Here’s the second 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! @toria_jayne: Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog is a clever crime novel with a complex … Continue reading More bite-sized book reviews
Other People’s Words
Guest review: Lisa Down on Making News by Tony Wilson
Murdoch Books July 2010 9781741969238 (Aus) reviewed by Lisa Down Remember the old saying, ‘Write what you know’? It’s an adage former AFL player, author and columnist Tony Wilson must have taken to heart. His latest offering, Making News, revolves around, well… a retired soccer player, an aspiring young columnist and an author, who … Continue reading Guest review: Lisa Down on Making News by Tony Wilson
Guest review: Lyndon Riggall on Five Wounds by Jonathan Walker & Dan Hallett
Allen & Unwin, 2010 9781742370132 (Aus, US, UK) To call your novel 'illuminated' is a dangerous thing. Five Wounds' claim holds with it the expectation that it should be something beyond a typical read. An 'illuminated novel' must be more than novel: no minor feat, and no small promise. I am glad to say that … Continue reading Guest review: Lyndon Riggall on Five Wounds by Jonathan Walker & Dan Hallett
Guest review: Greg Westenberg on John Mateer’s The West: Australian Poems 1989–2009
Fremantle Press, 2010 (Aus, US, UK) 9781921361869 Remember that Renaissance sculpture you admired, briefly, in a Roman or Florentine church, cool and hard and chiselled and, perhaps a little too dramatically posed? Reading John Mateer’s collection of poems The West, gives an analogous sensation. The sculptors worked in marble that kept its material nature, the hardness … Continue reading Guest review: Greg Westenberg on John Mateer’s The West: Australian Poems 1989–2009
Guest review: Gerard Elson on Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories
Faber/Allen & Unwin (Aus, US, UK) November 2010 (orig. 1997) 9780571270248 Reviewed by Gerard Elson It’s been a big twelve months for Tim Burton. Tim Burton: The Exhibition drew record crowds during seasons at both New York’s MoMA and Melbourne’s ACMI, and his visually brillig (though otherwise rote) Alice in Wonderland became just the sixth film … Continue reading Guest review: Gerard Elson on Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories
Guest review: Genevieve Tucker on Colm Tóibín’s The Empty Family
Picador November 2010 9781405040235 (Aus, US, UK) Reviewed by Genevieve Tucker Much has been made around the traps of the fact that Colm Tóibín published a story in his last collection that used the word empty (and words deriving from it) fourteen times, though no one has bothered to acknowledge that the story in question was … Continue reading Guest review: Genevieve Tucker on Colm Tóibín’s The Empty Family
Guest review: Alice Robinson on John Tesarsch’s The Philanthropist
Sleepers Publishing November 2010, 9781740669979 (Aus) reviewed by Alice Robinson John Tesarsch’s accomplished first novel The Philanthropist is a book about parents and children. It is about what we pass on, and what we inherit in turn. ‘The best thing a father can do, of course, is be there for his children. I wasn’t, because … Continue reading Guest review: Alice Robinson on John Tesarsch’s The Philanthropist
Bite-sized book reviews
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! @toria_jayne: Boys of Summer by Peter Skrzynecki. Great coming of age story set in Sydney's … Continue reading Bite-sized book reviews
Guest post by Jonathan Walker: Little Dorrit
In the Summer of 1989, I left my father’s home, which was never my home, not after my mother died. I couldn’t stand it there, in my father’s home, in the dark there, with the recessed windows and the ceilings, so low I used to bang my head on the doorjambs. The smell was what … Continue reading Guest post by Jonathan Walker: Little Dorrit
Guest review: Elizabeth Bryer on Shane Jones’ Light Boxes
Hamish Hamilton July 2010 9780241144954 (Aus, US, UK) Reviewed by Elizabeth Bryer This is one of those books that comes with baggage. Cult status? Check. Author plucked from obscurity? Check. Endorsement by guy with cultural cache? Check. (The latter was Spike Jonze, by the way, who at one stage acquired film rights to the … Continue reading Guest review: Elizabeth Bryer on Shane Jones’ Light Boxes
LiteraryMinded 