PICK OF THE WEEK
How To Fake Being Tidy
Fenella Souter
Allen & Unwin, $29.99

Being someone who, until recently, kept the bath towels in the pantry for want of storage space, I can relate to Fenella Souter’s envy of people for whom household management comes effortlessly. This collection of gently humorous reflections on the “domestic arts” and the pleasures of pottering around the home is like one of those kitchen drawers where all the vital miscellany of daily life is stashed: the useful stuff (tips about removing stains), the quirky stuff (Zen and the art of linen folding) and the intangible keepsakes with powerful emotions attached (memories of her mother who died when Souter was 16). Bringing order to chaos is central to Souter’s playful, love-hate relationship with being “clean and tidy”, as is an abiding awareness of the “healing power of domestic therapy” during times of trouble.

The World is Not Big Enough
Vanessa Russell
Hardie Grant, $29.99

In his 12th letter to Vanessa Russell, detained refugee Ahmad Shah sent her a poem: “And when that/ tomorrow comes./ Why should anyone remember me?/ Why should the busy world waste time remembering me?” As Shah began to make demands on her, Russell let the correspondence slide. Years later, she decided to look him up and discovered that he had been murdered. Stricken by guilt and feeling that she had failed him, she spent the next six years investigating Shah’s fate. The result is an unvarnished journey into the dark heart of Australia’s detention system and its soul-destroying impact on refugees. In search of answers about Shah, she travels to Port Hedland, Christmas Island and a Perth prison where his murderer is incarcerated. The larger story she uncovers implicates us all.

Defiant Voices
Babette Smith
NLA, $49.99

They fought “like tigers”, they were rabble-rousers, they gave lip to the men in charge and drove them to “breaking point” with their lewd songs and taunts. “The more punitive the authorities became, the less seriously the women appeared to take them,” says Babette Smith in this marvellous history of women convicts. Once tarred as whores or seen as passive victims, a much more spirited and nuanced picture has emerged as historians have drilled down into the details of individual lives. There was resistance in the workplace, the prison factories and domestic service. Women took control of their lives by embracing transportation or by exploiting the opportunities for freedom and status that marriage in a woman-starved colony gave them. In this time of #MeToo, there is much we can learn from our fearless and outspoken convict forebears.