The Signature of all things

The signature of all things is the name of the 16th century theory...that god had imprinted a message on every plant on earth about what that plant was for. –Elizabeth Gilbert.

Born in the 'Age of Wonder', Alma Whittaker is the daughter of a wealthy botanical explorer who had traveled on Captain Cook's voyages. She has access to one of the greatest libraries in the New World and has spent her life studying mosses. Alma has an unquenchable curiosity and is driven to try to understand the master clockwork behind every (living) thing. The quest leads her to eminence in science but to disappointment in the realm of romance. The central episode of the novel begins in the 1850s when Alma meets and marries a botanical artist, Ambrose Pike. When intimacy between them fails she sends him to the island of Tahiti. A little more than 3 years later she receives word that Ambrose has died. In her father's footsteps, she travels to Tahiti to unravel the mystery of Ambrose's death where she finally finds some answers, and an understanding of the nature of survival. 

CITATION: Gilbert, Elizabeth, The signature of all things. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

  I know there are few greater pleasures in life than to be completely subsumed by the work you are obsessed with.                                                                     –Elizabeth Gilbert.  

Eat, Pray, Love was a bestseller in 2006...but maybe if you weren't a fan of that book - you might like this one - because its a big, smart and beautifully written novel...an absolute highlight of the year. –Michael Cathcart, ABC radio.

Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle (USA).

Also available in an illustrated edition, large print, audiobook, kindle ebook.

Viking reader’s  book club notes, including interview with Elizabeth Gilbert.

Go to the Elizabeth Gilbert official author website for interviews, videos, and a TED talk on thinking creatively.

 

Listen to an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert by Michael Cathcart on ABC radio.

Promotional video - Signature of all things:

A tale for the time being

'Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.'

 

Ruth is a novelist living on a remote island off Canada’s Pacific northwest. She discovers a lunchbox washed ashore. It could be debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Inside the Hello Kitty lunchbox is a diary written by Nao, a 16 year old Japanese schoolgirl. Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all she wants to document the life of her great-grandmother. In a small cafe in Tokyo, Nao writes about the joy and heartbreak of family life and her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen anarchist nun.  

CITATION: Ozeki, Ruth. A tale for the time being. New York Viking, 2013.  422 pages. 

Also available in large print , audiobook, ebook & kindle. 

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013. 

Book promotional video.

Watch the author Ruth Ozeki video interview.

Mr Pip

On worn torn Bougainville Island, a teacher (the only white man in the village) – begins to read at school each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. He becomes known as ‘Mr Pip’ and inspires his students especially the young Matilda. Bougainville is no longer an island paradise – it’s a ravaged, murderous place where children are forced to live by their wits. After a series of tragic events Matilda begins to lose her will to live, but is revived by the memory of Pip and the power of literature to offer escape and solace in the worst of times.

A little Gauguin, a bit of Lord Jim, the novel's lyricism evokes great beauty and great pain.
– Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2007.

In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives.   –Fantastic Fiction website.

Citation:  Jones, Lloyd. Mister Pip. Melbourne : Text Publishing, 2008.  220 pages.

Official website for Mr Pip:  http://www.randomhouse.com/book/88486/mister-pip-by-lloyd-jones

The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.  It won the 2007 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for best book in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific and the 2007 American Library Association Literary Awards. 

Also available in large print, audiobook and movie.

Click here to watch the Mr Pip movie trailer.

Generation loss

Art needs light – look at the lack of it. –Patti Smith, book frontpiece.

Generation loss: the loss of quality between subsequent copies of data, such as sound recordings, video, or photographs.

Music is a big part of this novel about Cass Neary – a photographer whose hard living lifestyle has caught up with her. This self-destructive anti-heroine was once famous for her pictures of the 1970s New York punk scene. Now she has been forgotten and jobs are hard to come by. As a mercy mission, an old friend assigns her to interview iconic 60s photographer, Aphrodite Kamestos who lives as a recluse on her own private island off the coast of Maine. Aphrodite is not interested in being interviewed by Cass.

On the island Cass learns ‘that a commune Aphrodite helped found has taken her bleak aesthetic to the next level in an effort to penetrate mysteries of life and death.’ – Publishers Weekly.

“Cass confronts a horrifying embodiment of the extremes to which her own artistic inclinations could lead…Hand explores the narrow boundary between artistic genius and madness in this gritty, profoundly unsettling literary thriller.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Citation: Hand, Elizabeth. Generation Loss. Northampton, MA: Small Beer Press: Distributed to the trade by Consortium, 2007. 320 pages.

Read about the author + reviews and her other books at the Elizabeth Hand website. Watch her video interview. 

All the birds, Singing

A Miles Franklin award winner (2014), this is a story of stubborn hopes and unexpected beauty.  Jake Whyte is a hard working, hard headed young woman living alone and tending sheep on a remote British island. Her wayward dog is her only companion.  This wild, windswept island is isolated, although past emotional scars mean that's the way she wants it.

Suspense builds as her sheep go missing at night. Could it be foxes in the woods, a strange boy, or rumours of a mysterious beast? And there are demons of Jake's Australian past, intruding into the present...

CITATION: Wyld, Evie. All the birds singing. North Sydney, NSW:  Random House Australia, 2013.

 

Swift and assured and emotionally wrenching. You won’t only root for Jake, you’ll see the world, hard facts and all, more clearly through her telling.       
                                                     - The New York Times.


 

Readers feedback, a free chapter and notes about the author plus a video interview with Evie Wyld at the official publisher's  website.

Listen to the ABC radio interview with Evie Wyld.   
This title is also available in Large print, CD audiobook & kindle ebook.

 

 

The light between oceans

Set in 1918 on a remote island lighthouse off Southwest Australia. A dramatic wild setting where Tom Sherbourne has retreated to live a solitary life in the hope of erasing his emotional scars after distinguished service in World War I. While on leave he meets Isabel, they marry and she joins him at the lighthouse.  In peaceful isolation their romance blooms - but after 4 years and several heartbreaking miscarriages, their marriage is tested to the limit. Two weeks after the tragic loss of a premature baby, a dinghy drifts ashore carrying a dead man and a newborn baby in great distress. Against Tom’s protests, Isabel wants to keep the baby that she sees as a gift from God. Only years later will they understand that the choice they make will haunt them forever.

CITATION: Stedman, M.L., The light between oceans. North Sydney, NSW: Vintage Books, 2012.

The New York Times bestseller soon to be a major motion picture from Spielberg’s Dreamworks that is “irresistible…seductive…with a high concept plot that keeps you riveted from the first page.”  –O, The Oprah Magazine.

Also available in large print, audiobook & kindle ebook.
More about this book including video interview with the author and 'browse inside' feature from the Publishers website - Simon and Schuster.

Hollywood comes to Stanley, (Tasmania) starring Michael Fassbender, Rachel Weisz.

Stanley, Tasmania.     photo credit - ABC News

The secret fate of Mary Watson

Based on historical diaries, this fictional 'true story' is set in 1879 on remote Lizard Island in far north Queensland.

Fleeing her family home, 19-year-old Mary Oxnam has few prospects and no connections. Plain and penniless, she must rely on her wit and intelligence to survive. Mary soon finds work as a pianist in a Cooktown brothel. The job serves as a front for her more lucrative side career as a spy in various smuggling operations. 
Within a year she has moved to Lizard Island, locked into a marriage of convenience with a fisherman. It's a rough, isolated place, rife with hidden enemies - and unexpected temptation.

A suspenseful story of peril and intrigue, with a heady combination of wild beauty and foreboding. – HarperCollinsPublishers.


CITATION: Johnson, Judy. The secret fate of Mary Watson. Pymble, N.S.W. : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2011.

By the winner of a Victorian Premier's Literary Award, 2007 (for Jack).

Available in CD audiobook, braille & kindle ebook.