Chris Somerville
Chris Somerville is a former member of the Readings online team. He is the author of a short-story collection, We Are Not The Same Anymore.
Review — 26 May 2016
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
Since the publication of Annie Proulx’s last book, almost a decade ago, details have filtered through that she was working on an epic about the wood trade in the late…
Review — 24 Jul 2017
The Town by Shaun Prescott
It’s telling how a novel sets up, and answers, its mysteries. I’ve always preferred the ones that don’t sacrifice plot for character or vice-versa, and instead meet somewhere in the…
Review — 26 Feb 2017
From the Wreck by Jane Rawson
While there’s certainly no drought of Australian historical fiction, it’s probably fair to say that no-one else has tackled the genre in quite the same way as Jane Rawson. From…
Review — 29 Jan 2017
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Since the publication of CivilWarLand in Bad Decline in 1996, George Saunders has produced an incredible body of work, the majority of which are short stories, though there’s also a…
Review — 22 Aug 2016
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
The latest book from Teju Cole is a collection of essays, put out over a number of years, from various magazines and loosely arranged into three categories: reading, seeing and…
Review — 25 Sep 2016
The Nix by Nathan Hill
While Nathan Hill’s debut novel The Nix is certainly ambitious, given that it contains the Chicago riots of 1968, the invasion of Iraq, the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, as…
Review — 29 Feb 2016
See You at Breakfast by Guillermo Fadanelli
Guillermo Fadanelli’s short novel, See You At Breakfast? was originally published in Spanish, in 1999, and has now been released locally by Sydney publishing house Giramondo. Set in Mexico City…
Review — 25 May 2015
Find Me by Laura Van den Berg
Laura van den Berg’s first two books, the short-story collections What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and Isle of Youth, established her as…
Review — 29 Feb 2016
How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball
Midway through Jesse Ball’s novel How to Set a Fire and Why, the narrator, a fifteen-year-old girl called Lucia Stanton, takes a series of tests to see if she…
Review — 29 Mar 2016
One by Patrick Holland
Patrick Holland’s latest novel, One, charts the final days of the Keniff brothers, James and Patrick, Australia’s last bushrangers, and their antagonist Sergeant Nixon, a man obsessed by bringing…