Belle Place
Belle Place is a former editor of Readings Monthly
Blog post — 16 Jun 2014
Q&A with Michaela McGuire
Belle Place talks with Michaela McGuire about her new work of true crime.
Your book hinges on the case of Anthony Dunning, the 40-year-old man who was pinned to the…
Review — 24 Jun 2014
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman
Cast as ‘this generation’s Jane Austen’, Adelle Waldman’s debut novel – a work of intelligent, amusing social commentary – centres on Nathaniel Piven, a thirty-something book critic living in Brooklyn…
Review — 23 Apr 2014
The Promise by Tony Birch
The Promise sees Tony Birch return to the short form, following the achievements of his Miles Franklin-shortlisted novel, Blood. As in that novel, here Birch writes misguided, brooding characters…
Review — 25 Mar 2014
N by John A. Scott
John A. Scott’s long-awaited novel, his first in over a decade, is set in an imagined, though frighteningly familiar, Australia. It is the early 1940s and Melbourne is a fractious…
Blog post — 5 Mar 2014
Q&A with Mark Mulholland
Our Readings Monthly editor Belle Place interviews Irish writer Mark Mulholland about his debut novel, A Mad and Wonderful Thing, the story of an IRA sniper in the 1990s…
Review — 24 Feb 2014
The Lost Child by Suzanne McCourt
The protagonist of Suzanne McCourt’s debut novel, The Lost Child, is Sylvie, a sharp-witted but vulnerable young girl. Living in the small fishing town of Burley Point, her father…
Review — 29 Jan 2014
The Poet’s Wife by Mandy Sayer
Mandy Sayer’s vivid new memoir, set predominantly in New Orleans, Indiana, and later in Sydney’s Kings Cross, details her volatile ten-year marriage to the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. Two…
Blog post — 10 Dec 2013
Five books I have on my 'to read' pile in 2013
Working with books is wonderful, for all the obvious reasons, but it’s our most common complaint that there is never enough time to read everything we would like – including…
Review — 24 Oct 2013
Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey
In Moving Among Strangers, Gabrielle Carey intertwines the histories of the reclusive Australian writer Randolph Stow, and that of her acutely reserved mother, Joan, who both grew up in…
Blog post — 31 Jul 2013
What I Loved: What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
What I Loved is Siri Hustvedt’s third novel, published a decade ago now, and set in New York, opening in 1975. It follows Leo Hertzberg, an art historian teaching at…