ROBERT WAINWRIGHT Miss Muriel Matters: The Australian actress who became one of London’s most famous suffragists. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
Robert Wainwright’s life of Muriel Matters follows her from success on the Australian stage to becoming a leading suffragist in the UK campaign for votes for women. On 22 August 1905, a few hours after her last successful performance in Adelaide, Miss Muriel...
BARBARA SANTICH Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries: Two years in France. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
A charming gastronomic memoir of two years in France from Barbara Santich, Wild Asparagus also creates a multi-dimensional portrait of a country on the cusp of political and social change. On New Year’s Day, 1977, Barbara Santich and her husband John jetted from...
BARRY STONE The Squatters: The story of Australia’s pastoral pioneers. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The stories here of the European settlers’ progress from trespassers to squatters to established pastoralists are absorbing, fascinating and well-told. The Squatters tells the stories of the newcomers who, from the time of the First Fleet’s arrival in Australia,...
HEATHER MCNEICE Yak on Track: An unforgettable adventure in the last Himalayan kingdom. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Yak on Track shares McNeice’s 16-day trekking adventure in Bhutan, while offering a traveller’s insights into the country’s history and culture Nestled in the Himalayas between India and China, the Kingdom of Bhutan is a nation of forested mountain peaks...
IAIN MCINTYRE (Ed.) On the Fly! Hobo literature & songs 1879-1941. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
In his introduction to this fascinating collection of writing from the American hobo era Iain McIntyre tells us how that way of life, which began due to economic necessity, became so much more. The material gathered in On the Fly! reflects the politics of the early...
JANE LYDON and LYNDALL RYAN (Eds) Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre. Reviewed by Alexander Wells
The scholarly essays and personal reflections collected in Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre probe the broader meanings of one episode of shocking violence while also demonstrating the restorative power of historical truth-telling. In 1838, a group of armed...
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...
SYLVIA PLATH The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II: 1956-1963, edited by Peter Steinberg and Karen V Kukil. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The iconic poet continues to fascinate and Sylvia Plath’s letters shed light on her astonishing work ethic, her marriage to Ted Hughes, and the final years of her life. This second volume of Sylvia Plath’s letters takes up her correspondence from where Volume I...
ROXANE GAY (Editor) Not That Bad: Dispatches from rape culture. Reviewed by Justine Ettler
Feminist Roxane Gay brings together dispatches from the front lines of rape culture. This anthology of personal essays asks one of the harder questions about rape: ‘What is it like to live in a culture where it often seems it is a question of when, not if, a...
LEIGH SALES Any Ordinary Day: Blindsides, resilience and what happens after the worst day of your life. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis
The striking feature of this book is how much of herself Sales reveals as she takes a close look at a number of people blindsided by the ‘poison darts of fate’. A kind-looking grey-haired man sitting across from me downstairs at the National Library of Australia...
TIM PARKS Out of My Head: On the trail of consciousness. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Parks ushers us into the difficult world of science, where he gives a masterclass in the detailed analysis of scientific papers. Tim Parks is a prolific writer of novels and nonfiction, and a translator who lives in Italy and lectures at the University of Milan. A few...
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