Book Club: Carrie Cox’s Storylines

Perth author Carrie Cox opens her third novel, Storylines, with an epigraph from Edmund Burke in which the 18th century philosopher and politician attempts to pin down a concept that writers and thinkers have puzzled over for centuries. “By beauty,” he writes, “I mean that quality or those qualities in bodies, by which they cause love, or some passion similar to it.” It’s a fitting introduction to a novel which seeks to understand beauty as something grounded less in aesthetics than in the human capacity for vulnerability, care and connection with others. The story centres on Nessa, a 30-something who juggles her work as a nurse in an aged-care home with a side venture running unfussy wellness retreats at an old farmstead named Navada. Both roles suggest Nessa’s deep capacity for caring for others, even as they also reveal the ways she attempts to, as she puts it, “keep the world at arm’s length by letting little parts of it in”. Much of this reticence stems from a car accident a decade prior that has left her with a “twisty tangle of large angry red scars that cover the entire right side of my face”, which she covers each morning by way of a laborious make-up application referred to as “the Routine”. Cox handles this element of Nessa’s story with sensitivity, informed by her own experience of living with physical scarring, and suggests the ways her protagonist’s keen awareness of the tangible reminders of her accident is underscored by its continuing psychological legacies, not only for her, but also her terminally ill father, her somewhat aloof mother and her intensely capable sister, Maya. Nessa’s eventual catalyst confronting these impacts is a crisis in the life of her teenaged niece, Lily, who is struggling with the effects of social media on her self-esteem even as her mastery of it boosts Navada’s profile and business. All of this points to the importance of Cox’s knack for warm, authentic characterisation to the success of the novel, along with its interest in storytelling and particularly in the ways it can, as Cox writes, allow for “the possibility of connection, the unique capacity of humans to understand each other. The sorcery of it all”. STORYLINES Carrie Cox (Affirm, $34.99) GLASS HOUSES Anne Coombs (Upswell, $29.99) “What is it about houses? Is it about shelter? Family? Comfort?” So asks Glass Houses, the wryly satirical final novel by late author and activist Anne Coombs. It’s set in the 90s in Glaston, “once the most beautiful town in New South Wales” and a place where “houses — buying them, restoring them, furnishing them” are an obsession for a band of affluent and often eccentric newcomers. Chief among them is Raymond, who’s renovating Glastonbridge, “a vast neo-Gothic fantasy” infamous for having sent its original owner “bankrupt, then mad”. As his ambitious project progresses, Raymond increasingly comes into conflict with those around him: local heritage enthusiasts, a business rival, even his aggrieved sister. THE SHAPE OF DUST Lamisse Hamouda & Hazem Hamouda (Pantera, $34.99) In 2018, Lamisse Hamouda had recently moved to Cairo to study, and was waiting for her father Hazem to arrive from Brisbane for a family holiday. The situation quickly became nightmarish, however, after Hazem disappeared at the airport, eventually landing in Egypt’s notorious Tora prison. The pair’s powerful, intimate joint memoir charts the ensuing ordeal, offering thoughtful reflections on the challenges of narrating trauma and “a life that lives across multiple, truncated identities” as it interleaves Hazem’s gruelling 433 days in prison with Lamisse’s battle to secure his release, a process made all the more difficult by his status as an Egyptian Australian dual citizen. MANY THINGS UNDER A ROCK David Scheel (Hodder & Stoughton, $34.99) Marine biologist David Scheel opens his book by describing a playful encounter with an octopus off the coast of Alaska, during which the creature attempted to hide beneath kelp, only to appear bashful when its disguise was revealed. It’s a scene that vividly captures the sense of wonder and curiosity that has driven Scheel’s 25-year career seeking to better understand “how octopuses live and experience the world”. These are also the questions at the heart of Many Things Under a Rock, which draws on Scheel’s experiences along with scientific research, legends and stories, and the traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples to consider what we know — and don’t know — about these animals.