SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN Seven Empty Houses. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her novel Fever Dream, Argentine writer Samantha Schweblin has a talent for unsettling stories. These stories are weird and wonderful, and, given the strange behaviour of people that we hear about every day, completely...
MARYROSE CUSKELLY The Cane. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Maryrose Cuskelly’s novel seems to have taken Arthur Conan Doyle’s maxim to heart: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Cuskelly was born in Queensland, where there were several high-profile child...
COLM TOIBIN A Guest at the Feast. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
The author of The Magician is also a skilled essayist, ranging across the personal, religion, and literature. In the first essay in this collection, ‘Cancer: My Part in Its Downfall’, Colm Toibin describes being diagnosed with testicular cancer. At first he ignores...
JOHN DALE The Faculty. Reviewed by Airlie Lawson
This insider’s satire of university life is no advertisement for an academic career. The premise of John Dale’s new novel is simple, age-old even: ambitious young thing gets dream job – but discovers that, in reality, it’s closer to a nightmare. The book opens with a...
JESSICA JOHNS Bad Cree. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Jessica Johns’ debut novel does not discount the importance of dreams and the persistence of spirits. Jessica Johns claims that she wrote her horror-inspired novel Bad Cree ‘as a form of revenge’. The revenge was against what could be described as the mainstream...
BARRY MAITLAND The Russian Wife. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The fourteenth instalment of Barry Maitland’s groundbreaking Brock and Kolla crime series is also the last. Scottish-born, English-raised and, since 1984, Australian-based, Barry Maitland published the first Brock and Kolla novel, The Marx Sisters, in 1994. On his...
FIONA McFARLANE The Sun Walks Down. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith
Fiona McFarlane’s story of a lost child reveals a cross-section of colonial Australia. ‘The boy met a god by the hollow tree.’ So begins Fiona McFarlane’s second novel, The Sun Walks Down, and so begins a kaleidoscopic tour through the social strata of early...
GERALDINE BROOKS Horse. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey
In unearthing the story of a 19th-century thoroughbred, Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks examines racism then and now. Geraldine Brooks takes on a mighty task in her latest novel, Horse, covering events leading up to the American Civil War through the story of...
DEBORAH LEVY The Cost of Living. Reviewed by Anna Verney
In this month’s Flashback Friday, Anna Verney assesses Deborah Levy’s 2018 memoir The Cost of Living. As readers of South African-born British writer Deborah Levy’s literary fiction will know, it always has an unsettlingly allusive quality. While grounded...
JODI PICOULT and JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN Mad Honey. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
What did happen to Lily? Jodi Picoult’s collaboration with Jennifer Finney Boylan is much more than a murder mystery. Mad Honey is the latest novel from Jodi Picoult, a collaboration with fellow writer Jennifer Finney Boylan. The term ‘mad honey’ refers to a...
SARAH E BRADDOCK CLARKE and RYOKO YAMANAKA KONDO (Eds) Byzantine Silk on the Silk Roads. Reviewed by Ann Skea
This sumptuous book is richly illustrated and almost as carefully crafted as the Byzantine silk of its title. Editor Sarah Braddock Clarke describes Byzantine Silk on the Silk Roads as an ‘academic book’, yet there is much to interest and delight a general reader like...
Recent Posts
LYNNE OLSON The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück. Reviewed by Ann Skea10 July 2025Lynne Olson documents how, within the horror of a Nazi concentration camp, the [ … ]
SARAH GILBERT Unconventional Women: The story of the last Blessed Sacrament Sisters in Australia. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks8 July 2025Sarah Gilbert’s account of this religious order offers a rare insight into the [ … ]
JENNIFER MILLS Salvage. Reviewed by Robert Goodman3 July 2025The new novel from the author of Dyschronia and The Airways is climate fiction [ … ]
BELINDA LYONS-LEE The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson. Reviewed by Ann Skea1 July 2025The new novel from the author of Tussaud imagines what might have inspired [ … ]