All That’s Left Unsaid is a well-chosen title for this debut novel by Tracey Lien. At its heart is the death of teenager Denny Tran in a well-patronised restaurant in Cabramatta, Sydney. No-one there on the night will say anything to the police. When her father calls with the news that Denny is dead, his […]
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Reading War and Peace has been a life-long dream of mine, inspired by my father who took the book on a Gold Coast family holiday and vowed to read a hundred pages a day and finish it over the September school holidays, which he did. Over Christmas and the first half of January this new
As we approach the end of 2023, I’ve been looking back on a year of very enjoyable reading. I always have a book on the go. It’s as if I am living two lives at any one time: my own and the one created by the author. My monthly review posts reflect my choice
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During the last few weeks, I watched the television adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels and returned to re-read the fourth and final novel, The Story of the Lost Child. Ferrante’s four novels, My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave and The Story of the Lost
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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