by NRB | 3 Aug 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I remember a conversation on ABC radio between Philip Adams and Gore Vidal, both avowed atheists, in which Adams said that whereas America had initially been settled by Puritans, Australia’s first white settlers were criminals. In his honeyed tones Vidal said, ‘You...
by NRB | 2 Aug 2018 | Non-fiction |
In exploring the death – and life – of Mollie Dean, Gideon Haigh covers a lot of fascinating ground. A young woman walks home after a Melbourne theatre performance, making a phone call to a friend along the way. Then, metres from her front door, she is...
by NRB | 31 Jul 2018 | Crime Scene |
This year’s shortlists for the Australian Crime Writers Association Ned Kelly Awards celebrate the novels of well-established crime writers and talented newcomers. In July the ACWA released their longlists of entries, decided by individual panels of judges...
by NRB | 27 Jul 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
There is talk of the AFL making changes to the rules of Australian football to make it a more interesting and watchable game. Something such is sorely needed. Attendances are down and many people, including players, confess to turning off the television coverage. In...
by NRB | 26 Jul 2018 | Non-fiction |
The Coal Truth brings into sharp focus why the proposal to mine coal in the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland is so critical to our common future. The unassuming word Adani has come to represent an immense conflict over how Australia’s, and the world’s, future...
by NRB | 24 Jul 2018 | Non-fiction |
Sport can be examined from many angles. The first of these books takes a single sport and the second a single life as its subject. I might be the worst person to review Footballistics since I decry the over-quantification of the game. If I’m allowed to wear...
by NRB | 20 Jul 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Evan Whitton, who died this week aged 90, was editor of the National Times when I worked at the paper in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The winner of five Walkley Awards for investigative journalism and the Graham Perkins Journalist of the Year Award for his coverage...
by NRB | 17 Jul 2018 | Non-fiction |
Clearly written and ambitious, David Christian’s Origin Story manages to weave a comprehensive narrative about the evolution of the universe and the human species. Origin Story begins with a manifesto: a defence of Christian’s field. Big History, he explains, is the...
by NRB | 13 Jul 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I was exposed to poetry in primary school – Walter de la Mare, perhaps, and ‘My Country’ by Dorothea Mackellar almost certainly. The greatest impact was from the Australian bush ballads by Lawson, Paterson, Gordon, et al. A fourth-grade teacher, Mr Harry, was an...
by NRB | 12 Jul 2018 | Non-fiction |
Honesty and self-actualisation are at the core of this debut collection of essays by Durga Chew-Bose. The 14 pieces in Too Much and Not the Mood, varying in length and form, draw inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary, as does the book’s title. The...
by NRB | 10 Jul 2018 | Crime Scene |
Two authors returning to crime writing after more than a decade are among an eclectic longlist for New Zealand’s 2018 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel. After considering a total of 69 entries in the New Zealand crime fiction awards (the Ngaio Marsh Awards) across two...
by NRB | 6 Jul 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve just finished Sebastian Faulks’s take on PG Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013). Taking up this kind of challenge … or perhaps accepting this kind of commission from a dead writer’s estate, more accurately, has become something of an industry among...
JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm6 December 2024June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone [ … ]
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
IAIN RYAN The Dream. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith3 December 2024Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]