DONNA WARD She I Dare Not Name: A spinster’s meditations on life. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis
Donna Ward’s memoir explores spinsterhood, solitude, and shattering stereotypes. Publisher and poet Donna Ward describes this, her first book, as a meander through her life. In describing it this way she is thinking poor, as she admits to doing when she was...
KIM KELLY Walking. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Kim Kelly’s newest novel is a story of love, ambition and prejudice in the medical world. When Kim Kelly stumbled across the true story of how a brilliant German–Australian orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Max Herz, had been interned as an enemy alien during World War I,...
Autumn Giveaway #2
Welcome to our second big Autumn Giveaway. To go in the draw to win all four books, simply email editors@newtownreviewofbooks.com.au with ‘Autumn 2′ in the subject line and your name and address in the body of the email by midnight tonight, Monday 16 March...
ARAVIND ADIGA Amnesty. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Booker Prize-winning author Aravind Adiga takes on the issue of refugees and asylum seekers in his latest novel Amnesty. Set in Sydney, on a day sometime in the recent past, Amnesty concentrates on Dhananjaya Rajaratnam, aka Danny the Cleaner, as he grapples with his...
CHLOE HIGGINS The Girls. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
How do we talk about grief? Chloe Higgins’s memoir reveals her response to the loss of her sisters, and the impact of that loss on her parents. On 31 July 2005, Chloe Higgins’s father, Maurice, was driving home from a weekend ski trip with his two youngest...
Autumn Giveaway #1
Yes, autumn is with us, so let’s celebrate the season with these four fab books. To go in the draw to win all four, simply email editors@newtownreviewofbooks.com.au with ‘Autumn 1′ in the subject line and your name and address in the body of the email by...
SOPHIE HARDCASTLE Below Deck. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Sophie Hardcastle’s second novel explores the lure of the sea, and the cost of violence. It starts below deck. Olivia (Oli) has been kidnapped. Well, not actually kidnapped but rescued late at night, in a drunken stupor, by Mac, an old man who now needs to...
JULIAN LEATHERDALE Death in the Ladies’ Goddess Club. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
The author of Palace of Tears and The Opal Dragonfly returns with a new historical novel that encompasses murder and an exotic all-female club in 1930s Kings Cross. Julian Leatherdale’s third historical novel is a lavish escapade through Sydney’s Kings Cross...
EVIE WYLD The Bass Rock. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Evie Wyld won the Miles Franklin Award for her last novel, All the Birds, Singing. Her latest, set on the coast of Scotland, contains both beauty and violence. The Bass Rock opens with a small girl, who we will shortly meet as the grown-up Viv, finding the body of a...
JULIET MARILLIER The Harp of Kings. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
The author of the Sevenwaters series returns to the magic of ancient Ireland and the mysterious Otherworld in her latest novel. The Harp of Kings is the first in the new Warrior Bards series from Juliet Marillier. It is loosely connected to her Blackthorn and...
ANDREW HUNTER MURRAY The Last Day. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The world has literally stopped turning in Andrew Hunter Murray’s dystopian thriller. Andrew Hunter Murray’s debut novel The Last Day is one of an interesting new strain of post-apocalyptic dystopian thrillers. Unlike standard cli-fi apocalypses that project...
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