This is a terrifying world to find oneself in: walking a medicated line from sanity to insanity and back again. The divide is blurred in this book, partly because of the poet’s egalitarian eye: there is no “us” and “them”. Everyone is hurting, and everyone is both utterly sane, and absolutely mad. Postcards from the Asylum presents a powerful picture of life inside an asylum – tender, warm, loving and fierce all at once.
A review of Magisterium by Joel Deane
A review of Greek Roots by Emmanuel V Alexion
There are perceptive moments, they are just buried beneath unnecessary detail, and skillful assistance would have helped to bring them out and make this a much more lively memoir. Perhaps a second edition? Despite these problems, Emmanuel Alexion has produced a heartfelt and down-to-earth story of he and his wife’s return to their birthplaces, of particular interest to the Greek community in Australia.
A review of Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
But all of us are engaged in creation and consumption in one way or another (the machine I’m using to type this on, or the reams of paper my kids draw on to take two general examples) and the choices we make on how we will conduct those activities, and seeing ourselves as all being part of the great cradle to cradle cycle is an important step forward.
A review of Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
The book is short and sharply structured. It moves quickly and makes its points neatly. It is inescapably cold in some respects but the reader will come from it with an unforgettable experience. It is a pleasure to see a writer of such gifts – albeit sometimes uneven performance – produce a work of this quality.
A review of Birnbaum by Michael Hoffman
The twists of narrative are skillful and Hoffman sustains the interest of the reader right to the end. The conversations are real and Hoffman peoples his novel with convincing characters. He is an expert in what critics once described in the novels of Aldous Huxley as “cold agonies”.
Adrian Thaws, alias Tricky, Delivers Complexity You Can Dance To: Knowle West Boy
The dynamic, fun, imaginative, and thus far well-received album Knowle West Boy features the genre-bending collaborations of Tricky with members of his own boutique label Brown Punk. Tricky is great at presenting complexity, including personal and social contradictions, for which he has found a musical language, mixing very different sounds.
A review of The Write Advice – Inspirations, Observations and Affirmations from Classic and Contemporary Writers by Michael Meanwell
The Write Advice is an interesting collection of affirmations and sayings that you can enjoy whenever you need a little inspiration, to get yourself going, or just for a laugh. This is a neatly presented, well chosen group of sayings that can prove valuable for both changing your mindset, and finding camaraderie and support from the most lofty sources.
A review of The Steele Diaries by Wendy James
The novel is easy to read and moves quickly, effortlessly creating that fictive dream that makes for a pleasurable reading experience, but this is anything but a lighthearted read. The complexities of parenting, the shifting trends of the art world, the struggle to balance self-actualisation and artistic fulfilment with responsibility and love, the way we create and define ourselves, and the relationship between the interior world and the exterior one are all covered with great subtlety and depth.
A review of Good Americans Go to Paris When They Die by Howard Waldman
There’s a spare loveliness to Waldman’s prose, infused as it is with loneliness, humour, and a deep sense of irony in the cyclical prison of our nostalgia for the past. Good Americans Go To Paris When They Die manages a delicate, and all too rare, balancing act between entertainment and introspection.