Our latest reviews
The Last Sky: Alice Nelson
Shortlisted for last year’s Vogel Award, this is Alice Nelson’s first novel. Maya and her husband, Joseph, are academics. She is working on Poussin, he, an archaeologist, has just taken a position at Hong Kong University. It is just a…
The Good Thief: Hannah Tinti
At the start of Hannah Tinti’s debut novel, twelve-year-old, one-handed Ren has been stuck in an orphanage for as long as he can remember. He doesn’t know how he lost his hand or what happened to his parents. When Benjamin…
America America: Ethan Canin
Ethan Canin has published several short story collections and some promising novels including the very fine Carry Me Across the Water, but he has moved up several notches with America America.
The funeral of a famous liberal senator…
Twilight: Azhar Abidi
I loved Azhar Abidi’s first novel, Passarola Rising, a historical fable set in eighteenth-century Portugal about a fantastical air voyage by a pair of Brazilian brothers. His latest novel, while just as absorbing and lyrical, is set closer to…
Life In Seven Mistakes: Susan Johnson
To paraphrase Tolstoy, every unhappy family is different, but they’re also the same. In this darkly affectionate comic novel, the adult children bicker among themselves and unite to bitch about their parents; alternately judge and conspire with each other’s spouses…
Song For Night: Chris Abani
Song for Night is a powerful piece of prose portraying the shocking experiences of an African boy soldier. ‘My Luck’ belongs to a team trained to defuse mines with jungle knives. They have their vocal chords severed so they are…
Dissection: Jacinta Halloran
Melbourne GP Dr Anna McBride is suffering under the weight of a three-year-old malpractice suit. Her carefully constructed life is disintegrating, both personally and professionally. The tone of the novel is oddly detached, intensely inwardly focused. Anna, a perfectionist ill-equipped…
I Dream Of Magda: Stefan Laszczuk
Last year’s Vogel winner reminds us that breaking up is hard to do. Left by their respective girlfriends, the Harrison brothers lead a shambolic existence, numb with grief. Matthew retreats into an imaginary tryst with comedienne Magda Szubanski while younger…
Earth to the Dandy Warhols: The Dandy Warhols
On this follow up to 2005’s Oddortorium or Warlords of Mars it’s not until track 4’s (Wasp in the Lotus) that you realise you are in fact listening to the Dandy Warhols. From here on in, it’s classic Dandys with…
Evening Is The Whole Day: Preeta Samarasan
The exquisite challenge of portraying modern Malaysia is in the conveying of subtle paradoxes. Authoritarian yet democratic, stable yet fractious, multicultural yet segregated, its nuances have defied capture in recent literature. While Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng set their…