Feb 16, 2019 | What Am I Reading?
There has been a lot of hype about Normal People (Faber & Faber Books 2018), the second novel by young Irish author Sally Rooney. Readers are raving about it. But pinpointing what exactly they love about this story is hard to define. This novel captivated me – it...
Feb 11, 2019 | What Am I Reading?
After reading Holly Throsby’s recent release Cedar Valley, I was keen to read her debut novel Goodwood (Allen & Unwin Books 2016). The two fictional towns, set in the rural south of Australia, are depicted with a keen eye for the claustrophobic life of small...
Feb 7, 2019 | What Am I Reading?
Stephanie Bishop’s new novel Man Out of Time (Hachette Australia Books 2018) was nothing I expected. This extraordinary portrait of a man and his descent into madness, and the deterioration of his relationships with those around him, is presented in beautiful language...
Feb 3, 2019 | What Am I Reading?
I thoroughly enjoyed Dervla McTiernan’s debut crime novel, The Ruin, and in her follow-up book The Scholar (HarperCollins 2019), we are reacquainted with the warm and enormously likeable DS Cormac Reilly. In this second book, Detective Reilly and his partner (in life,...
Feb 1, 2019 | What Am I Reading?
Imperfect (Affirm Press 2019) is a remarkable, frank and questioning exploration of bodily imperfections and how we are shaped by them, from author Lee Kofman. This non-fiction book is distinguished by Kofman’s searing curiosity about her own scars and also the...
Jan 27, 2019 | What Am I Reading?
In Rosalie Ham’s new, darkly comic novel The Year of the Farmer (Picador 2018), we are returned to the microcosm of rural life in country Australia. As with The Dressmaker, Ham peers through a microscope at life in a small, isolated town and the myriad of eccentric...
