Our latest reviews

The Last Sky: Alice Nelson

Reviewed by Mark Rubbo, Managing Director of Readings

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…

Read more ›

The Good Thief: Hannah Tinti

Reviewed by Louise Swinn, Editorial Director of Sleepers Publishing

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…

Read more ›

America America: Ethan Canin

Reviewed by Russ Radcliffe, High Horse Books Publishing

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…

Read more ›

Twilight: Azhar Abidi

Reviewed by Kabita Dhara, Readings Carlton

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…

Read more ›

Life In Seven Mistakes: Susan Johnson

Reviewed by Jo Case, editor of Readings Monthly

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…

Read more ›

Song For Night: Chris Abani

Reviewed by Michelle Calligaro, Assistant Manager of Readings Carlton

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…

Read more ›

Dissection: Jacinta Halloran

Reviewed by Jo Case, editor of Readings Monthly

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…

Read more ›

I Dream Of Magda: Stefan Laszczuk

Reviewed by Sally Keighery, Program Coordinator of CAE Book Groups

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…

Read more ›

Earth to the Dandy Warhols: The Dandy Warhols

Reviewed by James Power, Readings St Kilda

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…

Read more ›

Evening Is The Whole Day: Preeta Samarasan

Reviewed by Maloti Ray, freelance reviewer

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…

Read more ›