Author: Andres Kabel

Dr. Billy Garvey works as a developmental psychologist and pediatrician at the Royal Children’s Hospital, renowned in Melbourne. His Ten Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child’s Mental Health is clearly a labor of love and his desire to help children, young and older, is palpable. Using real-life examples and developing his “ten things” systematically and carefully, the author has written a sublime book, one this reader wishes he had read decades ago before children and grandchildren. Writing from a deep basis of research and also a long history of practice, Garvey covers the core factors of temperament and the crucial role of attachment, before offering ways forward for just about any of the issues he confronts daily as confused, sad, or angry kids troop through his clinic. The words in Ten Things are not mere words; luminous wisdom (able to draw tears) rises from every page. A must for anyone involved with or interested in children, or indeed for a reader wanting to understand herself.

Debut novelist from my hometown, Melbourne, Sinéad Stubbins presents a trippy, dark-as-night corporate satire with Stinkbug, the title referring to that individual in a workplace at the bottom of the pile. The novel tells the tale of Edith, a cautious, conflicted advertising professional at a Melbourne marketing firm, during a corporate retreat in the bush. With the firm recently scooped up by Swedish corporates, the retreat is fraught with danger, and Edith is exquisitely attuned to risks and opportunities. The author’s style is nimble but also relentlessly snarky and savage, nearly every line slamming every aspect of the firm and all its employees, and this reader found himself longing for real drama at the book’s halfway mark. Fortunately, the build-up to the climax swaps clever commentary for absurd horror as the retreat morphs into something over-the-top horrible, and Edith’s humanity claws out of the rubble of her dysfunctional life and work existence. Stinkbug is both a mad lampoon and a cautionary tale, and also a fine read.

Flavor of the month is cinematic police procedurals starring neurodivergent investigators and the British six-episode series set in Yorkshire, Patience, is one of the best. A precarious, self-contained, precocious archivist in the police records department, Patience Evans (stunningly acted by Ella Maisy Purvis), has obsessively turned herself into a consummate amateur crime investigator. When Detective Inspector Bea Metcalf (played with subtlety and flair by Laura Fraser) stumbles upon Patience, a slow burning friendship and professional partnership emerges, punctuated by all the complexities of Patience’s character. An intriguing plot involving drug-induced suicides kicks off Season 1 and two other decent murder puzzles work well. Well paced and directed, splendidly filmed, and backed by decent supporting casts, Patience entertains while adding moving emotional depth.

A thriller about the trials of a gawky, geeky mathematician who might be able to ruin modern cryptography? Bring it on! Prime Target offers a pleasing plot unfurled (perhaps in a slightly leisurely manner) over eight episodes, workmanlike acting (Leo Woodall “works” as the squinty, hapless “genius” maths guy but fails to spark, while the other star, Quintessa Swindell, is sparkier as the super hacker), plenty of touristy eye candy from around the world, and enough plot twists to hold attention. If the music is insipid, if the depiction of the central mathematics ideas is overegged … well, we can’t have everything. Prime Target is “meh” television that plays the role it seeks, and if the central idea holds any appeal to you, I can cautiously recommend it.

A South Korean/American novelist with a poet’s passion for language, R. O. Kwong’s second, slim novel, Exhibit, is a transgressive tale of desire, creativity, and freedom. When a talented young Korean photographer, married to an Argentinian-born film producer, meets a magnetic Korean super ballerina somehow injured, she quickly becomes enraptured, firstly in the field of ambitious ideas, then physically. Overlaying this tableau is the ghostly presence of a long-ago Korean courtesan who might wield a curse. Dealing with sadomasochism and the presence of spirits, and eschewing easy plot progression, the novel stands or falls on the inferiority of the photographer, on the never-ending, inventive lyricism, and on its spotlight on freedom of expression. The net effect for this reader was admiration of the author, gasps of recognition at some of the language, and befuddlement about the climax and themes. Exhibit is bold and baffling.

Books addressing the contribution of humanity’s food systems to the climate crisis have been pouring in over recent years. After reading a few, I grew saturated with information and advice, and began to skip new tomes, but We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, by renowned journalist/author Michael Grunwald, drew me back in. Grunwald has an investigative journalist’s tenacity and thoroughness, and in podcast after podcast, has demonstrated a perceptive bird’s-eye view that appeals to my analytical side. To understand, one must condense and conclude. Anyway, such was my thinking when I commenced this recent book, and from the very first page, it was clear that I had alighted upon a wonderful contribution to Anthropocene understanding. By following a genius climate rationalist, lawyer Tim Searchinger, Grunwald finds the perfect anchor for a depressing tale. The global food system is responsible for about a third of global emissions and no traction at all has occurred in reducing that. The largest impact, it turns out, is due to land use and clearing, with agricultural land ruining the globe. The author pours scorn on biofuels, biomass, and regenerative agriculture (all of them result in more land clearing, at a time when we need to feed evermore people with less land), and charts the wild rise-and-fall market stories of fake meat and lab-cultivated meat. Grunwald finds hope in some high-tech possibilities but none of them cheered me up at all. The author is a feisty, clever stylist and We Are Eating the Earth is a charging bull of a story even as it ultimately depresses. A must-read.