ANDREA GOLDSMITH Invented Lives. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
This new novel from the author of the award-winning The Memory Trap explores what happens when an imagined life meets reality. The preface of Andrea Goldsmith’s Invented Lives cites Romanian author Norman Manea’s The Fifth Impossibility. ‘We are all exiles,’ writes...
Marvellous Monday Giveaway
Start your week with a chance to win the latest titles by two much-loved Australian authors, Graeme Simsion and Peggy Frew, as part of our our new series of Monday giveaways. To go in the draw to win both books, simply email...
ROY HAY Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century: They did not come from nowhere. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
The high visibility of Aboriginal players in the Australian Football League is well recognised and their skills admired. But as Roy Hay argues in the pithy subtitle of his penetrating new history, they did not come from nowhere. At the outset I should disclose that...
NIGEL FEATHERSTONE Bodies of Men. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
Nigel Featherstone’s new novel explores what it means to be a man. This latest work of fiction from Australian writer Nigel Featherstone is in many ways a timeless novel of love between men in wartime. But while its elegant structure turns on revelations of...
Marvellous Monday Giveaway
Let NRB bring a little cheer to the start of your week with our new series of Marvellous Monday giveaways. This week you have a chance to win books by two award-winning authors, Michelle de Kretser and Marlon James. To go in the draw to win both books, simply email...
JACLYN MORIARTY Gravity is the Thing. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Where is the truth? Jaclyn Moriarty’s second novel for adults pairs a single mother and a mysterious guidebook to deliver a story that reflects the lived experience of the 21st century. ‘Oh!’ he said suddenly. ‘Oh, you’re thinking it’s a metaphor! No! No!’ His...
PHILIP CHUBB Power Failure: The inside story of climate politics under Rudd and Gillard. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
How did the politics of climate change become so intractable? Power Failure gives an account of the Rudd–Gillard years – a pertinent reminder as Australia goes to the polls in 2019. Again, something is in the air. It is the acrid tang of a looming election. With it...
JULIE KEYS The Artist’s Portrait. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Shortlisted for the the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers in 2017, this debut novel from Julie Keys explores the life of a woman artist in Sydney in the 1920s. The first couple of times I passed her house there was no one around. Not that I saw anyone much at that...
AS PATRIC The Butcherbird Stories. Reviewed by James McKenzie Watson
AS Patrić won the Miles Franklin Award for his novel Black Rock White City. In this new collection he demonstrates his mastery of the short story. Patrić’s fourth short-story collection, The Butcherbird Stories, reads with a misty and dreamlike intensity, exploring...
TC BOYLE Outside Looking In. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
1960s LSD guru Timothy Leary famously said ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’; in this new novel TC Boyle explores what that meant for those who followed him. TC Boyle is one of the great chroniclers of America and Americans through fiction. While many of his...
NGAIO MARSH and STELLA DUFFY Money in the Morgue: The new Inspector Alleyn mystery. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
It’s 84 years since Dame Ngaio Marsh published the first Roderick Alleyn novel. Now he’s back, in a crime novel outlined by Marsh during the Second World War and completed by Stella Duffy in 2018. Dame Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre...
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