Tristen Brudy
Tristen Brudy works as a bookseller at Readings Carlton.
Reviews
Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber
Admit it. You’re a little bit curious. If a book, fiction or otherwise, offers you the secrets of happiness you’d want to know what it’s selling. Equipped with such a tantalising title and fond respe…
Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor
We start in peril. This is Antarctica; the weather can, and will, change without a moment’s notice. This is the first season working at the bottom of the earth for Thomas and Luke whereas Robert, or …
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood is known for – among other things – saying very clever things on the internet. The unnamed protagonist of her highly anticipated first novel seems to have the same gig: she reckons …
Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura
Kokoro doesn’t want to go back to school. After enduring painful bullying at the hands of her classmates, her whole body seems to rebel at the idea of returning to Yukishina No. 5 Junior High. Barric…
Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley
‘And I’m just fed up with the hypocrisy. People have sex for loads of different reasons. And, well, we have sex for money.’
Precious didn’t ask to be the figurehead of a movement. But when the broth…
Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic
Even after five years together the only time Luke and Anya are at ease in one another’s company is when they’re listening to true crime podcasts together. Driving from London to Provence for a romant…
The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
1970s Uganda: halfway through Idi Amin’s terrible reign. The First Woman details the coming of age of Kirabo, a headstrong young woman from a small Ugandan village who begins to feel the terrible abs…
Group by Christie Tate
Christie Tate, by most objective measures, is a success. She’s graduating top of her class from law school and is well on her way to a high-powered career. But underneath her veneer of control lies a…
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
Amanda, Clay and their two teenaged children are expecting a quiet vacation. They’ve rented an upmarket house on Long Island for a week – revelling in the chance to enjoy some rest from the bustle of…
The Palace Letters by Jenny Hocking
Would these historic letters between the Queen and the governor-general about Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam government be recognised as Commonwealth records and opened for public access? Could we n…
Our Shadows by Gail Jones
Nell and Frances Kelly are raised by their grandparents after their mother dies in labour and their father abandons them in a fit of grief. The sisters grow up with a special bond cemented by a share…
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
I loved God, my brother, and my mother, in that order. When I lost my brother, poof went the other two.
Yaa Gyasi’s sophomore novel is a study of relationships. With family. With God. With science.…
Betty by Tiffany McDaniel
I’m still a child, only as tall as my father’s shotgun.
So begins Betty’s story. Betty is a fictionalised account of the author’s own mother as she comes of age in Breathed, a town set in the footh…
True Story by Kate Reed Petty
If you don’t control your story, your story will control you.
Private schoolgirl Alice doesn’t know what happened to her the night of the party. She knows she was very drunk. She knows she was driv…
Sisters by Daisy Johnson
Something terrible has happened. Sheela’s only recourse is to spirit away her two teenage daughters, July and September, and herself, from their home in Oxford to a run-down shack in the Yorkshire Mo…
Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
Kevin Kwan has done it again. Told with his signature wit and flair, his latest romantic comedy of manners pays homage to A Room with a View, Pride and Prejudice, and, strangely enough, Crazy Rich As…
Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
The person who believes in you is the most dangerous person you know. The person who believes in you can unbuild you in an instant.
Nell Barber is not having a good year. She’s broken up with her b…
How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang
‘Generations of authors have molded the mythology of the American West for their own purposes … I take the lesson that what we call history is not granite but sandstone – soft, given form by its carv…
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
In 1596, a young boy named Hamnet died. About four years later, his father wrote the most famous play in English history: Hamlet. This is the story of that boy and his mother.
I took three separate…
Actress by Anne Enright
Years after her death, myths still circulate about Katherine O'Dell, Irish legend of stage and screen. Questions persist regarding her origins and her rise to fame. Of even more interest, of course, …
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
I have a confession: I’ve been pining for this book since I saw it on the horizon over a year ago. Carmen Maria Machado is a magical writer with a penchant for the darker side of fairytale, TV, film …
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia, hundreds of girls and women would wake every morning feeling bruised, abused, and battered. This was attributed for many years to ghost…
French Exit by Patrick deWitt
‘French Exit’: hastily leaving a social gathering without saying goodbye (see also, Irish Goodbye, taking English Leave, ghosting). Frances, her adult son Malcolm and their cat, Small Frank, are out …
A Superior Spectre by Angela Meyer
In the near future, Jeff is dying. Haunted by his dark past and current deterioration, he abandons Melbourne, and his long-suffering partner Faye, for the relative remoteness of Scotland. Once there,…
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
The Great Believers opens in Chicago, 1985, with Yale Tishman attending the wake of Nico – the first of many in his group of friends to be felled by the AIDS epidemic. Yale is the development directo…
84K by Claire North
Company men would run for Parliament, Company newspapers would trumpet their excellence to the sky, Company TV stations would broadcast their election promises this is how democracy worked: corporate…
A Sand Archive by Gregory Day
Award-winning author Gregory Day’s latest novel opens in Geelong with our narrator, a nameless writer, coming across a ‘slim grey-brown volume, cheaply printed but essential to [his] research: The Gr…
What the Light Reveals by Mick McCoy
Mick McCoy’s latest novel opens in 1954 as Conrad Murphy travels from Melbourne to Sydney to appear before the Royal Commission on Espionage. An active and unabashed member of the Communist Party, Co…
Oliver Loving by Stefan Merrill Block
There are many ways to describe the titular Oliver Loving – his mother’s favourite son, a beloved older brother to Charlie, and an aspiring poet. He has also been comatose (perhaps even brain-dead) f…
The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova
Elizabeth Kostova’s The Shadow Land follows a young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, as she travels to Bulgaria in memory of her lost brother. On her first day there, she accidentally takes the bag of…
