by NRB | 30 Oct 2012 | Non-fiction |
In this memoir, Lucy Neville finds love in a city of kidnappers. Mexico City has a population of almost nine million people and boasts the second highest rate of kidnappings in the world. On the other hand, Blackheath, a sleepy town in the Blue Mountains of New South...
by NRB | 24 Oct 2012 | Non-fiction |
The champion who won our hearts – and every race she entered. Black Caviar. Even the name is special, isn’t it? It rolls around your tongue, like caviar itself – rich, exotic, luxurious. It reminds me of a vodka and caviar bar that was once all the rage in London,...
by NRB | 17 Oct 2012 | Non-fiction |
The Tudors are endlessly fascinating. This new history examines the effects of one small family on a nation’s identity. Tudors, Volume II in Peter Ackroyd’s planned six-part history of England, has a different tone from that of Volume I, Foundation. In both...
by NRB | 11 Oct 2012 | Non-fiction |
He’s anti-abortion and his career owes a debt to Alan Jones. Does Tony Abbott have a problem with women? There’s an unsettling recent tradition of the political subjects of Quarterly Essays meeting with ill fortune. Think of Annabel Crabb’s profile of then-Opposition...
by NRB | 2 Oct 2012 | Non-fiction |
This warm-hearted memoir of an Aussie girl learning flamenco in Spain may inspire you to run away with the gypsies … or at least a handsome Basque chef. How many times has that little voice sounded in your head, suggesting that you ‘just do it’? Nellie Bennett...
by Jean Bedford | 15 Aug 2012 | Non-fiction |
The search for Newtown’s Miss Havisham. There are several urban myths about Newtown’s famous reclusive spinster, Elizabeth (Eliza) Emily Donnithorne. The most persistent, and attractive, is that she was one of the models for Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. (It’s...
by NRB | 6 Aug 2012 | Non-fiction |
Alcoholism, neurosis, venereal disease … this fascinating compendium of writers’ lives contains plenty of cautionary tales. John Sutherland, an academic himself, seems to have set out to annoy his colleagues. Not for him an analysis of the text with the...
by NRB | 25 Jul 2012 | Fiction, Non-fiction |
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...
by NRB | 4 Jul 2012 | Non-fiction |
The art and times of Rosemary Laing. I’m looking at a 100-year-old black and white photograph of a man riding a bicycle. It is on the cover of a biography of Alfred Jarry, author of Ubu Roi and one of the bright young literary lights of the turn-of-the-century...
by NRB | 27 Jun 2012 | Non-fiction |
A history of the world’s most fascinating drug. Did you know that only the white poppy yields opium? Did you know that harvesting opium requires great skill but that to produce heroin from morphine requires only basic chemical knowledge and simple equipment? Did...
by NRB | 6 Jun 2012 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
Two recent books focus on Arthur Upfield’s half-Indigenous detective Napoleon Bonaparte. Arthur William Upfield (1 September 1890 – 13 February 1964) was an Australian writer best known for his 29 works of crime fiction featuring half-Aboriginal Detective Inspector...
by NRB | 4 May 2012 | Non-fiction |
From how to make pastry to the ethics of eating, Charlotte Wood inspires with her passion for food. The best food writers are those who delight in the preparation of good food and in sharing it with loved ones, and novelist Charlotte Wood is one such writer. In...
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