This month's must read:
Gun Island
Amitav Ghosh $38
From the bestselling author of the popular Ibis trilogy. A dealer of rare books, Deen Datta is used to a quiet life spent indoors, but as his once-solid beliefs begin to shift, he is forced to set out on an extraordinary journey; one that takes him from India to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled route through the memories and experiences of those he meets along the way. There is Piya, a fellow Bengali-American who sets his journey in motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who opens Deen’s eyes to the realities of growing up in today’s world; Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help someone in need; and Cinta, an old friend who provides the missing link in the story they are all a part of. It is a journey which will upend everything he thought he knew about himself, about the Bengali legends of his childhood and about the world around him. Gun Island, a beautifully realised novel which effortlessly spans space and time, is the story of a world on the brink, of increasing displacement and unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope, of a man whose faith in the world and the future is restored by two remarkable women.
City of Girls
Elizabeth Gilbert $35
From the much-loved author of the internationally acclaimed The Signature of All Things, this novel, set in the New York City theatre world during the 1940s, is told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret. Vivian Morris is sent by her despairing parents to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theatre called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer and a no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it steers her to a new approach to the kind of life she craves – and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it… also leading to the love of her life. Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a beautiful, poignant story exploring the idiosyncrasies of true love.
The Electric Hotel
Dominic Smith $37
From the award-winning author of the acclaimed bestseller The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, this luminous and absorbingly inventive novel traces the intertwined fates of a silent-film director and his muse. It winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey – America’s first movie town – and on the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the spellbinding story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man’s doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder. For over 30 years, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. When a film-history student comes to interview him about ‘The Electric Hotel’ – the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose – the past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration, and Claude’s memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.
Chanel’s Riviera
Anne de Courcy $38
Far from worrying about the onset of war, in the spring of 1938 the burning question on the French Riviera was whether one should curtsey to the Duchess of Windsor. For those who had recently been attracted to settle there it was a golden, glamorous life, removed from politics or conflict. Featuring a sparkling cast of artists, writers and historical figures including Winston Churchill, Daisy Fellowes, Salvador Dali, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Eileen Gray and Edith Wharton, with the enigmatic Coco Chanel at its heart, Chanel’s Riviera is a captivating account of a period that saw some of the deepest extremes of luxury and terror in the 20th century. From Chanel’s first summer at her Roquebrune villa La Pausa, amid the glamour of the pre-war parties and casinos, to the horrors of evacuation and the displacement of thousands of families during World War II, acclaimed historian and biographer Anne de Courcy explores the fascinating world of the Cote d’Azur elite in the 1930s and 1940s. Enriched with original research, it is social history that brings the experiences of both rich and poor, protected and persecuted, to vivid life.
Big Sky
Kate Atkinson $38
Iconoclastic detective Jackson Brodie – ex-military, ex-Cambridge constabulary, now private investigator – makes a keenly anticipated return in a novel about secrets, sex and lies. He has relocated to a seaside village, where it’s quiet and picturesque, but there is something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network – and back across the path of someone from his past. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking literary crime novel.
