Trains and boats and planes – modes of transport abound in Barry Stewart Hunter’s interestingly varied collection of short stories, although the people they convey are seldom up to speed with their own lives. Persons in transit and the mental dislocations they experience are a recurring motif; thematically, however, there is a great deal more going on, much of which is intriguingly elusive.
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina is a novel that beguiles and intrigues. The world it depicts and dissects remains fascinating in itself. Its characters are among the most memorable ever created. And the targets and outward forms of social disapproval may be different now to what they were then, but they nevertheless exist. The world is still an awfully harsh place to those who step out of line or who cannot enter into prescribed ways of thinking and feeling.
We have a 3 book set of the Flinders Range series by Tricia Stringer including Heart of the Country, Dust on the Horizon, and Jewel of the North to giveaway. To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter.
Good luck!
A review of The Restorer by Michael Sala
Maryanne’s own sense of self in relation to her overbearing mother and Freya’s sense of self in relation to Maryanne are handled with such richness that they give the story a great deal of depth, even as it pushes towards its inevitable outcome. The Restorer is a beautifully written and very powerful fiction that not only shines a light on the deep roots of domestic violence but also plays with the line of what remains in the face of such destruction. Sala’s story that will stay with the reader long after the book is finished.
Strange Migrations: on the novel Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
For the cast of characters the present has no meaning. They are suspended between the places they have left and a fantasy of a future home. These are the superimpositions of images that color their thoughts, their dreams, and their narratives – the binaries of home and abroad, the past and the future, the real and fantasy.
A review of The Golden Child by Wendy James
The plot moves fast, the narrative driving the reading towards its final unnerving twist. It all happens almost too quickly. James’ writing is so smooth, and the story so powerfully plotted, that its easy to miss how neatly the shifts are between the individual voices, the many delicate links between cause and effect and the parallels between adults and children as we move from one character to another, the way the reader is unwittingly drawn into the toxic culture of privilege that underpins these characters, or how subtle the thematics.
A review of Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher and Anger and the Indigo Child by dianne Lancaster
n Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher the main character is a person. And since he’s not a real person on earth that we’ll be able to find, he’s living on another earth exactly the same as ours. In fact, you are living on another earth exactly the same as ours. He earns this, as does the writing because it’s him.
A review of Hope Farm by Peggy Frew
Hope Farm is an exquisite and powerful book that explores the gaps between desire, societal norms, and love, loss, and memory. Both Silver and Ishtar’s story is deeply affecting, and as full of beauty as it is of verisimilitude.
A review of Wild Gestures by Lucy Durneen
The language is silky and seductive and as a reader I was drawn in, drifting about like a leaf in a stream taking in sights, sounds and feelings. Lucy Durneen leaves the door open to her mind and as the pages pass I’m looking out of her eyes focusing and feeling the world as she describes and experiences it.
We have a copy of The Origins of Benjamin Hackett by Gerald M. O’Connor to giveaway. To win, just sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site.
The winner will be drawn by the 1st of April from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!