Wills and succession can bring out the worst in families. Disputes in the area often serve as a proxy for deeper interpersonal conflict and trauma. Caroline Overington’s latest domestic thriller begins with a death that spells legal trouble, and forces two middle-aged siblings to track down a mother who abandoned them as children 40 years earlier. Clare, now a New Yorker with a high-flying career in finance, and Aaron, a FIFO miner, return to the outback mining town of their youth when their father, Joe, commits suicide, and an error in the will leaves his entire estate to Clare and Aaron’s mother, Eden. As they uncover their family’s secret history, Aaron’s adolescent daughter Cady seems to be suffering more than teen angst. The novel twists from dark past to present danger. Narrated in alternating chapters by Clare, Aaron and Cady, what the novel lacks in style it makes up for in pace, accessibility, and psychological astuteness.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Beyond the Wall
Ines Geipel, Polity, $41.95

Ines Geipel, a former East German Olympic sprinter, not only takes us behind the Berlin Wall and life growing up in the German Democratic Republic during the 1960s and 1970s, but also lifts the rug on her own family. And what a rug it is: grandfather a Nazi administrator in Riga, a father who was a Stasi special agent with multiple passports and identities who travelled between East and West spying, and a mother who never spoke about any of it. Her memoir is a tale of repression, denial and secrecy at a personal and political level, drawing on the likes of Hannah Arendt and Roland Barthes. Emblematic of the impact is the tale of her dying brother looking back upon their family history. But it’s also the rise of neo-Nazism today in the former East that troubles her. A simply written, poetic and dramatic portrait of the interlinked nature of past and present.

The Secret Life of Flying
Captain Jeremy Burfoot, Macmillan, $36.99

When 10cc sang of flying in a jumbo (“It’s only my willpower that keeps this thing in operation”), they were, of course, right. But former Qantas pilot Jeremy Burfoot has other ideas. He takes the reader through the full flight process – especially the stuff you don’t see – from pre-flight to landing. Drawing on his 35 years of experience, he provides expert observations as well as an array of amusing anecdotes – from the thrill of take-off and the captain’s pride of a soft landing, to volcanic ash, farting etiquette (or lack of it) and pilot and cabin crew relations, including a pilot/co-pilot/female cabin crew member menage at serious altitude. He answers most questions you might want to ask and is generally reassuring – also addressing “green” flying – with all the breeziness of good in-flight entertainment.

Lebanon Days
Theodore Ell, Atlantic Books, 34.99

At about 6pm on August 4, 2020, Theodore Ell, resident in Beirut with his diplomat wife, was crossing from the dining area of their apartment to the kitchen to join his wife when the building was suddenly rocked, the floor bounced and everything shattered. The port explosion – one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded – destroyed most of the city. Ell’s description of that pivotal moment in his memoir about living in Lebanon between 2018 and 2021 is riveting; graphic, but also surreal, speech and sounds strangely muted. His record of the time, often poetic in treatment, incorporates history, the deeply troubled politics of the country, as well as the stories of Lebanese people. The result is a vivid, thoughtful outsider’s portrait of the country through five, literally and metaphorically, explosive years.

Milk
Matthew Evans, Murdoch Books, $34.99

Most of us get our dairy milk from supermarkets, but TV farmer and writer Matthew Evans gets his from Myrtle, his cow. And this study of the wonder food (especially for babies), mostly in its dairy form (but also in its other forms such as soy and oat), is what you might call hands-on. Milk not only contains carbs, fat and protein, but is essential for digestion and immunity. But, he acknowledges, it’s always been controversial. When Margaret Thatcher ended the free milk program in schools in the UK, the headlines read: Thatcher … Milk Snatcher. Environmentalists point to milk’s global footprint and alleged animal cruelty, but objections to and demonising of milk go back centuries. Evans calls it “a cultural icon or gastronomic flashpoint”. Consumption of milk may be declining in the West, but Evans sings its praises in engaging, informed writing.

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