What Am I Reading?
Normal Rules Don’t Apply – Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson’s most recent collection of short stories, Normal Rules Don’t Apply (Penguin Random House 2023) is a book of signs and symbols, imagination and magic, fables and fairytales, portents and pretend, the impossible and the ridiculous, all written in her...
In The Woods – Tana French
Tana French is an extraordinary crime writer who manages to combine literary prose with engaging characterisation and a page-turning plot. In her novel In The Woods (Hachette 2007), the fictional Dublin Murder Squad takes on the case of the murder of a child. Narrated...
The Wych Elm – Tana French
One of the great things about books is that they don’t have a use-by date. The Wych Elm (Penguin Random House 2018) by Tana French is six years old now but packs the same punch as the day it was published. Thanks to Ashley Kalagian-Blunt for introducing me to this...
The Conversion – Amanda Lohrey
Amanda Lohrey’s The Conversion (Text Publishing 2023) is another of her trademark meditative, slow burn, contemplative stories that focus on a woman and her particular place in the world. As with The Labyrinth, The Conversion is a beautiful metaphor about love, loss,...
A Guide Through Grief – Edwina Shaw
Queensland author Edwina Shaw has written a pragmatic non-fiction/part memoir book to accompany anyone experiencing loss, in A Guide Through Grief – First Aid for your Heart and Soul (Red Backed Wren Publishing 2020). In familiar and easy to read prose, with practical...
Any Ordinary Day – Leigh Sales
The blurb on the front of author and journalist Leigh Sales’ book is ‘Blindsides, resilience and what happens after the worst day of your life’. Despite being a Chatter (google Chat10Looks3; I’ve listened to every single episode since Day One), and despite admiring...
Love Stories – Trent Dalton
Now best known for his international bestselling fiction novels such as Boy Swallows Universe, author Trent Dalton was (and is) an award-winning journalist who has always been interested in collecting the fascinating stories of people’s lives and committing them to...
The Coast Road – Alan Murrin
In the Prologue of The Coast Road (Bloomsbury Publishing 2024) by Irish writer Alan Murrin, a woman is being questioned by police about a house fire that she admits she knows was intentionally lit, although that, she says, ‘is another story altogether’. The story...
Highway 13 – Fiona McFarlane
Fiona McFarlane’s The Sun Walks Down was one of my absolute favourite novels of the last couple of years, so I was excited to buy her new collection of short stories, Highway 13 (Allen and Unwin 2024). And I was not disappointed. McFarlane is an assured and...
The Ministry of Time – Kaliane Bradley
The Ministry of Time (Sceptre Hachette 2024), the debut novel by Kaliane Bradley, is an assured and brilliantly crafted story that is both futuristic and historical, a love story and a thriller, an intimate deep dive into the lives of the characters and a broad...
The Truth About My Daughter – Jo Skinner
The fiction debut The Truth About My Daughter (Hawkeye Publishing 2024) by Jo Skinner is a thoughtful portrait of the dynamics of families, with an emphasis on themes of parenthood and parent/child relationships; pregnancy, miscarriage and fertility issues; and...
Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff is a dazzling novelist who writes evocative prose, creates intimate and interesting characters and plants the reader firmly in place and time through detailed settings. Fates and Furies (Penguin Random House 2015) is an expansive saga of a novel that...