Our latest reviews

Searching for Sky by Jillian Cantor

Reviewed by Athina Clarke

Imagine an idyllic island paradise where life is beautiful but challenging. If you’re not willing or able to hunt, fish, forage for food and build shelter from the elements, you won’t last long in this complex world of interconnected human…

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Stop the Presses! by Ben Hills

Reviewed by Maloti Ray

In this account of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, Ben Hills describes the causes and consequences of the broadsheets’ decline. Having worked for 30 years at both papers, Hills is a ‘lifer’ who is personally and professionally…

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The Prince by David Marr

Reviewed by Sean O’Beirne

There is, throughout this book, the satisfaction of seeing Cardinal George Pell put under the bright light of reason. The Catholic Church dresses Pell and all it’s other ‘princes’ up in gold, and hides them, literally, with clouds of sweet-smelling…

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The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez

Reviewed by Luke May

The contradictions, false hopes and pervasive poverty of contemporary America has become so familiar in recent years that it is unsurprising to see a novel recreate such fate for the immigrants who’ve funnelled their way through Mexico only to arrive…

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Upstairs at the Party by Linda Grant

Reviewed by Bronte Coates

The new book from the Orange Prize-winning, and Man Booker Prize-shortlisted, novelist Linda Grant is joyously bold. Our narrator Adele opens with: ‘If you go back and look at your life there are certain scenes, acts, or maybe just incidents…

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Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee

Reviewed by Chris Somerville

Midway through ‘World Party’, one of the seven stories that make up Rebecca Lee’s debut collection, Bobcat and Other Stories, the narrator describes a fellow lecturer from her university: ‘She used history in the most chilling way possible, as…

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Friendship by Emily Gould

Reviewed by Emily Harms

Bev Tunney and Amy Schwerin have been best friends for years, ever since they worked together in a publishing house in New York City: ‘…we’re a couple, in a way. I mean we’re life partners. All these people […] are…

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A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Reviewed by Samuel Zifchak

Meet Ove: a veritable stick in the mudslide of human advancement. Ove can’t tell the difference between an iPad and a computer, but he can fix a fan heater. Ove might pass judgement on anyone driving a fancy car, but…

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Have You Seen Simone? by Virginia Peters

Reviewed by Brigid Mullane

In 2005, German backpacker Simone Strobel went missing from a caravan park in Lismore, New South Wales. When her body was found six days later – naked and barely hidden beneath palms nearby – the suspicion fell on her boyfriend…

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England and Other Stories by Graham Swift

Reviewed by Alec Patric

Graham Swift is the author of Booker Prize-winning Last Orders, an exceptional novel that inspired an equally brilliant film of the same title. England and Other Stories is Swift’s third collection of stories and it continues down the same…

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