Simone Lazaroo talks to The Compulsive Reader about the making of The Australian Fiance, her unique narrative style, the big themes, Australian literature, photography, poetry, and her next work. Interview by Magdalena Ball Compulsive Reader: Tell us about the background of…
Anne Tyler, a Nineteenth Century Contemporary
Tyler has brought exceptional skill and variety to an unaccustomed area of literary activity, the world of the best-seller. Her combination of popularity and quality recalls the great novelists of another century. Erudite guest reviewer Bob Williams looks at Tyler’s…
Interview with Moses Isegawa
Moses Isegawa talks to The Compulsive Reader about the writing of Abyssinian Chronicles, modern Uganda, on living in exile, and his next book, showing the same dry, wry humour displayed in his novel. Interview by Magdalena Ball Compulsive Reader: Tell me…
A review of Moses Isegawa’s Abyssinian Chronicles
A boy is raised in the land of despots, where the “curried curses of dispossessed property owners” is not necessary to explode into murderous excess. Between his abusive and tyrannical parents, and the abusive and tyrannical dictator Idi Amin, who…
A review of Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers
In 1857, Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley decides to take his boat, the Sincerity, on a little jaunt from the Isle of Mann, to Maldon. Perhaps he wasn’t really selling salted Herring. However, his little voyage turns into something entirely different,…
An Interview with Matthew Kneale
In this exclusive interview, Matthew Kneale talks about the making of English Passengers, some of his main characters, winning the Whitbread, racism, fiction versus reality, and his next book. Interview by Magdalena Ball Compulsive Reader: You’ve mentioned in other interviews that…
A review of Elizabeth Routen’s Voices on the Stair: Collected Stories
There are stories about war, about those who just don’t fit into society, about the US South, and the dissolution of marriage, of life, its limitations and occasional tender beauty. There are unattractive waitresses, fat men, poseurs, blind men, mothers,…
Interview with Elizabeth Routen
The author of Voices on the Stairs talks about the short story form, the making of her first book, her influences, creating characters, self-publication, her next book, and more. Interview by Magdalena Ball Magdalena: Tell me about the genesis of Voices on the…
A Review of Philip Johnson’s e’cco 2
If you casually flip through this book in a shop, you may well be tempted to leave it alone for fear that the dishes are too fancy and fussy for your tastes. That would be a mistake. This is food…
A review of David Malouf’s Dream Stuff
A missing father, a missing uncle, a missing place. David Malouf’s latest book of short stories, Dream Stuff is about longing and nostalgia. A desire to reach across the bridge of time, back to some place which may have never…