This week’s books range from Irish Gothic to a twisted thriller and an essay linking Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift; something for all readers.

FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK

Heap Earth Upon It
Chloe Michelle Howarth
Verve, $34.99

Chloe Michelle Howarth (Sunburn) delves into rural Ireland in the mid-1960s for her second novel. Heap Earth Upon It sees the four O’Leary siblings – Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy – move to the small town of Ballycrea. We’re not sure why. The novel unfolds through the distinct perspectives, voices and motives of the siblings, and that of a local, Betty, who with her husband befriends them, helps them to find work, and begins to divine their secrets. It’s a mysterious and slightly Gothic novel, steeped in the repression of that era of Irish history, which remained largely immune to the counter-cultural revolution taking place elsewhere. Of the characters, it’s Anna who draws the reader in with most intensity, overcharged by the wildness of desires she can’t articulate or tame. Howarth is strong on what it’s like to grow up queer in a rural setting, with only intuition to navigate the experience, without social context or even language to help light the way. It’s a clever and mysterious book that never collapses into ordinariness, and possesses an eerie, liminal, orphaned quality that lingers in the mind.

The Funeral Crashers
Joanna Nell
Hachette, $32.99

Gentle wisdom and light comedy pervade The Funeral Crashers, the latest novel from author and GP Joanna Nell. It deals with subjects – death, ageing, grief, loneliness – where wisdom and humour are perhaps needed most. For Grace Cavendish, her greatest fear has been realised, but despite visits to psychic Rhonnda – a struggling single mum – she hasn’t been able to process her grief at the recent death of her daughter. Grace becomes a “funeral crasher”, turning up uninvited to funerals, comforting strangers, judging the carrot cake. When she meets Martin, she invites him to join her. Martin’s a retired academic with demanding elderly mother, Edwina, and an obsession with archaeology. This collector of ancient things is also lonely, though not too retired for romance. As Grace and Martin gatecrash funerals, their foibles and vulnerabilities emerge, and the author works in tensions that keep the reader guessing. Besides the obvious qualms that intruding on funerals should inspire, you’ll wonder whether Rhondda might be preying on Grace’s distress and how Martin will reconcile his mother’s needs with his own. It’s a kind-hearted, life-affirming read.

Gunk
Saba Sams
Bloomsbury Circus, $32.99

A nod from Granta as one of their Best Young British Writers gives a kickstart to any aspiring author’s career, and Saba Sams got just that for her short fiction collection Send Nudes. Her debut novel, Gunk, takes us behind the scenes of a seedy student nightclub of that name. It opens with Jules cradling a day-old baby that isn’t hers, the birth mother Nim having vanished, before winding back the clock to relate the backstory. Sharp-witted Jules is a barmaid at Gunk, which the charismatic, chronically promiscuous Leon owns and runs. She’s still working there years after their marriage falls apart, when the 19-year-old Nim is hired to work alongside her. Nim charms both Jules and Leon, and when Nim falls pregnant, the relationship between her and Jules deepens. The lack of any easy definition of what family might or could mean today is at the heart of Sams’ novel. Experience defies category here, expands it in a way that feels touching and true, and there’s a lot of humour and human detail in this Gen Z portrait of those who work in clubland.

Best Offer Wins
Marisa Kashino
Doubleday, $34.99

If you’re on the wrong side of the housing crisis, Marisa Kashino’s Best Offer Wins might give you a sense of black comic catharsis … assuming, of course, that you have the wherewithal to consider buying a house at all. Margo can, within a strict budget, and after 18 months of house-hunting hell she gets an inside tip that convinces her she’s found the perfect home. All her marriage and work stress – and her frustrated desire to start a family – will vanish once the house is hers, she thinks, and she’s not above bending a few rules to seal the deal. Internet stalking. Covert surveillance of the property. Manipulating her way into becoming friends with the owner. None of it perturbs Margo, if it gives her an edge. But when she learns that her best offer might be enough, ethics go out the window, and Margo’s obsessive quest for a home takes a very dark turn. How low will she go? You’ll have fun finding out, as this slightly cynical comedy on sharp practice in the real estate game gets transformed by degrees into a viciously unhinged and twisted thriller.

Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop
Mai Mochizuki
Hachette, $32.99

Cat cafes are big in Japan, where keeping pets can be difficult and expensive, but Mai Mochizuki takes the idea to the next level with the Full Moon Coffee Shop series. The premise is a mystical cafe operated by talking cats, which only appears on the night of the full moon. The inscrutable felines serve mouth-watering desserts and dispense astrological life advice to those who have shown kindness to the right puss. Best Wishes to the Full Moon Coffee Shop is a festive follow-up to the first novel. It takes place as Christmas arrives, and around Tokyo rather than Kyoto, and features new customers wrestling with big decisions. The workaholic adwoman Satomi hopes that her boyfriend won’t propose this Christmas. If he does, she may face an invidious choice between work and love. Two other women connected to Satomi have their own dilemmas and are relying on a tortoiseshell cat to help the stars align. “Cosy” has become grotesquely overused buzzword in publishing, and readers with allergies to cats, astrology, or undistinguished magical realism may find this series the opposite....

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK

On Alexis Wright
Geordie Williamson
Black Inc., $22.99

When a writer ushers in a new kind of literature, this radical shift of worldview and aesthetics can make their opus daunting to approach. Such is the work of multi-award- winning Indigenous writer Alexis Wright. “I sometimes suspect she’s an author more worried over than read, and when read, more often misconstrued than got,” writes Geordie Williamson in this passionate defence and eloquent explication of her work. To fully enter her writing, he says, we need to “slow to a walking speed” and employ a different set of “mental muscles” than we use when reading Western literature. Williamson shows us how this might be done by providing a framework for understanding Wright’s work as constituting “an epic revelation of First People’s fusion with place – and a reckoning of the costs that come from severing that connection.” Each of her major works – from her first novel Plains of Promise and groundbreaking Carpentaria, to her collective memoir of ‘Tracker’ Tilmouth and latest novel Praiseworthy – is distilled and interpreted so that we might hear what we have been deaf to: the voice of her ancestors speaking through her.

Cat On The Road To Find Out
Yusuf/Cat Stevens
Constable, $34.99

How to reconcile spiritual yearnings with international fame as a musician? The tension between these two ways of being drives the life story of Yusuf/Cat Stevens. The open-hearted, playful, searching, almost childlike voice of his songs suffuses his narrative as he tells of his childhood in London’s West End, living over the cafe run by his parents, his early success and growing disillusion with the music industry, his brushes with death and his ongoing spiritual quest. It was a gift of The Qur’an from his brother, David, that set him on the path to Islam. His account of this second chapter of his life is genuinely fascinating as he reflects on his handling of the Satanic Verses fatwah, his role working for peace in the Middle East and his horror at the way Islam was hijacked by the terrorists behind 9/11. Stevens’ emphasis on the need for harmony between the Abrahamic religions is particularly timely. He still holds to the sentiments of Peace Train even though he knows that “not everybody’s ready to jump on it”.

The Slicks. On Sylvia Plath & Taylor Swift
Maggie Nelson
Fern Press, $22.99

“Slicks” is a North American term for a glossy magazine. In this essay, it becomes an emblem of the all-consuming creative drive supercharging the careers of these two stellar female poets. “I will slave and slave until I break into those slicks,” wrote Sylvia Plath who longed for a mass audience and who only found fame after she took her own life. While Taylor Swift’s career would seem to be the polar opposite of Plath’s – early recognition, international adulation, profuse output, domination of the charts – Maggie Nelson is struck by how both artists have been subjected to the “same script” that has greeted female ambition for millennia. Both also are known as being confessional writers, a genre that has been denigrated as overly emotional, excessive and lacking in self-control. With nuance and compassion, Nelson frees both artists from this script, celebrating the darkness and defiance in Plath even as she rejoices in Swift’s artistic prowess and genius for joy-giving pop.

Plant Parenting For Busy People
Nora Mutalima
Affirm Press, $39.99

For Nora Mutalima, looking after indoor plants is a form of meditation. Instead of watering, re-potting and pruning being chores, they become a way of finding “inner mental quiet”. In our de-natured home environments, caring for plants reminds us that we are “part of something bigger”. As well as offering practical advice, the book encourages plant “parents” to listen to what their plants are trying to tell them and identify their own parenting styles. Are they minimalists who prefer to keep things simple? Nurturers who are “the ultimate hands-on parent”? Or rescuers, decorators, scientists? While there are no foolproof rules for watering – the bane of any pot plant owners’ life – the basic guidelines come down to common sense. Alternatively, plant lovers can embrace semi-hydroponics, as Mutalima has done, and use lightweight clay balls instead of potting mix to minimise the risk of overwatering and root rot. Whether you’re a minimalist or rescuer, this is a useful and charming guide to helping indoor plants thrive.

Hooked
Quentin Beresford
NewSouth, $39.99

When my son was a boy, he was fascinated by a Warner Brothers cartoon in which a gambling bug infects others with the urge to bet. Now, the very screen that animated this bug – whether TV or phone size – is what enables the transmission of this fever. Being barraged by gambling ads while watching the football with his young grandson galvanised Quentin Beresford into writing this book. We are, he reveals, a nation of mesmerised punters throwing away a gobsmacking $32 billion a year. Hooked charts the resurgence of gambling in Australia in the 1950s with the emergence of pokies in Leagues clubs in NSW, the rise of casinos in southern states, the spread of online gambling and the marriage of politics and Big Gambling, a co-dependency that stymies every attempt at regulation. But, as Beresford observes in this cool-headed expose, it’s the normalisation of gambling as “a harmless form of entertainment” that is most insidious and disturbing.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.