SUMNER LOCKE ELLIOTT Water Under the Bridge. Reviewed by Tony Bremner
Sumner Locke Elliott’s portrait of Kings Cross and Sydney’s class divides is a classic worth revisiting. My mother was a wonderful snob. ‘You know Macleay Street, of course,’ I overheard her say once, giving directions to our Potts Point apartment. (I love...DUNCAN LAY The Bridge of Swords; JENNIFER FALLON The Dark Divide. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Celtic and Japanese cultures give visual and emotional charge to two recent fantasy novels. There is much richness and complexity on offer in fantasy writing, as well as extraordinarily varied and layered resources available to the writer. Two recently published...Crime Scene Shorts: Jean Bedford reviews six recent women’s crime novels
Åsa Larsson The Black Path, Kathy Reichs Bones Are Forever, Karin Slaughter Criminal, Camilla Lackberg The Drowning, Tess Gerritson Last To Die, Anne Holt The Blind Goddess. Åsa Larsson’s The Black Path is the fourth in the Rebecka Martinsson series to be...MARIO VARGAS LLOSA The Dream of the Celt. Reviewed by Peter Corris
The strange case of Roger Casement. The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door. W B Yeats This a difficult book to review, but not because it’s boring or poorly written – I read it comparatively quickly with great interest – but because it is more like a...TERRY PRATCHETT and STEPHEN BAXTER The Long Earth. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
The master of Discworld enters a new dimension. People who buy a new Terry Pratchett usually do so in the hope of finding themselves in the comfortable, funny and wise purlieus of Discworld; full of well-known characters with personalities hovering on the edge of...SUSAN JOHNSON My Hundred Lovers. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Susan Johnson’s new novel is both a woman’s search for love and a meditation on the senses. As Samuel Beckett reminds us, we are all born ‘astride of a grave’, so there is no reason why turning fifty per se should signal impending decrepitude. Western culture...STEVE LEWIS and CHRIS UHLMANN The Marmalade Files. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
This slickly sliced satire offers an insider’s view of federal politics. In a political world that contains all the strange twists of, say, the James Ashby/Peter Slipper case, or the Malcolm Turnbull/Godwin Grech imbroglio, how could fiction possibly top reality?...FRANCESCA RENDLE-SHORT Bite Your Tongue. Reviewed by Annette Hughes
This fictonalised memoir is a book of revelations. Two little girls, sisters, dare each other to touch tongues. I’ve done it, but always thought we were the only ones! The description of the act recalls vividly the singular weirdness of the Tongue Touch – the...RACHEL WILLIAMS and PETER WARRINGTON The Stripey Street Cat. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Cats, Newtown, street art … this charming book has everything. It was my seven-year-old grandson who first spied The Stripey Street Cat with his beady eye and insisted we buy it, but it’s also a novelty book for adult eyes. Cat-lovers, Newtown-lovers and...Crime Scene: ARNALDUR INDRIDASON Black Skies; QUENTIN BATES Cold Comfort. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Iceland’s economic crash gives texture to two crime novels. Arnaldur Indridason is a well-known and best-selling Icelandic author, many of whose novels have been translated into English. His books are police-procedurals, usually featuring detective Erlendur Sveinsson...JANETTE TURNER HOSPITAL Forecast: Turbulence. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
These stories of family trauma find their echoes in the elements. In ‘Moon River’, the chapter of memoir that comes at the end of this collection of short stories, there is an image of the Brisbane River swollen and raucous in flood. It occurs six months after...
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