Our latest reviews
Goat Mountain by David Vann
Goat Mountain is a ride of a novel. It’s dark, brooding, violent, powerful and brilliant because David Vann knows how to place the reader right alongside his characters, whether we want to be there or not.
The narrator, a young…
Infamy by Lenny Bartulin
Lenny Bartulin’s exuberant new novel takes place in 1830, in what was then an isolated corner of the British Empire – Van Diemen’s Land. The nascent colony exists in a state of near anarchy, filled as it is with convicts…
Cross and Burn by Val McDermid
Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan’s Major Incident Team is in tatters: the people she counted as her closest associates – both professionally and publicly – are in new jobs, or unemployed, or in rehab. Targeted by a psycho who killed…
Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes
Swimming in the Irish Sea is bound to tempt Celtic gods and mythical creatures that seduce or destroy. Selkies are said to live as seals in water, yet shed their skins on land seeking those dissatisfied with life … and…
The Signature Of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Signature of All Things is a sprawling story of botany, nineteenth-century scientific development, herbariums, sea voyages, love, death, old books and abolitionists. The protagonist is Alma Whittaker, born in 1800 and daughter of the world’s richest botanical importer; she’s…
My Mother, My Father by Susan Wyndham
A collection of essays by fourteen Australian writers, My Mother, My Father responds to the universal question of how to make sense of the death of a parent. Edited by Sydney Morning Herald literary editor Susan Wyndham, this suite of…
Perfect North by Jenny Bond
During the warm summer of 1897, Sweden sent a hot air balloon to the Arctic with the aim of being the first country to reach the North Pole. By the end of summer, it was clear: the three men had…
The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg
While I cry easily in films, I can attest to the fact that there are few which can somehow persuade me to curl up into the fetal position while in a cinema and let loose loud, wracking sobs that cause…
The Mundiad by Justin Clemens
The first part of Melbourne-based philosopher, academic, art critic and cultural provocateur Justin Clemens’s long poem The Mundiad was published almost ten years ago. It was immediately recognisable as one of the most audacious and singular works of contemporary English…
Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts
From the team that created the wonderful Iggy Peck, Architect comes another gem. Rosie dreams of being an engineer. She tinkers away with the bits and pieces she has collected, inventing machines and gadgets. Sadly she hides her creations after…
Browse our reviews by category
