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 »
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
Animals and People Read More »
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 »
Just to let you all know that the latest edition of Children, Families and Communities was published on 7 October by Oxford University Press. Along with Rebekah Grace and Christine Woodrow, I am an editor on the 6th edition using my professional name, Jennifer Bowes. The book is a collection of up-to-date research-based chapters about
They say that every book an author writes explores the same themes. Reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro got me thinking about how this very different novel raises similar issues to the other two Ishiguro books I have read, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. In my view, Ishiguro
The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan begins with a series of emails in which Hannah Rokeby secures herself a place in the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia Law School. From the tone of the emails, it is clear she will use whatever means she has available to obtain entry. The Innocence Project is a
A Drive for Revenge Read More »
Elizabeth Strout’s latest book, Oh William! is a slim one, more a novella than a novel. It extends the story of characters we have met before in Strout’s fiction, Lucy Barton the writer and William Gerhardt, her first husband, although Oh William! can be read as a stand-alone story. While I was eager to read