NIKE SULWAY Dying in the First Person. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Nike Sulway’s new novel is a powerful and extraordinarily beautiful story of family, love and sacrifice. In Dying in the First Person Nike Sulway has created a world we enter slowly, uncovering the past and its hurts in small steps. It draws the reader...
STEPHEN ORR Datsunland. Reviewed by Carmel Bird
The short stories in Datsunland strike notes of moodiness and dark irony. Dreams and fantasies inform the lives of many of the doomed characters in this moody collection of 14 distinctly ‘literary’ stories. There is much here about fantasy, much about fate, about...
SANDRA LEIGH PRICE The River Sings. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
The author of The Bird’s Child returns with the story of a Romany girl forced to live by her wits when her father is transported to Australia. In the opening chapter of The River Sings, it’s 1819 and Patrin, a young Romany woman, is giving birth to her...
Crime Scene: DAVID COHEN Disappearing off the Face of the Earth. Reviewed by Robin Elizabeth
David Cohen masterfully captures a repellent main character in this comic mystery novel. David Cohen’s new novel has been described as ‘a warped comedy with a body count’ by Brisbane writer Nick Earls. It is set in Brisbane and is packed with...
Crime Scene: CAROLINE OVERINGTON The Lucky One. Reviewed by Robin Elizabeth
In Caroline Overington’s new thriller, the Aldens don’t just have a skeleton in their closet, they have a whole castle full. Caroline Overington’s 11th book, The Lucky One, is a dysfunctional-family crime-farce and she has spared nothing in her depictions....
JOHN KINSELLA Old Growth. Reviewed by Carmel Bird
John Kinsella’s short stories reveal flashes of beauty amid the bleakness. ‘They were close enough to the dregs of the river to have a water rat dead on their dead lawn.’ So far, so ugly – the opening line of the 18th story in this collection of 27. By...
SUE WOOLFE Do You Love Me Or What? Reviewed by Carmel Bird
These short stories from Sue Woolfe offer alienation, yearning and brilliance. The final story in this collection of eight pieces is an extract from the personal papers of an unnamed fiction writer, with footnotes by Professor Amelia Broughton, who has prepared...
JANE RAWSON From the Wreck. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Jane Rawson’s new novel has its feet planted in the earth as well as in the ocean and the stars. Rawson says that she began this book as an attempt to record and make sense of historical facts from her family’s past. She knew that her...
DEBRA JOPSON Oliver of the Levant. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
Oliver of the Levant is a wise and nuanced coming-of-age story set in troubled times. Like many 15-year-old boys in the late 1960s, Oliver Lawrence has a poster of Jimi Hendrix on his bedroom wall, and he’d rather hang around Bondi Beach than go to school. But unlike...
RYAN O’NEILL Their Brilliant Careers: The fantastic lives of sixteen extraordinary Australian writers. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
This account of fictional writers’ brilliant careers contains connections, plays, substitutions, witty epigraphs, much ado about plagiarism and jokes galore. I’m tempted to describe this book as a parody of Australian literary history — so I will. Taking the...
CARMEL BIRD Family Skeleton. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
In Family Skeleton one of Australia’s most prolific and original authors delivers a tale of life-changing family secrets. Margaret O’Day has always lived an ordered and beautiful life. She’s a beloved mother and grandmother and, as an enthusiastic volunteer and...
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