OUR BOOKSELLERS

Meet our Matilda booksellers - what they’ve liked lately and some of their all-time favourite books and authors.

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MOLLY

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Bread of Angels by Patti Smith

Breathtaking account of a life lived in service to creativity, compassion, poetry, and rock music. But never with material riches as the goal, but instead humility, hard work, and practice. This luminous memoir is a beautiful complement to Just Kids, covering some territory not previously shared by Smith, such as her married life, widowhood, and personal transformations via grief, activism, and friendship. Just the balm I needed to read. MOLLY

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JO

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A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan

This evocative and gripping novel, told from the perspective of a young girl and set over summer in a small New Zealand town,kept me enthralled until the last pages. From the outside everyone seems happy, but secrets, both big and small, are eventually uncovered which change things forever. Trevelyan writes beautifully and sustains a tone of barely-concealed tension throughout.
I really enjoyed this. Jo

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GAVIN

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Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

Departures is yet another quiet and masterly novel from an author who has made a career from understated examinations of the human condition. Gently unfurling over the course of these pages, Barnes' narrator, ostensibly Julian Barnes, tackles grief, memory, love & sex, and, of course, death in his own inimitable way. The writing is typically precise and controlled, so that his occasional poetic flourish explodes on the page like a firework. If this is indeed to be Barnes' last novel then it's to be commended he stopped while still at the peak of his powers.

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ROSE

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The Bitter Water of the Lake by Giulia Caminito

A beautifully written coming-of-age novel about a girl growing up in poverty in Italy in the 1990s and early 2000s. Gaia Colombo is the daughter of a fiery but morally strict mother willing to fight for public housing to the point of arrest, and a father who is paralysed after falling from scaffolding while working as an unlicensed contractor on an illegal building site. I admired the depth of fury, despair and rage contained in the teenage protagonist, Gaia, and the skill with which Caminito created a character who should be unlikeable, given the violence of her actions, but is instead highly sympathetic for all her flaws. ROSE

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KASEY

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Plastic Budgie by Olivia de Zilva

This brutally funny debut really nails the brutal, and yet finishes with a hopeful glimpse of things to come. Whether you consider this fiction / autofiction / memoir, you’ll find the narrator well-realised and haunting. The cultural touchpoints of growing up in Y2K Adelaide offer an accessible means to identify with the narrator, whilst also allowing glimpses of the ways that grappling with cultural heritage in the face of racism underpinned the narrator’s childhood and shaped their later years too. De Zilva’s voice is powerful and provoking. This is a stunning debut. KASEY

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HEATHER

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Aednan: An Epic by Linnea Axelsson

Once the height of literary refinement, the verse epic has all but vanished from shelves. Linnea Axelsson’s luminous revival of the form demands attention. Spanning a century in the lives of two Sámi families in northernmost Scandinavia, Ædnan traces how language, land and identity fracture under the pressures of colonisation and time. Profound, ravishing and quietly radical, this work is singular. You don’t need to know poetry to be swept away (me!) - Ædnan is pure, immersive storytelling. HEATHER

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NADIA

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Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray

It is what it says on the tin. Best friends Eve and Nell, rejecting normative parental ideals, coparent a child together, but Nell is no longer in the picture. From childhood they understood each other in that way that young girls do, seeing right through to your core, but shame and outside influences creates a friction that’ll follow them throughout their lives. This equally funny and heart-wrenching novel is about chosen families, how we hide ourselves from the ones we love, and how those who see us can create or destroy us. A perfect summer read for the self-proclaimed ‘Thought Daughter’. I loved this! NADIA

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EMILIE

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The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

A little wax poppet is made for the purpose of retribution; to inflict suffering on those her mistress believes deserving (and true, they seemingly often are… always though? Well… that’s a matter of opinion, surely?) But as the years roll on and on, the doll watches the world and humankind with a wistful eye. It yearns to be human with heartbreaking intensity despite bearing witness to much incredible sorrow.

This book is the record of a witch trial and also of human fallibility with all its terrible consequences. Quiet, creepy, very beautifully written, featuring an inanimate narrator who speaks with eloquence and soul. Emilie

ASK OUR BOOKSELLERS

Do you need a hand choosing your next book?

Our Matilda booksellers are now offering a book recommendation service. If you’d like to fill out the form here, our widely-read staff will be in touch soon with their personal selections.