Best of books: Reconsidering sex ed, a summer of entanglements and the job of the public intellectual

There's already been a flurry of books about the pandemic written: weighty (and not so weighty) non-fiction tomes about the science, public health responses, lockdowns and the lasting impact of the disease.

But now the experience of the last two years is really starting to trickle into fiction. Novels have long lead times, as anyone who's tried to dash one off in an afternoon would know.

Hanne Melgaard Watkins finds the COVID element in Diana Reid's new novel, Seeing Other People, to be a bit of a distraction in a review this week.

When everyone has had an experience of the virus, getting it right in a novel is a tall order. Particularly without the benefit of proper hindsight. But I'm not sure that means novelists shouldn't try - it would be bizarre if our literature comes to pretend it didn't happen.

You can find all the books we've reviewed this week below. And I welcome your thoughts and feedback on what we've been reading. You can reach me by email at jasper.lindell@canberratimes.com.au

Katrina Marson, highly qualified and deeply experienced in criminal law and justice, will prompt a fresh debate in Australia about the nature of sex education with Legitimate Sexpectations (Scribe, $32.99), thinks our critic Mark Thomas.

"For [Marson], one key is teaching youngsters about sex and associated questions of autonomy, power, limits, feelings, and seeking help. She maintains that such an education program has been consigned to the too-hard basket: "not important, not appropriate, not that easy"," Thomas writes in a review this week.

"Her thesis is underpinned by a simple but dramatic comparison between sex education and swimming lessons. To learn about sex we sometimes seem just to throw youngsters into the pool and hope they do not drown. Some do."

What did the best-selling Australian novelist next? Diana Reid's answer to that timeless question is the obvious one: write another novel. And quickly.

Seeing Other People (Ultimo Press, $32.99) is the second book from the young Sydney novelist, whose Love & Virtue was released to great acclaim and commercial success.

This time, a long Sydney summer is the setting to follow the lives of the Hamor sisters, twentysomethings caught in the midst of who's-sleeping-with-who drama and secret-keeping.

"The novel has been given the tag-line 'dramedy' - comedy and drama. The comedy is part situational, part witty dialogue, and made me laugh out loud several times - for example when a floundering, failed, man describes a strip club as "quite well lit, actually", and, later, when a 23-year-old exclaims in dismay at the thought that she may one day be thirty. Conversations swerve and sparkle, and often manage - along with expositional asides - to comment on "modern life" in a way that to me felt thoughtful and real. The drama of the story comes from who sleeps with whom, and who else finds out about it," writes Hanne Melgaard Watkins in a review this week.

Craig Silvey believes children deserve good stories - and the ingredients of a good book for younger readers are the same as the ones for older readers.

"I adore books that invite me to feel things strongly and allow me to look at the world in a different way," Silvey tells Karen Hardy in an interview this week.

"Ultimately I want to be moved as a reader and I want to be challenged. I want to be swept up and taken on a journey. Kids demand the same experiences as adult readers as well."

Silvey's new book Runt (Allen & Unwin, $22.99) is, Hardy writes, "the story of Annie Shearer who lives in the small country town of Upsom Downs with her best friend Runt, a stray dog who has an uncanny way with the sheep.

"Annie's family are struggling financially and she needs to save the family farm.

"She enters Runt in the agility course at the Krumpets Dog Show in London, a competition where she's sure he'll take first place with a cash prize to boot.

"The only problem is, Runt can't perform when other people are watching.

"Can they overcome the hurdles, literal and figurative, to save the day?"

Will Salkeld considers the new novel by Alan Fyfe, T (Transit Lounge, $29.99). Yes, that's right: just one letter for the title. It's short for Timothy, the methamphetamine-using and -dealing character at the heart of the book.

But this is no clichéd, shallow, tabloid portrayal of drug use in Mandurah, Western Australia.

"Fyfe's writing is at its best when describing the urban environments of Mandurah as an extension of T's ambiguous identity," Salkeld writes in a review this week.

"[T] finds himself in the shed of his potential meth suppliers, filled with drug and Fremantle Dockers paraphernalia. In an asbestos-laden house decorated by broken record players and second-hand books, T crashes on the couch of Laurette, known mostly as Lori-Bird. The two come to an agreement: he will sell methamphetamine and pay for the rent, and she will provide a home for his comedowns."

Clive Hamilton is no stranger to a public debate on some of the big issues that have faced Australia in recent times, and in his new book, Provocateur (Hardie Grant Books, $34.99), he reflects on this life of ideas and action.

"Surging within Hamilton's intellectual critique of his times, compassion and moral severity contend for ascendancy, and Provocateur reveals how often severity has been the costly victor," writes Tim Rowse in a review this week.

Richard Coles was once in the Communards, who had the best-selling single of 1986 with their dance version of Don't Leave Me This Way. But, as our critic Anna Creer points out, he's probably better known as Reverend Richard Coles, vicar of Finedon in Northamptonshire and frequent guest on British television programs.

Now the recently retired Coles has turned his hand to that all-too-familiar type of crime fiction: think English villages, nosy parishioners and a murder in the midst of change. It's enough to choke on your Earl Grey.

"Events escalate when [the lord of the manor's] cousin Anthony is discovered murdered in the church, stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs. As Daniel establishes a working relationship with the investigating Police Sergeant, Neil Vanloo, secrets from the past emerge and eventually it's Daniel, with his insight into his parishioners' habits, who uncovers the truth," Creer writes in a review this week. "This is a gem of a crime novel, full of eccentric characters all centred around an empathetic, scholarly priest."

You mightn't recognise the name Brydon Coverdale, but if you enjoy quiz shows on television, you might know him as The Shark, writes Ron Cerabona.

"Formerly a sports journalist, he came to the Chaser job after many years as a quiz show contestant. Coverdale competed on Sale of the Century as a teenager, listened and phoned in to Tony Delroy's long-running late-night ABC radio quiz, and won $32,000 on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and $300,000 on Million Dollar Minute, to name a few of his appearances," Cerebona writes of Coverdale's book.

"For all his considerable knowledge and achievements, Coverdale comes across as likeable, funny and unconceited: he is willing to admit to his losses and frustrations as well as talking about his successes and he makes thoughtful observations on the appeal of trivia and quizzes. He scatters questions that came up in his travels throughout (with answers)."