Karen

Part life story, part inspirational memoir, BLOOM is life from Mary Fowler's point of view. And it's been quite the ride for such a young, talented woman. Parts of this book are distressing to read about - the overt racism particularly whilst playing in France, her self-doubt and anxiety. Then there are the insights into the joy of playing for the Matilda's and the close relationships with the team that seem to fuel so much of the success of the team. I love watching them play - win or lose - they seem like a supportive and close group when looked at from the distance of a TV screen.

The book is also a bit of a guide to how Fowler has improved her own mental health - through journaling, meditation and really working hard on it. The chapters are short, and mostly end with a series of meditative questions or points to think about, and there are photos sprinkled throughout that show a happy and supportive family life, as well as a series of photos of friends and playing times. And a growing romance with a sports person (I have to admit I've no idea who he is - but then up until the Matilda's current iteration you'd have had to drag me kicking screaming and raging to any form of football), but he seems incredibly supportive and they are obviously very close....

A very quick read, there's more than enough in this memoir to give you an idea of who Mary Fowler is and where she came from, the battles it's taken to get her to this point in her life, and the way that she handles pressure to be useful, without being overly intrusive.

In that it was actually refreshingly different - not your average sporting memoir at all, but then Fowler, and the Matilda's in general, are not your average team.

We've been in sovereign citizen territory a lot in recent crime fiction releases, and DARK DESERT ROAD takes us back there again, although coming at it from the different viewpoints of identical twin sisters on alternative sides of the law.

Kit McCarthy hasn't seen her sister Billie for over ten years. A childhood blighted by a dangerous and violent father, now imprisoned, and a family that disintegrated, Kit's a cop in NSW, dealing with a pain medication addicted mother, she's stayed away from her sister who seemingly happily followed their father into a life of crime. But Kit's spent years working in child protection, and she's burnt out and now accused of using excessive force in the arrest of a violent and very nasty drunk, although her boss is supportive and kind, and really uses that incident as a way of getting Kit to take a step back, and try to get some of the anger and angst out of her system. Which makes the frantic message from Billie begging for help about the right time / right place in Kit's life.

After spending many years in the US, getting caught up with an ex-US Marine, religious nutjob sovereign citizen type, and having a son with him, Billie's back in Australia and in danger of being raped and/or killed by a mad as a cut snake bikie. She's run, leaving her young son behind, in an off-grid camp in the middle of nowhere, where her husband and a bunch of other sov-cits and the bikie gang, who have already committed one act of terrorism, and are planning a lot more.

The question is can Kit work out where Billie is, get to her in time to save her, and rescue the young nephew she never knew she had, whilst also finding herself having to deal with those terrorism plots and continuing to keep her distance from her nasty piece of work father, who, unfortunately she has to turn to once, just to get a handle on where Billie has been and who she's now mixed up with.

DARK DESERT ROAD is partly a high voltage, action packed story of one woman who starts out inordinately determined to get to her sister, despite all their differences, and save yet another young child from goodness knows what. Reader's need not fear that this is yet another child protection scenario though - the young boy is loved by his father, and nothing untoward is going on, although it makes sense that Kit's initial motivation might be fed by the things she's experienced in all those years working in that area. It also sort of makes sense that breaking their father's hold and influence over Billie might be a motivation, as is the idea that she just wants to kick some bad guys heads in. Hard and repeatedly. Her anger is perfectly understandable, even if it does come from a hefty dose of PTSD, combined with a serious desire for some getting even with the world time.

On the other side of the equation from Kit is Billie, who comes across as a bit of a lost soul, dragged into the orbit of her husband who is a dangerous fool, deeply embedded in the warped sovereign citizen rhetoric, and just stupid enough to allow himself to be manipulated by a drug dealing, raping and pillaging bikie gang who know a sucker when they see one and are happy to take advantage. It's a common thread in these novels - how the sovereign citizen community are so easily manipulated by those with an even more sinister motivation - one that's increasingly not hard to understand.

The terrorism component is very real, but this is ultimately a story about Kit and the lengths that she will go to personally to save a nephew she didn't know existed, and a sister she hasn't seen for a very long time. Along the way there are some great bit part characters, and some really good observations about small towns, drought, and the remoteness of the locations that sovereign citizens seem to be drawn to.

Delivered with considerable pace, and action aplenty, DARK DESERT ROAD is a thriller with a bit of heart, and a hell of a head kick at the end.

A serial killer is stalking the suburbs of Perth in Western Australia, targeting young girls and women, swimmers whose bodies are later found on the shoreline. Their deaths are gruesome, the police slow to react, leaving two young women - Raych and Carmen - with feelings of disempowerment, anger and vengeance, who find themselves in the position of taking matters into their own hands. It's important to note that this is not yet another serial killer novel - it's a story of two young women who have had enough.

THE SHARK is a novel built on fury. The anger of young women who have had a gutful of being targets, and the lack of action on the part of authorities, and the sheer fury of the same young women who have had so much snatched away from them. In the case of Raych, her first love, when Piper disappears early in the killer's wave of attacks. For Carmen it's more complicated - an unhappy adoptive family, a bullying bitch of an adoptive sister, she's been pushed down and sidelined most of her life. Neither of these young women are easy to spend time with though. Not for the reader, or for each other, even as they team up, not prepared to sit around any longer and wait for the "other" to fix everything that has been done to them in their lives. Instead, in a very uneasy alliance they abduct and imprison the prime suspect for the killings, succumbing to the need for vengeance in a very visceral way, until events threaten to overtake, and their mistrust threatens to override their shared focus of never taking any shit from anybody ever again.

THE SHARK is propelling crime fiction, with a white hot anger at its core that this reader really REALLY appreciated, even whilst initially being a bit startled by it. That premise does result in a mess of tense, morally confused, uneasy alliances, and more than a hefty dose of obsession, but at the core of that is some serious heartbreak, and the rise of the disempowered, the "just had enough factor" that a lot of people are experiencing nowadays. The difference is in THE SHARK, no matter how messy, how weird, how dangerous and sometimes downright mad it all gets, at the core of all of that are young women who have sick of waiting for other people to fix things, and so do something.

THE SHARK is sensationally uncomfortable reading. I loved the reminders of historical events that gave context to part of the anger. I loved the way that both Raych and Carmen are incredibly complex women with redeeming features, and elements about their characters that were prickly and unlikeable. I loved their inventiveness and grit, I understood their secrets, you could feel their pain and their fierce, flawed determination. I loved that their choices were murky and messy, and that they did something - no matter what - for their sisters, as much as for them.

Following up very closely behind Milligan's debut novel PHEASANT'S NEST, SHELLYBANKS features the same main character, journalist Kate Delaney, and many of the same themes - violence and abuse of women, the PTSD and long-term affects of that on victims, and those that love them.

Whilst it's absolutely not necessary to have read the first book in the series, as there are plenty of throwbacks to the shocking and traumatising events in Delaney's life, it would also help to understand the depths of the PTSD and trauma she, and her much loved partner Liam are experiencing, and the challenges they are both facing in trying to move on with their lives. It's during an extended break away in Greece that they are called by Kate's beloved aunt Dolores, at home in Ireland, where after many many years of single life, she was nearly at the point of marriage to a much loved man. Only he has suddenly discovered a terminal illness that kills him pretty quickly, and Dolores needs Kate's support. Flying into Dublin what starts out as a supporting role for a grieving woman, quickly becomes an investigation into the abuse and trauma inflicted on Dolores when she was young, that Kate never knew about.

As is often the way with stories of the abuse of young women and girls, the full extent only comes to light at a later time in the survivor's life, in this case, as a result of the trauma of losing the man she loved, and the close connection between an Aunt who was a mother figure in many ways, and a niece who has her own godawful burden to bear. It's the shared experience that seems to give these two women the ability to a) reveal and b) deal with the events that happened to Dolores many years before, when she was drawn into a deeply abusive religious movement that inflicted physical and sexual abuse on its victims, and seems to still be operating in some capacity today. Maybe even more confronting because it's a movement of women, inflicting such cruel suffering on other women, including the stealing of babies and an illegal adoption racket.

To be honest by the time you get to the story of Siobhan, a young woman, adopted out as a child, it's a relief to know she got out, lived a relatively normal life, and survived. All the women who stayed within the orbit of a woman known as the "Directress" were most definitely the unlucky ones. Which gets us to the core of this book. This is a book about abuse and suffering. Much of the content of the stories of Dolores, and the references back to what happened to Kate are extremely confronting and downright distressing at times.

The style of writing is matter of fact, almost stilted on occasions, perhaps reflecting a reluctance to be party to the telling, to revealing just how bloody awful people can be. Regardless of the reason though, there are parts of this book that are absolutely a hard slog. For this reader, it was the story of Siobhan that struck me as a point of redemption in an odd sort of way. She had loving, albeit smothering adoptive parents, she had a life and the chance to be who she wanted to be, and it was her very existence that led to the downfall of awful people and an awful system.

Delaney works as an investigator who is utterly committed to these sorts of stories, and the use of the slightly lighter, albeit determined and dedicated cop in Christy Redmond works as a counterpoint. Although to be fair, Delaney's not trying to be likeable or understandable, she's as confronted by her PTSD, by the events that happened in the first novel as the reader is going to be. She's damaged, and Liam is struggling, but it's in Dolores and her relationship that you see shared experience triumphing over all.

Recommending a book like this is always going to be a difficult undertaking. It's a story that absolutely needs to be told. The telling of it's hard and the experience of reading about it confronting. It's one of those crime novels that takes something very broken and lights it up as brightly and as clearly as it possibly can. Warts and all.

I listened to Alcott read this memoir himself so that was a bit of a joy in and of itself, there's something about the infectious tone of his voice that's very engaging, and pretty funny in places. He's got a dry sense of humour that's for sure, but in ABLE he doesn't shy away from the complications of a life spent with some physical restrictions as the result of a tumour on the spine that he was born with. In 1990. Sheesh, the things this man has achieved in his lifetime make me wonder what the hell I've been doing for all my years.

I'd definitely recommend reading / listening to this memoir though. It's a reminder that life's not straightforward when you have physical disabilities, and the complications come from all sorts of places the rest of us aren't considering. Salting iced footpaths might help with walking, but it's havoc for wheelchairs just as one small example. But that doesn't mean everyone doesn't deserve a place, a voice and a chance.

Brilliant book. Brilliant bloke. How lucky are we to have him around. (And do look up Wheelchair Crowd Surfing Gone Wrong on YouTube).