MELISSA LUCASHENKO Too Much Lip. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
Melissa Lucashenko’s latest novel reveals the impact of history on contemporary Indigenous lives, and richly deserves its Miles Franklin Award. In telling the truth about the reality of many Aboriginal families’ lives, Melissa Lucashenko has created a...
PETRONELLA MCGOVERN Six Minutes. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Petronella McGovern’s debut thriller contains a lesson for the digital age. Six Minutes. A lost child. That’s it in a nutshell. As the world witnessed in horror the unfolding of the infamous James Bulger case in the early 1990s, or Madeline McCann’s...
TANYA HEASLIP Alice to Prague and YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE with HELEN TWORKOV In Love with the World. Reviewed by Ann Skea
These two memoirs of travel and dislocation present contrasting approaches to venturing into the unknown. Alice to Prague and In Love with the World are very different books with contrasting styles and perspectives and different stories to tell. Yet, fundamentally,...
JUDITH BRETT From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got Compulsory Voting. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Australian politicians might rank low in public esteem but as this incisive book from Judith Brett reveals, our system of voting is admirable compared to the rest of the world’s democracies and certainly superior to those of the United Kingdom and the United States....
SALLIE MUIRDEN Wedding Puzzle. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Sallie Muirden’s fourth novel explores love and life choices. How does anyone ever manage to choose a partner for life? Given the imperfections of every choice, given that we are all complicated individuals with our own distinct bundles of neuroses, Muirden asks...
SUZANNE DANIEL Allegra in Three Parts. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
The adults seem determined to make the world a baffling place for Allegra. Suzanne Daniel brings the 1970s to life in this debut novel. Sometimes when I get information from secretly listening in to the adults, it feels as though growing up is not so much about...
Marvellous Monday Giveaway
This Monday we’re giving away two very different novels about life outside Australia’s cities: Jennifer Mills’s Dyschronia, set in a small coastal town and longlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award, and previous Miles Franklin winner Sofie...
LEAH KAMINSKY The Hollow Bones. Reviewed by Tracy Sorensen
Leah Kaminsky’s second novel explores science, Nazi ideology, and the dangerous seduction of going with the flow. The bones in Leah Kaminsky’s new novel, The Hollow Bones are bird bones: hollow and light, made for flying. The image of birds in flight and birds...
Marvellous Monday Giveaway
This week week our giveaway features two remarkable convict women: Meg Keneally’s new novel Fled, based on the life of Mary Bryant, and Jessica North’s biography Esther, about the First Fleet girl who became First Lady of the colony. To go in...
ANDREA GOLDSMITH Invented Lives. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
This new novel from the author of the award-winning The Memory Trap explores what happens when an imagined life meets reality. The preface of Andrea Goldsmith’s Invented Lives cites Romanian author Norman Manea’s The Fifth Impossibility. ‘We are all exiles,’ writes...
JACLYN MORIARTY Gravity is the Thing. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Where is the truth? Jaclyn Moriarty’s second novel for adults pairs a single mother and a mysterious guidebook to deliver a story that reflects the lived experience of the 21st century. ‘Oh!’ he said suddenly. ‘Oh, you’re thinking it’s a metaphor! No! No!’ His...
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