RONNIE SCOTT Shirley. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Ronnie Scott’s second novel explores themes of abandonment, attachment and the idea of home. Characterised from the beginning by a sense of uncertainty, Shirley is a novel where anything can happen, and probably will. Names are ambiguous, sexuality is fluid,...
ELISA SHUA DUSAPIN The Pachinko Parlour. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The new novel from the award-winning author of Winter in Sokcho explores the lives of Koreans living in Japan. At first, the language of this novel seems spare and abrupt, but gradually it draws you into the strange, disconnected life of the narrator. We learn her...
CORMAC MCCARTHY The Passenger. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
The new novel from this iconic writer embraces conspiracies, hallucinations and paranoia in America’s South. The Passenger is an ambitious novel; it is also a little crazy. I was by turns gripped, maddened, bored and intrigued. It is a novel about paranoia and...
AK LARKWOOD The Unspoken Name and The Thousand Eyes: Books 1 and 2 of The Serpent Gates. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
AK Larkwood’s debut fantasy series combines a death cult, magical artefacts, and an accomplished assassin. ‘Only I am without end, for desolation is my watchword. Yet nothing is to be forgotten that belongs to me. All things that are lost come into my keeping.’...
SD HINTON The Brothers. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
SD Hinton’s debut novel uses the structure of a thriller to explore myriad responses to trauma. Jake Harlow is a decorated Special Forces veteran, returned from a tour in Afghanistan that went horribly wrong for him. Captured by the Taliban, he was mentally and...
DOMINIC SMITH Return to Valetto. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The new novel from the author of The Electric Hotel uncovers wartime secrets in an Italian village. Hugh Fraser is an American academic whose Italian mother, Hazel, used to take him to her home village in Italy for their summer holidays. He has fond memories of...
REBECCA MAKKAI I Have Some Questions for You. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Rebecca Makkai’s fourth novel examines our obsession with true crime – and where that can lead. True crime and true crime podcasts are having a moment, not only in the real world but also in fiction. However, in fiction, writers can start to get behind the...
GREGORY DAY The Bell of the World. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
Gregory Day’s new novel explores the sublime through the life of a young woman in his beloved Otways. In the essay ‘Otway Taenarum’ in his previous book, Words are Eagles (2022), Day recounts how, at a formative age, he looked for ‘imaginative texts...
ASHLEY KALAGIAN BLUNT Dark Mode. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This fierce, unflinching thriller asks timely questions about threatening behaviour. Why don’t we recognise it? Stop it? Dark Mode is a novel, as the note at the beginning makes clear: While the characters and their precise circumstances are fictitious, the...
ELEANOR CATTON Birnam Wood. Reviewed by Ann Skea
New Zealand guerilla gardeners meet a US doomsday prepper in this new novel from Booker-winner Eleanor Catton. Twenty-nine-year-old horticulturalist Mira Bunting is looking for some under-utilised land that she and the activist Birnam Wood collective can quietly...
FRANK BONGIORNO Dreamers and Schemers: A political history of Australia. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Dreamers and Schemers provides an expert overview of Australia’s political history. There is always a place for big history such as this. Near the end of his introduction, author Frank Bongiorno outlines his approach: The book begins in deep time, among Indigenous...
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