‘He feels a crease of disappointment, but it’s a mere fingerprint in a pie’s crust, one of the many dimples pressed into the soft dough of his soul. That quote, from the exquisite opening paragraph in chapter one of Mirandi Riwoe’s A SHORT HISTORY OF LONGANS, sets the tone for this most sublime of novels. […]
If you are a fan of Kris Kneen’s writing, you might come to Rite of Spring for the erotica. And, yes, there’s plenty of that. But this book is so much more. I think of it as an allegory for bodily change and transformation. Through the central character of Miranda, Kneen invites the reader to […]
Edwina Shaw shines a direct and bright light on evil and society’s role in it by weaving fact, creative non-fiction, and memoir in this exploration of generational trauma. Who would imagine that an account of horrific murder and its consequences could be both frightening and tender? There’s a wide vulnerability between the pages that I […]
Prepare yourself for a magical, lyrical, poetic journey as you wind your way from the end to the beginning and back again in this stunningly original novel. I read it slowly, returning to passages and sentences, mulling over words, constantly astounded. “And I learnt in that moment that love is a document that has to […]
Full disclosure: I purchased this book for the sole purpose of examining the structure, after discovering that the whole novel is set over a time period of just one hour. I wanted to see how the author managed it. What I discovered is that she achieved it with finely-crafted, exquisite skill. Walker etches characters with […]
I read this quite a while ago, actually, but my travels got in the way of writing about it. Donna M Cameron won a KSP Fellowship for the manuscript, and rightly so; the novel is beautiful. Goodbye, Sydney, city of mirrors, beautiful whore who has sucked him dry. The subject matter lends itself to something […]
What a fantastic debut crime thriller from Elise Janes (Jett Books). Cover art: tick (by Kylie Pye Design) Setting: tick (primarily Melbourne, one of my favourite cities) Mystery: tick (What is Sam’s secret? What happened to Catriona? Are there more paintings?) Crime: tick (eight deaths … and counting?) Subject: tick (Murder, […]
‘Doll Parts’ is a dual timeline suspense involving goth girls, the poetry of Sylvia Plath, a string of suicides, and a fractured, yet resilient, friendship. Cleverly entwining poetry and popular music with lyric prose, Zang takes us on a beautiful journey through girlhood and beyond. “‘It was the kind of pink-hazed sky that called for […]
I loved Lyn Yeowart’s first book, ‘The Silent Listener’ and so I came to ‘The Hollow Girl’ with high expectations. Thankfully, I was not disappointed. The blurb intro sets the scene: HARROWFORD HALL A safe haven for lost girls? Or a breeding ground for revenge? Harrowford Hall is aptly named. It is, indeed, a harrowing place, […]
I’m more than a little late to the party with Janet Lee’s 2018 book (the manuscript won the Emerging Queensland Writer category in the 2017 Queensland Literary Awards) ‘The Killing of Louisa’ (UQP). What a stunning imagining of the real Louisa Collins’ final days as she remembers her big life events. Louisa’s thoughts on her […]
