Biography and memoir

Dress, Memory by Lorelei Vashti

Reviewed by Stella Charls

Reading Lorelei Vashti’s Dress, Memory feels akin to spending time with a dear friend – the kind who might grip your hand fiercely as they talk, who could be accused of over-sharing but also bravely reveals their private, personal world…

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Optimism: Reflections on a Life of Action by Bob Brown

Reviewed by Maloti Ray

Amid contemporary figures in Australian public life, Greens party founder Bob Brown is an iconoclast. This book of anecdotes is neither a traditional nor entirely chronological memoir. With optimism as the common theme, Brown tells 53 stories, each centred on…

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Chemo by Luke Ryan

Reviewed by Sally Keighery

Stand-up comedy may seem like an odd outlet for a cancer patient but for Luke Ryan it became a way of taking control of his illness, and of rewriting the traditional cancer narrative. Inspired by his sell-out comedy festival show…

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Travelling Without Gods: A Chris Wallace-Crabbe Companion by Cassandra Atherton

Reviewed by Samuel Zifchak

In Travelling without Gods, Cassandra Atherton has assembled an impressive collection of articles, photo-graphs, journal entries and personal reflections that pay tribute to the life and work of Chris Wallace-Crabbe, a linchpin of the Australian literary scene. Drawing on…

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Shy: A Memoir by Sian Prior

Reviewed by Flick Ford

As a well-known journalist, broadcaster, teacher and singer who has spent most of her career in the spotlight, it seems quite strange that Sian Prior’s first book should be all about her shyness. Perhaps more remarkable is that Prior’s discussion…

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The Feel-Good Hit of the Year by Liam Pieper

Reviewed by Nina Kenwood

Liam Pieper’s memoir – of family, addiction and loss – begins in a crumbling, 35-room gothic mansion in Caulfield in the 1980s, where his hippie parents are struggling to raise their children amid the chaos of communal living. From there…

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Dear Leader by Jang Jin-Sung

Reviewed by Alan Vaarwerk

North Korea and its ruling Kim dynasty are often ridiculed in the West as eccentric megalomaniacs with odd habits and funny hair. But for those living under the country’s totalitarian regime, whose daily life – entertainment, relationships, even language itself…

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Gandolfini by Dan Bischoff

Reviewed by Duncan McKimm

The task attempted by Dan Bischoff in posthumously creating a biography of the actor who embodied Tony Soprano is, to say the least, challenging. Chronicling a man who played the fundamental character in such a pivotal series without focusing on…

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The Poet’s Wife by Mandy Sayer

Reviewed by Belle Place

Mandy Sayer’s vivid new memoir, set predominantly in New Orleans, Indiana, and later in Sydney’s Kings Cross, details her volatile ten-year marriage to the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. Two memoirs precede this work: Dreamtime Alice, which detailed the…

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Report from the Interior by Paul Auster

Reviewed by Matthew Benjamin

Who is the ‘You’ that Paul Auster’s memories in Report from the Interior are addressed? Not even addressed, perhaps it is more accurate to say directed, by a giant wagging finger, a bit like Monty Python’s all-crushing foot. Auster’s new…

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