The Invocations
by Krystal Sutherland (Penguin, 2024)
audiobook read by Kit Griffiths (Penguin Random House Australia)
Itchingly dark, powerfully feminist. There is nothing cosy in Sutherland’s depiction of witchcraft. Instead, ‘The Invocations’ recasts the bleak horror of ‘House of Hollow’ as a visceral manifestation of (societally ingrained) misogyny, endured and countered by three resilient, resolute, sorely representative 17-year-olds.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
dir. George Miller (2024)
The War Rig sequences, through their rapid-fire ingenuity, best showcase Miller’s vision of unsettling, dystopic abandon. Beyond these, Furiosa leans a bit too heavily into deranged campness. Chris Hemsworth walks a particularly wobbly tightrope. Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy are more convincing.
The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime
by Miles Harvey (Random House, 2000)
Slightly frustrating non-fiction that strays far from its central story (the serial map thievery perpetrated on American libraries by Gilbert Bland). Harvey’s extensive research leads to some diverting asides, but equally into a drawn-out narrative of his own existential crisis as researcher.
Killjoys, Season 5
created by Michelle Lovretta (CTV, 2019)
A rare instance of a series recovering from a bad stumble and righting itself late in the piece. The final season of Killjoys is focussed and coherent, resetting with purpose to stage a ten-episode, fun and fitting sprint for the finish line.
Sherlock: The Final Problem
by Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss; dir. Benjamin Caron (BBC, 2017)
A cheerless conclusion to a series already skirting morbidly close to the edge. The scripting remains clever, but at too-distant remove both from Conan Doyle’s stories and from the humour and energy of the first three series. Sherlock himself is greatly reduced.
Sylvie & Jenna
by Ashley Herring Blake
“This is our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us” ed. Katherine Locke & Nicole Melleby (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021)
More direct than Blake’s conceptual trilogy of queer MG novels, this tweenage short story achieves a remarkable degree of character empathy and worldbuilding within its thirty-three pages. A positive take on finding gender identity, and being secure enough to acknowledge past demons.
Synchronic
dir. Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (2019)
In addition to its main speculative premise (drug-fuelled time travel, history proving the grimmest of backdrops to the protagonists’ modern-day life situations), the story plays cleverly with narrative time, picking up interrupted scenes as memories. Morose as all get-out but gloriously non-Hollywood.
Big Art / Small Art
by Tristan Manco (Thames & Hudson, 2014)
A hefty hardcover book showcasing off-the-wall constructions by modern artists working in either very large or very small media. Some of the latter pieces are a bit gimmicky, and Manco’s introductions add little value. Still, a beautifully photographed reminder of human creativity.
Sinister Stones (reissued as Cake in the Hat Box)
by Arthur W. Upfield (Doubleday, 1954)
audiobook read by Peter Hosking (Bolinda, 2018)
Though the murder investigation is somewhat nebulous, the story remains notable for the extreme remoteness of its Western Australian setting, and for its historical depiction of cattle station life—and particularly the relationships between Aboriginal and white folk—in the mid-20th Century.
Holidays
by William McInnes (Hachette, 2014)
audiobook read by William McInnes (Hachette, 2015)
McInnes reminisces about holidaying mishaps from his childhood and adult life (and those of people he has known). With the growing wisdom of experience, he draws wider, often subtle, gentle and empathic conclusions about Australian culture, family and what makes us happy.