MYKAELA SAUNDERS (ed.) This All Come Back Now. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
This anthology showcases the range of First Nations speculative fiction. This All Come Back Now is a collection of speculative fiction by First Nations authors curated by Mykaela Saunders, who observes that First Nations writers in this genre are rarely able to get...
CLAIRE KEEGAN Small Things Like These. Reviewed by Anna Verney
In Claire Keegan’s novella of Ireland in the 1980s, a good man faces a testing decision. In the cosmopolitan Ireland of blockbuster millennial novelist Sally Rooney, the main issues are capitalism and class rather than religion and religious institutions....
DAVID ENRICH Servants of the Damned: Giant law firms and the corruption of justice. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
David Enrich delivers a cautionary tale of the capture of US courts by vested interests. The powerful have always needed handmaidens to tend to their needs. They employ small armies of professionals – lawyers, accountants, scientists, engineers, technical and cyber...
ISOBEL BEECH Sunbathing. Reviewed by Robyne Young
Isobel Beech’s debut novel explores the grief left behind by a father’s suicide. From the opening scene when the unnamed daughter in Sunbathing crawls into the attic to retrieve her father’s dying cat, Donna, Isobel Beech creates an intimacy with the reader, bringing...
ANNA SPARGO-RYAN A Kind of Magic. Reviewed by Virginia Muzik
Anna Spargo-Ryan’s memoir melds a vivid account of lifelong mental illness with thorough research. Early on in A Kind of Magic, Anna Spargo-Ryan tries to establish where her mental illness story begins, looking – not surprisingly – to her family. Did she inherit...
EMILY ST JOHN MANDEL Sea of Tranquility. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
The author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel travels through time in her new novel. If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness. Emily St John Mandel takes us on a delightfully strange journey through time in her latest novel. In the distant future,...
JAY CARMICHAEL Marlo. Reviewed by Ivan Crozier
Set in the 1950s, Jay Carmichael’s second novel is a window onto Australia’s queer history. In the closing paragraph of the author’s note to Marlo, Jay Carmichael tells us that for him, ‘the task of the historical novel’ is to fill the gap between what we...
ANNE TYLER French Braid. Reviewed by CJ Pardey
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist demonstrates there is little she doesn’t know about human nature. Anne Tyler’s most recent novel, her twenty-fourth, French Braid covers familiar territory. If this was said about any other novelist it might be a...
PAUL M CLARK The Witchfinder’s Mark. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
Paul M Clark employs the tropes of ‘folk horror’ in this tale of a 16th-century witchfinder. Samuel was the most experienced witchfinder north of London. Until he’d met Douglass. Now he felt like an infant learning how to walk. Trying to find the courage...
CAMERON K. MURRAY and PAUL FRIJTERS Rigged. Reviewed by Susan Francis
Cameron K. Murray and Paul Frijters reveal how Australia is run by the ‘Game of Mates’, the cosy relationships at the centre of power. Given current discussions about a federal ICAC, and a continuing avalanche of corruption allegations against former members of the...
PETER GODFREY-SMITH Metazoa: Animal minds and the birth of consciousness. Reviewed by Venkat Ramanan
Do animals have consciousness? And if so, to what degree? Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith investigates in Metzoa. A scene in André Brink’s anti-apartheid novel An Act of Terror begins with a team of labourers processing recently caught crayfish. They take hold of each...
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