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ROBERT DESSAIX The Time of Our Lives. Reviewed by Ann Skea

ROBERT DESSAIX The Time of Our Lives. Reviewed by Ann Skea

by NRB | 15 Oct 2020 | Non-fiction | 0 comments

In The Time of Our Lives Robert Dessaix ponders approaches to ageing, and does so with ‘unending playful curiosity’. Robert Dessaix is 76 years old. Not quite spry enough to join the middle-aged hotel guests dancing to boom-box music by the lotus pool of...
MELANIE JOOSTEN A Long Time Coming: Essays on old age. Reviewed by  Shelley McInnis

MELANIE JOOSTEN A Long Time Coming: Essays on old age. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis

by NRB | 30 Jun 2016 | Non-fiction | 4 comments

Old age may be a long time coming, but it is coming. This eloquent collection advocates for the elderly. It was a Doris Lessing novel – specifically, Diary of a Good Neighbour – that inspired Melanie Joosten to take up social work with the idea of working with older...

FIONA MCFARLANE The Night Guest. Reviewed by Kylie Mason

by NRB | 1 Oct 2013 | Fiction | 0 comments

This mesmerising and suspenseful novel examines isolation, trust and the vagaries of memory. Ruth Field and her cats reside in a house set among the dunes on the New South Wales South Coast. Ruth is a widow who lives a self-contained life, her hours and days filled by...

The Godfather: Peter Corris on being over seventy

by NRB | 24 May 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris | 2 comments

Recently I turned 71. My sister emailed a greeting and apologised for reminding me of the number but I didn’t object at all, not as I did when I turned 70. Had a lovely day – nice presents, email greetings from local friends, my agent in the Big Apple and daughters...

SUSAN JOHNSON My Hundred Lovers. Reviewed by Linda Funnell

by NRB | 8 Aug 2012 | Fiction | 2 comments

Susan Johnson’s new novel is both a woman’s search for love and a meditation on the senses. As Samuel Beckett reminds us, we are all born ‘astride of a grave’, so there is no reason why turning fifty per se should signal impending decrepitude.  Western culture has...
             

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