Careless
By Deborah Robertson

This month's BRA book club selection was an interesting little novel that explores how we all deal with grief differently and choose to memorialise the dead. I looked at it numerous times in the bookstore and was glad that it was chosen as one of this year's reads. I would not have read it if left to my own devices.

In the first novel from Australian Robertson, Pearl, at eight, already exerts a self-punishing precision on a world she cannot control. When her younger brother, Riley, whom Pearl's aloof single mother, Lily, charged Pearl with caring for, is mowed down (along with several other children) deliberately by a disturbed father's car, Lily tries to peddle Pearl's grief to the media. She then gets involved with Adam, an artist who has created a scandal by making and showing a body cast of a dead teenage heroin addict. With Adam up for the design of the memorial to honour the children slain with her son, Lily morbidly attempts to secure his affection. A another storyline follows Sonia, a recent widow of a famous woodcarver and furniture maker, from whom Adam rents studio space. Pearl, meanwhile, to deal with her grief and keep chaos at bay, becomes almost obsessed by Frank Lloyd Wright's house 'Fallingwater' .

The Broken Shore
By Peter Temple

Joe Cashin, a city homicide cop recovering from an injury and broken by his last case, returns to the quiet coastal area of South Australia where he grew up to run its one-man police station while his wounds heal and the nightmares fade. He lives a quiet life with his two dogs in the tumbledown wreck his family home has become. It's a peaceful existence - ideal for the rehabilitating man. There he investigates the beating death of elderly millionaire Charles Bourgoyne. After three aboriginal teens try to sell Bourgoyne's missing watch, the cops ambush the boys, killing two. When the department closes the case, Joe, a melancholy, combative cynic sympathetic to underdogs, decides to find the truth on his own. His unauthorized inquiry, which takes him both back in time and sideways into a netherworld of child pornography and sexual abuse, leads to a shocking conclusion.

The relentless story of a town with a hidden past versus a man who is trying to forget his, "The Broken Shore" delivers powerful, lean writing. Temple chooses his words carefully and sparingly. Incisively drawn characters combine with stunning descriptions of the wild, lush, menacing Australian landscape to make this an unforgettable read.

Watch the First Tuesday Book Club's review of this novel.

Moral Disorder
By Margaret Atwood

Moral Disorder could be seen either as a collection of ten stories that is almost a novel or as a novel broken up into ten stories. It resembles a photograph album - a series of clearly observed moments that trace the course of a life, and also the lives intertwined with it - those of parents, of siblings, of children, of friends, of enemies, of teachers, and even of animals. And as in an album, times change: the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s and 80s, the present time - all are here. The settings are equally varied: large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests.

Moral Disorder is about a whole life, the life of Nell, married to Tig, or Gilbert. Margaret Atwood balances the apparently random - disorderly - events and memories against the sense we all have that a life as a whole has its own shape, possibly a destiny.

There were varying opinions about this novel in our reading group. Some found it difficult to read and disjointed. I liked the book and it's interlinked stories. A good piece of literature.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
By Susskind Patrick

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets as a new-born child, but grows up in an orphanage to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is obsessively creating the most sublime fragrances in Paris. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical - the scent of a young virgin. And to get it, he must kill. And kill. And kill.

A novel both horrid and repelent, it draws you in with it's imagery. Perfume relates the fascinating and horrifying tale of a person as gifted as he was abominable. Born without a smell of his own but endowed with an extraordinary sense of smell, Grenouille becomes obsessed with procuring the perfect scent that will make him fully human. With brilliant narrative skill Susskind exposes the dark underside of the society through which Grenouille moves and explores the disquieting inner universe of this singularly possessed man.

The film is a visual feast - luscious and erotic, cruel and fascinating. You do need to have read the novel to truly appreciate the film and understand it's dark themes fully.