Hear This 23rd May 2025

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:09):
Take a look. Take a look inside the book. Take
a look.

S2 (00:24):
Hello and welcome to hear this. This is the Vision
Australia Library radio show where we talk about books in
the Vision Australia library collection. And today we've got a
few to mention, so I do hope you enjoy the show.
Let's start off with a couple of reader recommended. The
first one is from Gina and it is The Best

(00:47):
Years of Our Lives by Richard Clapton. Welcome to the
party that never ends. When he was 16, he inveigled
his way into a Sydney hotel to hang out with
the Rolling Stones. And from that day on, Richard Clapton
knew he was going to be a rock star. It's
now almost 50 years since that fateful day. Years filled
with a lifetime of incredible experiences, outrageous good times, and

(01:11):
a catalog of iconic and timeless songs. Through the glory
years of rock n roll in cities as varied as London, Berlin, Sydney,
Los Angeles and Paris, Richard forged his own career and
built up a significant body of work while living, loving
and partying with the biggest names in the Australian and
international music world. By his own frank admission, these were

(01:34):
years fuelled by prodigious quantities of alcohol and drugs, set
against a backdrop of constant recording and touring, of endless
partying and wild times. It was to be a roller
coaster ride of euphoric highs and deep shattering lows. Let's
hear a sample of Richard Clapton's memoir, The Best Years

(01:55):
of Our Lives. It's narrated by Daniel Wilks.

S3 (01:58):
It was 1966, and Sydney was bathed in the and
the brilliance of Summer. Black and white television had only
been introduced to the suburban masses a few years earlier,
and as I recall when I was a little kid,
programs like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best
were already designing a rough sketch, which would fast become

(02:20):
the tapestry of our lives in much the same way
as the Kardashians and other gaudy plastic TV soaps have
become the blueprint of the current generation of Australians. I
grew up with the Leave It to Beaver generation. Beaver
Cleaver's family would have been a mighty fine role model,
if only they and the world they lived in had

(02:41):
been real. Alas, this was not the case, so the
rather gawky Australian attempts to emulate these TV fantasies only
resulted in a homogenised culture that didn't even belong to us.
As for cutting edge music, Australia in the 60s was
a bit of a wasteland. The only incident of note

(03:03):
during my school years that had real impact on my
music career was spending a day with the Rolling Stones
in 1965. When I was in my late teens, a
kid called Ross was my best friend at school and
figured prominently in my life during the 60s. We had
another friend at school, David, who had been forced to

(03:24):
leave school early. I think his single mother could no
longer afford the fees. Anyway, David went to work for
Movietone News, the newsreel company, which we thought was fantastic.
What a job. All that money and independence and an
elite gig with the media as well. The Rolling Stones
had long been established as our demigods at school. Because

(03:48):
Ross and my other friends were day boys, they would
buy me the rolling Stone monthly, a little glossy fan
club magazine published in Britain. We would endlessly discuss every
minute detail about the Rolling Stones.

S2 (04:02):
And that was a sample of The Best Years of
Our Lives by Richard Clapton. Richard is right, Richard Clapton. Clap, clap.
And as you might be able to tell from the
synopsis that comes with a bit of a warning about content, drugs,

(04:23):
alcohol and sex. So just be aware of that. What
rock and roll biography or memoir doesn't contain it? And
that book goes for eight hours. And thank you, Gina.
And it was lovely to catch up with you at
the Writers Festival a couple of weeks ago. And in
case you needed reminding, Richard Clapton, um, some of his
great hits have been girls on the Avenue in 1975,

(04:45):
Deep Water, um, and Goodbye Tiger. As well as being
a bit of a backbone of the Australian industry for
a long, long time. The next recommendation comes from Dawn,
and thank you very much for this Dawn. It is
the Pearl thief by popular author Fiona McIntosh. Severin Cassel
is asked by the Louvre in 1963 to aid the

(05:07):
British Museum with curating its antique jewelry. Her specialty? Her
London colleagues find her distant and mysterious, her cool beauty,
the topic of conversations around its quiet halls. No one
could imagine that she's a desperately damaged woman, hiding her
trauma behind her chic French image. It is only when

(05:28):
some dramatic Byzantine pearls are loaned to the museum that
Séverine's poised is dashed, and the tightly controlled life she's
built around herself is shattered. Her shocking revelation of their
provenance sets off a frenzied hunt for Nazi rudder magic.
Mossad's interest is triggered and one of its most skilled
agents comes out of retirement to join the hunt, while

(05:50):
the one person who can help Severin, the solicitor handling
the pearls, is bound by client confidentiality as she follows
Mack's trail, there is still one lifelong secret for her
to reveal and one for her to discover. Let's hear
a sample of the Pearl Thief by Fiona McIntosh. It's
narrated by Marilyn Barclay.

S4 (06:12):
The neat angles that ordered the planes of Severin's face
looked as though they'd been drawn in determined strokes with
a sharpened pencil, yet the keen points that usually held
her figure so finely poised from the wide triangle of
her shoulders tapering to the slant of her ankles, seemed
to pleat, shrinking her as she backed away from the

(06:33):
glass cabinet, swooning for a heartbeat. She reached blindly behind
for a nearby seat into which she folded the tailored
two piece she wore with its Parisian Designers label stitched
to the satin lining folded with her. Nevertheless, it maintained
its hauteur and thus her envied her weakness that her

(06:56):
female British colleagues referred to with wistful envy. Perched on
the chair, though she resembled a fragile bird ready to startle.
She didn't register others, not even when her colleagues descended,
making collective clucking, worried noises. Mademoiselle Cécile, her companions, cajoled,

(07:16):
but it was as though she could no longer hear them.
In these moments of terror, Séverine couldn't touch the present
because she was transported to day. Suddenly, she was no
longer standing on parquet floors, surrounded by burnished timber and
glazed bookshelves in the King's Library of the British Museum.

(07:37):
In her mind, it was no longer morning in London's
great Russell Street of 1963 that was rife with traffic
and people sniffling with the tail end of their spring colds.
All those human sounds and today's innocent landscape had dispersed
in her mind and coalesced into the vivid scene of 1941,

(07:58):
a memory she had bullied over the past decade into
hiding in these protracted moments of rekindled terror. The nightmare
escaped from the prison in which she kept it, unleashing
the recollection of blood so powerful she could feel its
damp stickiness once again clinging to her skin.

S2 (08:17):
And that was the Pearl Thief by Fiona macintosh. Fiona
is Fiona. Fiona macintosh is m I o m I o.
And that book goes for 17 hours. Fiona macintosh is

(08:38):
a prolific author in all sorts of genres. There's a
detective series and the first two are in the library collection. Um,
so if you want to embark on the DCI Jack
Hawksworth series, you can start with bye bye baby. So
that's part one of a Jack Hawksworth detective series. There's
also the Champagne War set in France. There's the chocolate tin,

(09:02):
The Last Dance. There's quite a few of her books
in the library collection. She's a really. She writes very
well and she's very popular. So thank you, Dawn, for mentioning, uh,
the Pearl thief and recommending it. The exciting news with
this book also is that it's been, uh, going to
be made into a major feature film from the same
producers of Big Little Lies and Gone Girl. So it's

(09:25):
been snapped up, uh, to be made into a film.
Fiona always wrote as a hobby, but attended a writing
workshop around the year 2000, in Tasmania, which was led
by writer Bryce Courtenay, who encouraged her and mentored her.
And she now lives on a property with her husband
in Riverton in South Australia, continuing the thread of art

(09:47):
and curating type books. The next book is The Muralist
by Barbara Shapiro. Alice Benoit, an American painter working for
the Works Progress Administration, vanishes in New York City in
1940 amid personal and political turmoil. No one knows what
happened to her, not her Jewish family living in German

(10:08):
occupied France, not her artistic patron and political compatriot Eleanor Roosevelt.
Not her close knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko,
Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. And some 70 years later,
not her grand niece, Danielle Abrams, who, while working at
Christie's auction house, uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind recently found

(10:30):
works by those now famous abstract expressionist artists. Do they
hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt, entwining
the lives of both historical and fictional characters and moving
between the past and the present? The muralist plunges his
readers into the divisiveness of pre-war politics and the largely

(10:51):
forgotten plight of European refugees refused entrance into the United States.
It captures both the inner workings of today's New York
art scene and the beginnings of the vibrant and quintessentially
American school of Abstract expressionism. Bay. Schapiro is a master
at telling a gripping story. While exploring provocative themes in

(11:12):
Alizée and Danielle, she has created two unforgettable women artists,
both who compel us to ask what happens when luminous
talent collides with inexorable historical forces? Can great art have
the power to change the world? And to what lengths
should a person go to thwart evil? Let's hear a
sample of The Muralist by Barbara Shapiro. It's narrated by

(11:36):
Sans Souci.

S5 (11:37):
It was there when I arrived that morning, sitting to
the right of my desk, ostensibly no different from the
other half dozen cartons on the floor, flaps bent went back,
paintings haphazardly poking out. As soon as I saw it,
I ripped off my gloves, dropped to my knees, and
pored through the contents. I didn't realize I wasn't breathing
until my chest began to ache, and little black dots

(11:57):
jumped around the edges of my vision. I stood, hung
up my coat and scarf, reminded myself that this needed time.
Thoughtful research, judgments deduced from fact, not desire. But I
did know my abstract expressionists, their early paintings, as well
as their more famous later ones Jackson Pollock before his drips,
Mark Rothko before Color block when Lee Krasner and Willem

(12:19):
de Kooning worked Representationally. And there was a stirring of recognition,
a sense of knowing this was no ordinary cardboard box,
no ordinary find. There were over a dozen paintings, not
particularly large. Three by four feet was the biggest small
for the Abstract Expressionists. Even the early works. One by one,

(12:41):
I propped them against the walls and across my desk
put a couple on top of a pile of art books.
I inhaled the musty aroma of dust and aged paint.
I wondered where they had been all these years. Who
had touched them? Loved them? Forgotten them. Rumor had it
that this curtain was the proverbial box in the attic,

(13:03):
uncovered by a bereaved family and full of priceless masterpieces.
These rumors were all too common around here and rarely
pan out, but the odds were actually better than usual
that this was the real deal. In the early 1940s,
the WPA, FAP, the art division of the Works Progress Administration,
one of Roosevelt's New Deal employment programs, was cancelled without notice.

(13:25):
The artists were unceremoniously dismissed. All the work they'd previously
submitted disposed of.

S2 (13:30):
And that was the muralist by Barbara Shapiro. Barbara is.
Bah bah bah bah bah bah. Shapiro is s h
a p I r o s p I r o.
And that book goes for nine hours and ten minutes.
The muralist was published in 2015. It's the only book

(13:53):
of by Shapiro or Barbara Shapiro's books that we do
have in the library, but there is a theme with
her other novels. So there is the Art forger, the
lost masterpiece, according to the Harvard Review Online. They call
the muralist, or they say it has every ingredient of
seductive historical fiction lead characters whose fiery reputations make for

(14:16):
dramatic moments and relationships, and a backdrop so intense in
the American imagination that this addition to the canon of
depression novels is refreshing. And that was from a review
by Jennifer Kurdyla from the Harvard Review Online. And that's
from 2016. Continuing with historic type books. The next one

(14:37):
is The Midnight Watch, and this is by David Lloyd Dyer.
Sometimes the smallest of human failings can lead to the
greatest of disasters. As the Titanic was sinking slowly in
the wretchedly cold North Atlantic, she could see the lights
of another ship on the horizon. She called for help
by Morse lamp and the new Marconi telegraph machine. But

(14:59):
there was no response. Just after midnight, the Titanic began
firing distress rockets. The other ship, the Californian, saw these rockets,
but didn't come. Why not? When the story of the
disaster begins to emerge, it's a question that Boston American
reporter John Stedman cannot let go. As soon as he
lays eyes on the californian's captain and second officer, he

(15:22):
knows a story lurks behind their version of events. So
begins his strange journey towards the truth, haunted by the
1500 who went to their deaths in those icy waters,
and by the loss of his own baby son. Years earlier,
Stedman must either find redemption in the Titanic's tragedy or
lose himself. Based on true events, the Midnight Watch is

(15:44):
at once a heart stopping mystery and a deeply knowing
novel about the frailty of men, the strength of women,
the capriciousness of fate and the price of loyalty. Let's
hear a sample of The Midnight Watch by David Lloyd Dyer.
It's narrated by Anthony Campbell.

S6 (16:01):
Herbert Stone tapped his teeth with his fingers, as if
playing a small piano. He had come from his cabin
to the port side of the promenade deck to take
his afternoon sun sites, and been surprised to see three large,
flat topped icebergs a mile or so away across the
still ocean. They were magnificent things, with lofty cliffs catching

(16:23):
the yellows and pinks of early sunset. But Stone was worried.
Only last year, the Columbia had struck ice off Cape
Race and smashed up her hull plates. And this year
even more bergs birds had come sweeping south into the
shipping lanes. There would be many more up ahead. He
lifted his sextant, put in place its shades, and took

(16:47):
two altitudes of the low sun. He then stepped into
the chart room, a small space squeezed between the captain's
cabin on one side and a bare still bulkhead on
the other, and began to work up his sights. Someone
had marked on the chart the ice reported by wireless
over past days, and most of it lay to the west,

(17:08):
directly across their track. When he plotted the ship's position,
he saw that the ice was only about seven hours
steaming away. They would likely meet it during his watch
later that night. Stone walked back to the ship's rail
and looked again towards the south. The three icebergs had
drifted astern, but he could still see them, stately and

(17:32):
tall and brilliantly lit. But he knew not all icebergs
were like this. Some were low and gray, and tonight
there would be no moon. He wondered how during the
dark hours of the midnight watch, he would be able
to see them.

S2 (17:48):
And that was a sample of The Midnight Watch by
David Lloyd Dyer. David is our David Lloyd. The middle name?
L o l l o d. Dyer is d y
e r d e r. And that book goes for
11.5 hours. The Sydney Morning Herald writes David Dyer's first novel,

(18:14):
in which the Californian is the ship of focus. In this,
Dyer appears well qualified to tackle a seafaring story, being
an Australian Maritime College graduate who worked on merchant ships
as an officer. The Historical Novel Society, which is just
simply all one word historical novel society, OIG has reviewed

(18:34):
the book and they say not another book about the Titanic. Um, no.
This book, they say, is about the Californian. This review
is by Edward James, and they say the story of
the Californian and the Titanic is the greatest unsolved mystery
of the disaster, and we can never know the answer.
He says the story has all the tension, narrative drive,
characterization and sense of place of the very best detective novels,

(18:58):
including two fine courtroom dramas. If you like murder mysteries,
you will love this. And now to a work that
is nonfiction. It is an African history of Africa, from
the dawn of humanity to independence. This was published in 2024.
It's by Zeinab Badawi. Everyone is originally from Africa, and

(19:20):
this book is therefore for everyone. For too long, Africa's
history has been neglected, dominated by Western narratives of slavery
and colonialism. Its past has been fragmented, Overlooked and denied
its rightful place in our global story. Now, Zeinab Badawi
guides us through Africa's spectacular history, from the origins of humanity,

(19:41):
through ancient civilisations and medieval empires, with powerful queens and kings,
to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence,
seeking out occluded histories from across the continent. Meeting with
countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, and travelling through
more than 30 countries. Badawi weaves together a fascinating new

(20:06):
account of Africa, an epic, sweeping history of the oldest
inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of
Africans themselves. Let's hear a sample of an African history
of Africa from the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by
Zeinab Badawi. It's narrated by Zeinab Badawi.

S7 (20:26):
As Mary's star waned, that of Aksum's rose, Its fame
spread far and wide. The third century Persian mystic and
historian Mani was so impressed by what he learned about
Axum that he described it as one of the four
greatest civilizations of the ancient world, along with Babylon or Persia,
Rome and China. Another illustrious African kingdom, then, that, like Kush,

(20:51):
has fallen into the footnotes of global history. The Kingdom
of Axum, which lasted a thousand years, was located on
the northern edge of the highland zone of the Red sea.
At its peak between the third and sixth centuries, it
covered a large expanse of territory that today includes Ethiopia
and Eritrea, and its influence extended further into eastern Africa

(21:14):
and even beyond into Arabia. At around the same time,
most of western and central Europe was under Roman rule
from the late fifth century, with the fall of Rome,
Germanic groups such as the Ostrogoths and Vandals began to
take over parts of Europe so that the continent fell
into what is described in European history as the Dark Ages,

(21:36):
from 500 to 1000 CE. Practical and cultural knowledge from
classical antiquity dissipated and was lost, and living standards radically
declined across Europe. Meanwhile, the Axumites had their own written
script coinage and were building castles, monuments, churches and monasteries.

(21:56):
Their kingdom was the second in the world after Armenia,
to adopt Christianity as its official religion. Many centuries before,
Christianity had even reached other parts of Africa south of
the Sahara. While most of their region, what became known
as the Horn of Africa became Islamized, Ethiopia retained Christianity

(22:17):
as its state religion until 1975.

S2 (22:21):
And that was the symbol of an African history of
Africa from the dawn of humanity to independence Dependence by
Zeinab Badawi. Zainab is z e a b z e
I n b. Badawi is b a d a w
I b a d a w I. And that book
goes for 15.5 hours, and it has been shortlisted for

(22:45):
the British Book Awards this year for the best non-fiction
and the book that won for the best fiction in
this year's book awards is Hunted by Abir Mukherjee. It's
a week before the presidential elections when a bomb goes
off in an alley shopping mall in London. Armed police
storm Heathrow airport and arrest Sajid Khan. His daughter Alaya

(23:08):
entered the USA with the suicide bomber and now she's missing,
potentially plotting another attack. But then a woman called Carrie
turns up at Sergi's door after travelling halfway across the world.
She claims Alaya is with her son Greg, and she
knows where they could be. Back in the US, Agent
Shreya mystery is closing in on the two fugitives, but

(23:29):
the more she investigates, the more she suspects a wider conspiracy.
Hunted by the authorities, the two parents are thrown together
in a race against time to find their kids before
the FBI does, and stop a catastrophe that will bring
the country to its knees. Let's hear our sample of
Hunted by Abir Mukherjee. And it's got multiple narrators.

S8 (23:51):
Nothing good comes without pain. The chiffon scarf dances around
her in the breeze. Yasmin shifts it casually to her
shoulders while the world beyond the windshield melts. The Carboniferous
ghosts of trees yielding to the sprawl of settlements and
in the distance, the contours of the city, its dark

(24:14):
lines and needle points etched out in the smoke blue
haze of the horizon. Los Angeles the sight of it
prickles the soft hairs on the back of her neck
as the fear rises within her once more. She tries
to bolster her courage, drawing on a lifetimes worth of anger.

(24:36):
That's why she's here, after all. To make a stand
for those who can't. Beside her, Jack takes a sip
of soda. That's what they call it here. And in
her head she plays with the novelty of the word.
He places the can in the hollow of the armrest
between them, and she reaches out, touching his bronzed fingers

(24:59):
with hers, tracing the faint blue outline of the rough tattoos,
Jack glances over her All-American white boy, his eyes hidden
behind Oakleys and his hair under a Patriots cap. But
he says nothing. How she wishes he would. A sentence,

(25:20):
a word, Anything just to reassure her or to show
her that he too might be scared. His glance, though,
sends a shiver through her. An act that feels illicit.
She breathes in the tang of his Cologne and turns
once more to look out at the vista.

S2 (25:41):
And that was a sample of Hunted by Abir Mukherjee,
the winner of the best fiction novel for 2024 at
the British Book Awards. Abir is spelled Abir. That's a
b I. Mukherjee. Mukherjee is m u k h e
r j e m u k h e j w.

(26:05):
And that book goes for 13 hours and 21 minutes.
Abir Mukherjee grew up in the west of Scotland, and
at the age of 15, his best friend made him
read Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith. And he's been
a fan of crime fiction ever since. Thank you so

(26:29):
much for joining us on here this. And thank you
for those two lovely recommendations. The best years of our life,
the Best Years of Our Life by Richard Clapton and
the Pearl Thief by Fiona McIntosh. If you would like
to recommend an audio book, just send through an email
or ring the library. The number is 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656.

(26:55):
Or you can email library at Vision Australia. Org that's
library org. I hope you have a lovely week and
we'll be back next week with more here. This.