Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking
by Susan Cain
(Penguin, $31)
Susan Cain quit her job as a lawyer to focus on writing this book about how society has a cultural bias towards extroverts. A gentle and soothing book for those who are sensitive to overstimulation, Quiet explains why introverts are in fact important in society. Cain offers tools for introverts to better understand themselves and to flip their personality type into a strength. She does this while reminding us that without introverts, we wouldn't have the Apple computer, the theory of relativity or Van Gogh's iconic Sunflowers series.
The Ghost of Frederic Chopin
by Eric Faye (translated by Sam Taylor)
(Faber, $23)
Translated from the French, this is cosy crime at its delightful best. Set in 1995 Prague, it's a charming ghost story and mystery with a dash of easily digestible class and political commentary. Based on the peculiar story of real-life pianist Rosemary Brown, The Ghost of Frederic Chopin centres on middle-aged widow Vera Foltynova, who claims she is visited by the ghost of the late composer, Chopin, who dictates sublime and complex compositions to her. Former secret police agent Ludvik Slany, now a television journalist, is dispatched to produce a documentary to investigate Foltynova and expose her as a fraud. A gentle and escapist read.
The Country Life
by Rachel Cusk
(Faber, $23)
While Rachel Cusk is typically known for her unwavering intellectual rigour and uncompromising dissections of relationship dynamics, morality, class, womanhood and motherhood, The Country Life is a slyly hilarious rustic and comic satire. Twenty-nine-year-old Stella hastily flees her London life to take a position as an au pair in a small pastoral Sussex hamlet. She's there to take care of Piers and Pamela Madden's disabled son, Martin. As the story unfolds, we learn more about Stella's backstory and what she's running from. The Maddens are an eccentric family and Stella finds herself in one hilarious encounter and blunder after another. The Country Life has been compared to Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and sits happily alongside those classic comfort reads, which by the way, are also recommended.
The Maytrees
by Annie Dillard
(Harper Perennial, $28)
This special and radiant book is a true writer's and reader's novel, written with such care and craft. The Maytrees is Dillard's second novel and is a transcendent treat of a read. In this oceanside love story, Toby Maytree and Lou Bigelow are a couple who marry just after World War II in Provincetown, Cape Cod. Lou is a painter and Toby is a poet and house mover and they have a band of Cape Cod bohemian friends who are artists and writers. Charting them over the decades, this is a beautifully observed study of friendship, intimacy, loyalty, mortality and landscape. The style is spare but always warm and Dillard's descriptions of landscape are evocative and calming.
Modern Nature
by Derek Jarman
(Vintage Classics, $28)
When the late film-maker Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive in 1986, he was one of the first to go public with his diagnosis. He set about constructing a garden at his cottage in Dungeness, which is a headland on the coast of Kent, England, on a shingle shore, near the Dungeness nuclear power station. A barren, desolate landscape, it was where he lovingly grew plants and spent time in nature while reflecting on his uncertain future. A special book which serves as a diary of the garden but also a meditation of his life from his childhood, growing up in the 1960s and his creative work as a film-maker, Modern Nature is also a dreamy insight into the natural world, something we find comfort in during lockdown. It celebrates flora and fauna with slivers of beguiling folklore, and the writing is lush in its descriptions, as Jarman thoughtfully explores what it means to be an artist, to be political, and the gentle art of gardening itself.
