The Lost Man by Jane Harper (Abacus, £7.99)
Jane Harper writes beautifully and compellingly about the Australian Outback. People disappear and die out there, and other people try to find out why. The vast open spaces are full of existential dread.
In this book a man is found dead beside a solitary gravestone in the back of beyond; as his life slipped away, he moved around in a circle, trying to stay in the stone’s shadow. But what was he doing there? Why did he abandon his vehicle? He had refrigerated supplies; the engine worked. Harper introduces us to the man’s brothers, his extended family and the local cop, who comes from the city. Superb.
How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan (Penguin, £9.99)
Best known as a food writer, Michael Pollan is the guy who famously said: ‘‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (By “food” he means real food, as opposed to junk food.) Here, unexpectedly, he takes us into the world of LSD and magic mushrooms.
Lysergic acid diethylamide and the active stuff in magic mushrooms, called psilocybin, do weird things to your brain. But can psychedelic drugs help us understand how our brains work, and help us fix some of our problems? Quite possibly. “One good way to understand a complex system is to disturb it,” he writes. Which he does — it’s fascinating.
