In conversation: Jock Serong, 11th September 2024

Join Jock Serong in conversation with Michaela Kalowski, to discuss his latest novel Cherrywood - an imaginative and moving new literary novel for readers of Trent Dalton, Robbie Arnott and Daniel Mason.

WHEN: Wednesday, 11th September, 2024, at Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore. Please arrive at 6:45pm for a prompt 7pm start.

TICKETS: 

Admission: $25.00 (excluding external fees), including a glass of wine and nibbles upon arrival.

Admission + Book Bundle; $55.00 (excluding external fees), includes a glass of wine and nibbles upon arrival and a signed copy of Jock Serong's Cherrywood (RRP $34.95). 

‘I have always known that a woman’s greatest power is her looks. For most of my life, I just took it as the way things were, a fact not worth interrogating since it was so obviously true.’

About Cherywood

'One rainy Friday evening in the winter of 1993, a taxi swept through the streets of East Melbourne, on its way from the city to Richmond. That year was one of the few remaining when a great deal was known of the world but not yet so much that the world had become over-known. Small gaps remained ...'

Edinburgh, 1916: A rich Scottish industrialist, Thomas Wrenfether, impulsively embarks on a mad scheme to build a paddlesteamer out of dubiously sourced European cherrywood on the other side of the world, in booming Melbourne, Australia. But nothing goes according to plan.

Melbourne, 1993: Martha is a clever, lonely and frustrated lawyer. One night, on impulse, she stops at a strange pub in Fitzroy, The Cherrywood, for a bottle of wine. The mysterious building and its inhabitants make an indelible impression, and she slowly begins to deduce odd truths about the pub.

From multi-award-winning author Jock Serong comes a darkly delicious, playful and rich novel about legacy, community, wonder, love and reinvention - Cherrywood is haunting, magical and a true original.

'A wildly imaginative, intricately woven tale of beauty, love and loss. Serong is an exceptionally gifted writer, and Cherrywood is his best book yet' Mark Brandi

'Beneath its captivating intricacy lies an exploration of grief, love and the haunting proximity of the past ... A work of exuberance, rare charm and, above all, heart' Lucy Treloar

'What an adventure. This beautiful novel of ambition and grief has me feeling ghosts at every step' Tim Rogers

About the Author

Jock Serong is the author of Quota, winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction; The Rules of Backyard Cricket, shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction, finalist of the 2017 MWA Edgar Awards for Best Paperback Original, and finalist of the 2017 Indie Book Awards Adult Mystery Book of the Year; and On the Java Ridge, which won the Colin Roderick Award and, internationally, the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK), and was shortlisted for the 2018 Indie Awards. He has won praise for his trilogy of historical novels Preservation; The Burning Island, which earned him the ARA Historical Novel Prize and the Historia Award for Historical Crime Fiction (France); and The Settlement, which was shortlisted for the Voss Prize and the ARA Historical Novel Prize.

About the Host

Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, moderator & curator for writers and ideas festivals. Highlight interviews include Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Michelle de Kretser, & Stan Grant. She's curator of ABC RN’s on-air writers’ festival, Big Weekend of Books, now in its fourth year.She also produces and hosts a monthly books conversation event for Petersham Bowling Club in Sydney. Michaela has conducted radio interviews and presented programs across ABC radio and is the co-presenter & co-writer of a two-part podcast for ABC RN, tracing part of her family’s history, called Laya’s Way Home.

About Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore

Rated as one of the top 10 bookstores in the world by National Geographic, Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore is an oasis for writers, readers, and coffee lovers. Books overflow from the shelves of their store, featuring a mix of new, second-hand, antiquarian and rare books. Stay a while & enjoy some homemade chai, and amazing coffee, and unearth a book treasure or two. Read more about the bookstore's story here, and about the real Gertrude & Alice here.