Fire
John Boyne
Doubleday, $29.99

John Boyne’s Fire is the third of a quartet of short novels based on the elements, each dealing unexpectedly with trauma. Dr Freya Petrus is an emergency doctor specialising in skin grafts and burns victims. She’s skilled, attractive, well-off, but spent her childhood in poverty and neglect. In alternate chapters, we follow Freya as a doctor in a busy English hospital, training interns and treating patients whose lives are changed forever, then as a girl abandoned by her teen mum to the care of her grandmother, before being bullied horribly by teenage boys (the sons of one of her mum’s better boyfriends). The not-so-submerged twist is that the remarkable Dr Petrus, when she’s not saving lives as a medico, seduces underage boys. Nature vs nurture is raised but not in a way that works as more than a plot point in a genre mystery. Boyne’s suite of novellas embraces brevity, but it works against him here – the nightmare isn’t fleshed out emotionally and psychologically with sufficient gravity.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK

A Mudlarking Year
Lara Maiklem
Bloomsbury, $44.99

Mudlarking: scavenging river banks for valuable or interesting objects. British writer Lara Maiklem has been mudlarking on the banks of the Thames since 2012, and it’s astonishing what the river bank throws up. This, her second book on the subject, covers a year. But, more than a record of her finds, it’s also a history of London reflected in the objects – Maiklem also incorporates perfectly plausible, inventive speculations on why the objects wound up on the river bank, as well as glimpses of her own story. Roman artefacts, old coins, pottery, Samian bowl fragments, 18th-century shoe soles, shells and gold are just some of the finds her mudlarking hands dig up. Whether it’s the pain of her freezing fingers in January or describing the beauty of the “blue hour” in spring, Maiklem has a rare talent for making you feel you’re there right alongside her.

My Country
David Marr
Black Inc, $39.99

Most readers will be familiar with David Marr’s unflinching political journalism – especially his scathing assessment of John Howard during the “children overboard” scandal. What this updated collection of his writing life reveals, however, is the well-rounded nature of his oeuvre. His reconstruction of the night Ben Chifley died in Canberra in 1951, for example, both engrossing and poignant, is as perfectly judged a piece of non-fiction storytelling as you’re likely to come across. Likewise, his reflections on his Christian youth, coming to terms with his sexuality, the demise of his marriage and entering into the writing life – as well as the way, like Patrick White, he looks his country in the eye, both hopeful and despairing. But, above all, what comes through is the fact that Marr, with deceptive simplicity and poise, is a superb writer.

Crimes Against Humanity
Geoffrey Robertson KC,
Penguin, $45

The whole notion of crimes against humanity (acts so heinous they diminish everybody) may have come from the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials (which spawned the ICC), but Robertson, in this fifth edition, takes the history of humanitarian crimes back to the English civil war and the reign of Charles 1. He concentrates mostly, though, on the post-WWII era – paying special attention to GW Bush’s invasion of Iraq on the basis of “pre-emptive self-defence”, how the same argument was used by Putin to invade Ukraine (to stop them joining NATO and becoming a potential invader), right up to the current war in the Middle East. He points to the Hague’s successes – Milosevic, Gaddafi (posthumously) and, potentially, Putin and Netanyahu. A vast, exceptionally relevant subject, argued with engaging clarity, with the odd dash of gallows humour.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Sport
Titus O’Reily
Penguin, $36.99

As often as not, sport is spoken of in religious terms – sportspeople not uncommonly seen as saints, sinners or sinning saints. Taking his cue from this, sports commentator Titus O’Reily examines the flawed careers of a range of sporting figures, according to which of the seven deadly sins they have committed. The downfall of blessed soccer freak George Best – who famously said, “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered” – is almost Shakespearean, his fatal flaw, lust, leading him to squander his talent as well. Whether it be Tiger Woods, Michael Jordon or Donald Trump (whose envy of anyone who owned a team led to all sorts of dubious dealings), they all fall victim to, or are characterised by, one of the biblical sins in the amusing account of strange but true sporting tales.

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