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​Five Midnights

4/10/2019

 
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Ann Dávila Cardinal: Tor Teen $26.99
 
SO ENTRENCHED is Puerto Ricans’ belief in the mythical Latino bogeyman El Cuco that when first one, then another, teenage boy is murdered, natives of San Juan don’t doubt that this beast is the likely killer.
Lupe Dávila, on the other hand, a ‘Gringa Rican’ from Vermont newly arrived on holiday in the Caribbean, is not nearly so easily convinced. Surely in the 21st century people don’t actually believe that an imaginary monster wielded as a threat over misbehaving children is roaming the city’s streets?
Yet the deaths do seem to be frustrating the best investigative efforts of Lupe’s uncle, police chief Esteban.
When Lupe meets Javier, a longtime friend of the two dead youths, a side of San Juan seen by few foreign tourists begins to reveal itself. In the tattered remnants of the El Rubí neighbourhood with its delectable street food and peeling, colourful façades, in the garbage-strewn alleyways and crumbling warehouses dominated by a rampant drug trade, and in the ultra-glamorous ocean-front condominium of international reggaetón superstar Papi Gringo, Lupe finds the most extreme of contrasts.
Could the common denominator in these two horrific crimes be an informal quintet dubbed by their mothers Los Cangrejos (The Crabs) – five male babies born within a few days of each other under the star sign Cancer and raised almost as brothers? If so, could Javier’s life also be at risk?
Both young men died literally on the eve of turning 18 so, with his own birthday looming, Javier – now clean and sober and working to support community programs run by his parish priest – begins to think back over his years of drug abuse and the meaning behind the lyrics of Papi Gringo’s new hit song, “Retribución”.
This novel is partly autobiographical, reflecting author Dávila Cardinal’s experiences as a fair-skinned North American with Puerto Rican heritage.

​Twelve Unending Summers

2/8/2019

 
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Cholet Kelly Josué: Authority Publishing US$15.99

IN AN engrossing memoir Cholet Josué describes being born in the Bahamas to immigrant workers from Haiti. There he spends his first four years suspended between competing cultures, cocooned by the archipelago’s expatriate Haitian community and unaware that he’s resented by the English-speaking native population.
When an almost-fatal incident prompts his parents to return with their offspring to Haiti, Josué meets his extended family for the first time: aunts, uncles and cousins who together assume responsibility for helping to raise the five Josué siblings. His summers are spent in the country; for the remainder of the year Josué lives with his mother and brothers in Saint-Louis-du-Nord while his father works their farmland.
His priorities are simple: playing soccer (often with a large unripe orange rather than an expensive and puncture-prone plastic ball), studying, telling stories by lamplight and feasting on simple, robust Haitian cuisine prepared in kitchens whose doors are always open to neighbours.
The death of his father, followed by his widowed mother’s move back to the Bahamas as she struggles to support her children, leaves Josué a virtual orphan at the age of eight but living happily in a huge household of warm, welcoming maternal relatives.
His life takes another unpredictable turn when as a 16-year-old he is given directions for embarking on a small fishing boat to be smuggled via a stomach-churning ocean voyage to Miami, North America’s human melting pot.
Finally reunited with his mother, who has made her own way to the US, Josué focuses his body and mind on using his athletic skills to secure a college scholarship. It is only when he is accepted, however, that the implications of his status as an undocumented illegal arrival truly hit, forcing this determined young man to re-evaluate his identity in his adopted country as he strives to establish a legitimate future for himself.

The German Girl

24/3/2017

 
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Armando Lucas Correa: Simon & Schuster $29.99
 
BERLIN, 1939: With her blue eyes, blonde hair and smooth creamy skin, Hannah Rosenthal is the physical epitome of all that is truly German – in every way but one. Hannah’s parents, Max and Alma, are German Jews.
Even as an image of Hannah circulates on the cover of a Nazi propaganda magazine, held up as an example of the ultimate Aryan child, the terrified Rosenthals desperately plot their escape from a country that is making clear its contempt for the “impure”, the “stained”.
Seen through 12-year-old Hannah’s eyes, the events of Berlin’s infamous Crystal Night and its aftermath in 1938-39 leave no doubt that war in one form or another is inevitable. Although Max and Alma have retreated from society and now rarely go outside, they are nonetheless tormented, taunted by the tenants who rent parts of the family’s grand heritage building.
There is the slimmest glimmer of hope, however: a mysterious place called “Kuba” is accepting Jewish refugees.
New York, 2014: At the age of 12, Anna Rosen is a full-time carer for her reclusive mother, Ida, a woman who has barely managed to function since her husband Louis’ mysterious disappearance six months before Anna’s birth.
However, the unexpected arrival of an envelope from Havana breathes fresh life into the pair’s existence. Filled with new-found energy, Ida agrees to take Anna to Cuba in search of her father’s only other relative.
While the Rosenthal/Rosen family is fictitious, the flight of Jews from Hamburg aboard SS St Louis did take place in May 1939 – for many, with disastrous consequences when the Cuban authorities suddenly rejected almost all of the ship’s exiled passengers. This little-known piece of history is rekindled beautifully through the experiences of two girls half a century apart but bonded by not only blood but a need to be their parents’ sole support.

The Man with the Golden Typewriter

31/12/2015

 
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Fergus Fleming (editor): Bloomsbury Publishing $29.99
 
TO TENS of millions of fans James Bond is a suave, invincible Hollywood spy with a cultured British accent, an eye for a beautiful woman and an unerring ability to hunt out anyone who threatens the security of the West. Well before the arrival of the big-screen version, however, Bond was born in print.
A new compilation of correspondence both to and by intelligence-operative-turned-writer Ian Fleming traces this evolution from the unveiling of the first of his eventual 14 Bond books through the negotiation of several Bond film deals and concludes shortly after Fleming’s death, aged 56, 12 years later. It reveals the insecurities, frustrations and embarrassment of the author, despite his growing stature as one of the greatest ever espionage novelists, and provides an insight into a man who valued accuracy of detail so intensely that no feedback, no matter how trifling, was brushed aside.
Writing frantically over a few weeks each January-February while on retreat from deep-winter Britain to his Jamaican property, “Goldeneye”, Fleming produced a new Bond best-seller every year; two, in fact, had been completed in his final months and were published posthumously. In addition, he created children’s tale Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and wrote non-fiction works The Diamond Smugglers and Thrilling Cities.
The “golden typewriter” of anthology editor Fergus Fleming’s title is simultaneously a reference to the extravagant purchase made by his Uncle Ian as reward for having completed his first full manuscript – Casino Royale – in the northern spring of 1952 and a play on the name of one of the later Bond books.
If there is any slight fault in this collection it is that the correspondence is arranged by project rather than chronologically, producing an at-times disjointed and occasionally repetitive read; this, though, is more than offset by the intimacy of the conversations between Fleming and his publishing colleagues, readers, friends and wife Ann.

    ' Books are treasure for the spirit and ​the soul. '​
    — VB 2020

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    Book reviews

    WABONGA Press produces an original book review every Friday. Books are chosen from among the latest English-language fiction and non-fiction releases in Australia and internationally.
    Each 300-word review is accompanied by a high-resolution cover image.
    All are available for licensing to print media in selected regions.​For less than the cost of one takeaway cup of coffee each week, a publication can make use of this service to access a new review every seven days, backed by a written guarantee that the same content will not be licensed for use by any direct competitor.
    Please contact Wabonga's publisher, Rosalea Ryan, to discuss how this service can be tailored to your newspaper or magazine.​

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