NRB readers’ favourite reviews of 2022
Which of our reviews this year did you enjoy the most? We’ve run the numbers to discover our top ten reviews of 2022 based on reader views. Are any of your favourites among them? Or perhaps on your TBR pile? (A TBR pile is a wonderful thing – there’s always something to look forward to.)
This is our final post for 2022. We’ll be back with more reviews in January. In the meantime, a huge thank you to all our readers, and to our wonderful contributors – we wouldn’t be here without you. A very happy and book-filled holiday season to you all.
Douglas Stuart Young Mungo
Reviewed by Michael Jongen
This is a grim but compelling coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy, set over a year in Glasgow.
Jane Caro The Mother
Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Though I knew the gist of the issues raised by The Mother before I began – I’d read the devastating stories of victims of domestic violence, watched the news, and thought I understood the issues – this novel still shocks.
Elif Shafak The Island of Missing Trees
Reviewed by Ann Skea
The island is Cyprus, and in The Island of Missing Trees Elif Shafak tells a story that brings its rich and troubled history vividly to life.
Gillian McAllister Wrong Place Wrong Time
Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Time loops are everywhere these days … Wrong Place Wrong Time asks the questions: How far into the past would you need to go to find the root of a present day crime? And what would one have to fix to prevent it?
Diana Reid Love and Virtue
Reviewed by Emma Foster
University campus culture was fresh for Diana Reid when she began writing Love & Virtue … which she describes as an ‘Australian campus novel’.
Audrey Magee The Colony
Reviewed by Ann Skea
Mr Lloyd is an artist who describes himself as ‘half married’ to his artist, art-dealer, wife. She now prefers another man … Lloyd, seeking authenticity, embarks on a terrifying sea-voyage, choosing to be rowed to a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland in a leaky currach.
Isabel Allende Violeta
Reviewed by Ann Skea
Violeta del Valle is now a hundred years old and she is writing her life story for her beloved grandson, Camilo, because, ‘when you are old and less busy you might want to remember me’. In a covering letter, she tells him that her life is ‘worthy of a novel, because of my sins more than my virtues’ …
Amor Towles The Lincoln Highway
Reviewed by CJ Pardey
His novels are page-turners, but it is their moral backbone, personified in his male protagonists – in The Lincoln Highway, Emmett Watson; in his first novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, Count Alexander Rostov – that ensures we are left with not just an entertaining read …
Trent Dalton Love Stories
Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
How this book came together is as intrinsic to its existence as the 150 love stories it contains.
Edwina Preston Bad Art Mother
Reviewed by Annette Hughes
The protagonist of Bad Art Mother, Veda Gray, finds herself unable to reconcile her duty to motherhood with her duty to her inner life of the mind. Much is bound up in the title. Does being an artist make her bad mother? Can a mother only make bad art?
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