SEPTEMBER 2025 EDITION #6

In this edition

+ From the Desk

+ What We're Reading

+ A Book We Loved

+ Book Club News

+ Highlight on an Author

+ Further Reading and ephemera

From the Desk—September in Review

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Matilda Bookshop Review #6, your monthly chronicle of books and writing, where we share with you our current reads, author interviews, book club wrap ups, and other literary ephemera such as reviews, award news, and books we love.

We've had our heads down this month, making some dynamic renovations to our website. Visit the Our Booksellers page to find out more about the kinds of things each staff member loves to read and recommend. And ... thrillingly, there is now the opportunity to Ask Our Booksellers online for a curated recommendation by book-loving humans. Big thanks to our brightly talented designer, Nicole Stewart, for interpreting our visions so beautifully and bringing our long-awaited online recommendation station to light.

This month saw the launch of our newest book club, Matilda, Translated take its elegant place alongside our two other adult book club institutions, Matilda Bookshop Book Club (circa 2014), and Red Door Book Club (circa 2022). The inaugural session for Matilda, Translated saw a philosophical, lively, fabulous discussion of On The Calculation of Volume in our beautiful bookshop over glasses of award-winning SC Pannell wine. Places are still available for the October gathering.

We've hosted six book clubs for adults and children across ten sessions in September (wrap-ups below). But this feedback from a first-timer at one of our kids' book clubs, reminds us why we love to do what we do:

“Mum, I feel like I’ve found people with similar interests. They literally had the same thoughts as me. We said the SAME things about the book! There were chips and apples and lollies ... I was shy at first but then I was talking in sentences, PARAGRAPHS even! ... I’m so happy”

The kids' books clubs are hosted by the wonderful Kasey, who will also be in-conversation with the inestimable Craig Silvey next week, launching the sequel to Runt at the Regal Theatre. See our Events page for more details on all the upcoming brilliant chats next month and beyond.

Our featured author in this month's Review is Miles Franklin winning author, Siang Lu, whose really funny novel, Ghost Cities, was discussed at this month's Red Door Book Club. Browse our archive of A uthor Q&As here.

Happy Reading,

Jo, Gavin, Molly, Kasey, Rose, Heather, Nadia & Emilie

What We're Reading

Emilie: Boudicca's Daughter by Elodie Harper (out November)

Perhaps a historical fiction novel isn't the most reliable way to learn about history, but I am very much enjoying discovering the customs of the fierce Iceni tribe in Roman Britain through Elodie Harper's Boudicca's Daughter.

Gavin: Heart The Lover by Lily King (out October)

This is one of those effortlessly propulsive novels that is eminently readable and impossible to put down. King's characters are rounded and warmly drawn and I can't wait to keep reading to find out how the whole tangled mess sorts itself out.

Heather: One Boat by Jonathan Buckley (back in stock November)

This is a gorgeous, meditative read that shifts seamlessly between the narrators two holidays in Greece ten years apart, reminds me a lot of Rachel Cusk's Outline and has solidified Buckley as an auto-buy author for me.

Jo: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (out now)

From Kerala to Delhi, Arundhati Roy shares with us her col(out now)ourful, dramatic and at times brutal upbringing and her turbulent relationship with her extraordinary, terrifying, and inspirational mother. I'm loving every word!

Kasey: Runt and the Diabolical Dognapping by Craig Silvey (out October)

It's six weeks since Runt and Annie Shearer competed valiantly at the Krumpets Dog Show, and with a Tournament of Champions on the horizon, Runt has mysteriously vanished. Annie and Max must once again team up to track down Runt before it's too late. This is an endlessly charming sequel.

Molly: Fireweather by Miranda Darling (out now)

In homage to Virgina Woolf and the stream-of-consciousness of Mrs Dalloway, this is an extraordinary and electrifying account of a woman's mind under siege, as she reckons with her ex-husband's allegations of 'madness', made against her, to wrest custody of their sons.

Nadia: The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung (out October)

Through interconnecting stories, our narrator recounts chilling tales of night shifts at the Institute, a place that houses haunted items. These are deeply unsettling ghost stories mixed with political commentary. It is so good!

Rose: Loved One by Aisha Muharrar (out now)

After Julia's best friend and first love dies at 29, she travels around the world trying to track down his possessions. A fresh take on love and grief from an Emmy award-winning TV writer of Hacks and The Good Place.

Staff Pick

Yilkari: a desert suite by Nicholas Rothwell and Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson

Extraordinary, mesmeric, enigmatic. This is a journey into Australia's Western desert via stories within stories, where Country is a living and alchemical (sometimes) malevolent presence. Finding the complex space between an Indigenous cosmology and a rationalist Western worldview, the characters of the desert's highways, remote communities, roadhouses, and creek beds are both fable-like and visceral. MOLLY

Book Club News

This month we chatted about the revelatory Desolation for Matilda Bookshop Book Club (Tuesday nights, monthly, in the Stirling Hotel), Ghost Cities for Red Door Book Club (Wednesday nights, monthly, in the bookshop), and On The Calculation of Volume 1, in our new Thursday night book club, Matilda, Translated.

For further information about all of our fabulously dynamic book clubs, as well as the most recent wrap ups of the adult sessions, or to book in, please click here.

Kids Book Club News

Dear book-loving young people, we run three book clubs for kids, Magical Minds (Mondays after school, twice a term), The Matilda Society (Mondays after school, twice a term), and Chapter & Ink Book Clubs (Wednesdays after school, twice a term). Newcomers always welcome for engaged chats, snacks, cozy bookshop setting, cool reading matter.

Term Four Sessions Next Up:

Chapter & Ink: Oxford Blood by Rachael Davis-Featherstone on Wednesday October 22

The Matilda Society: The Poisoned King: Return to the magic of the Archipelago by Katherine Rundell on Monday October 20

Magical Minds: Song of a Thousand Seas by Zana Fraillon on Monday October 13

Highlight on Authors Series

Welcome to this month's Highlight on Authors series, where we ask authors (whose books we've read and absolutely loved) questions on books and writing.

The next author we're introducing you to is Miles Franklin Award Winning Siang Lu, discussing his funny and deft, Ghost Cities.

(We've provided a glimpse of the interview below):

Highlight on Author: Siang Lu

Why do you tell stories?

All literature is an uninterrupted conga line of writers seducing readers into becoming writers.

I could answer this question in eight other different ways, but in the end there’s also the real answer beneath it all, which is: to reveal while hiding; to hide while revealing.

Without talking about plot in any way, what would you say your book is about?

Ghost Cities is about a young Chinese-Australian man named Xiang – no relation to me – who works at the Chinese Consulate as a translator when he’s fired because it’s been discovered that he is in fact monolingual, and has been relying on Google Translate to do his job.

***

To read the rest of this thoughtful and reflective interview, click HERE.