A stranger walks into a church in America’s deep south, looking for sanctuary. Not religious, but physical sanctuary. It’s worked before. Many times. When the churchgoers arrive, they do not wake the stranger, carrying on their service around the sleeping figure. When finally jolted awake the stranger doesn’t speak and…
Red Sea Spies by Raffi Berg is proof that true life can be just as spectacular, and unputdownable, as fiction
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2020 was to read more non-fiction books. It wasn’t that I have ever made a conscious decision to avoid them, there was just too much temptation from the world of fiction. Red Sea Spies by Raffi Berg is a brilliant example of what…
Review: The Deceptions by Suzanne Leal
With the arrival of the Germans, I became a Jewish girl who happened to live in Czechoslovakia rather than a Czech girl who happened to be Jewish. Growing up in Prague, young Hana Lederová’s world had been carefree. The only child of doting parents her father’s job as a dentist…
Good Dogs Don’t Make it to the South Pole by Hans-Olav Thyvold: wise and witty words on the power of companionship direct from man’s best friend
Do you talk to your dog? Not just “walkies” or “good girl” but conversations. More to the point, does your canine join in the conversation? If your answer is yes, then you are going to love Good Dogs Don’t Make it to the South Pole by Hans-Olav Thyvold a quirky,…
Here Until August by Josephine Rowe is amazing, on so many levels
I always face the same dilemma when I am opening a book of short stories: whether to read them all in one go, and risk the overall experience blurring the impact of each one or progress more slowly, even stopping after every one for a minimum couple of hours, to savour…
Inner monologue on loss and love in Strange Hotel by Eimear McBride
In Irish novelist Eimear McBride’s much awaited new novel, Strange Hotel, a woman, not young or old, has checked into a hotel in Avignon, France. It is as nondescript as the others on her carefully curated list of cities around the world where she has stayed previously, or is to…
Diversity of Australian characters on the margins revealed in Miles Franklin Literary Award long list
Two debut novels, Room for a Stranger by Melanie Cheng and Act of Grace by Anna Krien, are included in the longlist for Australia’s prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award, announced this week. Six other contenders have previously been short-listed the Miles Franklin including Gerald Murnane, considered a candidate for the Nobel…
Don’t be put off by its brevity, Jenny Offill’s Weather packs a mighty literary punch
Lizzie Benson, the narrator of Jenny Offill’s latest novel Weather, is a failed university student, librarian, surveyor of life and lives, and enthusiastic amateur psychiatrist. She is busily absorbed in managing the everyday: her relationship with husband Ben, a laid-back IT specialist, caring for her worryingly bright son, religion-obsessed mother…
Review: The Satapur Moonstone cements Perveen Mistry as one of crime’s most fascinating characters
It is 1922 and Perveen Mistry, the first lady lawyer in Bombay, is hired by The Kolhapur Agency, which manages, on behalf of the Colonial British government in India, the princely states in the western region. She is to travel to the kingdom of Satapur, about 300 miles away, as…
Review: The Viennese Girl, an extraordinary true story of friendship, love and survival in occupied Jersey
One of the most popular tourist attractions for visitors to the beautiful island of Jersey, to the south of England, is the Occupation Tapestry; 12 colourful and detailed panels which eloquently tell the story of the German occupation of the island, and eventual liberation between 1940-45. Each intricate stitch is…