A review of The Great Big Show by Justin Lowe

It’s as if the characters function as a kind of strophe and antistrophe — the male voices pressing on with the war and the females analysing, wondering, and in their own way, pulling back even as they participate. The tension between these dispersed voices drives the narrative forward and helps give the story a drama which goes beyond the action on the battlefield.

A review of Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero by Lucy Riall

Riall sees the mythos of Garibaldi as an effective if unrealistic public relations tool. His frequent intransigence and independence was as valuable as if he had been the brainless tool of Cavour, Cavour’s successor, or Vittorio Emanuele. In the pursuit of her message she inundates the reader with trivia, which, however relevant, could have been more effectively presented.

A review of Bob Wade: Tribute to a Chess Master

Bob Wade: Tribute to a Chess Master is, first and foremost, a games collection. It collects together just under 250 of Bob Wade’s games, played between 1945 and 2006. There are 27 or 28 (see below) annotated games, with about a third annotated by Wade himself (and included among this number is a hard-fought draw with Bobby Fischer).

This is a story that transcends the limitations of “what actually happens” giving us a deeper sense of truth. What it succeeds at, is not so much uncovering the events that led to and followed the Eureka Stockade, but rather, creating a real, true sense of the people that lived then and what it means in terms of who we all are now.

A review of The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Though McCarthy resists the urge to give the reader too much hope—things can never be made right again–the memories of the boy, of trout that smell of moss in your hand; the “vermiculate patterns” of a world that once was, of the enduring conversations between a boy and his father, remain beautiful. And for his readers, these are things we still have now.

A review of The Blind Rider by Juan Goytisolo

The Blind Rider is a short, intense novel difficult to compare with others in the European canon; there is almost nothing like it. Mr Palomar comes close in intention, perhaps, but The Blind Rider wholly lacks Calvino’s sense of play. It is unrelentingly dark with dread and despair, as serious and unforgiving as Goya’s greatest art.