Our latest reviews
Owl Know How by Cat Rabbit & Isobel Knowles
Oh my! Here in my hands is sweetness and delight: sheer creative joy! The papercraft endpapers of Owl Know How herald a handmade world of invention and patience along with a team of crafty rabbits, not to mention adorable owls…
The Mountain by Drusilla Modjeska
The Mountain opens in the heady years just prior to Papua New Guinea’s independence, a country grappling with the transition from Australian colony to independent nation. The new university is a magnet for a range of different people and has…
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Hardly famed as an instrument of understatement, Gary Oldman nevertheless proves just that as George Smiley, John le Carré’s frog-mouthed MI6 spook in this new adaptation from Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In).
Sapped of the chic…
The Weight of a Human Heart by Ryan O’Neill
When Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad was propelled into the literary stratosphere last year (helped along by a small prize called the Pulitzer), one chapter in particular seemed to crop up in all related conversations. That was…
Running Dogs by Ruby J. Murray
Despite Indonesia’s proximity and its intense, at times turbulent relationship with Australia, relatively few Australian novels are set there. Is this because, as the Australian character in Running Dogs suggests, when it comes to Jakarta, let alone the whole country…
The Meaning of Grace by Deborah Forster
Grace is wife to down-trodden Ian Fisher, who suffers from depression. She is mother to their daughters Edith (Edie) and Juliet who were born in quick succession but, having decided they weren’t going to have any more, a few years…
Skagboys by Irvine Welsh
1993 was the year in which Irvine Welsh was flung into the bestseller/cult realm with his debut, Trainspotting. Since then, he has continued to riff on ideas of masculinity, and other, bleaker, aspects of life.
I was thrilled to…
Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
She was the woman who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf. Clarice Lispector, born in the Ukraine and raised in Brazil, catapulted to fame in 1943 with the publication of her first novel, Near to the Wild…
The Server by Tim Parks
A confession of favouritism: I love Tim Parks’ essays and book reviews. He’s an original journalist and a master of short form nonfiction. Nevertheless, I hadn’t read any of his novels before The Server. I was particularly curious, not…
The Girl who Fell from the Sky by Simon Mawer
Marian is your everyday girl living through WWII. Only just 18 years old, she’s doing her bit by working for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) when a secret meeting with a ‘Mr Potter’ from the Inter Services Research Bureau…
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