Our latest reviews
The Casuals by Sally Breen
The Casuals has been blurbed as Generation X’s version of Puberty Blues. Like Sally, I was born in 1975, and grew up in an outer suburb where ‘new estates explode out of the bushland like instant Lego lands’, so…
Breathing Lessons, Music for Saxophone Quartet
Most people outside of conservatoriums don’t hear any sort of woodwind quartet regularly but recently a number of high quality Saxophone Quartet recordings have been released and Breathing Lessons is the next one that, for any discerning listener of contemporary…
Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter
I made the bold claim the other day that “EVERYONE LOVES A HEIST NOVEL” and of course then someone said “BUT I DON’T LOVE HEIST NOVELS!” So I said “THAT’S JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T READ ANY ALLY CARTER BOOKS”. Does…
Small Blue Thing by S.C. Ransom
Small Blue Thing was definitely an interesting read. It’s set in England which is a really nice change from all the American settings and language.
Alex just a seventeen-year-old girl living her life (and going through her exams) when she…
De Luxe by Lenny Bartulin
A lot of blurbs around the traps insinuate that Lenny Bartulin could be some distant Australian relative of Raymond Chandler, a claim that I first laughed at but now, to be quite honest, am seriously considering.
Bartulin’s wrong-place-wrong-time hero, Jack…
Clara in Washinton by Penny Tangey
One of the many things to like about this novel is the main character, Clara. She is such a likeable, intelligent young woman, poised between Year 12 and university. The way she is focused on the things thatboth limit and…
The Land At The End Of The World by Antonio Lobo Antunes
[[antonio]]The Land at the End of the World is a new translation of the second novel by António Lobo Antunes (left), generally regarded as Portugal’s most important living novelist. Published in his native country as Os Cus de Judas…
How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
‘In strewn banners that lay like streamers from a long ago parade the sun’s fading seraphim rays gleamed onto the hood of the old Ford and ribboned the steel with the meek orange of a June tomato straining at the…
The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung
Hyped as 1984 for our age, this tale delivers like a velvet sledgehammer – the characters are gentle and happy and the society they inhabit is both utopia and dystopia. The ‘fat years’ of the title refers to a China…
Only Ever Always by Penni Russon
Can it be that somewhere we have a double? Someone in another place or another world in whom we recognise ourselves? Claire’s loved uncle is in an accident and in her state of shock the music box he gave her…
Browse our reviews by category
