DONNA M CAMERON The Rewilding. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Donna M Cameron’s second novel is both a fast-paced tale of a whistleblower on the run, and a paean to the beauty of the natural world. The instant he ruins his life a vision of his mother explodes in his head. He can’t see her face, yet he knows she is smiling....
MELINDA HAM The Lucky Ones. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
These stories of refugees who have found new lives in Australia encompass enormous suffering, courage, and determination to survive. ‘We are not numbers or statistics. We fled from our homelands because we were standing up for what we believed was right. We had...
SCOTT EYMAN Charlie Chaplin vs America. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Cancel culture is nothing new: Scott Eyman’s biography shows how Charlie Chaplin’s fame was no protection when the tide turned against him. I flip-flopped into success from being a frightened, lonely person … Success brought life into focus and showed me the...
SULARI GENTILL The Mystery Writer. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
In Sulari Gentill’s new novel, aspiring writer Theo and her brother Gus become embroiled in increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories. The Mystery Writer is the latest book by the prolific and always intriguing Australian author Sulari Gentill. Set in the USA, as her...
LIAM MURPHY The Roadmap of Loss. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
Liam Murphy’s debut novel is both a road trip across the US and a journey into the past. It’s tempting to invoke the first stanza of Philip Larkin’s famous poem ‘This Be The Verse’ here. That’s because The Roadmap of Loss is about unresolved childhood psychological...
ROBYN BISHOP The Rust Red Land. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Through the story of Matilda, Robyn Bishop’s novel reveals the constrained lives of women in rural New South Wales in the late 1800s. It is July 1892 and Matilda is just old enough to help Clara out of her cot, change her nappy and dress her, but not old enough to...
MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM Day. Reviewed by CJ Pardey
In this new novel, New Yorker Michael Cunningham takes inspiration from lockdowns and their impact on relationships. In his most recent novel, Day, Michael Cunningham takes on the difficult business of fictionalising the Covid experience. In his Pulitzer-winning novel...
CHRISTOPHER POLLON Pitfall: The race to mine the world’s most vulnerable places. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Renewable energy requires significant quantities of minerals. Can mining companies be trusted to supply them responsibly? Christopher Pollon is a Canadian journalist who has spent the past two decades ‘writing about natural resources, including the environmental and...
TRACY RYAN The Queen’s Apprenticeship. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Tracy Ryan’s latest novel evokes the social divisions of sixteenth-century France and the stories of two independent-minded women. In The Queen’s Apprenticeship, Tracy Ryan tells the stories of two women. One, Jehane/Josse, the daughter of a journeyman printer who...
IAIN RYAN The Strip. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith
The new novel from the author of The Spiral and The Student delivers a noir excursion into the underbelly of the Gold Coast in the 1980s. Steeped in corruption, incompetence, and alcohol, 1980s Queensland seems like the perfect setting for a distinctly Australian...
SUSAN McCREERY All the Unloved. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Susan McCreery’s novel recounts the lives of the residents of a block of flats in 1990s Bondi and the complexities of love. A few short sentences and a scene is set, a mood caught, a character revealed: all this is beautifully done. Then short passages are linked...
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