Louise Doughty’s new novel, A Bird in Winter, is replete with tension. It begins with a familiar scene. The protagonist, Heather, attends a work meeting in a room dubbed ‘Alaska’ because it is so cold. Her workmates are seated at a glass board room table. Her boss stands by the window, coffee cup in hand. […]
As soon as I finished Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, I started reading it again. The book is a short one, more a novella than a novel. On the surface, it reads like an extended report on a travel experience rather than a story with dramatic twists and turns. Yet its essence is
As an aspiring author of fiction, I can see where the protagonist was coming from in the recently published novel Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang. Competition for publication is so keen in the literary world that some writers take short cuts. Australia has its share of writers who have engaged in literary fraud whether intentional
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
Laugh-out-loud murder Read More »
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
Lessons in Chemistry and Life Read More »