  | Cairo Stories – Anne Marie Drosso This short story collection examining the inner lives of Egyptians at home and abroad is remarkable for its measured, delicate approach to its subjects. These range from a jet-setting archaeologist locked in an impossible marriage, to a young girl whose mother no longer recognises her — yet there’s a wistful, elegiac quality that unites these fractured souls and inner monologues, while remaining appealingly understated. An interesting collection that bodes well for first time author Anne-Marie Drosso, who grew up in Egypt and lived for many years in Canada, but now resides in the UK. The book comes recommended by Egyptian author Alaa al-Aswany. -NR Launch event Thur 8 March, details here. |
 | White Man Falling – Mike Stocks The spirit of RK Narayan’s quirky and humorous novels set in a fictional town in south India informs poet and translator Mike Stocks’s witty first book; not only in setting and character, but also in some of the wry humour and ironies that accrue as the story unfolds. Former policeman Swami has suffered a stroke and is stressed by the demands of his six daughters and wife, who, as Indian mothers in books like this are prone to, is obsessed with finding eligible bachelors for them. Depressed and beaten by life, one day a white man falls from the sky before him and soon he is seen by the people of Mullaipuram no longer with derision but as a man with a charmed and inspirational life. Stock’s enjoyable debut is buoyed by some clever observational wit, characterisation and detail. -HS |
| Deep Hanging Out Richard Gwyn British artist Cosmo Flute and his Argentinian friend Ruben Fortuna are smart, sensitive blokes taking refuge from the 1980s in Crete and engaging in time-honoured male pursuits like catching big fish, screwing around and being creative. As Cosmo gets involved with Alysa, things get complicated. There are explosions, modern-day minotaurs, and a barrage of recent Greek history delivered as if through a haze of raki. The Times apparently described Gwyn’s debut novel as ‘superior lifestyle porn’ and perhaps this is a niche he intends to cultivate: an addictive cocktail of travel, history, sex and philosophy. -LA |  |
| Sunstroke — Tessa Hadley Inertia is an overriding force in these stories about women: young women who live with men, older women who live without. In the title story, two young mothers bask prettily in the sun with their toddlers and toy with the notion of an affair, seemingly as locked in their routines as the mistresses of a Victorian country house: ‘the warm vegetable soup of motherhood… surprisingly resembles their own mothers’ lives… They don’t quite know how this happened’. Under Hadley’s intense photorealist gaze, the domestic goddesses who grace the pages of women’s magazines or populate the average conservation area are brought to life, but it is not a very animated form of life. -IP |  |
| Every Move You Make “The cicadas stopped dead in the heat. There was a sound, more like a happening in the sky I thought than a shot, and dozens of birds that had been invisible in the grass were suddenly in the air, wildly flapping.” In ‘Valley of the Lagoons’, which follows the men and boys of a small town on an annual outback pilgrimage to shoot wild pigs, Malouf presumably draws on childhood memories of growing up in Queensland. Not content to merely mythologise the past, he uncovers uncomfortable holes in it — instances of boys who must be more macho than they want in the title story, and in ‘War Baby’ about the hapless Charlie en route for Vietnam. The final story ‘Domestic Cantata’ shows a very different contemporary world: a man at home with his wife and teenage family, not a gun or a ute in sight. –LA |  |