ANDREA GOLDSMITH The Buried Life. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Each of Andrea Goldsmith’s three protagonists faces a reckoning with the past in this novel of life and death and friendship. The Buried Life begins with characters whose fates seem predictable, but Andrea Goldsmith is too good a writer to rely on clichés. Adrian...
DEBORAH CALLAGHAN The Little Clothes: extract
Deborah Callaghan’s sharply observed debut explores what can happen when a woman feels invisible – and starts pushing the boundaries. Audrey, the 38-year-old protagonist of The Little Clothes, is a smart lawyer who lives alone with her pet rabbit, Joni. As the...
ROBINNE LEE The Idea of You. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
It’s Flashback Friday: Jessica Stewart reviews Robinne Lee’s 2017 novel of an older woman and a younger man which is getting renewed attention thanks to a film adaptation. Is there a right way to love? In a thousand ways we are told what is acceptable, ethical,...
SUSAN McCREERY All the Unloved. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Susan McCreery’s novel recounts the lives of the residents of a block of flats in 1990s Bondi and the complexities of love. A few short sentences and a scene is set, a mood caught, a character revealed: all this is beautifully done. Then short passages are linked...
ANNA KATE BLAIR The Modern. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Set in New York, Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel explores the art of curation, sexuality, modernism, and knowing one’s own mind. This is a novel to savour, its language crystalline, its acute observations tumbling one after the other. In the opening paragraph,...
CAROL MAJOR The Asparagus Wars. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Stretching from France to the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Carol Major’s memoir is a meditation on family, grief and love. This memoir by Carol Major comprises three strands woven into one heartbreaking narrative of a woman and her daughter. Written as a...
TESSA HADLEY Late in the Day. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Tessa Hadley’s latest novel is one to savour as she examines four London lives with subtlety and elegant prose. In the London of Tess Hadley’s novel, everything inside her protagonists’ houses is cool, well placed and well maintained. It is the world outside...
LUKE HORTON The Fogging. Reviewed by Amy Walters
Luke Horton’s tense debut novel asks uncomfortable questions about intimate relationships. In hindsight, the end of a relationship can take on an air of inevitability. But is it possible to pinpoint the exact moment when it irrevocably breaks down? Or is the end...
LUKE HORTON The Fogging: extract
This week in our series of extracts from recent Australian books, we’re delighted to bring you an extract from Luke Horton’s debut novel The Fogging. The fogging of the title refers to the routine spraying of insecticide around hotels in Bali, and it is during the...
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