Here’s the first batch of mini reviews I commissioned from some of my Twitter followers. They get a free book, I retweet the review to my followers and publish it here (slightly edited). It can be over two tweets. Enjoy!
Boys of Summer by Peter Skrzynecki. Great coming of age story set in Sydney’s western suburbs during ’50s. Really captures Polish migrant life & the role of the church. The novel’s pivotal events are told with great impact, & deal with very current issues.
Room by Emma Donoghue engages our pity and horror by turns, and leaves us with a profound sense of empathy for 5-year-old Jack. A fairy tale for the modern world – & like all good fairy tales, dark and uncomfortable. Unputdownable.
Evil in Return, Elena Forbes – Competently structured London-based crime novel, using suitably conflicted hero Mark Tartaglia and his URSTwhile partner Sam, is let down by transparent authorial machinations which result in a lack of genuine tension.
Sam Lipstye’s novel The Ask, delivers clichéd penis humour that died in the ’70s – Portnoy’s Complaint, it ain’t. Protagonist ‘Milo’, is a middle-aged, underachiever, with boring contemplations that fail to grab audience attention.
