by NRB | 5 Dec 2022 | Giveaways |
What a year it’s been, and it’s not (quite) over yet. To get you in a festive mood, we’ve got some seriously good books to celebrate the season. To go in the draw to win all four of the titles below, simply email editors@newtownreviewofbooks.com.au...
by NRB | 21 Feb 2019 | Non-fiction |
A charming gastronomic memoir of two years in France from Barbara Santich, Wild Asparagus also creates a multi-dimensional portrait of a country on the cusp of political and social change. On New Year’s Day, 1977, Barbara Santich and her husband John jetted from...
by NRB | 23 Oct 2018 | Non-fiction |
In this search for her father, Louisa Deasey affirms the value of love, generosity, and – crucially – encourages thinking about what a successful life really is. Louisa Deasey’s father, Denison Deasey, died when she was a child. With only one photograph of them...
by NRB | 24 Oct 2017 | Non-fiction |
We have arguably privileged lives yet we feel close to desperation – the paradox at the heart of Briohny Doyle’s Adult Fantasy. I grew up through the 1980s and 90s believing the mantra of you can do anything. As I hastily finished an undergrad...
by NRB | 26 Sep 2017 | Non-fiction |
Rosie Waterland gives a clear-eyed reckoning of her life in this new memoir. In Every Lie I’ve Ever Told, Rosie Waterland tells stories from her ruptured childhood – first laid bare in her 2016 memoir The Anti-Cool Girl – interlacing them with intelligent, wickedly...
by NRB | 7 Sep 2017 | Non-fiction |
How to Dress a Dummy speaks frankly of Cassie Lane’s battle for acceptance and will ring bells with many women. Cassie Lane is a former international model with a Masters in Creative Writing, but seems to be best known in Australia for dating AFL player Alan...
by NRB | 6 Jul 2017 | Non-fiction |
Our Fathers Cleared the Bush is a captivating combination of regional history and memoir. ‘When I say I come from Eyre Peninsula, I am sometimes met with a blank look,’ wrote the late Professor Emerita of History at Macquarie University, Jill Roe, in opening her first...
by NRB | 16 Mar 2017 | Non-fiction |
Baum’s memoir is replete with examples of emotional deftness of the highest order. I have very much enjoyed Caroline Baum’s published essays, and it is a delight to see two of them appearing as familiar landmarks in this big map of a memoir. One, entitled...
by NRB | 2 Mar 2017 | Non-fiction |
Scoundrel Days takes the reader into each unfolding moment of Frazer’s getting of wisdom. Brentley Frazer has changed names in this memoir to protect the privacy of particular individuals, but every word of it rings true. Children who grew up in far north...
by NRB | 29 Sep 2016 | Non-fiction |
Robbi Neal has captured a truthful, no-holds-barred and deeply sensitive range of Indigenous Australian experience. For seven years from 2008, Robbi Neal and her family lived and worked in a Cape York Aboriginal arts community. There, Neal heard the narratives of six...
by NRB | 31 May 2016 | Non-fiction |
On Being a Minister is an ideal primer for the political class. We’re in election mode and it’s a long campaign. Plenty of politicians (aspiring and actual) are waiting to be either elected or re-elected. I think of one of my all-time favourite political quotes from...
by NRB | 3 May 2016 | Non-fiction |
Growing Wild is the entertaining and instructive memoir of a writer and publisher who always took notice, and always took notes. If you’re starting your writing and publishing life in 2016, can you quite imagine how different things were before the tsunami of...
NRB readers’ favourite reviews of 202419 December 2024Welcome to our most popular reviews of the year. Is your favourite among them? [ … ]
RONNI SALT Gunnawah. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm17 December 2024Ronni Salt’s debut is historical crime fiction at its best, with a strong [ … ]
TIMOTHY SNYDER On Freedom. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck12 December 2024Historian Timothy Snyder asserts that freedom is something we must work for – [ … ]
SUE PRIDEAUX Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin. Reviewed by Ann Skea11 December 2024Sue Prideaux separates the man from the myth in this new account of the [ … ]