NRB, Author at Newtown Review of Books

ANNA DOWNES The Safe Place. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt

by NRB | 2 Jul 2020 | Crime Scene, Fiction | 0 comments

Anna Downes’s first novel is a thriller that poses uncomfortable questions about families. The Safe Place begins with a dreamlike escape. A young Londoner in a Ramones T-shirt and worn sneakers boards a private jet and arrives in France, where a chauffeur...

CURTIS SITTENFELD Rodham. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis

by NRB | 30 Jun 2020 | Fiction | 0 comments

This new novel from the author of Prep and American Wife imagines what might have happened if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton. Towards the end of Curtis Sittenfeld’s fictionalised treatment of the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, she has the 2016...

KATHRYN HIND Hitch: extract

by NRB | 26 Jun 2020 | Extracts, Fiction | 0 comments

This week’s extract is from two-time prize-winner Hitch, the debut novel from Australian author Kathryn Hind. Hitch was the inaugural winner of the Penguin Literary Prize (you can read more about the prize and the 2020 winner, Sophie Overett, here) and published...

TED CHIANG Exhalation. Reviewed by Chris Maher

by NRB | 25 Jun 2020 | Fiction, SFF | 0 comments

These new stories from award-winning author Ted Chiang challenge what we think about artificial intelligence, free will and other big questions. Ted Chiang made quite an impact in 2002 with his debut collection, Stories of Your Life and Others. The title story won a...

ANNETTE MARNER A New Name for the Colour Blue: extract

by NRB | 19 Jun 2020 | Extracts, Fiction | 0 comments

This week we’re delighted to bring you an extract from Annette Marner’s beautiful and powerful debut novel A New Name for the Colour Blue, winner of the Adelaide Festival Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and now published by Wakefield Press. Annette Marner writes...

JAMES BRADLEY Ghost Species. Reviewed by James McKenzie Watson

by NRB | 18 Jun 2020 | Fiction | 0 comments

Ghost Species, James Bradley’s terrifyingly relevant seventh novel, is On the Beach for a globally warmed generation. Its proposed roadmap of where humankind’s false belief we’re in control will lead us is bleak but beautiful, its climate mayday embedded within a...

KATE LEAVER Good Dog. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt

by NRB | 16 Jun 2020 | Non-fiction | 3 comments

In Good Dog Kate Leaver writes in praise of having dogs in our lives, whether for their health benefits or their loyalty and companionship. When 65-year-old Andy Szasz ended up in hospital with pneumonia and influenza, the doctors put him in a medically induced coma...

CARMEL BIRD Field of Poppies: extract

by NRB | 12 Jun 2020 | Extracts, Fiction | 1 comment

We’re thrilled to continue this series of extracts from recent Australian books with an extract from award-winning author Carmel Bird’s latest novel Field of Poppies. What lies beneath the poppy field? There are rich and varied layers to Field of Poppies, which ranges...

GREGORY DAY A Sand Archive. Reviewed by Paul Anderson

by NRB | 11 Jun 2020 | Fiction | 1 comment

The author of Archipelago of Souls explores a life spent with the sand dunes of the Great Ocean Road in A Sand Archive. Gregory Day’s fifth novel is a confluence of nature and culture set in France and Australia, on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. Day is a writer, poet...

ANDREW RM SMITH No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the business of boxing. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck

by NRB | 9 Jun 2020 | Non-fiction | 0 comments

Andrew RM Smith tells the story of George Foreman’s career in and out of the ring and reveals the workings of the business of boxing. George Foreman is a two-time heavyweight boxing champion. The first occasion was in 1973 when he knocked out Joe...

ASHLEY KALAGIAN BLUNT How to be Australian: extract

by NRB | 5 Jun 2020 | Extracts, Non-fiction | 0 comments

This week we bring you an extract from Ashley Kalagian Blunt’s memoir How to be Australian: An outsider’s view of life and love Down Under. In 2011 Ashley convinced her husband Steve to leave their native Canada – specifically, the city of Winnipeg,...

TANYA HEASLIP An Alice Girl. Reviewed by Ann Skea

by NRB | 4 Jun 2020 | Non-fiction | 0 comments

Tanya Heaslip is ‘An Alice Girl’ and she reveals what life was like growing up on a remote property north of Alice Springs. This new memoir from the author of Alice to Prague (reviewed here) starts dramatically. The author, her youngest brother,...