by NRB | 26 Jun 2018 | Non-fiction |
For decades, Mackay has warned in mild tones about the social costs of our retreat into consumerism: now he is calling us out more stridently. It’s been a while since I reviewed one of Hugh Mackay’s books, and when I heard him being interviewed on Radio National about...
by NRB | 22 Jun 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve written before about conversations with taxi drivers, and I happened to meet a couple of interesting ones recently. On my way home in a taxi after one of my multifarious medical appointments, I began chatting about nothing in particular as is my wont. The driver...
by NRB | 21 Jun 2018 | Fiction |
Ackland crafts perfect scenes in Little Gods – a novel about the things that fade away: childhood, memories and ghosts. Olive Lovelock is 12 years old and fearless. She tells people that the old binoculars she wears around her neck all the time are...
by NRB | 19 Jun 2018 | Non-fiction |
The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, the new biography of Australia’s second, fifth and seventh Prime Minister, is a magnificent sweep of a book that demanded to be written. Deakin has been the subject of previous biographies and author Judith Brett quickly establishes her points...
by NRB | 15 Jun 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Entering its fifth year of operation, the Mount Pleasant Revitalisation Centre is set on a five-hectare site ten kilometres from the town of that name among rolling hills, vineyards, secondary-growth forest and grassland in the southern highlands of NSW. The centre...
by NRB | 14 Jun 2018 | Fiction |
Eleanor Limprecht’s new novel explores themes of love, resilience, and courage – the courage to make critical life changes and to endure the loss of what must be left behind. In The Passengers, Limprecht cleverly mixes fictitious elements with real events and the...
by NRB | 12 Jun 2018 | SFF |
Revenant Gun delivers a deeply humanistic tale that furthers the concerns of the previous two volumes without being repetitive. Yoon Ha Lee wraps up his stunning Machineries of Empire trilogy with all of the style of the first two volumes. Both the...
by NRB | 8 Jun 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
What diabetics most fear are hypoglycaemic reactions or ‘hypos’ as we call them. This condition results when the blood sugar, through a lack of carbohydrate or an excess of exercise or insulin, causes the blood sugar to drop drastically below normal levels. The result...
by NRB | 7 Jun 2018 | Non-fiction |
In Tracker (winner of the 2018 Stella Prize), hundreds of stories are told to build up the portrait of an immensely complex and gifted man. This is a big book about a big personality but it’s not a traditional biography. Most of it consists of transcribed...
by NRB | 5 Jun 2018 | Fiction |
Storyland carries us into new imaginative places – past, present and future. ‘To dare is to do!’ The 15-year-old cabin boy repeats this mantra when terror, like a giant black wave, threatens to overwhelm him. The boy is William Martin, and he’s aboard a tiny...
by NRB | 1 Jun 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve been listening to memoirs by people who attended what Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister referred to as ‘both universities’ – that is, Oxford and Cambridge. Geoffrey Robertson, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens have all made their marks and, in different degrees,...
by NRB | 31 May 2018 | Fiction |
The Tattooist of Auschwitz gives a harrowing insight into how a person might survive and how love persists in the darkest of places. Beyond the yard, disappearing into the darkness, is a further compound. The tops of the fences are lined with razor wire. Up in...
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