April's Best Books: Tradwives, Gangsters, and More

ABC Arts presents the best new books for April.

The topic of these books is varied, including fiction and non-fiction.

April's best new books include gripping narrative non-fiction and a short story collection from an Irish literary legend.

Welcome to the ABC Arts wrap of the best new books out in April.

Our critics' picks this month have something for every type of reader.

In Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke imagines what would happen if a tradwife influencer woke up one day to find herself living in the 19th century.

In London Falling, Patrick Radden Keefe's investigation of the mysterious death of a teenager who fell from a luxury apartment building takes him into the city's underworld.

And a prison inmate goes on the run with his canine companion in Good Boy, a moving novel by Australian author Michelle Wright.

Happy reading!

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is a notable book this month.

Fourth Estate is the publisher of Yesteryear.

Anne Hathaway is slated to co-produce and star in the film adaptation of Yesteryear.

Sometimes a book captures the Zeitgeist, popping up in every literary conversation until you just have to dive in.

Right now, that book is Yesteryear, a buzzy debut that has captured readers with a simple hook: what if a tradwife influencer was forced to live in 'yesteryear'?

Natalie Heller Mills is our unlikeable and unreliable anti-heroine who spends her days showing the world her faultless life.

She has created an online version of herself where she is a perfect mother, wife and woman.

Natalie is, of course, living a lie, hiding the truth from her millions of viewers.

These women are redefining what it means to be a stay-at-home parent.

Then, one day, she wakes up in 1855 and is forced to put her tradwife skills to the test in a world without electricity and running water — or Instagram.

Yesteryear interrogates our fascination with the tradwife movement and its signature blend of traditional values, regressive politics and glitzy capitalism.

Are tradwives victims or perpetrators of patriarchy?

Caro Claire Burke asks big questions about religion, politics, feminism and the fabled American Dream.

— Rosie Ofori Ward

A Rising of the Lights by Steve Toltz is another notable book this month.

Penguin is the publisher of A Rising of the Lights.

"If you can't find the humour in difficult circumstances, then the misery will just be compounded," Toltz told ABC Radio National's The Book Show.

Poor old Rusty Wilson, a character in A Rising of the Lights, has hit rock bottom.

It's fair to say Rusty's life is not going well, but that's where Australian author Steve Toltz likes his characters to be.

Your favourite fiction authors share the stories behind their latest books on ABC Radio National's The Book Show.

Plot lovers, rejoice: this is a book where lots of stuff happens, and it's wild.

A Rising of the Lights is set in a near-future Australia where robot nurses care for the elderly and a dour chatbot doles out relationship counselling.

— Claire Nichols

Good Boy by Michelle Wright is a moving novel about a prison inmate and his canine companion.

Allen & Unwin is the publisher of Good Boy.

Wright became interested in criminal justice after appearing in a theatre production staged by inmates at Pentridge Prison as a university student.

It's 1997, and with just a couple of months left on his sentence, Cookie is apprehensive about his looming freedom.

At a warden's suggestion, Cookie joins a program where inmates train abandoned dogs.

In quietly moving scenes, Cookie starts to warm to his allocated animal, Nigel, whom he soon renames Good Boy.

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Unwilling to give up on Good Boy, Cookie makes a run from the low-security facility as the other prisoners watch Princess Diana's funeral.

As the unlikely pair survive on their wits, the narrative stretches back to Cookie's bleak childhood.

Rendered in plainspoken prose that only heightens its heartbreaking power, Good Boy is a deeply moving work.

— Daniel Herborn

Transcription by Ben Lerner is a sly, funny, enigmatically provocative novel.

Granta is the publisher of Transcription.

[Lerner] regards the digital moment as one in which our attention ... has been stolen and monetised," critic Geordie WIlliamson told ABC Radio National's The Bookshelf.

First, props to Granta for a frankly fabulous cover.

Swipe left on this particular touchscreen, though, and what greets you is not a dull parade of online advertising posing as information or entertainment, but a sly, funny, enigmatically provocative novel.

Ben Lerner's fourth, Transcription, begins with an unnamed narrator, a writer, travelling to meet his intellectual mentor, Thomas, on the occasion of Thomas's 90th birthday.

Eveyln Araluen has taken out the top award at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards for The Rot.

Resolving to proceed with the interview anyway, he tells Thomas theirs will be a preliminary conversation before the recording proper.

Like being added to a long-standing group chat, Lerner introduces many of the novel's narrative and thematic forces in the opening pages.

Throughout Transcription, the question of what lasts — and what parts of our lives we might wish to make last — are juxtaposed with the risk of outsourcing our emotions, habits, attitudes, our entire lives and memories, to technology.

Densely packed, Transcription rewards re-reading.

— Declan Fry

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe is an investigation of the mysterious death of a teenager who fell from a luxury apartment building.

Picador is the publisher of London Falling.

In his latest book, Keefe — who won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for his 2021 book Empire of Pain — investigates the death of a London teenager.

In the early hours of November 29, 2019, 19-year-old Zac Brettler fell to his death from the balcony of a luxury apartment overlooking the Thames in London.

Four years later, Patrick Radden Keefe — a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of several non-fiction titles, including Empire of Pain — learned about the teenager's mysterious death.

A friend of the Brettler family explained to Keefe how, unbeknownst to his middle-class Jewish parents, Zac had been living a double life, masquerading as the son of a Russian oligarch.

Debra Adelaide became friends with Gabrielle Carey when they were 12.

Zac's parents made the canny decision early on to make voice notes of their thoughts and recordings of any discussions relating to their son's death.

Keefe draws from this huge and comprehensive archive, presenting much of the narrative in a close third-person point-of-view that gives the reader the sense of being in the room.

— Nicola Heath

No Such Thing as Monday by Siân Hughes is a dark satire that delights in pushing its characters, and the reader, to the edge.

Penguin is the publisher of No Such Thing as Monday.

Kate Evans, speaking on ABC Radio National's The Bookshelf, described No Such Thing as Monday as "one of the best things that I've read this year".

British writer and poet Siân Hughes's first novel, Pearl — longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize — was a story of lost mothers, mourning rituals, fathers getting by and houses.

Her new novel seems, at first, to have an entirely different style.

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As the narrative shifts between her new life, finally free of her obligations to her ungrateful father, and the past, we're given access to the childhood that brought her there.

There's more to it though, a strange shimmering absence in the story and Steffie's memories.

Meanwhile, Steffie "borrows" a set of clothes from the dry cleaners to wear to her father's funeral.

— Kate Evans

The News From Dublin by Colm Tóibín is a collection of stories about lonely people all over the world who have been estranged from a person, place or time.

Picador Australia is the publisher of The News From Dublin.

Tóibín, a former Irish Laureate for Fiction, won the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award for his novel The Master.

One word kept coming to mind as I read the new collection of stories from Irish author Colm Tóibín: yearning.

But The News From Dublin does not concern itself with lovesick teens or happily-ever-after romances.

Combining the dark and moody traditions of Irish storytelling with the frank self-exposure characteristic of queer literature, Tóibín is the doyen of longing.

The beloved Irish author has written a sequel to Brooklyn, but some readers aren't happy

In this collection, he focuses his emotional heft on lonely people all over the world who have been estranged from a person, place or time.

You know these stories are going to hit you hard in the chest when the opener is about a woman learning her son has been killed at war.

Whether it's a man seeking the bliss of anonymity after being released from prison, an elderly woman finally taking a stand against her domineering family, or a father grappling with the injustice of immigration law, there's a real humanity to these characters.

Many short story collections are best enjoyed by dipping in and out, but The News from Dublin is propulsive and raw, making it impossible to put down.

— Katherine Smyrk

Fruit Fly by Josh Silver is a bold and occasionally muddy exploration of who gets to hold the pen, figuratively and literally.

Oneworld is the publisher of Fruit Fly.

Silver grapples with questions of exploitation in Fruit Fly: "If I write about someone else's pain, am I appropriating it, or am I using it in a positive way to shine a light?"

As Fruit Fly opens, the protagonist, Mallory, compares herself to an exploding piece of digital fruit in Candy Crush.

Mallory is a once-successful, 30-something writer, marooned by writer's block and married to handsome, controlling Ronan.

Mallory hijacks Leo's narrative, and Slay, her comeback novel, is born.

Silver, a mental health nurse and YA author, covers serious ground in his debut adult novel: trauma exploitation, who has the right to tell whose story, domestic abuse, chemsex and addiction.

Partly inspired by RF Kuang's Yellowface and its skewering of literary morality, Fruit Fly is a bold and occasionally muddy exploration of who gets to hold the pen, figuratively and literally.

— Ying-Di Yin

Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest is a novel about a non-binary character named Rothko who is relishing freedom after 15 years behind bars.

Jonathan Cape is the publisher of Having Spent Life Seeking.

Tempest, a past winner of the Ted Hughes Award for his poetry, published his debut novel, The Bricks That Built the Houses, in 2016.

Kae Tempest is best known for his powerful poetry and spoken word performances — including a remarkable set at Glastonbury last year — and his fiction brings that same pain, joy and emotion to the page.

His second novel introduces us to Rothko who's relishing freedom after 15 years behind bars.

And that's not all they're trying to avoid.

The spectre of Rothko's free-spirited, damaged mother Meg hangs over the town — Rothko does, and doesn't, want to see her.

There's a lot of darkness in Having Spent Life Seeking: poverty, addiction, discrimination, cruelty and neglect.

But fans of Tempest will know to expect catharsis too.

— Claire Nichols

Sororicidal by Edwina Preston is a novel about two sisters, Mary and Margot, who live in well-to-do circumstances in Adelaide in the early years of the 20th century.

Picador Australia is the publisher of Sororicidal.

Preston is the author of a biography of the artist Howard Arkley and the 2022 novel Bad Art Mother.

Mary and Margot live in well-to-do circumstances in Adelaide in the early years of the 20th century.

Told in chapters alternating between each sister, the novel slowly reveals a peculiar world through the introduction of small and vibrant details.

The sadistic older sister Mary wields her authority and power over her younger, more impressionable sister, as the girls place hexes upon their enemies and studiously update a "Hate Book".

Sororicidal depicts not only the girls' external world but also their shared interior landscape.

As children, their days are languorous, the sisters caught in a fantasy of curses and cruelties.

The unlikely love-child of Jane Campion, Angela Carter and Barbara Hanrahan, Sororicidal is intelligent and stylish, full of dry wit and possessing an impressive sense of ambition and scope.

— Declan Fry

Tune in to ABC Radio National at 10am Mondays for The Book Show and 10am Saturdays for The Bookshelf.

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