Hear This 6th June 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. I'm Frances Kelland and
you're listening to the Vision Australia library radio show. We've
got some reader recommended today and kind of a mixed bag. It's, uh,
really interesting books, I think. So I hope you enjoy
the show. We've got some great reader recommended today. Let's

(00:46):
start off with, uh, Bob's recommendations. And he's made a couple.
One of the books he recommended is Enter Ghost by
Isabella Hammad. After years away from her family's homeland and
healing from an affair with an established director, stage actress
Sonia Nasir returns to Palestine to visit her older sister Janine.

(01:06):
Though the siblings grew up spending summers at their family
home in Haifa, Sonia hasn't been back since the Second
Intifada and the deaths of her grandparents. While Janine stayed
and made a life commuting to Tel Aviv to teach
at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on
her burgeoning acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return,

(01:29):
she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone
deep and new. Once at Janine's, Sonia meets the charismatic
and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped
into a production of hamlet in the West Bank. Soon,
Sonia is rehearsing Gertrude's lines in classical Arabic and spending

(01:50):
more time in Ramallah than in Haifa with a dedicated
group of men who, in spite of competing egos and priorities,
each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall.
As opening night draws closer, it becomes clear just how
many invasive and violent obstacles stand before a troop of
Palestinian actors. Amidst it all, the life Sonja once knew

(02:13):
starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of
finding a new self in her ancestral home. Let's hear
a sample of Enter Ghost by Isabelle Hammad. It's narrated
by Nadia Albina.

S3 (02:27):
I expected them to interrogate me at the airport and
they did. What surprised me was that they didn't take
very long. A young blonde female officer and then an older,
dark haired one took turns in a private room to
ask me about my life. They particularly wanted to know

(02:48):
about my family links to the place, and I repeated
four times that my sister lived here, but that I
personally hadn't returned in 11 years. Why? They kept asking.
I had no explanation. At points, the exchange seemed to
come bizarrely close to them, insisting on my civic rights.

(03:11):
Of course, they were only trying to unnerve me. Why
does your sister have citizenship? And you don't? Right place,
right time, I shrugged. I didn't want to bring up
my mother. They unzipped my bags, investigated my belongings, opened
every play, flipped through my appointment diary with its blank

(03:34):
summer months and the two novels, one of which I'd
finished on the plane, then led me into a different
room for a strip search. Surely this isn't necessary, I
said in a haughty voice, while a third woman officer
ran her detector over my bare flesh, as though I
might have hidden something under my skin and dawdled over

(03:58):
the straps of my bra and knickers, which I had
matched in preparation blue lace. And as she knelt before
my crotch. The laughter began to quiver in my stomach.
I put my clothes back on, surprised by how hard
I was shaking, and ten minutes later they called me

(04:20):
to a booth where a tall man I hadn't seen
before gave me my passport and told me I was
free to enter. Welcome to Israel.

S2 (04:32):
And that was Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad. Isabella is
spelt I b e double l I b e double ela.
Hammad is h a double m a d h double d.
That book goes for 11 hours and 40 minutes. Thanks,

(04:52):
Bob for that recommendation. There's a really lovely interview in
the Guardian, and this is from, um, the 22nd of
September 2024 by Anthony Cummins. And he asks, was there
a book that first made you want to write? And
she says, I have a memory as a child of
carrying around a very tatty Penguin collection of surrealist poetry,

(05:15):
with a painting on the cover of A Blue Woman
with a butterfly on her face. I remember being very
taken by a poem that described waves breaking on a
shore like eggshells. If by wanting to write, you mean
that impulse to play with language. It was probably these quite,
quite literary books for grown ups that I came across
and only half understood. That first gave me that feeling.

(05:38):
And ghost was published in 2024, and it is her
second novel. The first novel is The Parisian, which we
don't have in the library. In 2023, she was included
on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. This
is compiled every ten years since 1983, and it identifies

(05:58):
the 20 most significant British novelists aged under 40. Next
we have the Australian novel The Burrow by Melanie Cheng
and Bob writes. This was on the shortlist for The Stella,
but was beaten at the post by Theory and Practice. Amy,
Jin and Lucy are leading isolated lives in their partially
renovated inner city home. They are not happy, but they

(06:21):
are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet
rabbit for Lucy and then Amy's mother, Pauline comes to stay,
the family is forced to confront long buried secrets. Will
opening their hearts to the rabbit help them to heal
or only invite further tragedy? And Bob makes a point
that this is a novel, um, set during Covid lockdown.

(06:43):
So an interesting period of time. Let's hear a sample
of The Burrow and it's narrated by Casey Withoos.

S4 (06:51):
He looked different from the photos when she looked at
him from the side. He didn't even really look like
a rabbit, more like some hurried craft project. A couple
of tan coloured pom poms with two oversized black beads
for eyes. Where were his whiskers and his nose? He
seemed unfinished, like Ruby when she'd first come home, fleshy

(07:12):
and lumpy and unformed. But that hadn't stopped the adults
from saying how much she looked like great aunty so
and so, and how she had inherited the lee mouth.
Lucy didn't get it, she thought Ruby, in all her
doughy formlessness, somehow resembled everybody and nobody at all. When
he had arrived with the rabbit, Lucy's dad had placed

(07:35):
a cardboard box on its side on the small patch
of grass in their backyard. Lucy had flopped down, belly
first with her head propped up on her hands. Open
it dad! The lid had come away to reveal a
huddled ball of blond fur in a tangle of yellow hay.
Lucy felt her mother crouch beside her and rest a
cool hand on her shoulder. Don't rush him. They waited,

(07:58):
barely breathing, until he ventured out of his cardboard cave.
Lucy watched with silent delight as he took hesitant strides
across the grass. Until then, she hadn't known a bunny's
nose was constantly twitching, as relentless and tireless as a pulse.
Rabbits are prey animals, her mum said as they watched him.

(08:19):
They're not like cats and dogs, as Lucy observed her
unnamed pet. She imagined an owl nosediving from a nearby
tree and whisking the bunny away in its leathery talons.
She shook her head to rid herself of the image.
Twitchy limbs, cloudy eyes, matted, metallic smelling fur. The family

(08:40):
had decided that during the day when they were home,
the rabbit would be free to roam the fenced backyard.
But at night, when cats were prowling and birds of
prey were hunting, he would be safer inside the hutch.

S2 (08:52):
And that was the Burrow by Melanie Cheng. Ching. Melanie
is m e a m e a n I e.
Chang is c h e n g c h e
n g. It's a short one. It goes for three
hours and 50 minutes. In an interview with Readings Bookstore.

(09:12):
And the person is Chris Gordon, who's doing the interviewing
sort of question and answer. This is from the 1st
of October, 2024. He asked how how important it was
to set this novel in Melbourne's lockdown. And she said,
I didn't really intend to. I started writing The Borough
in 2022, when we were already two years into the pandemic,

(09:35):
and while things were improving, there was still no clear
end in sight. It seemed wrong, almost deceitful, to write
a contemporary story that didn't incorporate it in some way.
Chris Gordon asks your novel deals with heart wrenching loss
and grief. Was that where the story started for you
and Melanie? Ching says, occasionally a story will haunt me,
particularly one that involves a sudden accidental death or the

(09:58):
loss of a child. I find myself wondering about the family.
What are they doing in their grief? Are they blaming themselves?
Are they blaming each other? What does their daily life
actually look like? Um, so in the borough, I wanted
to explore how a family can forge a life together
after such a loss. And the story is based a
little bit on, um, autobiography. Well, um, because, uh, there

(10:20):
was a pet rabbit in Melanie Chang's life. My own
family adopted a mini lop rabbit in 2020, so I
had a wealth of knowledge and experience about bunnies to
share rabbits. But it's also more than that. Rabbits are
prey animals. They are watchful and hyper vigilant, a little
like we were during the pandemic. They are also harder
to read than dogs and cats. They don't wag their

(10:42):
tails or purr. And I thought this unknowable and unreadable
quality provided a great mirror to the human beings in
the book, all of whom are keeping secrets from each other.
So thank you, Bob, for that recommendation for Melanie Cheng,
The Burrow. And we also have two other books by
Melanie Cheng. In the library collection, there is Australia Day,

(11:04):
which is a collection of short stories. And there's also
room for a stranger. And again, it's about an animal,
an African grey parrot called Atticus, and the protagonist Meg,
who is coping with the death of a of a sister.
And the next book is Precipice by Robert Harris. Precipice,

(11:25):
the latest from what Harris. It is a quality read,
wonderfully narrated by Samuel West, who I just had to
follow down a rabbit hole to read another of his
narrations and led him to The Shropshire Lad or Shropshire.
I'm not sure which pronunciation. And how is it that
I've never read these poems? Thanks, Bob, for those for

(11:46):
the recommendation for both the narrator and the author, Samuel
West is interesting because he's the well, for many reasons.
The one of the reasons is that he is the
son of Timothy West, who was also a very esteemed actor,
as is Samuel, and his mother is Prunella Scales. Probably
most well known that she's a fabulous stage actor as

(12:07):
well for her Fawlty Towers playing, um, Mrs. Fawlty. So
we'll hear his beautiful narration. And this is the synopsis
for precipice, Summer 1914, a world on the brink of
catastrophe in London, 26 year old Venetia Stanley, aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless,
is having a love affair with the Prime minister, H.H. Asquith,

(12:29):
a man more than twice her age. He writes to
her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As
Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a
young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of
top secret documents, and suddenly what was a sexual intrigue
becomes a matter of national security that will alter the

(12:51):
course of political history. Let's hear a sample of Precipice
by Robert Harris. It's narrated by Samuel West.

S5 (13:00):
Late one Thursday morning at the beginning of July 1914,
a young woman with dark, wet hair strode long legged
from the Serpentine in Hyde Park along Oxford Street towards Marylebone.
In one hand she carried a cream linen sun hat,
in the other a damp bathing costume and a pair
of silk stockings rolled up inside a navy blue towel.

(13:22):
Although she was evidently in a hurry, she did not
break into a run. The pavements were too hot and
crowded for that, and besides being seen to exert herself
was never her style. But she did walk quickly. Tall
and slim, her head erect, and in such a purposeful
manner that most people instinctively cleared out of her way.

(13:42):
It was shortly after noon when she rounded the corner
into the grand Georgian terrace where her parents had their
London residence On the opposite side of the street. The
postman had made his midday delivery and was standing on
the step in front of the double fronted, white stuccoed mansion,
checking his bag. With luck, she was just in time.

(14:03):
She crossed the road, wished him good morning, slipped around
him beneath the portico, through the wide front door, and
into the stuffy mid-summer gloom of the hall. The mail
still lay in its wire basket. She managed to extract
the familiar envelope moments before a manservant emerged from the
depths of the house to fetch the post for her father.

(14:25):
She hid the letter in her hat, handed over. The
rest started up the stairs and was halfway to the
landing when her mother, Lady Sheffield, called from the morning room.
How was your swim, darling? Without breaking steps, she shouted back. Heavenly!
She closed the door to her room, dropped her swimming things,
tossed her hat onto the dressing table, lifted her dress

(14:48):
over her head and threw herself down on the bed,
lying on her back. She held up the envelope between
both hands on Venetia Stanley, 18 Mansfield Street, Portland Place,
London W.

S2 (15:03):
So that was Precipice by Robert Harris. Robert is r
o b e r r o b e r t.
Harris is h a double r I s h a
double r I s. And that book goes for 12 hours.
This book was published in September 2024, and it's based

(15:25):
on a true story of British Prime Minister Asquith and
his affair with the much younger socialite Venetia Stanley. But
it spins this into a wondrous web of intrigue, love
and treachery. Alex Preston in The Guardian in 2000 and
September 2024. Um, he makes he notes that Harris was
given access to an archive of letters, telegrams and official

(15:47):
documents in the possession of the Bonham Carter family. Many
of which are reprinted in the novel and several for
the first time. He finishes the review saying this is
a novel about love and power, about the son of
a dour northern nonconformist, um, risen to the highest seat
in the land. He also says it's the character of Venetia,

(16:09):
though that turns precipice from a very good novel into
a great one. And if you want to search the
catalogue for Robert Harris, there are so many books by him.
I haven't read one of his books. I've seen movies
based on his books. There's the series conclave, which is, um,
still highly, um, watched on Netflix. I think it is.

(16:29):
There's also, um, The Ghost Writer, a loosely based on
the life of Tony Blair, supposedly who's, um, left office
in a bit of disgrace and hires a ghostwriter to
help him write his memoirs. It was a movie with
Ewan McGregor. He's one of those writers that has a
sound background in journalism that just seems to be able

(16:51):
to churn out these really highly readable, but also have
a high basis of authenticity in them and brilliant research.
Three really good recommendations from Bob in the act. Thanks, Bob.
Now to a nonfiction by Claire G. Coleman. This is lies,
Damned Lies, a personal exploration of the impact of colonization.

(17:12):
This is a difficult piece to write. It cuts close
to the bone than most of what I have written.
Closer to my bones, through my blood and flesh, to
the bones of truth and country. There is truth here,
not disguised, but in the open. And that truth hurts.
In this book, acclaimed author Claire G. Coleman, a proud
Noongar woman, takes the listener on a journey through the past,

(17:34):
present and future of Australia. Lens. Through her own experience.
Beautifully written, this literary work blends the personal with the political,
offering listeners an and insight into the stark reality of
the ongoing trauma of Australia's violent colonisation. Let's hear a
sample of Lies, Damned Lies, a personal exploration of the

(17:55):
impact of colonisation by Claire G. Coleman. It's narrated by
Lisa maza.

S6 (18:02):
Words are weapons. Stories are dangerous, for they define who
we are. They define our history. They can be weaponized.
Stories and history are tools and weapons of war. Stories
can be used as part of genocide. Because if you
say a people are extinct. Other people might believe it.

(18:23):
Stories can be part of genocide. Because you can use
stories to erase a culture. We are the stories we
tell each other and the stories we tell ourselves. History
is nothing but a story. A nation and its culture
are defined by that story, and the stories not always

(18:44):
built on the truth. You might think you know the
history of the colony of Australia, but do you really?
History is trying to speak to you. It always has.
From the birth of the colony in 1788, down to today,
the ripples left by the wake of longboats still reflect

(19:04):
from the shore. Can you hear it? Can you? Can
you hear it? Can you? Can you hear it? I
am certain I can, but perhaps I'll listen more carefully
than most. Do you listen? Are you listening? Do you

(19:27):
even want to listen? Do you even want to know?
The echoes of colonisation sound out even now. More than
250 years after the first shot fired on Australian soil. When?
In 1770 Lieutenant James Cook, not yet a captain, fired

(19:47):
at the first Aboriginal men he encountered when he landed
a longboat near where Sydney now stands. Cook named that
place botany Bay after the abundant samples the ship's botanist,
Joseph Banks, collected. You might notice that the colony in
New South Wales was not founded in botany Bay, but
in Sydney Harbour.

S2 (20:08):
And that was lies, Damned Lies. A personal exploration of
the impact of colonisation by Claire G. Coleman. Claire is
c l a r c l a I r middle
initial g and then Coleman c o l e m
a n c o l e m a n. And

(20:31):
that book goes for 8.5 hours. We have other works
by Claire G. Coleman in the collection, including her 2017
debut novel, Terra Nullius. Unless there is an interview that
you can listen to on ABC, on the listen app,
or just go to the website ABC and you can

(20:52):
do a search for Claire G. Coleman. And there is
an interview from the ABC Radio National's program away, and
that's a 19 minute interview about about the writing of
this book. And there's a blog online called Roaring Histories.
There's a question and answer with Claire G. Coleman on
this blog. One of the questions is, are you hopeful

(21:15):
that you will see substantive and meaningful steps towards decolonization
in your lifetime? And what could just one of them be?
And Coleman says, I think the first step is truth telling.
Most decolonized places and places in the process of decolonization
are aware of that. Take South Africa, for example. They
have problems there. That much is clear. But they at

(21:38):
least have started a truth and reconciliation process. In Australia,
the white people demand reconciliation without truth, which is impossible.
Now to the next book. This is the Abominable by
Dan Simmons. Over the last couple of months, we had
some reader recommended for books set in very snowy climes
about explorers, which were non-fiction, and this is a fiction book.

(22:02):
So in the abominable it is June 1924, on the
brutal north east ridge of Mount Everest, famous adventurers George
Mallory and Andrew Irvine vanish into the snow whipped night.
Daredevil explorer Richard Deacon devises a plan to follow in
the men's footsteps, accompanied only by two friends with no

(22:24):
support team, the three men strike for Everest's peak and
the most vicious climate on Earth. As the winds rise
and the temperature and oxygen levels drop, deacon and his
companions hear howls in the distance. Some dark creature is
tracking them up the mountain, sending them scrambling blindly into
Everest's dangerous heights to escape it. Soon they will discover

(22:48):
what happened to Mallory's crew. But can they escape the
same hideous fate? Let's hear a sample of The Abominable
by Dan Simmons. It's narrated by Michael Fitzpatrick.

S7 (22:59):
The summit of the Matterhorn offers very clear choices. A
misstep to the left. And you die in Italy. A
wrong step to the right. And you die in Switzerland.
The three of us learn about Mallory and Irvine's disappearance
on Mount Everest. While we are eating lunch on the
summit of the Matterhorn. It is a perfect day in

(23:23):
late June of 1924, and the news lies folded in
a three day old British newspaper that someone in the
kitchen at the small end at Breuil in Italy has
wrapped around our cold beef and horseradish sandwiches on thick,
fresh bread. I've unwittingly carried this still weightless news, soon

(23:46):
to be a heavy stone in each of our chests
to the summit of the Matterhorn. In my rucksack, tucked
alongside a goatskin of wine, two water bottles, three oranges,
100ft of climbing rope and a bulky salami. We do
not immediately notice the paper or read the news. That

(24:07):
will change the day for us. We are too full
of the summit and its views. For six days we
have done nothing but climb and reclimb the Matterhorn, always
avoiding the summit for reasons known only to the deacon.
On the first day up from Zermatt, we explored the

(24:27):
Hörnli Ridge Whimpers route in 1865, while avoiding the fixed
ropes and cables that ran across the mountain's skin like
so many scars. The next day we traversed to do
the same on the Zmutt Ridge. On the third day,
a long day, we traversed the mountain again, climbing from

(24:49):
the Swiss side via the Hörnli ridge, crossing the friable
north face just below the summit that the deacon had
forbidden to us, and then descending along the Italian ridge
at twilight, reaching our tents on the high green fields
facing south towards Breuil.

S2 (25:08):
And that was the Abominable by Dan Simmons. It's a
novel based on, um, a few realities. Dan is Dan
Simmons is s I s s I s. And that
book goes for 28 hours and 41 minutes. Hachette Australia,

(25:30):
the website call this an epic, genre defying thriller. The
abominable blends historical fact with spine tingling drama to create
one of the most chilling and unforgettable novels you will
ever read. Dan Simmons is an outstanding commercial talent. He
has won the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, and
the Locus Award and the Bram Stoker Award. He lives

(25:51):
in Colorado, so a nice snowy environment there. This novel
was published back in 2013. Barnes and Noble call it
a pulse pounding story of adventure and suspense. There's a
few people that question how long it is, and also
talk about how mountaineering people may enjoy it, because there's

(26:13):
a lot of technical, um, mountain climbing things in this.
But then a lot of other people say, no, it's
just really exciting and suspenseful. Thank you for joining us
on here this today. Thank you, Bob, for those wonderful

(26:33):
Recommendations and also for the narrator recommendations as well. So
in the next couple of weeks, I might put a
show on about narrators playing books by narrators that people
have recommended, including Peter, who a while ago, uh, wanted
to say that he really enjoys the narrator, David Banks,

(26:55):
will look at David Banks and a little bit more
have a sample of Sam West in the next couple
of weeks if you would like to join the library.
If you'd like to recommend a book or a narrator,
you can always ring 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656. Or you can
email library at. Library at Vision Australia. Have a lovely

(27:22):
week and we'll be back next week with more here. This.