Tristen Brudy
Tristen Brudy works as a bookseller at Readings Carlton.
Reviews
Ruth and Pen by Emilie Pine
There isn’t much to physically connect Ruth and Pen beyond a few chance encounters that unfold one pivotal October day as they go about their lives in Dublin (much like another famous book set in tha…
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
This is it. The one we’ve all been waiting for. Jennifer Egan’s follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning, genre-bending A Visit from the Goon Squad. Taking the same patchwork form as Egan’s previous n…
True Friends by Patti Miller
‘I’ve been wondering why, compared to romantic love, the love of friends is not much written about.’ Seeking to redress this balance, albeit on a minor scale, Patti Miller sets out to recall and reco…
Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood needs no introduction. But here’s one anyway. Born in Ottawa, Canada in 1939, Atwood has published more than 50 works of fiction, poetry, critical essays, works of nonfiction, childre…
Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang
Joan is okay. At least as far as she is concerned. She’s in her thirties, with a successful career as an ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. She has fulfilled the American Dream that her par…
Making Australian History by Anna Clark
It is generally proposed that history is written by the victors. Anna Clark, however, may argue that it is written by historians – which makes it no less biased. Australian history is famously contes…
Devotion by Hannah Kent
Prussia, 1836: a small village of Old Lutherans is forced to practice their religion in secret or face persecution. Deliverance comes with the opportunity for settling in the new colony of South Aust…
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
Benny Oh has lost his father in a terrible accident. Shortly afterwards, something peculiar happens to the grief-stricken teenage boy: he starts to hear objects speaking. Snow globes, scissors, windo…
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Theo Byrne, a rising star in the field of astrobiology, has lost his wife, leaving him the sole parent to nine-year-old Robin. Robin is both a fascinating and a troubled boy. His love and appreciatio…
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’ It has been almost 20 years since I first read that opening line of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and it still gives me goosebumps. I remember reading t…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
A radio play, a trilogy of five (or six, depending on whether you count Eoin Colfer’s 2009 contribution to the series), a TV series, multiple comic books and stage shows, a video game, a film, and no…
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Ada is 16 years old and struggling to fit in. She’s lost her mother, Defne, and she can’t connect with her father, Kostas. He’s physically present but emotionally distant. One day at her school in No…
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…
