Reviewed by Angela Marie “Elaine’s tennis ladies had their own idea of a class system …Humans strive to sort themselves into strata wherever they find themselves – even, or perhaps especially, in a former penal colony. The only group where she hasn’t found that is in her little swimming circle…They’re all equals in the
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders The People vs The Banks is a compelling tale of the events leading to Australia’s royal commission on misconduct in financial services – the first in eighty years. The action takes place in recent years, with emphasis on the commission’s activities from December 2017 to February 2019. Michael Roddan demonstrates how
Reviewed by Ian Lipke I plead guilty to more than a little disquiet when Jonathan Bate’s latest book crosses my desk. However, I know Bate’s work very well and I admit that he is not the person to waste his time on something that is unoriginal. He has never simply re-worded some other scholar’s
Reviewed by Rod McLary Washington Black – the third novel by award-winning Canadian writer Esi Edugyan – is a bildungsroman; that is, a novel which focusses on the moral and psychological growth of a young protagonist from child to adult. Washington Black, the eponymous protagonist, or ‘Wash’ as he is known to his acquaintances, is
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Readers of up-and-coming author Martin Holmen will be interested in the writing style that has a dynamic immediacy of impact in the book Slugger. How to paint a character so that he or she is immediately recognised, how to present insights into the lives of the people around the central character,
Reviewed by Rod McLary Simon Greene is a successful and rich wealth management consultant; his wife Ingrid is an ex-model of Scandinavian origin but is now a respected paediatrician in a private hospital. They live with two of their three children – Anya [the youngest] who is a student at an exclusive private school and
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke This novel is the twenty-third book in the Montalbano detective series written by Italy’s most famous contemporary writer, ninety-four year old, Andrea Camilleri. His books have been written in Italian and translated into English by Stephen Sartarelli, who includes in each Montalbano novel translation a set of illuminating footnotes that explain
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Julie Keys’s book the artist’s portrait is one of the strangest books I have read in a long time. Perhaps the best way to describe how I initially felt about this book is to take a sentence from a letter in the book. ‘Your letter of the 12th reached us a
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The novel Fled is based on the true story of a convict, Mary Bryant, sent to Australia with the First Fleet, who with her two children and a small group of convict men flee Sydney Cove by commandeering a small boat and taking on a perilous journey to Koepang (Timor). Here
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The novel A Dream of Italy, by Nicky Pellegrino, begins with a young Italian man, returning to his roots in a dilapidated medieval town with its narrow streets, fresh mountain air and views across the valley below. When he becomes mayor of Montenello, his goal is to restore the place to
Reviewed by Ian Lipke This is a compelling story based on a real Vogue model who became a photojournalist during World War II. This story traces the real woman’s escapades in France with a totally fictional account of a woman in modern day times struggling to understand the relationship that appears to have existed between
Reviewed by Ian Lipke “Mr Menzies, the Prime Minister, announced that his parliamentary colleague, an honourable opponent, the man who loved his neighbour better than he loved himself, the whimsical philosopher, the man who rose without favour or patronage to the Prime Ministership and he was never far from God, had died suddenly” (7).
Reviewed by Ian Lipke This is one of the better fantasy novels that are being published at the moment. There is a storyline that creaks a bit, a series of strong characters that know how to keep a stiff upper lip, a group of minor characters who are tiresomely presented such that one wonders what
Reviewed by Angela Marie How much rhythmic literary magic can be created from the imagination of one person? An infinite, innumerable amount if the author is Julia Donaldson. Add a talented illustrator to the mix and the result cannot fail to entertain both the reader and the read to. Think Julia Donaldson and we may