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.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of In Hubble’s Shadow by Carol Smallwood
What’s interesting in all of Smallwood’s work is how she manages to put together myriad disparities to create a whole. Thematically, these poems are drawn together by the overarching concept of exploration of the universe, but the poems themselves are as diverse and disparate as poems from different authors.
A review of The Loyalty of Chickens by Jenny Blackford
It’s rare to come across a collection that is suitable for such a broad age range, and yet Blackford, something of a literary jill-of-all-trades, manages it perfectly. Though her poems are lighthearted, often exploring the secret and not so secret world of animals and other aspects of nature, they are anything but facile. Often there is a dark heart, or a rich philosophical exploration of the nature of psychology, history and mythology.
Behind the Scenes with the Master of Espionage Thrillers: A review of The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carré
I closed The Pigeon Tunnel wanting more. More behind-the-scenes confessions. More striking prose from this master of evocative description. But Cornwell knows when and how to end a tale and leaves us with an anecdote loaded with both humor and irony.
A review of Kafka’s Shadow by Judith Skillman
It takes a lot of craftsmanship to have readers get inside the personalities and the culture of the characters in poems based on scholarship and detailed research—a huge task; all of the poems stick to the topic of Kafka and explore aspects of his family and his times.
A review of Dream Catcher by Margie Shaheed
Margie Shaheed’s Dream Catcher poems are eloquently woven word quilts. Life-filled, sensual, powerful, tender, courageous and unapologetic. Her poems are beautiful, richly crafted testaments written by a woman who knows and understands life in its many nuances.
A review of The Adventures of Fawn: ‘Til the Last Snowflake Falls by Al E. Boy
Chicanery, greed, a desire to capture and sell North Pole inhabitants to a zoo, parental love, friendship, and a little magic all come together to create a memorable tale well worth the reading.
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.