Reviewed by Ian Lipke Stephanie Bishop is a well-known writer according to the critiques I’ve read. The critics, to a woman, are fulsome in their praise, yet when I review her latest book The Anniversary, I’m thrown into doubt. She begins by telling us that novelist JB Blackwood has taken a holiday with her husband
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Michael Meehan has set his tale in the early 1700s in France during the long reign of King Louis XIV. The lad Antoine Forqueray and later his son Jean-Baptiste had the unenviable reputations of being the only musicians in France capable of performing at a highly sophisticated level on the viola
Reviewed by Tricia Simms-Reeve When our lives are battered by interest rate hikes, cost of living pressures and the environmental devastation of floods or fire, it is a very welcome relief to read Toni Jordan’s latest novel. She handles a family’s dramas with clever humour and delightful descriptions. Her characters’ everyday lives, although ordinary, are
Reviewed by Rod McLary Sebastian Barry is one of our finest writers. His previous novels have twice won the Costa Book of the Year [in 2008 and 2017], the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and two have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Days Without End and A Thousand Moons, his two most recent novels,
Reviewed by Rod McLary Readers will come to this new book by Eleanor Catton with memories of her winning the Booker Prize in 2013 with her novel The Luminaries. Aged just 28, she was the youngest-ever winner; and The Luminaries was a complex and lengthy historical mystery. Ten years later, Birnam Wood is a different
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Dominic Smith has the gift of transporting a reader to an unfamiliar world, but brings it to life with writing that is carefully chosen, beautiful and haunting. In the Last Painting of Sara De Vos, it was the era of the great Dutch Masters. In his latest novel, Return to Valetto,
Reviewed by E. B. Heath The world lives in small rooms. Salom p.365 More than once during the first seventy odd pages I wondered if I cared enough to continue. But then … characters gained traction, subject matter became both real and interesting, the narrative and dialogue authentic, empathy was building and I started to
Reviewed by Rod McLary Cormac McCarthy is best known as one of America’s finest writers – he is the author of The Road, No Country for Old Men and what some critics believe to be his greatest novel Blood Meridian published in 1985. Perhaps lesser known is that McCarthy works with the Santa Fe Institute
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The story The Wrong Sister by Fiona Palmer is an interesting and easy book to read about family relationships, growing up and forming new relationships outside the family, as well as the impact on families of devastating diseases. What a tangled web Fiona Palmer has given the reader in her latest
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders Stand-up comedians don’t live in the real world, do they? They are wealthy, slumber in designer beanbags and see jokes in everything. This makes them happy, carefree and able to devote their creative genius to expanding their fortunes. Imagine my surprise to find that the A-list comedian, Wil Anderson, star of
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The Choice is the third book in the Dragon Heart Legacy trilogy by Nora Roberts. Although a reading of the first two books enhances what is in this book, it can be read on its own because the prologue provides the basic outline of the story so far. However, having already
Reviewed by Rod McLary The Passenger is the first novel from Cormac McCarthy – one of America’s finest writers – in sixteen years. His previous novel The Road was published in 2006 and was a post-apocalyptic novel in which an unidentified cataclysmic event destroyed civilization. The Road won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The author, Inga Simpson, says that the book came about from a challenge in a 2015 article entitled ‘Just not Cricket: Where are the Great Australian Cricket Novels?’ (401). I must admit I was not immediately drawn to this story as I am not a dedicated cricket fan. However, once I
Reviewed by Rod McLary Alex Miller is one of Australia’s finest writers – and is the winner of Miles Franklin Literary Awards for The Ancestor Game [in 1992] and Journey to the Stone Country [in 2003] and has won several other awards. A Brief Affair is his fifteenth novel and, as he does in his
Reviewed by Ian Lipke When Adam Brewster, the protagonist of John Irving’s new novel, The Last Chairlift finds himself enmeshed in an incestuous affair with his unmarried mother, all the signs flash “Beware! This book may not be worth the time needed to read it.” The fleshpots are further indicated by the naming of the