Sunday Fiction Pick: The Bridge

The Bridge – Enza Gandolfo

Our staff member Teresa loved this new Australian novel. Enza Gandolfo explores the impact of industrial disaster through a multi-generational plot that deals with family, loss, and anxiety as one event continues to affect two families on either side of The Bridge.

In 1970s Melbourne, 22-year-old Italian migrant Antonello is newly married and working as a rigger on the West Gate Bridge, a gleaming monument to a modern city. When the bridge collapses one October morning, killing 35 of his workmates, his world crashes down on him.

In 2009, Jo and her best friend, Ashleigh, are on the verge of finishing high school and flush with the possibilities for their future. But one terrible mistake sets Jo’s life on a radically different course.

Drawing on true events of Australia’s worst industrial accident—a tragedy that still scars the city—The Bridgeis a profoundly moving novel that examines class, guilt, and moral culpability. Yet it shows that even the most harrowing of situations can give way to forgiveness and redemption. Ultimately, it is a testament to survival and the resilience of the human spirit.

Local Spotlight: The Bus Ticket & The Orchardist's Daughter

Pick up something from the Tasmanian scene with either of these two new fiction titles…

The Bus Ticket – Susan Walker

Tasmanian author

Walker’s prose is interspersed with letter like formatting to create an absorbing layout that reflects her inspiration of a true Tasmanian story. The Bus Ticket is her debut into writing; the title was inspired by a collection of ANZAC documents and paraphernalia she mysteriously received at a dawn service in 2015.

It is a beautiful testament to the journey and sacrifice of families then and now, a century on. Much like a lot of work involving such a personal connection to our country’s history, The Bus Ticket will pull at your heart strings with its deep roots in reality.

A cryptic message and a mysterious photograph fall from a century-old box full of letters, papers and trinkets – an inheritance that sparks the unravelling of a tragedy kept hidden for a lifetime. 

Inspired by true lives and events, The Bus Ticket is a moving story of prosperity, love and innocence lost to war, lives forever changed by events a world away, a toll paid by past generations that those of today, one century on, are still trying to understand. 

The Orchardist’s Daughter – Karen Viggers

Set in Tasmania by an Australian author

Viggers is no stranger to creating a strong sense of place and connection to Tasmania’s iconic wilderness. Her previous novel The Lightkeeper’s Wife was also set in Southern Tasmania. In The Orchardist’s Daughter she has captured believable protagonists and the essence of small-town life; also inevitably scraping the surface of the anti-deforestation VS logging debate with the plot taking place in some of Tasmania’s old-growth forests.

Sixteen-year-old Mikaela has grown up isolated and homeschooled on an apple orchard in southeastern Tasmania, until an unexpected event shatters her family. Eighteen months later, she and her older brother Kurt are running a small business in a timber town. Miki longs to make connections and spend more time in her beloved forest, but she is kept a virtual prisoner by Kurt, who leads a secret life of his own.

When Miki meets Leon, another outsider, things slowly begin to change. But the power to stand up for yourself must come from within. And Miki has to fight to uncover the truth of her past and discover her strength and spirit.

“A captivating read that reflects the real Tasmania”

— Favel Parrett

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Our sale continues!

If you’ve not checked out our sale section on the upper level, now is a good time to stop in to have a look…

There are books from all around the store - cooking, fashion, garden and design, a mix of children’s, and plenty of others - we’ve reduced as much as 50% off, simply to make room for more books! Here are some of our favourites: