The best new books released in May, as selected by avid readers and critics
ABCWelcome to ABC Arts' monthly book column: a shortlist of new releases read and recommended by The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and critics Declan Fry and Cher Tan. English writer Deborah Levy's "living autobiography" trilogy – Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate – combines life story, analysis, and reflections on writing and on gender politics. It's happened to me before and it will probably happen again, but for now I value the most recent instance – Anam, the debut novel of Melbourne-based author André Dao. Raised in Melbourne, Anam's unnamed narrator – a lawyer – lives with his partner Lauren and their young daughter, Edith, while studying at Cambridge. Look at it go: onward into the future – where our narrator's daughter will grow up and inherit whatever story awaits her – and backward, into the past, where everything has already happened but somehow still goes on, as if those whom it all happened to were still alive, sharing their little room with us, telling us "It's OK, it's OK, we're here, we're still here".
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The best new books of April, as selected by avid readers and critics
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The new books our avid readers and critics couldn't put down in November
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The best new books released in September, as selected by avid readers and critics
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The best new books released in April, as selected by avid readers and critics
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