Our latest reviews
Metamorphosen: Works by R. Strauss, Korngold & Schreker
When you think of Richard Strauss you think of lush Romantic works, big orchestral moments and dramatic opera. While his work, Metamorphosen, uses all those skills, it is something else – a strangely…
Mozart & Birchall: Clarinet Concertos
It is an interesting concept writing a new, contemporary work for an old instrument. One such instrument – an instrument that has fallen out of favour and indeed could be called ‘Mozart’s lost clarin…
Root and Branch by Eda Gunaydin
Root & Branch is the debut essay collection from Eda Gunaydin, a Turkish-Australian writer and academic. Gunaydin’s essays cover a wide range of topics: class, wealth, post-colonisation, whiteness, h…
The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight
In 2019 writer and journalist Sam Knight wrote an article that appeared in The New Yorker. It was titled ‘The psychiatrist who believed people could tell the future’. Knight found the subject of that…
The Matter of Everything by Suzie Sheehy
Despite being inpossession of so little scientific knowledge that the mysteries of the internal combustion engine still elude me, I found myself absorbed by this fascinating book. Suzie Sheehy is a p…
Seven Days by Fleur Ferris
Ben Parker is caught in the middle of divorced parents, convinced he’s always an afterthought in their lives. When his dad leaves on a business trip Ben feels like he’s been dumped with his country r…
Wake by Shelley Burr
It has been nearly 20 years since Evelyn McCreery went missing. She went to sleep one night, in the bed next to her twin sister Mina’s; the next morning she was gone, her bed neatly made, no fingerpr…
Bedtime Story by Chloe Hooper
How does one react when one’s partner is diagnosed with cancer? In her new memoir Bedtime Story, Chloe Hooper is forced to grapple with that question when her partner, Don, is diagnosed with a parti…
The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-Mo
Hornclaw is a 65-year-old contract killer; still lethal but considering retirement. While she may not get an invite to my fantasy dinner party for my favourite literary characters (for practical reas…
People Person by Candice Carty-Williams
Imagine your wayward, largely absent father showing up one fine day offering to take you and your younger brother for ice cream. Along the way, you stop at various unknown houses to collect three com…