PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- A young woman lives on the streets and in the parks of Melbourne. She's an addict, a smalltime prostitute, devoted to her dog Sunny and her friend Anton, who give her a precarious sense of belonging. Anton is an optimist, with dreams for a better, but quite humble, future, that the girl goes along with. When he runs into someone he used to know who offers them a room in his flat, she is dubious, but Anton accepts. As Steve starts to share his access to drugs and a place to crash, what seemed like a life she had some control over rapidly spirals downwards, and Steve's behaviour becomes more aggressive and domineering… A finely wrought and non-judgemental novel about the underside of urban life, the invisible people you pass in the streets given a kind of integrity and dignity, and with an undercurrent of undescribed menace that Brandi had shown himself to be a master of in his previous bestselling book Wimmera. Lindy Jones
Mark Brandi's bestselling novel, Wimmera, won the coveted British Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger, and was named Best Debut at the 2018 Australian Indie Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards Literary Fiction Book of the Year, and the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year. Mark's shorter work appears in The Guardian, The Age, The Big Issue, and in journals both here and overseas. His writing is also sometimes heard on ABC Radio National. Mark graduated with a criminal justice degree and worked extensively in the justice system, before changing direction and deciding to write. Originally from Italy, growing up in a rural Australian town continues to influence his creative focus. He now lives in Melbourne and is working on his next book.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- A young woman lives on the streets and in the parks of Melbourne. She's an addict, a smalltime prostitute, devoted to her dog Sunny and her friend Anton, who give her a precarious sense of belonging. Anton is an optimist, with dreams for a better, but quite humble, future, that the girl goes along with. When he runs into someone he used to know who offers them a room in his flat, she is dubious, but Anton accepts. As Steve starts to share his access to drugs and a place to crash, what seemed like a life she had some control over rapidly spirals downwards, and Steve's behaviour becomes more aggressive and domineering… A finely wrought and non-judgemental novel about the underside of urban life, the invisible people you pass in the streets given a kind of integrity and dignity, and with an undercurrent of undescribed menace that Brandi had shown himself to be a master of in his previous bestselling book Wimmera. Lindy Jones
