MANDY BEAUMONT The Furies and AMY REMEIKIS On Reckoning. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Mandy Beaumont’s novel and Amy Remeikis’s essay share powerful themes. Two books released in this nascent year recount women’s trauma and silencing by men, and their rage. In On Reckoning, an essay in Hachette’s ‘On’ series, Guardian journalist Amy...
AMANI HAYDAR The Mother Wound. Reviewed by Sanchana Venkatesh
Last month Amani Haydar’s powerful memoir won the non-fiction prize at the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. When Amani Haydar was five months pregnant with her first child, she received the unimaginable news that her mother, Salwa Haydar, had been...
JR THORP Learwife. Reviewed by Ann Skea
JR Thorp gives breath to King Lear’s queen, and imagines another dimension to the world of Shakespeare’s play. I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone....
ROBYN FLEMMING Skinful. Reviewed by Mary Garden
Robyn Flemming’s memoir encompasses the adventure of being a global nomad within a story of addiction and healing. Over the past several decades, there have been countless books falling under the umbrella of ‘addiction memoir’, most of them focusing on alcohol...
GARRY DISHER Consolation. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Australia’s leading writer of rural crime fiction, Garry Disher, has been quietly crafting an excellent series set in the dry wheatbelt of South Australia. This latest instalment won the 2021 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction. There are three books now in the...
HANNAH KING She and I. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Hannah King’s debut novel is an unsettling murder mystery with a longstanding female friendship at its core. She and I is a detective story with a difference. It is set in Ireland but there are few indications of this, apart from a police officer’s query about...
JUSTIN DAVID The Pharmacist and NEIL BARTLETT Address Book. Reviewed by Ivan Crozier
Authors Justin David and Neil Bartlett reflect a range of experiences in these stories of gay life in London. For most of modern literature, the male homosexual is not a happy figure. He is burdened by the stigmata of degeneration; he is corrupting; he is criminal; he...
DOIREANN NÍ GHRÍOFA A Ghost in the Throat. Reviewed by Anna Verney
Contemporary Irish poet Doireann Ni Ghriofa explores the life and work of eighteen-century poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s prose debut A Ghost in the Throat is both intimate and scholarly, ranging across multiple literary forms. Clothed...
ELIF SHAFAK The Island of Missing Trees. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The twelfth novel from British-Turkish writer Elif Shafak evokes the history of Cyprus in a story of love and grief. Once upon a memory, at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea, there lay an island so beautiful and blue that many travellers, pilgrims, crusaders and...
MATTHEW NICHOLSON, BOB STEWART, GREG de MOORE and ROB HESS Australia’s Game: The History of Australian Football. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
As a single-volume history of the growth and development of Australian football, Australia’s Game has much to recommend it. When a book consists of 784 pages and 54 chapters, it’s a big book. But when it also contains 2517 endnotes and has a bibliography that includes...
LOUSE ERDRICH The Sentence. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The new novel from Pulitzer-winner Louise Erdrich is both a story for our times and a loving tribute to bookshops. Two years on and the pandemic is starting to colonise literature. Louise Erdrich’s latest book The Sentence feels like it started as one thing and was...
Recent Posts
FRANCESCA DE TORES Saltblood. Reviewed by Ann Skea24 April 2025Francesca de Tores’ novel is swashbuckling historical fiction, featuring [ … ]
FIONA HARDY Unbury the Dead. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm22 April 2025Melbourne author Fiona Hardy has broken very different ground with her crime [ … ]
CLEM BASTOW and JO CASE (eds) Someone Like Me: An anthology of non-fiction by Autistic writers. Reviewed by Kylie Mason17 April 2025This diverse anthology challenges stereotypes by bringing together Autistic [ … ]
RACHEL MORTON The Sun Was Electric Light. Reviewed by Ann Skea15 April 2025Set in Guatemala, Australian Rachel Morton’s debut novel of a young woman [ … ]