by NRB | 23 May 2017 | Fiction |
The Crying Place is a big novel that juggles even bigger ideas. For the first time in his life, Saul, a drifter, has remained in the same place for nearly a year. He has a steady job, and he’s renting a tiny Sydney apartment, its door marked with scratches left behind...
by NRB | 9 May 2017 | Fiction |
Ashley Hay’s new novel gives us warm, affectionate portraits of people and place in a story that shifts between past and present. Longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Award, Ashley Hay’s previous novel, The Railwayman’s Wife, was a love letter to Thirroul. A...
by NRB | 4 May 2017 | Fiction |
This is a powerful portrayal of what can happen in war and in the skilful hands of Claire Corbett the message is clear: there but for the grace of God … The world is at war. It always has been. Our sense of security is an illusion. At any moment, on any day, in...
by NRB | 7 Jun 2016 | Fiction |
Emily Maguire combines a page-turner with a provocative reflection on violence against women. Emily Maguire’s latest novel tells the story of the aftermath of the murder of a young woman, aged-care worker Bella Michaels, in the little town of Strathdee, somewhere...
by NRB | 16 Apr 2015 | Fiction |
A deftly plotted, carefully crafted narrative about art, trauma and female friendship. It is no wonder that Emily Bitto’s haunting debut, The Strays, is on the shortlist for this year’s Stella Prize. Bitto’s well-constructed novel, primarily set in 1930s Melbourne,...
by NRB | 13 Jan 2015 | Fiction |
A young woman searches for peace of mind as a past trauma refuses to stay buried in SA Jones’s new novel. Isabelle is a data analyst in the corporate world in Perth. After a promising start in the company, she is effectively derailed by an embarrassing mental meltdown...
by NRB | 16 Oct 2014 | Fiction |
Paddy O’Reilly’s third novel is a riotously clever, dark-hearted look at fame and the human body – and what happens when the two collide. Leon is in his mid-20s, single and working in an office in Melbourne when he dies for the first time. He’s...
by NRB | 31 Jul 2014 | Fiction |
Three characters set out to find what they have lost in this novel about the rituals of grieving. Striking an uncanny balance between probing and restraint, Australian author Brooke Davis’s debut novel Lost & Found examines the rituals of grieving – how to make...
by NRB | 22 Jul 2014 | Fiction |
These stories add complexity to racial and cultural stereotypes and explore a wide range of human experiences. Foreign Soil won last year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and for good reason. Clarke’s stories contain...
by NRB | 3 Jul 2014 | Fiction |
Angela Meyer’s microfictions expose the shiny bare bones of narrative. It took me a while to find Captives in the bookshop, but finally I discovered it, a tiny little thing, sitting in a special display of its own. As it turns out, this separation is rather...
by NRB | 26 Jun 2014 | Fiction |
The limits of loyalty and discretion are tested in Christine Piper’s Vogel Award-winning novel about a Japanese doctor interned in South Australia during World War II. Christine Piper’s provocative and at times confronting debut tells the story of a Japanese doctor,...
by NRB | 3 Jun 2014 | SFF |
Through cruelty to transcendence: the third book of this powerful series delivers both. This final instalment of the Children of the Black Sun trilogy opens with three damaged mages – Rasten, Sierra and Isidro – reeling in the aftermath of the events of Book Two,...