Continuation of The girl with the loud voice (2020), Abi Darés And so I scream continues the story of Adunni, a 14-year-old Nigerian girl who grew up in a rural village and was sold into slavery but overcomes hardship and exploitation to find opportunity and education in Lagos. Adunni wants to become a teacher, but her home village of Ikati has other plans. When Adunni is accused by a village chief of causing the death of a young woman and the crippling drought that followed, she is taken away to be sacrificed in a ritual designed to appease the gods and bring rain. Her rich and educated benefactor Tia – who has a disturbing savior complex – is unwilling to let Adunni go alone and puts herself in great danger because she is determined to protect the girl. Unlike in the previous novel, And so I scream feels flimsy as fiction, with lengthiness that undermines the pacing and themes blatantly revealed rather than integrated into characters and narrative.
Non-fiction selection of the week
Dive!
Mike Carlton, Penguin, $45
Most of us are well acquainted with the military exploits of the Gallipoli landings and the fiasco that followed. Few are familiar with the achievements of Australian submarines in the same and other campaigns. This study sets out to make amends across more than a century of wars. While carnage was taking place on land, an Australian submarine managed what the Turkish army thought impossible: it slipped through the entrance to the Dardanelles Strait, sank a cruiser and forced Turkey to stop supplying its troops by sea. This is just one of the unsung Secret Service stories explored by veteran military chronicler Mike Carlton. As in most popular military histories, the battle scenes can tend toward melodrama, but in his entertaining and knowledgeable writing style, he has brought out an aspect of our history that often slips under the sonar.
Overcoming the boss bias
Catherine Fox, NewSouth, $34.99
When Julia Gillard gave her famous speech on misogyny in 2012, she addressed what Catherine Fox sees as one of the biggest obstacles to equality in the workplace and the advancement of women into leadership positions: pervasive sexism. The central problem, Fox says, is what she calls the “progress narrative” – the false idea that gender equality in the private and public spheres has been more or less achieved. That is not the case. A major problem in this context is the phenomenon of “fall to the top”, i.e. the higher women climb up the corporate ladder, the less chance they have of getting top jobs. This alternately angry (channelling anger constructively is one way to counteract bias against bosses) but also circumspect, including interviews with prominent and relevant players, is a pretty blunt, sometimes witty call to arms.
Techno
Marcus Smith, UQP, $34.99
We are probably living through the most significant technological revolution in history, but too many of us simply marvel at our smartphones to think about the dangers, says Marcus Smith, senior lecturer in technology law and regulation. The guillotine effect of the revolution, so to speak. There are two phases, the revolution itself and what must follow – technological regulation. What is emerging is what he calls a moment of “singularity”: the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI), autonomous intelligence with the capacity for self-evolution that makes decisions for us in all areas of society. He focuses on the US, China, Europe and Australia, and touches on issues such as privacy and surveillance. Although he repeats his key points somewhat frequently, this is a very accessible study of what is potentially the problem of our time.
Life & Crime
Andrew Rule, Macmillan, $34.99
True crime may be a relatively new phenomenon in published literature, but veteran journalist Andrew Rule has been studying the dark side of that moon for decades. His collection of 18 Cameo case studies is a kind of summary of his investigations. His account of the shocking and infamous Easy Street murders of 1977 is a dramatic example. It is still harrowing to read that the bodies of the two murdered women lay undiscovered in their rented Collingwood home for two days, despite visits from concerned friends and relatives. And so far there is no conviction, just ongoing DNA testing. The other stories of hitmen and gangland killings – violent, brutal and sometimes disturbingly premeditated – are forensically documented, haunting crime scene recordings, often written with dry wit and an occasional touch of Raymond Chandler.
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