Meet author Jenny Davies and uncover the incredible history of an amazing Melbourne icon

A family story about Jenny Davies' grandparents first meeting at a ballroom at Flinders Street Station compelled the author to discover more about Flinders Street Station and write Beyond the Facade: Flinders Street, more than just a railway station. Her research uncovered that along with housing a train station, the building has also been home to a lending library, several dance and theatre schools, a lecture/concert hall and classrooms, a gym and sauna and many more surprising organisations and facilities.

The talk coincides with the 100th anniversary of the station and an exhibition at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

This session is free, however bookings are essential.
To book, visit library bookings

Kew Booktalk Books

Lisa

French, Nicci

What to do when someone dies.

FIC FRENC

Hall, Norma

Leaves from my diary.

FIC HALL

Martin, Tony

A nest of occasionals.

791.45092 MAR

Magrs, Paul

Never the bride.

FIC MAGRS

Theroux, Paul

A dead hand.

FIC THERO

Elizabeth

Krakauer, Jon

Into thin air.

796.522 KRA

Levitt, Stephen & Stephen J Dubner

Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything.

330 LEV

Kingsolver, Barbara

The poisonwood bible.

FIC KINGS

Almond, David

Skellig.

TFIC SKELL

Fiona

Bartulin, Lenny

A deadly business.

FIC BARTU

Bruce, Alison

Cambridge Blue.

FIC BRUCE

Jance, J A

Edge of evil.

FIC JANCE

Patterson, Diana

The ice beneath my feet.

919.89 PAT

Peter Temple wins Miles Franklin Literary Award

Congratulations to Peter Temple who was awarded the Miles Franklin Literary Award for 2010. Announced at an award dinner in Sydney on 22 June 2010, Peter Temple was presented this year's prize of $42,000 for his novel Truth.

Temple who was born in South Africa now lives in Ballarat.

It is the first time a crime novel has woth the prestigious award.

Temple's winning novel is the much anticipated sequel to The Broken Shore and comprehends murder, corruption, family, friends, honour, honesty, deceit, love, betrayal - and truth. A stunning story about contemporary Australian life, Truth is written with great moral sophistication.

At the close of a long day, Inspector Stephen Villani stands in the bathroom of a luxury apartment high above the city. In the glass bath, a young woman lies dead, a panic button within reach.

So begins Truth, the sequel to Peter Temple’s bestselling masterpiece, The Broken Shore, winner of the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Crime Novel.

Villani’s life is his work. It is his identity, his calling, his touchstone. But now, over a few sweltering summer days, as fires burn across the state and his superiors and colleagues scheme and jostle, he finds all the certainties of his life are crumbling.

Truth is a novel about a man, a family, a city. It is about violence, murder, love, corruption, honour and deceit. And it is about truth.

On behalf of the judging panel, Morag Fraser commented "It was a controversial and challenging shortlist, accomplished and diverse in many ways that made the judges' task very difficult. Each novel offered quite a distinct and compelling fictional journey".

Temple was interviewed on radio this morning about the award. Click here to read a transcript of the interview.

Click here to reserve Truth.

Gerbrand Bakker wins Dublin Literary Award.

The Twin, a debut novel by Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker, has won the 2010 International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award.

The Award is organized by Dublin City Libraries, on behalf of Dublin City Council and sponsored by IMPAC, an international management productivity company.

The prize is €100,000. It is the largest prize for a single novel and will be divided between the author and the novel’s translator, David Colmer, who will receive €25,000.

Uniquely, the IMPAC DUBLIN receives its nominations from public libraries around the globe.

Nominated by:

• Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• The Association of Public Libraries The Hague, The Netherlands
• Gemeentebibliotheek Utrecht, The Netherlands
• Open bare Bibliotheek Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The Twin was chosen from a shortlist of 8, and a longlist of 156 books.

163 libraries participated - representing 123 cities in 43 countries.

The citation for the award reads:

The Twin is the first novel by Gerbrand Bakker, beautifully translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer. Though rich in detail, it’s a sparely written story, with the narrator’s odd small cruelties, laconic humour and surprising tendernesses emerging through a steady, well-paced, unaffected style.

Helmer van Wonderen is a farmer. For forty years he’s lived a stalled, frustrated life, with every decision on the farm being made by his father. It wasn’t the life Helmer intended. Through childhood he was one half of twins – an entity he even thought of inwardly as ‘Henk and Helmer’. But Henk was killed at eighteen in a car driven by his girlfriend, Riet, who was then ordered away by the boys’ grieving father. Helmer was called home from university to take his brother’s place on the farm. And then the mother he loved died.

But now Helmer’s father, too, is dying, and the shift in power between the two of them sets off great changes. Helmer moves the old man upstairs. “He sat there like a calf that’s just a couple of minutes old, before it’s been licked clean: with a directionless, wobbly head and eyes that drift over things.” Is this indifference, coldness, or Helmer’s first chance at revenge for what has been an unlived life ‘with his head under a cow’? And perhaps also for his father’s own seemingly deliberate cruelties, both on the farm itself and to the son whom he could never love as much as the dead brother.

Into what seems set fair to be a stunning and compelling study of unlocked grief and frozen hate comes Riet’s wayward teenage son, sent by his exasperated mother to get an inkling of experience away from home. This cheerful lad (“How is the dying going, Mr Van Wonderen?”), with all his openness and shifting moods and frank demands, hastens the changes that Helmer has already starting making in the house, and stirs up more reminders of the past. Deftly, this poignant and astonishingly tender story opens up into an exhilarating account of how a man can come to understand himself for the first time. It is a tale of redemption.

The book convinces from first page to last. With quiet mastery the story draws in the reader. The writing is wonderful: restrained and clear, and studded with detail of farm rhythms in the cold, damp Dutch countryside. The author excels at dialogue, and Helmer’s inner story-telling voice also comes over perfectly as he begins to change everything around him. There are intriguing ambiguities, but no false notes. Nothing and no one is predictable, and yet we believe in them all: the regular tanker driver, the next door neighbour with her two bouncing children, and Jaap, the old farm labourer from the twins’ childhood who comes back to the farm in time for the last great upheaval, as Helmer finally takes charge of what is left of his own life.

***

Click here to reserve The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker.

Barbara Kingsolver wins Orange Prize

Barbara Kingsolver has won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel The lacuna.

The Orange Prize for Fiction is awarded to the woman who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English.

The prize is open to any full length novel, written in English by a woman of any nationality, provided that the novel is published for the first time in the United Kingdom between 1 April of the year before the prize is awarded and 31 March of the year in which the prize is awarded.

Click here to go to the library catalogue to reserve The lacuna.

Hawthorn Booktalk. 3 June 2010.

KATE

GRESCOE, Taras

Dead seas

910.4 GRE

FLYNN, Nick

The ticking is the bomb

928.1 FLY

DOYLE, Peter

Crooks like us

364.30994 DOY

AGASSI, Andre

Open

796.342092 AGA

MARX, Jack

Australian tragic

994 MAR

CATERSON, Simon

Hoax nation

001.95 CAT

JANE

WOODSWORTH, Nicholas

Seeking Provence

944.9 WOO

MALOUF, David

Ransom

FIC MALOU

WALKER, Martin

Bruno, Chief of Police

FIC WALKE

HEWSON, David

The blue demon

FIC HEWSO

CAROL

BYATT, A.S.

The children's book

FIC BYATT

MILLER, Alex

Lovesong

FIC MILLE

OLSSON, Linda

Let me sing you gentle songs

FIC OLSSO