MILES ALLINSON Fever of Animals. Reviewed by Joshua Barnes
Weird, audacious, paradoxical and strange – this novel of a writer’s search for a missing painter offers much to think about. In the first pages of Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust describes the tendency of his narrator – also named Marcel – to fall asleep while reading in...
Crime Scene: MICHAEL ROBOTHAM Close Your Eyes. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The CWA Gold Dagger Winner’s latest novel is a return to his much-loved Joe O’Loughlin series. As is often the way with series books, some knowledge of past novels can enhance a reader’s pleasure, and in this case Shatter (2008) is close to mandatory reading...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on hard-boiled Hemingway
At one time I had a lot of Hemingway’s books on my shelves – novels, short story collections, journalism, even Death in the Afternoon (1932), although I never sympathised with his passion for bullfighting. I’ve always thought that the story ‘Fifty Grand’, about a...
MAGDA SZUBANSKI Reckoning. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis
This memoir untangles intergenerational trauma with intelligence and insight. In Magda Szubanski’s memoir, Reckoning, the author outs herself as many things: a secret reader of forbidden books, a one-time sharpie from the wrong side of the tracks in Croydon, Victoria,...
MIKE JONES The Mothers: The Transgressions Cycle Book One. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
The Mothers is a gripping, cinematically detailed horror story following a fearless 19th-century heroine as she journeys from England to Van Diemen’s Land. Liverpool, England 1880. Rosanna is a young woman whose mother had died during childbirth....
The Godfather: Peter Corris on film quotes
Call me superficial, but several quotes from films stay with me permanently and surface in my consciousness from time to time. One in particular I repeat at what I deem to be an appropriate moment. Whenever I consider that I’ve done something generous towards a family...
Crime Scene: MATTHEW CONDON All Fall Down. Reviewed by Annette Hughes
Courage and humanity are at the heart of this final volume about corruption in Queensland. Matthew Condon’s brilliant final instalment of his Three Crooked Kings trilogy, All Fall Down, was launched at the Queensland State Library. The building is a relatively...
JONATHAN FRANZEN Purity. Reviewed by Michael Richardson
This novel might be the most sustained, thoughtful interrogation of secrecy and exposure in the digital age. Jonathan Franzen has become one of those rare literary authors whose public persona casts a shadow over his works. After famously refusing to appear on Oprah’s...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on his workplaces
I’ve done my writing in some pretty unusual places. The early chapters of the first Cliff Hardy book were written in a Melbourne house that was packed up ready for our move to Sydney. I had a borrowed electric typewriter moored on some boards stretched across a number...
GREGORY DAY Archipelago of Souls. Reviewed by Annette Marfording
Post-traumatic stress is at the heart of Gregory Day’s lyrical and profound fourth novel. Wesley Cress has spent the Second World War as a soldier under British command on the Greek island of Crete, home of the ancient Minoan civilisation. After his return to...
JENNY ACKLAND The Secret Son. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
This charming and inventive first novel is audaciously told and richly woven. Growing up near Beechworth in the mid-1880s, James Kelly inhabits a small but blissful world that revolves around his adoring mother, his favourite picture book, the bull in the paddock...
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