Ed Moreno

Ed Moreno is a former Readings Carlton bookseller

Review — 25 Sep 2016

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed, the fourth novel in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, is a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, his late-career tale of magic and illusion. In Atwood’s…

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Review — 26 Jun 2016

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee

This opulent operatic opus is an over-the-top-of-the-top rags-to-riches postmodern picaresque adventure stuffed full of plot, more plot, plot twists, melodrama, and lots of costume changes. It’s a historical novel set…

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Review — 26 Jun 2017

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Heads up, reader: rave review (and a surfeit of superlatives) ahead. It’s unavoidable. As a debut novel, Here Comes the Sun is staggeringly spectacular, and marks the beginning of what…

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Review — 25 Apr 2016

LaRose by Louise Erdrich

I earmarked Louise Erdrich’s brilliant LaRose as ‘must reread’ about fifty pages in; I’ve since granted it ‘give-this-copy-to-a-friend-and-buy-yourself-another-copy’ status. I want to get it into the hands of as many…

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Review — 26 Apr 2017

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

The seven stories in this collection all feature male protagonists contemplating solitude and loneliness, love and death, and the impossibility of really knowing their unattainable love object. These guys are…

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Review — 26 Feb 2017

Bright Air Black by David Vann

Dark, visceral, lyrical, sinister, sad: David Vann’s hypnotic reimagining of Greek mythology’s famously fiendish Medea is masterful  – the expressive style is bizarre but brilliant. Vann’s poetic prose rushes inexorably…

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Review — 28 Sep 2015

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

Once I started The Heart Goes Last, I couldn’t put it down until I’d read the last word. When I did, I had a perverse smile on my face…

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Review — 26 Jun 2016

Sergio Y. by Alexandre Vidal Porto

Published in Brazil as Sergio Y. Vai à America (Sergio Y. Goes to America), Alexandre Vidal Porto’s second novel is a story in which the journey of migration represents another…

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Review — 29 Mar 2016

The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kate Tempest

Prepare to be lit up and properly electrified, to feel love, desire, dread and longing in equal parts  – in great swathes or in tiny jolts or in head-ripping explosions…

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Review — 29 Feb 2016

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri

Indian-American writer Jhumpa Lahiri was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for her first book, Interpreter of Maladies, a collection of short stories. She has since published…

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