What Am I Reading?
The Weekend – Charlotte Wood
Charlotte Wood’s much anticipated next novel, The Weekend (Allen and Unwin 2019) in many ways could not be more dissimilar to her previous award-winning book The Natural Way of Things. While that story was bleak, angry and desperate, The Weekend is gentle, contained...
The Returns – Philip Salom
The Returns (Transit Lounge 2019) is the latest novel by author Philip Salom, an award-winning Australian poet whose novels have previously been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and the Prime Minister’s Awards. In The Returns, we meet two middle-aged protagonists:...
Wolfe Island – Lucy Treloar
Wolfe Island (Picador Pan Macmillan) is the second novel from Lucy Treloar, the award-winning author of the historical Salt Creek. Wolfe Island takes us into the future instead of the past and is set on the other side of the world, in Chesapeake Bay, where the seas...
The Man in the Water – David Burton
Author David Burton is well-known for his playwriting, his work with the Queensland Music Festival, and his award-winning non-fiction book for young people, How to Be Happy. His first novel, The Man in the Water (UQP 2019), is a page-turning and suspenseful YA story...
Overland Literary Journal Issue 236 – (editor) Jacinda Woodhead
Issue 236 of Overland Magazine, founded in 1954, is packed with nonfiction, poetry (including by Stuart Barnes), prize-winning fiction and the brilliant cartoons by Sam Wallman – my favourite being Grenfell Two Years On, a collage memorial of the tragedy. The winner...
Moving Your Body and Dressing Your Family – Beci Orpin
Moving Your Body (Lothian Hachette 2019) is a delightful board book for toddlers by Beci Orpin. Each page is a fun suggestion for movement – ‘Fly with your arms’; ‘Smile with your mouth’; ‘Hold with your hand’ – that can be imitated by children and parents as they...
Croatoan – Matt Halton
Croatoan is an ebook by emerging author Matt Halton, who is creating some awesome, intellectual, edgy, exciting and thought-provoking writing. His novel Croatoan features crime, conspiracy theories, synchronicity, lost cities, hippies, aliens, politics, mysteries,...
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong
Before I opened the first pages, I had no idea what this novel was about, only that the debut novel by poet Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Random House 2019) had received rave reviews from people like Max Porter, Celeste Ng and Marlon James,...
Cilka’s Journey – Heather Morris
Cilka’s Journey (Echo Publishing 2019) is the companion novel to Heather Morris’ international bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Apparently based on the true story of Cilka Klein, a minor character in the first book, this second novel follows Cilka’s journey,...
The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris
The very first words written in The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Echo 2018) by Heather Morris are these: ‘This is a work of fiction, based on the first-hand testimony of one Auschwitz survivor; it is not an authoritative record of the events of the Holocaust.’ I think it’s...
Griffith Review66 The Light Ascending – edited by Ashley Hay
You know when you open the pages of a new Griffith Review that the writing within will be thought-provoking, opening your mind to new authors and voices you have not heard before, and cementing the talent of established authors that you already know and love. Each...
Islands of Australia: Travels Through Time – Tony Wheeler
It’s that time of year again, with Christmas approaching, when we begin to think about the perfect present for an international friend, a relative with the travelling bug, or just the person who has everything, and this beautiful coffee table book Islands of...