by NRB | 2 Dec 2021 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
The ninth novel from Wendy James is a classic page-turning mystery that is both psychologically complex and authentically Australian. Best known as the ‘queen of domestic noir’, James brings a keen understanding of social and political history to her richly layered...
by NRB | 30 Nov 2021 | Non-fiction |
Carole Angier’s biography of writer WG Sebald examines his German origins, English exile, and his hugely influential books. In the preface to Speak, Silence, Carole Angier addresses the difficulties of writing Sebald’s biography when so many significant aspects...
by NRB | 25 Nov 2021 | Fiction |
Japanese author Sosuke Natsukawa’s second novel brings together a cat and a bookshop, and contains more than its slim volume suggests. The Cat Who Saved Books is like a TARDIS. It has simple language and is only 224 pages, yet in many ways it is ‘bigger on the...
by NRB | 23 Nov 2021 | Non-fiction |
Bronwyn Adcock provides a searing insider’s account of the bushfire that terrorised the NSW South Coast during Black Summer, and warns that fires on this scale will happen again. It’s impossible not to be moved by Currowan, the debut book by award-winning journalist...
by NRB | 18 Nov 2021 | Fiction |
Hilma Wolitzer’s stories capture the extraordinary within the ordinary in this collection that showcases her work from the 1960s to now. A woman went mad in the supermarket … well, haven’t we all felt like that at times, especially if we have had two small...
by NRB | 16 Nov 2021 | Non-fiction |
Henry Gee manages to convey 4.6 billion years of history and a planet’s sense of yearning in one slim volume. Douglas Adams wrote in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry...
by NRB | 12 Nov 2021 | Fiction, Flashback Friday |
This month’s Flashback Friday explores Nick Earl’s entwined Wisdom Tree novellas from 2016: Gotham, Venice, Vancouver, Juneau, and NoHo. The Tolstoy quotation about unhappy families could easily have been the epigraph to every one of the five novellas that...
by NRB | 11 Nov 2021 | Non-fiction |
Jay Parini’s memoir provides an insight into the famous South American author as the two of them tour the Scottish Highlands. It doesn’t matter if you have never read any of the work of the famous Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, neither had Jay Parini when...
by NRB | 9 Nov 2021 | Non-fiction |
Stretching from France to the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Carol Major’s memoir is a meditation on family, grief and love. This memoir by Carol Major comprises three strands woven into one heartbreaking narrative of a woman and her daughter. Written as a...
by NRB | 4 Nov 2021 | Non-fiction |
Novelist Bohumil Hrabal’s memoir explores the roots of cruelty by examining the author’s relationship with his many cats. Published in Czech in 1986, novelist Bohumil Hrabal’s non-fiction work All My Cats is now available in English, translated by Paul...
by NRB | 2 Nov 2021 | Non-fiction |
Michelle Tom’s memoir weaves together the experience of being in an earthquake and the reverberations of family trauma. In 2011, Michelle Tom’s house was damaged by the deadly magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch that killed 185 people. In her debut memoir...
by NRB | 28 Oct 2021 | Fiction |
Colm Toibin’s tenth novel imagines the life and times of novelist Thomas Mann, whose books were banned by the Nazis in his native Germany. The Magician is a very clever and enjoyable novel based on the life of German author Thomas Mann. Toibin has previously...
JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm6 December 2024June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone [ … ]
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
IAIN RYAN The Dream. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith3 December 2024Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]