This is an accessible collection with stories that almost always add up to something which wasn’t there before. The economy and careful construction of this work is one which a serious reader will appreciate–Moorhouse has chosen well–but overall, what is…
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of The Penultimate Peril (Book the Twelfth) by Lemony Snicket
The plot is very good, taking unexpected turns in every chapter. The most appealing thing for me though, is that the main characters, despite their young age, are heroic, and manage some very difficult tasks, getting into some situations that…
A review of Jukebox Music by Tony Nesca
The musical background is a strong influence in Nesca’s poetry. In the present collection there are references to Stan Getz, Billie Holliday, and Count Basie as well as to more current groups. The musical influence is also apparent in the…
A review of Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B. S. Johnson by Jonathan Coe
Like all heresies, his novels challenge our most fundamental beliefs: our belief in the moral integrity of ‘fiction’, our belief in the usefulness of storytelling when the daily truths thrown up by our misbegotten world cry out for immediate, practical…
A review of The White Earth by Andrew McGahan
This is a passionate, powerful and beautifully written story which contains all of the elements of good fiction, and is the culmination of a skill which has been growing with each of McGahan‘s exceptional novels. In The White Earth McGahan’s prose maintains…
A review of Girlosophy – Real Girls Eat By Anthea Paul
The book’s content is all about empowerment through food knowledge: respecting your body through choosing to cook, understand nutrition, and choosing to eat and exercise in a way that will give you the energy to do whatever you want. Paul…
A review of 10 Minutes to the Pitch by Chris Abbott
Abbott is exactly the person you want to take this kind of advice from. She’s one of the most well known writer-producers in the business, with a welter of successful television and film credits to her name (including Magnum PI…
A review of Among the Blacks: Two Works by Raymond Roussel and Ron Padgett
The translation is a delicate, accomplished work that captures perfectly the placid emptiness that lies at the heart of Roussel’s world. A flurry of outlandish and bizarre events is related to the reader, but in a manner that is formal,…
A review of The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
The humour is at its strongest when it mixes the exotic with the homely. At one point Marlborough, a kind of latter-day Noah, says of his sisters, one of whom is a werewolf who comes to mate with a wolf,…
A review of Peninsula by Trevor Hewett
Hewett observes and writes about those things which others tend to ignore, and allows the close, and very quiet perspective he takes to reveal its own meaning, without judgement or fanfare. This is an easy to read, and tenderly chosen…