by NRB | 16 Mar 2017 | Non-fiction |
Baum’s memoir is replete with examples of emotional deftness of the highest order. I have very much enjoyed Caroline Baum’s published essays, and it is a delight to see two of them appearing as familiar landmarks in this big map of a memoir. One, entitled...
by NRB | 14 Mar 2017 | Fiction |
Mothering Sunday gives us a moving exploration of a particular day, and opens up a rich look at the nature of writing. Graham Swift’s wonderful novella concerns one particular Mothering Sunday, that of 30 March 1924. Mothering Sunday was a sort of feudal ritual that...
by NRB | 10 Mar 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
In the television program Life on Mars a character from the present has gone back to the past and at a moment of plot crisis shouts in frustration, ‘I need my mobile!’ ‘Your mobile what?’ someone responds. This illustrates the effect time and technology can have on...
by NRB | 9 Mar 2017 | Fiction |
These short stories from Sue Woolfe offer alienation, yearning and brilliance. The final story in this collection of eight pieces is an extract from the personal papers of an unnamed fiction writer, with footnotes by Professor Amelia Broughton, who has prepared an...
by NRB | 8 Mar 2017 | Giveaways |
We have one copy of Scoundrel Days to give away. To go in the draw, simply email us at editors@newtownreviewofbooks.com.au with SCOUNDREL in the subject line and your name and address in the body of the email by 6pm March 9, 2017. As we are unable to post giveaways...
by NRB | 7 Mar 2017 | SFF |
World building is the real star of Lotus Blue, the debut science fiction novel for Australian author Cat Sparks. Very quickly in this novel Sparks creates a vision of a future Australia – an already ancient land – that’s further weighed down by centuries of...
by NRB | 3 Mar 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
At the start of every week I run my eye along the offerings of Foxtel’s History Channel hoping to see a program that will interest me. Mostly, but not always, I find something. Back when I first got pay TV (we were living in the country then, when it was called...
by NRB | 2 Mar 2017 | Non-fiction |
Scoundrel Days takes the reader into each unfolding moment of Frazer’s getting of wisdom. Brentley Frazer has changed names in this memoir to protect the privacy of particular individuals, but every word of it rings true. Children who grew up in far north...
by NRB | 1 Mar 2017 | Giveaways |
We have a copy of Jane Rawson’s new novel From the Wreck to give away. To go in the draw, simply email us at editors@newtownreviewofbooks.com.au with WRECK in the subject line and your name and address in the body of the email by 6pm Thursday March 2 2017. We...
by NRB | 28 Feb 2017 | Fiction |
Jane Rawson’s new novel has its feet planted in the earth as well as in the ocean and the stars. Rawson says that she began this book as an attempt to record and make sense of historical facts from her family’s past. She knew that her...
by NRB | 24 Feb 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
In 1986, when Jean was working as a commissioning editor for Transworld Publishing, she recommended a book to me. It was an historical novel by Robert Goddard, published that year. The title was Past Caring and the publishers, who had some of their bigwigs in...
by NRB | 23 Feb 2017 | Fiction |
De Botton’s novel about relationships and keeping love alive comes with an inbuilt commentary from the author. The Course of Love has been touted as the long-awaited sequel to Alain de Botton’s debut novel Essays in Love, which was first published in 1993. In...
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