HANIF KUREISHI The Last Word. Reviewed by Adib Khan
Hanif Kureishi’s new novel about a would-be biographer and his famous novelist subject charts a process of disillusionment. If a biographer’s role is to ‘show the world what an artist is’ then it is not merely the sublimity of the imagination or the creative process...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on science fiction, astronomy and the next Big Bang
Few subjects interest me less than astronomy and space travel. I can’t be bothered with what’s happening light years away, the Big Bang or dark matter. I watched the moon landing with some interest but, with the Vietnam war raging, I saw it mainly just as another...
BOYD ANDERSON The Heart Radical. Reviewed by Suzanne Rath
This compelling account of a little-known period is rich in history and plot. The fifth novel by Australian author Boyd Anderson is set in a relatively unknown time in history, covering several years in Malaya from Japanese occupation until the ’emergency’, when...
Crime Scene: PM NEWTON Beams Falling. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
The second book in the Nhu ‘Ned’ Kelly series, Beams Falling is an exciting crime thriller that works on many levels. Although a complete read on its own, Beams Falling benefits from the background of the first book in this series, The Old School, in which...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on his father
I recently had an email from a friend saying he’d written his autobiography and wished he’d recorded his father’s memories of the area where they’d both grown up. He saw it as an opportunity missed for his project and the implication was that it would have been...
ROBERT WAINWRIGHT Sheila: The Australian beauty who bewitched British society. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
More social history than biography, this fascinating book brings to life the glamorous years between the world wars. Born in 1895 on a property near Goulburn, New South Wales, Sheila Chisholm spent her childhood like most other Australians: cavorting outdoors, getting...
LUKE HARDING The Snowden Files: The inside story of the world’s most wanted man. Reviewed by Michael Richardson
The full significance of the security documents Edward Snowden leaked has yet to emerge; this fast-paced account tells the story so far. No one knew who Edward Snowden was in May 2013 when he scraped 1.7 million classified documents from the National Security Agency...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Bertrand Russell
In a book I was reading recently I came across a mention of Bertrand Russell as convenor of a conference of intellectuals and others protesting against the war in Vietnam. Russell was then 94. I hadn’t thought about him for years, but was abruptly reminded of what a...
Crime Scene: WENDY JAMES The Lost Girls. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
Wendy James’s sixth novel is a thrilling Jack-in-the-box that centres on an unsolved murder from the 1970s and its impact decades later on those left behind. Is the past something we can ever truly put behind us, or do our old traumas continue to linger over our...
DAVID MALOUF A First Place. Reviewed by Kathy Gollan
David Malouf’s absorbing essays, full of erudition and with his trademark lucid prose, engage with the troubled issue of Australian identity. In this fascinating collection of essays, written between 1984 and 2010, David Malouf circles around that Australian...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Hazel Rowley
Tomorrow, 1 March 2014, is the third anniversary of the death of Hazel Rowley, who died of a cerebral haemorrhage in New York (where she had moved a few years before), at the age of 59. She was born in England but came to Australia as an eight-year-old and was...
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