Perth Writers Festival - Fin

Well that was worth doing. The weather was perfect, apart from the first evening which was just a tad warm and humid for the party, but a nice opportunity to put on a summer frock and sip wine with even warmer people.

In the end I came away with five new book purchases, which wasn't too bad given that I had vowed not to buy any more until I had finished reading the ones that I already have. Ah well, it's a long drought until the next festival, and sometimes books are hard to track down. Not the ones I bought probably, but in theory. I didn't get everything I wanted though. I'm looking to purchase China Mieville's (still can't do the accent) Embassytown. What I did come away with was Whisky Charlie Foxtrot a novel by Annabel Smith (Fremantle Press) about identical twin brothers who are estranged until a freak accident... looks good. I started reading it in the bookshop and I'm hooked already. No prizes for guessing the next ones: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, and In Other Worlds - SF and the Human Imagination. Yes, I know she doesn't need the book sales, but there you have it.

The other two purchases were surprises to me. Not the sort of thing that would normally draw me in, but listening to these two speakers in individual sessions, I couldn't help but buy the books. They were calling me. One was a memoir and the other a novel, both by soldiers who had served in 'The War on Terror'. The first is called Exit Wounds - One Australian's War on Terror by Major General John Cantwell with Greg Bearup, and discusses the emotional scars left by war. The blurb says: "Exit Wounds is the deeply human account of one man's tour of the War on Terror, the moving story of life on a modern battlefield: from the nightmare of cheating death in a field strewn with mines, to the utter despair of looking into the face of a dead soldier before sending his body home to his mother. Cantwell hid his post-traumatic stress disorder for decades, fearing it would affect his career." Yes, I say it should be required reading for every politician and foreign policy decision-maker.

The novel I bought was The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers. The author holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry, and he served in the US Army in Iraq in 2004, 2005. In his talk he said that nobody comes out of a war zone undamaged. I bought the book because I walked in late, just in time to hear a passage read out from the book, and it moved me to tears. The writing is powerful, the subject necessary. What more could you ask from a novel?

I rounded off my day listening to the delightful Ramona Koval in conversation with John Freeman and Rachael Robertson. Too early for the closing address, but my brain was almost full and I needed to keep what was left to get myself safely home.

I'll keep you posted on the books.