Our latest reviews
The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob
The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing is a hefty 500-page, multi-generational family saga. The novel follows the story of an Indian family who immigrate to America, moving between three timelines – India in the 1970s, New Mexico in the 1980s, and…
Hild by Nicola Griffith
We open on three-year-old Hild, lying, ear to the ground, absorbing the cadence of her world: birds, trees, earth. She is disturbed, though not frightened, by the arrival of her mother’s lady with the news her father, a would-be king…
Noggin by John Corey Whaley
Travis Coates is dying of leukaemia. As his body slowly deteriorates, Travis and his family realise he will soon die. When a doctor suggests he take part in a cryogenics trial (where you are preserved in below-freezing temperatures until future…
Over the Water by William Lane
An unexpected sense of menace and melancholy pervades this debut novel about cultural difference and identity, set in Indonesia’s third-largest city. Following in the footsteps of his enigmatic older brother, 23-year-old Joe arrives in Bandung to teach English and immediately…
Breakfast with the Borgias by D.B.C. Pierre
For those familiar with the comedic horror of D.B.C. Pierre’s fiction, worry not about the conventional beginning as this novella soon descends into a tightly wound pressure cooker reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, both hilarious and horrific. The opening string…
Deeper Water by Jessie Cole
There’s always going to be something comfortingly familiar for me in an Australian novel about growing up in an isolated place. What rang most true in Jessie Cole’s Deeper Water was the immense yearning of a young soul – not…
Game Day by Miriam Sved
Miriam Sved’s debut novel strips back the corporate persona of an AFL club by weaving together a series of individual perspectives of our indigenous game. Players, scouts, coaches, groupies: none are spared, but nor are they mocked or trivialised. This…
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
We Were Liars is many things. It is an unflinching glimpse into a family fueled by their own self-destruction. It is King Lear and his three daughters. It is a pair of star-crossed lovers. Mostly, it is clever and surprising…
Nest by Inga Simpson
Inga Simpson is one to surprise. Her first novel, Mr Wigg – while not something I would instinctively select – quickly won me over with its heartwarming tale. Her second work of fiction, Nest, again deals with loss, grief…
Britten’s Century: Celebrating 100 Years of Britten edited by Mark Bostridge
For my current studies, I’m mostly reading books about twentieth-century composer Benjamin Britten. This week I finished Britten’s Century, a collection of essays about the composer by musicians and scholars, published for the Britten centenary (2013). The book offers…
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