Category: Literary Fiction Reviews

A review of Tom Keneally’s Bettany’s Book

 Bettany’s Book has just been released in paperback. The generosity of Bettany’s Book leads us to not only follow the strivings of the Bettany family and those whose paths they cross, such as Sharif and Felix, the “Europeanised, educated natives”,…

A Review of The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra

 Mishra oversimplifies his characters till they remain nothing but poorly illustrated cardboard cutouts. Samar’s character emerges slowly and painfully from the murky undergrowth of the meagre plot. And most of his personality remains obscured by the slime he insists on…

A Review of Louis de Bernieres’ Red Dog

The cute little red book has 15 sweet and poignant stories based on the real life of a well known dog whose bronze statue appears in Karratha, a Western Australia mining town. Aside from the evil wind which Red Dog…

A Review of Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup

Nadine Gordimer has written over 25 books, and has won the Booker and Nobel Prizes. The Pickup is her 13th novel, and perhaps, at 77 years of age, she no longer feels the need to pander to an audience. The Pickup certainly raises questions…

A Review of E M Forster’s A Room With A View

I found A Room with a View to be, if not in the absolute top rank, nevertheless a very worthwhile piece of literature. Aside from being a sensitive study of a woman who often doesn’t know herself well enough, it is a…

A Review of Tim Winton’s Dirt Music

 Dirt Music is one of those books that gets under your skin. Comes into your bed with you; changes your dreams; travels with you throughout the mundane details of everyday life. Winton’s descriptive prose works both externally in its depiction…

The Dead: An Outline Commentary

 Noted Joycean Bob Williams provides a very thorough overview of one of the most beautiful and complex of short stories from James Joyce’s Dubliners. by Bob Williams Lily begins the story and she begins with a funny solecism: she “was literally…

A review of Salman Rushdie’s Fury

 At 55, the Indian born, NY dwelling protagonist of Rushdie’s latest novel Fury, has the kind of rage which causes him to stand with a knife over the sleeping bodies of his wife and son, scream in public, and slip between…

A Review of Robert Dessaix’s Corfu

 Corfu: A Novel is an ambitious work, which uses a range of literary techniques such as complex time sequencing, incorporation of other texts, and mise-en-abyme, or a series of stories within a story, to convey its meaning. The narrative moves forward…