Australian Television Premiere: Monday 23 April, 8.30pm
Take a lively new look at the world of literature with STUDIO’s new series For The Love of Books. Join three very different (and very opinionated) book lovers for a weekly book club where the new releases and acclaimed classics are discussed and debated.
This week on For the Love of Books hosts Cheryl Akle, Michael Campbell and Lachlan Jobbins discussed M.L Stedman’s Light Between the Oceans, Patrick Whites The Hanging Garden and Ian Parkes A Youth Not Wasted.
The Light Between the Oceans – M.L Stedman
1926. Tom Sherbourne is a young lighthouse keeper on a remote island off Western Australia. The only inhabitants of Janus Rock, he and his wife Isabel live a quiet life, cocooned from the rest of the world. One April morning a boat washes ashore carrying a dead man and a crying infant – and the path of the couple’s lives hits an unthinkable crossroads. Only years later do they discover the devastating consequences of the decision they made that day – as the baby’s real story unfolds …
A Youth Not Wasted – Ian Parkes
′People who truly live in the outback listen to it. What they hear, I do not know … What the country says is beyond words.′ In the early 1950s, Australia was riding on the sheep′s back and no-one doubted the wisdom of making a life in the wool industry, certainly not sixteen-year-old Ian Parkes.
The Hanging Garden – Patrick White
Two children are brought to a wild garden on the shores of Sydney Harbour to shelter from the Second World War. The boy’s mother has died in the Blitz. The girl is the daughter of a Sydney woman and a Communist executed in a Greek prison. In wartime Australia, these two children form an extraordinary bond as they negotiate the dangers of life as strangers abandoned on the far side of the world.
If you’re a fan of Patrick White, don’t miss the Sydney Writers Festival as Barbara Mobbs and David Marr speak about the importance of preserving Whites literary legacy.
