New in bookstores this month. Have you read it yet? A plethora of international reviewers have, including Max Harris of @nytimes who writes: “Be assured that the latest work from Stuart, whose debut, ‘Shuggie Bain,’ won the 2020 Booker Prize, is the furthest thing from damp. ‘John of John’ is a stick of dynamite waiting to go off in your hand, the steadily intensifying story of a fractured trio — grandmother, father and son — who are held together, barely, by their waning ability not to say the words to one another that will blow them apart. So strained is the household, which still feels defined by the end of the marriage that shattered it years ago, that barely a kind word is spoken, either in English, the language that they all share, or Scottish Gaelic, which two of them use either to shield or to shut out the third.”
‘Cannon’ by Lee Lai has become the first graphic novel to win the Stella Prize. The award was announced in Brisbane tonight.
“This is a novel of immense skill and power that uses words and the visual language of comics to construct a complex and pleasingly unresolved story that readers can’t put down,” says Stella judges’ chair Sophie Gee.
“It’s relatable, funny, wise, and very weird in all the best ways.” In last November’s ‘Guardian’ reviewer Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen described ‘Cannon’ as “a thoughtful, meditative book that is also spiked with necessary anger and moments of levity, all achieved through the dexterity of the graphic novel format.” Lee Lai is an Australian cartoonist living in Tio’tia:ke (colonially known as Montreal, Canada). In 2021, she was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 for her debut graphic novel, ‘Stone Fruit’. ‘Cannon’ (Giramondo, 2025), was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards earlier this year, and was named a ‘best book of 2025’ by the Sydney Morning Herald, NPR, Guardian Australia and ABC Arts.
Earlier this week Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s ‘Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice’ won the British Book Awards’ Overall Book of the Year award. For the judges, Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s memoir was a “testament to the importance of serious non-fiction”. One judge said: “I am a better person for having read this book.” Writes Sonia Orchard @australianbookreview : “Virginia Roberts Giuffre was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most high-profile victims, and many will read her story hoping for leads into the Epstein files. What the memoir offers instead – or in addition – is a devastating anatomy of vulnerability: what it means to be a teenage girl, attractive and poor, in a society that treats such girls as simultaneously visible and disposable. It reveals how easily and routinely girls can be exploited in plain sight, not once but repeatedly, and how power not only enables abuse but launders it.”
Thank you @samah_sabawi for our “in convo” @sorrentowritersfestival two weeks ago. On a weekend of many important discussions, it was a highlight for me. ‘Cactus Pear For My Beloved’ is a beautiful family story - and my book rec on this week’s @dontshootpod
Happy 100th birthday to modern media’s greatest science communicator one of our wisest thinkers (parents and grandparents pls note: ‘Where’s Attenborough’ is the Thinking Child’s ‘Where’s Wally?’ Big hit at our place 🦓 🦒 🦁 🦍 🐍 🐻❄️ 🕷️ 🦘 🦅
Mother’s Day next week and I found a few possibles @avenuebookstore Albert Park store. From crime novels to Muriel, plus a new one from my hero writer Patrick Gale, to a book about flowers …… lots of choices, go visit your local bookshop and have a browse. And PS all mums love a book 📕❤️
