MICHELLE DE KRETSER Questions of Travel. Reviewed by James Tierney
From colonialism to the internet, Michelle de Kretser explores big themes in this tale of two travellers. Australian literary fiction is sometimes accused of lacking ambition. Michelle de Kretser’s fourth novel attempts to defy this criticism with a palimpsest of...ALEX MILLER Autumn Laing. A comment by Thea Welsh
Alex Miller makes Sunday Reed a lesser woman for the sake of art. In an enthusiastic review of Alex Miller’s novel Autumn Laing in the Australian Book Review, Morag Fraser worried that, as the novel draws ‘freely on the lives of [Sidney] Nolan and the Heide circle’,...KRISTEL THORNELL Night Street. Reviewed by James Tierney
Artist Clarice Beckett inspires this award-winning debut novel. Kristel Thornell’s Dobbie and Vogel Award-winning novel Night Street takes the apparently narrow life of interwar Australian artist Clarice Beckett and imaginatively deepens her life’s hue, working with...EMILY MAGUIRE Fishing for Tigers. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Emily Maguire’s vivid novel of expats in Hanoi reveals some uncomfortable truths. Mischa is a thirty-something Australian woman who washes up in Hanoi in the aftermath of an abusive marriage: I wanted to lose myself so thoroughly that I would never find...BELINDA CASTLES Hannah and Emil. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
This third novel from Belinda Castles is a love story, a family saga, and a slice of twentieth-century European and Australian history. Hannah and Emil first see one another across a crowded room in 1933. The venue is a trade union conference in Brussels, where...SUMNER LOCKE ELLIOTT Water Under the Bridge. Reviewed by Tony Bremner
Sumner Locke Elliott’s portrait of Kings Cross and Sydney’s class divides is a classic worth revisiting. My mother was a wonderful snob. ‘You know Macleay Street, of course,’ I overheard her say once, giving directions to our Potts Point apartment. (I love...DUNCAN LAY The Bridge of Swords; JENNIFER FALLON The Dark Divide. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Celtic and Japanese cultures give visual and emotional charge to two recent fantasy novels. There is much richness and complexity on offer in fantasy writing, as well as extraordinarily varied and layered resources available to the writer. Two recently published...SUSAN JOHNSON My Hundred Lovers. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
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...STEVE LEWIS and CHRIS UHLMANN The Marmalade Files. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
This slickly sliced satire offers an insider’s view of federal politics. In a political world that contains all the strange twists of, say, the James Ashby/Peter Slipper case, or the Malcolm Turnbull/Godwin Grech imbroglio, how could fiction possibly top reality?...JANETTE TURNER HOSPITAL Forecast: Turbulence. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
These stories of family trauma find their echoes in the elements. In ‘Moon River’, the chapter of memoir that comes at the end of this collection of short stories, there is an image of the Brisbane River swollen and raucous in flood. It occurs six months after...WENDY JAMES The Mistake. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
There’s more than one side to this story of a mother accused of murdering her child. It’s impossible to read Wendy James’s fourth novel and not think of the real-life case of Keli Lane, jailed for the murder of her baby Tegan, whose body has never been found. In...
Recent Posts
2025 Readers’ Favourites8 January 2026With the new year barely begun, take a look back at our top ten reviews of [ … ]
Tributes to Jean Bedford18 December 2025Writer and editor Jean Bedford died after a long illness on 11 December 2025. [ … ]
LYN DICKENS Salt Upon the Water. Reviewed by Ann Skea11 December 2025Lyn Dickens’s award-winning debut novel of an independent woman in colonial [ … ]
STUART EVERLY-WILSON The Maskeys. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey10 December 2025Set in a small Australian town dominated by a family of drug dealers, Stuart [ … ]