Reviewed by Ian Lipke Every now and then a book comes along that makes you want to read and read, forgetting all other responsibilities in the enjoyment of the task. Such a book is David Haskell’s Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction. Haskell takes us back to
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Australian poet Les Murray’s poems can be read as reflective of his own life views, his original outlook on social issues such as homelessness, and the importance of rural Australian culture. Natural sacramentalism and the significance of ordinary lives, as shown in An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow and Spring Hail, are common
Reviewed by Rod McLary Keep yourself to yourself [Charles Causley]. This line of poetry, quoted in the epigraph to Mother’s Boy, was written by Charles Causley – a poet born in the small town of Launceston in Cornwall – and is indicative of his life in that he was a very private person. The line
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Steven Carroll has taken fragments from the facts concerning the tortured life of TS Eliot’s first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, to weave a masterly restructuring of her life. Until the publication of her diaries this year, it was maintained that she suffered serious mental illness all her life, inflicted damage to her
Reviewed by Antonella Townsend Concepts planted in our psyche through music and other media unconsciously inform what we create. p. 278 A master class in presenting serious themes with a feather light touch. And so very funny! Allayne Webster’s That Thing I Did has all the elements of an intriguing young-adult novel – four young
Reviewed by Richard Tutin There is a song that came out some years ago where the singer complains about how hard it is to be humble when they are perfect in every way. While this smacks of self-centred boasting, the desire to be perfect has been ingrained into the human psyche since the beginning of
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The book Dare to be Different: Inspirational Words from People who Changed the World is a hard covered 19.5 x 25.5 cm publication which is a rich and exciting compendium for children of quotes from speeches, letters, lyrics, stories, and poems by people who have done wonderful things during their lifetime.
Reviewed by Richard Tutin Anyone who was interred in the Auschwitz prison camp during World War II was, more often than not, destined never to be released. Auschwitz has gone down in history as one of, if not the most, despicable places of death and torture created by human beings. It was a place where
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Although Afghanistan has a rich literary tradition, life there is a struggle to survive in the twenty-first century, to the degree that writing is almost a luxury, especially for the women. My Pen is the Wing of a Bird is an unusual title but strikingly conveys that, by writing, these women
Reviewed by Rod McLary Those Who Perish is the fourth in the award-winning Caleb Zelic series. Two of the earlier books [And Fire Came Down and Darkness for Light] have been favourably reviewed in these pages. For those readers new to the books, Caleb is profoundly deaf from contracting meningitis as a five-year-old. He is
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders How would you feel if you were happily working overseas, then arrested without trial and deported to another country and held indefinitely in custody by armed guards? All through no fault of your own. Such was the fate of Miyakatsu Koike, a Japanese national, working in Indonesia for a Japanese bank.
Reviewed by Ian Lipke If there is no difference between a fantasy novel and a fantastical one, there should be. Richard Swan’s novel The Justice of Kings is a vastly different enterprise from Ken Follett’s Never, which is an epic tale of the fanciful. Richard Swan’s book is epic in size but certainly not in
Reviewed by Clare Brook When thinking of occupied France during the Second World War, one does not usually associate the brutality of the Gestapo and their ever-present Swastika Flags flapping in the Parisian breeze, with the elegant swish of Christian Dior’s haute couture, but Christine Wells has brought both together in her novel Sisters of
Reviewed by Ian Lipke The premise of this book is simple: to save your loved one’s life, you have to play and win the game. Across the globe five strangers receive a horrifying message, texted from a number unfamiliar to them. The message makes clear that the person loved most is in danger. ‘To save
Reviewed by Gail McDonald The Dictator’s Wife is set in the town of Poarta, capital of the fictitious country Yanussia, in eastern Europe under the dictatorship of Constantin Popa the country’s executive president. However, according to the author Freya Berry, the story, although it is fiction, is ‘heavily rooted in fact ‘ after she spent