KATHERINE COLLETTE The Helpline. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Katherine Collette’s Germaine may not be ‘good with people’ but The Helpline charms and delights. The plot of The Helpline sounds a bit dull: late-thirties mathematician Germaine Johnson is made redundant from her role at an insurance company and,...
KIM KELLY Sunshine. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Kim Kelly’s Sunshine, set in the aftermath of the First World War, offers hope amid loss and despair. The lives of three men and a woman, returned after World War I, intersect in a new offering from Kim Kelly – an historical novella set in the fictional hamlet...
ROSALIE HAM The Year of the Farmer. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
The author of The Dressmaker returns with The Year of the Farmer – a novel of romance and skullduggery in a small farming community. Part mystery, part romance, part social comedy and part slapstick, The Year of the Farmer brings together an engaging cast...
VIET THANH NGUYEN The Sympathizer. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel The Sympathizer shows the Vietnam war from a Vietnamese perspective, critiquing Hollywood’s renderings of the conflict in the process. When Ed Burns and Lynn Novick’s 17-hour documentary The Vietnam War...
MOLLY MURN Heart of the Grass Tree. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Kangaroo Island is an enduring presence spanning multiple generations in Heart of the Grass Tree. Not too tight, not too loose. You have to keep adding in the rushes – not all at once, she said – like adding to a family. Keep it growing. When you finish you can’t see...
KRISTINA OLSSON Shell. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
The struggle over the building of the Opera House is part of Australia’s ongoing quest for a national identity and the country’s truncated sense of itself at this time resonates through Shell. Shell is set in Australia in the months before the sacking...
HEATHER ROSE The Museum of Modern Love. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
This Stella Prize-winning novel from Heather Rose is a masterpiece of introspection. Passages linger in the mind; her evocative prose demands that we stop and ask What would I do? Rose has wrapped this novel around the life and work of the performance artist Marina...
Must-reads of 2018
From fiction to crime to history, essays, memoir and literary letters, the NRB editors choose ten of the reviews we published in 2018 of books we think deserve to go on your TBR pile. Jean’s picks: Ali Smith Winter The first of Ali Smith’s...
ASHLEY KALAGIAN BLUNT My Name is Revenge. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
A real act of terrorism in Sydney in the 1980s inspired Ashley Kalagian Blunt to write My Name is Revenge (a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award*). This work is in two parts – a novella, and an essay reflecting on the motivations and...
JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST I Always Find You. Reviewed by Dasha Maiorova
The bestselling author of Let the Right One In, Lindqvist clouds the division between horror and memoir in this new novel. Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist is known for transforming staples of horror into new and compelling configurations, tapping into fears...
MADELINE MILLER Circe. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
In Circe, Orange Prize-winner Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles, weaves more ancient Greek myths into a new, gritty and spellbinding tale. Circe, lowly daughter of the sun god Helios, first uses witchcraft in pursuit of her doomed love for a mortal. For...
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