by NRB | 18 Jun 2024 | Fiction |
Bel Schenk’s deceptively simple novel of a teenage boy’s response to a small-town scandal has a lot to say about gender relations. The Most Famous Boy in Town is the first novel from Bel Schenk, a Melbourne-based poet with three published poetry collections. It has a...
by NRB | 7 Dec 2023 | Non-fiction |
In Stories for Harry & Ray, Michael Sexton brings together 43 of his essays on sport. The result is a small gem. Fellow Adelaide sportswriter Michael Sexton has a number of impressive books to his name – 1964: A Season, A Game, A State; Chappell’s Last Stand;...
by NRB | 15 Sep 2022 | Non-fiction |
Footy star Eddie Betts recounts the highs and lows of his career and what it means to be a Blackfulla. There is a genre of sports writing known as the ‘Glory Book’, where a former player waxes lyrical about wonderful moments he experienced on the playing field, either...
by NRB | 1 Feb 2022 | Non-fiction |
As a single-volume history of the growth and development of Australian football, Australia’s Game has much to recommend it. When a book consists of 784 pages and 54 chapters, it’s a big book. But when it also contains 2517 endnotes and has a bibliography that includes...
by NRB | 6 Jul 2021 | Non-fiction |
Michael Warner doesn’t hold back in this examination of the scandals that have beset the AFL over the past two decades. In professional sport teams compete not only with each other on the field, but also off the field for fans, sponsors and players. Despite this...
by NRB | 27 Jul 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
There is talk of the AFL making changes to the rules of Australian football to make it a more interesting and watchable game. Something such is sorely needed. Attendances are down and many people, including players, confess to turning off the television coverage. In...
by NRB | 24 Jul 2018 | Non-fiction |
Sport can be examined from many angles. The first of these books takes a single sport and the second a single life as its subject. I might be the worst person to review Footballistics since I decry the over-quantification of the game. If I’m allowed to wear...
by NRB | 31 Oct 2017 | Non-fiction |
A rivetingly flawed biography of one of the most talented Australian Rules footballers to ever pull on a boot. Let’s begin with the flaws. This is a book with 55 chapters and books with so many chapters usually see me casting them aside – they’re just too bitty. It...
by NRB | 8 Sep 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I finished 44th out of 114 players in my AFL tipping competition. A mediocre result and well below my personal best. The winner of the competition averaged slightly under six correct tips per round, well down on previous winning scores. It was an unusual season, with...
by NRB | 7 Oct 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
See the Bombers fly up, up … (Essendon Football Club song) It may seem perverse to begin a comment on the past season with a reference to the team that finished on the bottom of the ladder but, when you have supported a team for 69 years as I have Essendon, it remains...
by NRB | 4 Aug 2016 | Non-fiction |
With beautiful design and sparkling text, this book is an ideal example of a club history. When I first heard of the Kapunda Football Club celebrating 150 years of its history my private response was, ‘Oh, no.’ For two reasons. First, sporting clubs are...
by NRB | 13 May 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
At a touch over 50 games into the 2016 season (I am writing just before the bounce of the ball to begin round 7), the AFL competition this year bids fair to be more interesting than in recent times. For the last three years it has been pretty much a matter of which...
JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm6 December 2024June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone [ … ]
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
IAIN RYAN The Dream. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith3 December 2024Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]