You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here, by Frances Macken

Childhood friends Katie, Evelyn and Maeve have been thrown together by circumstance rather than affinity. Their friendship holds through to adulthood because of habit and the dominance of Evelyn’s strong personality. Evelyn is a pampered princess for whom everything comes easily. Maeve is her poor cousin with few choices. Narrator Katie is a people pleaser, who adores Evelyn and endures Maeve. The dynamic of their friendship is disturbed when a new girl arrives in their rural Irish town and leaves in mysterious circumstances. But it takes many years and much drama for their roles to change and for Katie and Maeve to find their own voices. The girls’ story is told in a series of time jumps through primary school, high school, college and beyond. It provides a vivid picture of small town life in Ireland, with echoes of Derry Girls in its quirky characters with a dark side. It’s a little difficult to accept that Katie stays in Evelyn’s thrall even when she moves to Dublin for University. Would it really have been so clicky that she couldn’t make any new friends? After a tale stretching more than a decade it all comes together a little too quickly and neatly in the end, particularly for Maeve, whose voice has until then barely been heard.

The Grove of Caesars, by Lindsay Davis

Her husband is out of town on a family matter, so Flavia Albia must oversee his building business. Their major project is clearing up a neglected section of some public gardens – the Grove of Caesars. There they find some old scrolls, which may prove valuable. Nearby to the building site a grisly murder takes place and Flavia Albia uncovers a conspiracy of silence about what may prove to be a long history of serial killings. Can she solve the mystery before the killer strikes again? Immersion in ancient Rome is once again total, although the level of detail on the city’s layout does tend to read too much like a Roman street directory. In the end the perpetrator is obvious, more to the reader than to Albia, but it’s still an exciting ride getting there – if a rather dark and grisly one. Already softened up by the addition of a dog to the household, Albia’s personal life takes an interesting turn in this novel, possibly promising a more domestic bent in future tales of the informer.

Battle of the Sexes (2017), directed by Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton

The 1970s saw some great leaps forward for feminism and equality, led by some strong characters who broke new ground for women. In tennis it was Billie Jean King, with great support from her husband Larry, who made the case for equal pay for female players. She did a lot of work over many years to achieve this, but is best known for the rather showbiz stunt of beating former pro player Bobby Riggs. The self-proclaimed chauvinist declared that even he – a 55-year-old has been - could beat the top women’s player of the day. The film is interesting and entertaining, creating King and Riggs as fully rounded characters with strengths and flaws. It focuses a little too heavily on King’s sexuality, at the expense of her tennis and business achievements and really does not do Larry’s role justice. Emma Stone is very good as King and Steve Carell makes a credible Riggs. Jess McNamee makes a rather strange cameo as Margaret Court, but at least they cast an Australian so the accent is right.

Almost a Mirror, by Kirsten Krauth

Teenage groupie Mona and her childhood sweetheart Jimmy live through the music of the 80s. Later Benat’s memories as an immigrant teen in the druggy Melbourne music scene are added to the mix. The action jumps back and forth in time between the 1980s and the 2010s, in a series of sometime confusing vignettes. It’s all sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, with a dash of child abuse and neglect thrown in for fun. Set in Castlemaine and grungy St Kilda, the integration of real musicians sits oddly amid the fictional; it should add authenticity but makes the fictional seem fake. Bold, evocative writing creates a strong sense of place and time, but there is little in the way of character development. Elliptical references in early chapters are fleshed out in rather too much detail later in the book, whereas some questions could use an answer. A classic 80s song, said by the author to have inspired it, heads each chapter. Some inspiration is clearer than others and similarly, some chapters work better than others. The best are knife-sharp, moving, evocative and heartbreaking; others are kind of meh. It seems Mona and Benat are survivors, able to eventually grow up, while Jimmy is not. Is the moral of the story that it is impossible to escape your origins and that we are destined to be the kind of parent we had? The title refers to matching incidents in 1984 and 2018, the only chapters written in first person, with Mona abused as a child and taking a kind of revenge as an adult. These sit oddly out of context with the rest of the book.

Burn, by Patrick Ness

Not so much an alt-history as an alt-reality, this is a fascinating reimagining of the cold war era, with added dragons. Humans and dragons have lived an uneasy truce for the last couple of centuries, after a history of conflict. The peace is threatened when a group of human dragon-worshippers, known as Believers, look to enact an old prophecy. Fanatical disciple Malcolm travels across country, pursued by the FBI, to carry out his destiny. Will a chance encounter lead him astray? Meanwhile Sarah, a vulnerable mixed-race farm girl forms an unlikely friendship with the snarky dragon her father employs to clear their fields. There is rather too much foreshadowing and when the story threads and characters all come together half way through the book, the story takes a sharp turn into an alternate universe. The trick to world building or alternate realities in speculative fiction is to establish clear rules and stick to them. Doing this well allows suspension of disbelief to the extent that literally anything is possible. Unfortunately Burn does not achieve this. There are lots of interesting elements and characters, but they don’t come together as a credible whole.

Judy & Punch (2019), directed by Mirrah Foulkes

There is a fairytale quality to this reimagining of the Punch and Judy puppet show. The setting is long ago and far away, in a country town possibly in 17th century Europe. All the familiar characters are present – the dog, the baby, the policeman, but there is a twist in the traditional tale of alcoholism and family violence. Writer/director Mirrah Foulkes makes it a story of overcoming prejudice and groupthink, as well as vengeance on a violent and manipulative abuser. Mia Wasikowska and Damon Herriman are terrific as the title characters dealing with love gone wrong. The film is beautifully shot, with an almost dreamlike quality that is at odds with its sometimes brutal content. Interesting and entertaining, this is yet another example of an Australian film that did not receive the distribution or attention it deserved.