Roland Bisshop
Roland Bisshop is a music specialist at Readings Carlton. By night he travels the streets of Melbourne in a camper-van solving crimes with the assistance of a remarkably clever Labrador.
Review — 30 May 2023
The Terrible Event by David Cohen
The title story of David Cohen’s new collection chronicles the administrative preparation for the launch of a memorial – to what we are not informed, but the inference is a…
Review — 28 Oct 2022
The Passenger & Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy
It is more than 15 years since Cormac McCarthy’s last novel was published, and for those of the faith the reward is rich indeed. Not one, but two novels published…
Review — 30 Aug 2022
Her Fidelity by Katharine Pollock
It is now 27 years since Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity was first published. 27 is an inauspicious age in the annals of rock and roll. Saturn’s return. Those who perished…
Review — 30 May 2022
Basin: A Novel by Scott McCulloch
After poisoningand castinghimself into the sea,Figure is pulled from thewater and resuscitatedby a paramilitary banditnamed Aslan. Uponrecovery, the protagonistfinds himself in alandscape of societal rupture. A world of ethnic cleansing…
Review — 3 Oct 2021
Nina Simone’s Gum by Warren Ellis
When I was a boy, my mother declared chewing gum to be a filthy habit. I dutifully took up smoking. Dr Nina Simone chose to do both, right up to…
Review — 21 Oct 2019
Beyond the Sea by Paul Lynch
Bolivar, an experienced, albeit aging, fisherman of meagre means and scant ambition in an unnamed South American seaside location, sets off with the inexperienced, teenaged Hector against conventional wisdom –…
Review — 30 Apr 2018
A Shout in the Ruins by Kevin Powers
George Seldom was born in Virginia in the midst of the American civil war. A foundling, saved from certain death by an outlaw gang, who knows nothing of his parents…
Blog post — 16 Apr 2015
Resurface Noise, April 2015
Resurface Noise is a new column from our music specialist Roland Bisshop, dedicated to new vinyl reissues and first time on vinyl releases.
And don’t forget that for the month…
Blog post — 25 Jun 2013
An Album That Changed My Life: Fun House by The Stooges
My childhood was a fairly strict Catholic one and rock ‘n’ roll was frowned upon with a muscular brow. Mix-tapes were exchanged in shadowy corridors of the high school, to…