KRISTINA OLSSON Shell. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
The struggle over the building of the Opera House is part of Australia’s ongoing quest for a national identity and the country’s truncated sense of itself at this time resonates through Shell. Shell is set in Australia in the months before the sacking...
HEATHER MCNEICE Yak on Track: An unforgettable adventure in the last Himalayan kingdom. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Yak on Track shares McNeice’s 16-day trekking adventure in Bhutan, while offering a traveller’s insights into the country’s history and culture Nestled in the Himalayas between India and China, the Kingdom of Bhutan is a nation of forested mountain peaks...
HEATHER ROSE The Museum of Modern Love. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
This Stella Prize-winning novel from Heather Rose is a masterpiece of introspection. Passages linger in the mind; her evocative prose demands that we stop and ask What would I do? Rose has wrapped this novel around the life and work of the performance artist Marina...
LOUISA DEASEY A Letter from Paris. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
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...
LIANE MORIARTY Nine Perfect Strangers. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
In her latest novel the bestselling author of Big Little Lies takes a group of disparate strangers into a health retreat that may not be quite what it seems. Nine Perfect Strangers is the latest release from Australian author Liane Moriarty, known to many through...
CLARE PAYNE One: Valuing the single life. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis
One is driven by a keen sense of social justice, and an intolerance of all the ways in which society devalues those who, for various reasons, live alone. If this is the age of single living, as Ita Buttrose proclaims on the cover of this book by Clare Payne, it...
HEATHER MORRIS The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Reviewed by Clare O’Brien
The Tattooist of Auschwitz gives a harrowing insight into how a person might survive and how love persists in the darkest of places. Beyond the yard, disappearing into the darkness, is a further compound. The tops of the fences are lined with razor wire. Up in...KIRSTY MANNING The Jade Lily. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
Through the lens of friendship and romance The Jade Lily traces the way war smashes and transforms identity and truth. Sometimes the secrets we keep are gifts of love, and it’s this kind of refreshingly unvarnished love that sits at the heart of Kirsty Manning’s...
KIM KELLY Lady Bird and the Fox. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
An Australian Pride and Prejudice? This love story spans race and class in colonial Australia. In Kim Kelly’s new novel, her seventh, a simple scaffold of romantic historical fiction allows for a more sophisticated commentary on race, privilege and the place...
LAUREN CHATER The Lace Weaver. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
In The Lace Weaver the narrative twists and turns like the weave of the lace at its core. ‘Estonia has five seasons’, we are told in the opening lines of The Lace Weaver, the debut novel from Sydney writer Lauren Chater. There are the usual four that most...
WENDY SCARFE The Day They Shot Edward. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
A slim volume but vast in scope, The Day They Shot Edward is a novel that asks who the grownups really are. Beautifully original historical fiction, The Day They Shot Edward is an intricately layered story of life and death and love set in Australia during the First...
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