On the back cover of Wifedom, the newly published book by Anna Funder, Geraldine Brooks judges it as ‘simply a masterpiece’. I agree wholeheartedly. Wifedom breaks new ground in biography. As well as telling the story of Eileen O’Shaughnessy, the wife of George Orwell from 1936 to 1945, it includes discussion about what it means […]
The Sun Walks Down is Fiona McFarlane’s second novel and it is as extraordinary as her first. While The Night Guest dealt with the life of an elderly woman who thought she had a tiger in the house, The Sun Walks Down presents us with a whole community. Set in the Flinders Ranges in South
Truth is a crime story set in Melbourne which won the Miles Franklin Award for Peter Temple in 2010. The city itself is almost a character in the novel. Peter Temple shows us the seedy side of Melbourne, a world of corrupt politicians, bent cops, brutal murders, drugs, and prostitution. Instead of the trendy inner-city
How can anyone resist a title like Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone? Benjamin Stevenson is a stand-up comic turned novelist and this is his third crime novel. I heard Stevenson speak about his book at my local library in Sydney. On a high stool flanked by two other writers, Stevenson gave an animated
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When it was published last year, I was drawn to Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost by its title. It reminded me of a much-loved children’s book, Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter, a book alluded to in Arnott’s novel. The 1909 children’s book told the story of a lonely girl growing up in the Limberlost Swamp
Reading Ali Smith’s latest novel, Companion Piece, I was intrigued to discover a book which ignored much of the current advice to authors not to write about the pandemic. This advice assumes that readers have had enough of COVID and publishers won’t be interested. I found it strangely reassuring to read about the attitudes and behaviour
Celebrating companionship Read More »
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is a great example of a character-driven story. The main character, Elizabeth Zott, is a strong-minded woman who combines the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt with Olive Kitteridge of Elizabeth Strout’s novel of the same name and Beth Harmon in Walter Trevis’s The Queen’s Gambit. Faced with situations common for
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Jacqueline Maley is a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald whose first novel, The Truth About Her, was published last year with a reprint in 2022. The main character of the novel, Suzy Hamilton, is a journalist who has written an article exposing a woman who falsely claimed to have cancer which she cured through
Two novels I’ve read in the last month involve the relationship between people and animals. The first, Runt by Craig Silvey involves Annie and her dog. The second, Horse by Geraldine Brooks centres on a famous American racehorse, Lexington, and his groom, Jarrett. Both counterpose the unique relationship developed between people and animals with the
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Nimble Foot by Robert Drewe is a rollicking tale inspired by the true story of an Australian boy called Johnny Day. In the latter half of the 1800s, Day became the world champion of the then popular sport of pedestrianism when he was ten. At the age of fourteen, he rode a horse called Nimble
Whatever Happened to Johnny Day? Read More »