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...
JAN MORRIS In My Mind’s Eye: A thought diary. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Reading this memoir by Jan Morris is like having light, charming, gossipy meetings with an old friend. In My Mind’s Eye is a thought diary which, ‘having nothing better to write’, Morris thought she would ‘have a go at’. For 188 days, Jan (as she signs herself) shares...
LESLIE JAMISON The Recovering: Intoxication and its aftermath. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis
Leslie Jamison illuminates her own downhill slide into alcoholism and eventual uphill lurch into continuous sobriety by a scholarly investigation of the lives and works of numerous alcoholic literary luminaries. It isn’t often that a member of Alcoholics Anonymous,...
HENRY REYNOLDS This Whispering in Our Hearts Revisited. Reviewed by Kathy Gollan
In this book Henry Reynolds shows that today’s white activists for justice for Indigenous people are inheritors of a long tradition. Reynolds’s first book about Aboriginal and white relations, The Other Side of the Frontier, was published in 1981. For many people it...
LOUISA DEASEY A Letter from Paris. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
In this search for her father, Louisa Deasey affirms the value of love, generosity, and – crucially – encourages thinking about what a successful life really is. Louisa Deasey’s father, Denison Deasey, died when she was a child. With only one photograph of them...
GEORGE MEGALOGENIS The Football Solution: How Richmond’s premiership can save Australia. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
The Football Solution is a history of the Richmond Football Club with a powerful political dimension. A week might be a long time in politics as Harold Wilson once said, but a fortnight is too short a time between Newspolls measuring voting intentions. The latter...
GAIL BELL Being Shot: A place between worlds. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
The victim of a random unsolved shooting, in this memoir Gail Bell offers a sober contemplation of the ramifications of gun violence. As 17-year-old Gail Bell walked home from the train station at Toongabbie, New South Wales, on a dark night in April 1968, a vehicle...
ROBERT MANNE On Borrowed Time. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
From asylum seekers to politics, climate change and the personal challenges of dealing with cancer, Robert Manne’s essays are a rich canvas and urge us to interrogate prejudice and injustice wherever they threaten to take root. When Robert Manne, Emeritus...
EMILY MIDORIKAWA and EMMA CLAIRE SWEENEY A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Bronte, Eliot and Woolf. Reviewed by Justine Ettler
From Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell to Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, Midorikawa and Sweeney celebrate the friendships between women writers. I’ve heard people say that what ensures a writer’s continued productivity are things like having a...
LOUIS NOWRA Woolloomooloo: A biography. Reviewed By Tom Patterson
Nowra’s affection for his suburb is all through this book – offering Woolloomooloo as both a place of refuge and an ideal to aspire to. In the mid-19th century, a new type of dandy appeared in Paris. They were rich enough to be idle and could be found...
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