Hear This 22nd August 2025

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:18):
Take a look. Take a look inside the book. Take
a look.

S2 (00:33):
Hello and welcome to hear this. I'm Frances Keeland and
you're listening to the Vision Australia Library radio show, where
we talk about books in the Vision Australia library collection. Uh,
hopefully we've got a good array of books and something
for everyone to enjoy. So I hope you enjoy today's show.

(00:54):
We have some great reader recommended titles today. There are
two from Bob in the act. Hey Bob, thank you
so much. The first one is The White Crow by
Michael Rowbotham. As the daughter of a London crime boss,
PC Philomena McCarthy walks a thin blue line, keeping the
two sides of her complicated life apart. On patrol one night,

(01:17):
she discovers a child in pajamas, wandering alone, taking Daisy home.
Phil uncovers the aftermath of a deadly home invasion as
three miles away, a prominent jeweler is found strapped to
an explosive in his ransacked store. The crimes are linked,
and all the evidence points to Phil's father as the mastermind.

(01:37):
Phil's two worlds are colliding, trapping her in the middle
of a vicious gang war that will threaten her career
and everyone she loves. Who can she trust? The badge
or her own blood? Let's hear a sample of The
White Crow by Michael Rowbotham. It's narrated by Kate Soby.

S3 (01:55):
In a real dark night of the soul, it is
always 3:00 in the morning. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote that
line almost 60 years before I was born, but it's
true enough today. London is not asleep at this hour,
merely resting her eyes and humming impatiently, waiting for the

(02:15):
sun to rise. She is like an aging, toothless beast
chewing through years that she struggles to swallow. I'm behind
the wheel of a police car, driving along Prince Charles
Road towards Hampstead in north London. The headlights sweep across
the wet asphalt, reflecting from the polished surfaces of parked

(02:38):
cars whose bonnets are beaded with raindrops. Beside me, PC
Rowan Cooper has a mobile phone tucked against his ear,
taking down food orders. We are on a breakfast run
to a Jewish bakery in East Finchley that serves the
best salt beef bagels in London, outside of Brick Lane.

(02:58):
Our colleagues at Kentish Town police station are hungry or bored,
or both. Although boredom is not a word that is
ever used, a quiet night is a good night. Good
nights are rare. What do you want? Asks coop. Smoked
salmon and cream cheese. You're such a girl. I'm a pescatarian.

(03:21):
Is that like being an Anglican? No, but I am
going straight to heaven. Coop is one of the few
people who call me Philomena rather than Phil. My mother
is another one. She insists upon it. She rang up
my station sergeant on my first day at Kentish Town
and told him that I should be addressed as PC

(03:42):
Philomena McCarthy. The sergeant thought it was a wind up
and I was teased for weeks.

S2 (03:48):
And that was a sample of The White Crow by
Michael Rowbotham. Michael is my h e m I c
h e Rowbotham r o b a r b h.
That book goes for nearly 12 hours, and it is

(04:09):
part two of the Philomena or Phil McCarthy series. Bob
wrote about The White Crow, an absolutely stunning thriller and
police procedural, and Bob has read most of Rowbotham's 12
novels and I have never been disappointed. And this one,
the latest, was no exception and just published in July.
So very quick to get into the collection for the library.

(04:31):
Michael Rowbotham was born in Australia and worked as a
journalist for many years on The Sydney Morning Herald, as
a court reporter and police roundsman as as a part
of that. His first Joseph O'Loughlin novel was published in 2004,
and that is the suspect, and we have all of
the Joseph O'Loughlin books in the series, as well as

(04:53):
some of his other series, lesser known but still quite
gripping the Cyrus Haven series. Starting off with Good Girl,
Bad Girl, published in 2019. Another book that Bob recommended
is The Occupation by Chloe Adams. In the autumn of 1949,
two women convene in the parlor of a Melbourne hotel.

(05:16):
Tess is married and childless. Mary unwed and pregnant. Surrendering
to the unimaginable, Mary agrees to a life altering pact
she will give her child to Tess. One year earlier,
Mary stands on the deck of an Australian naval ship
awaiting arrival in the ruined Japanese city of Kure. There,
thousands of Australians have established an occupation of the Hiroshima Prefecture.

(05:41):
As she settles into her new life, Mary finds carefree
expats touring the countryside, hosting picnics and even throwing parties,
all while the war ravaged locals try to rebuild their lives.
When she meets Sully, an Australian journalist, Mary's idealised notion
of the occupation crumbles. Confronted by moral ambiguity on such

(06:02):
a grand scale, she becomes reckless. Returning home may seem
the answer, but even there echoes of the occupation linger.
Let's hear a sample of The Occupation by Chloe Adams.
It's narrated by Leeanna Walsman.

S4 (06:17):
1949. Almost at once, the scene was drenched in motion
picture sentimentality. Cousin Tess, alone in the doorway, pared back
in effortless cream linen. She was clutching her crocodile skin bag,
the very one she carted about for years in an

(06:38):
apparent show of Protestant austerity. And she'd come in from
the hot squall of Collins Street, drawn and harried. That
much was clear to Mary, who was perched beneath the window, waiting.
But then Tess reached the fand air of the lobby,
and her shoulders slackened. The pace of her heels against

(06:59):
the parquetry floor slowed at the verge of the parlor.
She took stock of the men and women in their finery,
all the while tucking the bag under one wing, smoothing
her frock, pulling the bag free, tucking it back again. Finally,
a small man in a tailcoat approached, and they exchanged

(07:21):
a few words. Again Tessa's eyes flashed about the room,
leaping from one pale frock to the next. One straw.
Panama to another. Mary. Imagine the man in the tailcoat
was repeating the remarks he'd made to her only minutes earlier.

(07:41):
Awfully warm out, madam. Indeed. At least 90 degrees, they say,
before the change. Yes. In March, madam. March. Tess pressed
the back of her hand against her cheek. Perhaps she
could feel the heat of the day under her skin.
Or perhaps she was thinking what a fright she looked.

(08:04):
Not that she did. She did not. But perhaps she
was thinking that. Thinking of her mop of curls that
no doubt objected to weather and haste.

S2 (08:16):
And that was the occupation by Chloe Adams. Chloe is
c h o o. Adams is Adams. Adams. And that
book goes for nine hours and 33 minutes. The occupation
was the winner of the 2024 Penguin Literary Prize. And

(08:38):
I hope a lot of people joined the library with
the author. Reading by Chloe Adams on the 11th of August.
Next up we have a book recommended by Steve. Steve
is a person I pass by when I walked my supermarket,
and he's always got a great book that he's reading.
And we have discussed quite a few books. Often he

(08:58):
reads a lot of fantasy, high fantasy, big, you know,
big series of fantasy. But he will read any book
that anybody gives him. He'll have a go at it. Um,
and the latest one is Klara and the sun, and
this is by Kazuo Ishiguro from her place in the store. Klara,
an artificial friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the

(09:21):
behaviour of those who come in to browse and of
those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful
a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility
emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned
not to invest too much in the promises of humans.
In Klara and the sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our

(09:43):
rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable
narrator to explore a fundamental, fundamental question what does it
mean to love? Let's hear a sample of Klara and
the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, and this is narrated by
Sarah Su.

S5 (10:01):
When we were new, Rosa and I were mid-story on
the magazine's table side and could see through more than
half of the window, so we were able to watch
the outside. The office workers hurrying by, the taxis, the runners,
the tourists, beggar man and his dog. The lower part
of the RPO building. Once we were more settled, manager

(10:25):
allowed us to walk up to the front until we
were right behind the window display, and then we could
see how tall the RPO building was, and if we
were there at just the right time, we would see
the sun on his journey, crossing between the building tops
from our side over to the RPO building site. When

(10:46):
I was lucky enough to see him like that, I'd
lean my face forward to take in as much of
his nourishment as I could. And if Rosa was with me,
I'd tell her to do the same. After a minute
or two, we'd have to return to our positions. And
when we were new, we used to worry that because

(11:08):
we often couldn't see the sun from mid store, we'd
grow weaker and weaker. Boije AF Rex, who was alongside us, then,
told us there was nothing to worry about, that the
sun had ways of reaching us wherever we were. He
pointed to the floorboards and said, that's the sun's pattern

(11:29):
right there. If you're worried, you can just touch it
and get strong again. There were no customers when he
said this, and manager was busy arranging something up on
the red shelves, and I didn't want to disturb her
by asking permission. So I gave Rosa a glance and
when she looked back blankly, I took two steps forward,

(11:53):
crouched down, and reached out both hands to the sun's
pattern on the floor. But as soon as my fingers
touched it, the pattern faded.

S2 (12:03):
That was a sample of Klara and the Sun by
Kazuo Ishiguro. Um. Kazuo is spelled k a z u
k a z uo. Ishiguro is i-s h I g
u r o I h I g u r o.
And that book goes for ten hours and 15 minutes.

(12:25):
It comes under the category of science fiction. But, um,
Ishiguro is a great explorer of all sorts of genres.
One of his earlier books was The Remains of the day,
which was famously made into a film with Emma Thompson
and Anthony Hopkins, Never Let Me Go. Um, which is
also made into a film, and that's available in Braille

(12:48):
as well. And in 2017, Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize
for literature. So taking his body of work, uh, he
won the prize for his, um, wonderful explorations of all
sorts of topics. The Nobel Prize panel praised his work,
saying it has great emotional force, and his work uncovers

(13:11):
the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.
Thank you, Steve, for that recommendation. And I know he
was on the last 5 or 6 pages. And, uh,
so I kind of interrupted him towards the end of
the book, and he was just raving about it. Now,
to some sad news with the passing of, um, British

(13:31):
actor Terence Stamp. What a body of work he left
behind in cinema. He captured Australia's hearts in Priscilla, Queen
of the desert. Uh, but long before that, he was, uh,
in so many British movies that are so memorable. Far
from the Madding Crowd with Julie Christie, The Collector with
Samantha Eggar. So many amazing films starting off with Billy Budd,

(13:54):
which based on the book by Herman Melville. That was
his first film role in 1962, and he never looked
back from that point. I have been listening to some
wonderful books by him, his memoirs, and the first one
is called Stamp Album. He narrates them for the Rnib
and stamp album is published in the 80s. If you

(14:18):
want to borrow that, it's just wonderful. An insight into
his early life. He writes beautifully about his family growing
up in a fairly poor family as well in East London,
but there is a chapter in there where he talks
about some early sexual experiences that can be confronting. So
just a bit of a warning there, but beautifully written.
And his second memoir or second part of the memoir

(14:41):
series is Double feature. And in this he talks about
his acting career, but he also talks with great fondness
about people he knew, including Michael Caine, and they shared
a flat together before they were famous. They supported each
other through their early careers. So I'm just going to

(15:02):
play a sample of Double Feature by Terence Stamp. And
in this, um, Michael Caine is advising him on how
to perfect his role in Billy Budd.

S6 (15:14):
Mike went through the text with me every day, and
when I decided to do it with a Bristol accent,
he taught me a song which I had to sing
in dialect. My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light.
He slept with a mermaid one fine night. I was
cajoled into singing it everywhere, sometimes whilst walking in crowded streets.

(15:39):
He'd start me off and if I was too embarrassed,
he would bellow raucously until I joined in. If you
can sing in a dialect, it makes speaking it a doddle.
He assured me he didn't say. Not many people know
that in those days, only raised a blonde eyebrow in
such a way that you knew it wasn't just hearsay,

(16:00):
but a theory tried and tested in the field. There's
a lot of pressure up there in front of cameras,
believe me. I've seen good actors. Old troupers with years
of experience on the boards fall apart when the lights
go on, and it's all down to them. Stage actors
who've never tried. Frink gets a piece of cake. Oh,

(16:21):
there's always another take, love, but there ain't. It's not
like that. The first take is always the last. And
when you get up there, see what a lot of
manpower entails, you realise that they're all waiting. Watching to
see how you perform. If you can deliver. It ain't slow, heavy,

(16:42):
spread out pressure like a first night. It's sharp hypodermic
pressure and lonely. And here's a funny thing. You have
to resist playing to the crew. The camera is your lady.
Never forget it. Right here. End. If the first gospel. Now.

(17:04):
My father is the keeper of the Eddystone. Lie. He
slept with a mermaid one fine night. From that union,
there came three a keeper and a porpoise. And the
other was me.

S2 (17:16):
And that was a symbol of double feature by Terence Stamp. Um.
Takes place all throughout the 60s. His wonderful memoirs. Next
up is a book called wool. And this is by
Hugh Howey. The world outside has grown toxic. The view
of it limited talk of it is forbidden. The remnants

(17:37):
of humanity live underground in a single silo. But there
are always those who hope, who dream. These are the
dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism.
Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing
they want. They are allowed to go outside after the
previous sheriff leaves the silo in a terrifying ritual. Juliette,

(17:59):
a mechanic from the down deep, is suddenly and inexplicably
promoted to head of law enforcement. With newfound power and
with little regard for the customs she is supposed to abide,
Juliette uncovers hints of a sinister conspiracy tugging this thread
may uncover the truth, or it could kill every last
human alive. Let's hear a sample of Wool by Hugh Howey.

(18:22):
It's narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.

S7 (18:25):
The children were playing while Halston climbed to his death.
He could hear them squealing, as only happy children do
while they thundered about frantically above. Halston took his time,
each step methodical and ponderous as he wound his way
around and around the spiral staircase, old boots ringing out
on metal treads. The treads, like his father's boots, showed

(18:49):
signs of wear. Paint clung to them in feeble chips,
mostly in the corners and undersides where they were safe.
Traffic elsewhere on the staircase sent dust shivering off in
small clouds. Halston could feel the vibrations in the railing,
which was worn down to the gleaming metal that always
amazed him, how centuries of bare palms and shuffling feet

(19:12):
could wear down solid steel, one molecule at a time.
He supposed each life might wear away a single layer,
even as the silo wore away that life. Each step
was slightly bowed from generations of traffic. The edge rounded
down like a pouting lip in the center. There was
almost no trace of the small diamonds that once gave

(19:33):
the treads their grip. Their absence could only be inferred
from the pattern to either side. The small pyramidal bumps
rising from the flat steel with their crisp edges and
flecks of paint. Halston lifted an old boot to an
old step, pressed down, and did it again. He lost
himself in what the untold years had done. The ablation

(19:55):
of molecules and lives. Layers and layers ground to fine dust.
And he thought, not for the first time, that neither
life nor staircase had been meant for such an existence.
The tight confines of that long spiral, threading through the
buried silo like a straw in a glass, had not
been built for such abuse. Like much of the cylindrical home,

(20:18):
it seemed to have been made for other purposes, for
functions long since forgotten, but was now used as a
thoroughfare for thousands of people. Moving up and down in
repetitious daily cycles seemed more apt, in Holston's view, to
be used only in emergencies and perhaps by mere dozens.

S2 (20:36):
And that was the sample of Wool by Hugh Howey.
It's part one of the silo saga, and people may
be familiar with the silo series. It was a very
successful series, I think, on Apple TV. We also have
parts two and three. Part two of the silo saga
is shift. And then there is a dust. Hugh is

(20:58):
spelt h u g h. That's h u g h.
And Howey is h o w e y h o
w e y. And wool goes for 15 hours. Hugh
Howey began writing the series in 2011 as a standalone
short story to begin with. He started off self-publishing as

(21:19):
an independent through Amazon's Kindle Direct publishing system, and the
series grew in such popularity that in 2012, he signed
a deal with Simon and Schuster to distribute wool to
book retailers across the US and Canada. Let's finish off
today with a cozy food mystery. This is, um, recipes

(21:40):
for Love and Murder, and it's part one of a
Tannie Maria mystery recipe for murder. One stocky man who
abuses his wife, one small, tender wife, one medium sized
tough woman in love with the wife. One double barreled shotgun.
One small Karoo town marinated in secrets. Three bottles of

(22:02):
klipdrift brandy, three little ducks, one bottle of pomegranate juice,
one handful of chili peppers, one mild gardener, one fire poker,
one red hot new Yorker, seventh seventh day Adventists prepared
for the end of the world and one hard boiled
investigative journalist. Throw all the ingredients into a big pot

(22:24):
and simmer slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon for a
few years. Add the ducks, chilies and brandy towards the
end and turn up the heat. Let's hear a sample
of recipes for Love and Murder, a Tony Maria mystery.
Part one Mrs. of the series, and it's narrated by
Sandra Prinsloo.

S8 (22:43):
Isn't life funny? You know how one thing leads to
another in a way you just don't expect that. Sunday
morning I was in my kitchen stirring my apricot jam
in the cast iron pot. It was another dry summer's
day in the Karoo, and I was glad for the
breeze coming in the window. Mm. You smell lovely. I

(23:04):
told the apple confit, when I call it apricot jam,
it sounds like something in a jar from the spar supermarket.
But when it's gone, fight. You know, it's made in
a kitchen. My mother was Afrikaans and my father was English,
and the languages are mixed up inside me. I taste
in Afrikaans and argue in English, but if I swear,

(23:27):
I go back to Afrikaans again. The I was just
coming right, getting thick and clear when I heard the car.
I added some apricot kernels and a stick of cinnamon
to the jam. I did not know that the car
was bringing the first ingredient in a recipe for love
and murder. But maybe life is like a river that

(23:50):
can't be stopped, always winding toward or away from death
and love. Back and forth. Still, even though life moves
like that river. Lots of people go their whole lives
without swimming. I thought I was one of those people.
The crew is one of the quietest places in South Africa.

(24:11):
So you can hear an engine a long way off.
I turned off the gas flame and put the lid
on the pot. I still had time to wash my hands,
take off my blue apron, check my hair in the
mirror and put on the kettle. Then I heard a
screech of brakes and a bump and I guessed it
was Hattie. She's a terrible driver. I peeked out and
saw her white Toyota Etios snuggled up to a eucalyptus

(24:33):
tree in my driveway. I was glad to see she'd
missed my old Nissan Bucky. I took out the milk
from the fridge. Harriet Christie's my friend and the editor
of the Klein Karoo Gazette, where I write my recipe page.

S2 (24:47):
And that was recipes for Love and Murder by Sally Andrew.
Sally is Sally Andrew a n d r e w
a n d r e w. And this book goes
for 11.5 hours. The second one in the series is
a satanic mechanic and that's also available in the library.

(25:18):
Thank you for joining us on Hear This today. Thank
you to Bob for your recommendations. And to Steve, if
you would like to recommend books, if you would like
to suggest something for the show. Please don't hesitate to
email or call the library. The library's number is 130654656.
That's 130654656. Or you can email library at that's library

(25:46):
at australia.com. That's also just the contact for any of
your queries, whether it's about wanting to join the library,
wanting to find out a little bit more about what
the library offers. There's just so much that goes on
with the library. Um, hopefully next week we'll have Maureen
on to to talk about some library events that are

(26:07):
coming up. So hope everybody has a lovely week and
we'll be back next week with more here. This.