Biography and memoir
Understory by Inga Simpson
‘I see the world through trees. Every window and doorway frames trunks, limbs and leaves.’ Inga Simpson’s memoir Understory, in the tradition of the best nature writing, leads us into an internal landscape made external, and an external landscape…
Adult Fantasy by Briohny Doyle
Briohny Doyle is a thirty-something millennial. The only daughter of a pair of middle-class, educated baby boomers, Doyle has a PhD but works as a greengrocer; she has a long-term partner, but they live in separate sharehouses. The questions about…
Woman of Substances by Jenny Valentish
Jenny Valentish presents a raw, but relatable, account of her encounter with addiction. Woman of Substances is eminently readable, honest and revealing, not just about Valentish’s personal life and traumatic events in it, but also about the politics of addiction…
For a Girl by Mary-Rose MacColl
For a Girl is the story Mary-Rose MacColl has been writing around all her life. Its themes – of sexual misconduct and secrets – have driven her critically acclaimed novels, Falling in Snow and Swimming Home. In this heartbreaking…
Between Them by Richard Ford
Richard Ford is the only child of older parents. Before he was born, his parents spent years driving around the South of the US for his father’s job, selling industrial quantities of starch. After his birth, he and his mother…
The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy’s first book, Female Chauvinist Pigs (2005), was an influential feminist work on raunch culture and the sexualisation of women. In the 12 years since its publication, Levy has written primarily for the New Yorker, including a remarkable…
The Other Mother by Kelly Chandler
Immediately I was struck by what an absolute pleasure it is to read a book set in my local neighbourhood. Of course, not everyone will understand the Ruckers Hill references – however, rest assured, this will not deter from the…
Beyond The Rock by Janelle Mcculloch
Just like Janelle McCulloch, the author of Beyond the Rock (about Lady Joan Lindsay and her masterpiece Picnic at Hanging Rock), I too have been captivated by the story of that fateful Valentine’s Day picnic in 1900, ever since…
Things That Helped by Jessica Friedmann
Last year I was challenged by Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, a book its publisher categorised as ‘autotheory’, a kind of hybrid of autobiography and critical theory. Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick (which I read when it was republished last…
The Green Bell by Paula Keogh
The Green Bell by Paula Keogh is subtitled ‘A Memoir of Love, Madness and Poetry’. Mostly set in Canberra in 1972, it is also an homage to the 1970s and the social and cultural changes of the time.
In 1972…
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