Tag: Australian fiction

A review of The Turning by Tim Winton

The Turning often makes for painful reading, as we are drawn deeply into the heart of these stunted, unhappy, and sometimes doomed lives, but Winton’s prose is transcendent. Taken together, these stories create their own turning, a sense that life…

A Review of The Prosperous Thief by Andrea Goldsmith

Andrea Goldsmith’s fifth book is an historical novel that looks at the lives of Heini Heck and the Lewins – the two opposing sides of the Holocaust which intersect, and the impact that this has on their children as the stories moves forward in time to the modern day. While presenting a compelling and powerful story, the novel explores a wide range of topics including crime, punishment, good, evil, pain, survival and the legacy that acts of these nature leave across generations in permanent repercussions.

A Review of Andrew McGahan’s Last Drinks

The style is serviceable but without the lift and lilt that distinguishes the classic practitioners of the novel noir, Chandler and Hammett. A purist might think that McGahan is careless regarding grammatical niceties but this is a common failing and…

A Review of Hindustan Contessa by Jane Watson

Part of the tension in the book is created by the fact that we glimpse all of the action through Tillie’s diary – a kind of mini-summation first person narrative. The different threads of the story are revealed separately in…

A review of Joan London’s Gilgamesh

It is 1939, just prior to the outbreak of World War 2. A young Australian woman and her baby make the near impossible journey to Armenia to find the baby’s father. It is a journey based on love, and romantic…

A review of Sue Gough’s The Nether Regions

 The Nether Regions is a marvellous novel, coupling linguistic beauty with humour, psychological fascination and intensity. Reviewed by Magdalena Ball The Nether Regions is Sue Gough’s first adult novel, but she isn’t new to writing. She has written 17 books,…

A Review of Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish

 In its gorgeous use of language, its extraordinary structure, its ambitiously realised depths, and above all, the magic it works on its reader, Gould’s Book of Fish is a masterpiece. Read it for the interesting story, and find yourself, like Hammett, lost…