I launched Lucy Durneen's Wild Gestures on 11 January at Buck Mulligan's Irish whiskey bar-bookshop. This was my speech. * Lucy Durneen’s Wild Gestures is a stunning collection of stories, so full of insight on the unconquerable spaces between people, the missed or never possible opportunities, the mistakes that couldn’t be otherwise, the yearning for things we … Continue reading Wild Gestures by Lucy Durneen
book review
Captives reviewed in Cordite
Jo Langdon has written a beautiful and perceptive review of Captives for Cordite Poetry Review. 'The space beyond the stories is essential, and the words themselves appear with an illusory ease and simplicity.' Read the rest here. Captives is widely available, including from the publisher, Readings, Booktopia, Avid Reader, Fishpond (free worldwide shipping), or your local bookstore. The ebook is available on Kindle, Google Play, iBooks, Kobo & more.
Review: Herman Koch’s Summer House with Swimming Pool in The Australian
'Summer House is a dark satire, scalpel-sharp and more cohesive than The Dinner, with a more complex unreliable narrator, a compelling structure, and a sutured but festering wound of themes.' Read my review of Dutch author Herman Koch's disturbing novel Summer House with Swimming Pool here. I also reviewed his previous novel, The Dinner, for The Australian.
Review of Janet Frame’s In the Memorial Room for The Australian
Janet Frame is one of my all-time favourite authors. Her writing is surprising, absurd, knowing, funny, sad, dark, moving, imaginative and honest. She was an incredibly hard-working writer, often having to work in uncomfortable or strange conditions (while overcoming much personal tragedy). I've read quite a few of her novels; plus her short fiction, her … Continue reading Review of Janet Frame’s In the Memorial Room for The Australian
Guest post: Troy Martin on Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth
Jonathan Cape (Random House) 9780224097383 September 2012 (buy paperback, ebook) reviewed by Troy Martin This isn’t a spy drama. Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth is more than a novel of London or the 1970s. It’s bound with literary references, but you do not need a companion to English literature to enjoy this novel. That is the most … Continue reading Guest post: Troy Martin on Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth
The LiteraryMinded Couch, Episode One: Uhh, Fail Vlog
I've been meaning to add video content to LiteraryMinded for yonks! I've interviewed authors on stage, I've read my own work aloud, I can write about books - but speaking alone into a camera is an entirely different kettle of fish...
Guest review: Chris Flynn on Justin Cronin’s The Passage
The Passage Justin Cronin (Aus, US) Orion 9780752897851 Reviewed by Chris Flynn It’s funny how movies influence books so much these days. The fact that The Passage was optioned by Sir Ridley Scott for $1.75 million within a week of Cronin settling on a $3.75 million publishing deal for his vampire apocalypse trilogy is unsurprising … Continue reading Guest review: Chris Flynn on Justin Cronin’s The Passage
Read and Seen: Revolutionary Road
The first in a series of simultaneous book and film reviews by LiteraryMinded's Angela Meyer and Celluloid Tongue's Gerard Elson. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates (orig. 1961, several editions: Aus, US) Angela says... Revolutionary Road opens with a moody series of observances and a sense of foreboding - 1955, Western Connecticut, settled yet restless characters, cars too … Continue reading Read and Seen: Revolutionary Road
The Comfort of Figs by Simon Cleary
9780702236433, UQP, 2008 (Australia) This book opens in the past, with the sight of a body falling from a bridge. In the present, Robert O'Hara makes small gestures - planting fig trees, comforting his distraught girlfriend after an attack on them both, easing his way into an old man's life to learn the secrets of his own … Continue reading The Comfort of Figs by Simon Cleary
Seduce Me by Megan Clark
9780758209818, Kensington Fiction, 2008 (Aus, US) So it begins and ends with sex, and there's a whole lot of juicy business in the middle, but Seduce Me also has an intriguing storyline and vivid, memorable characters. Megan Clark utilises the characters' sexualities to round them out - desires, fulfillments, vulnerabilities and disappointments. Carissa has a … Continue reading Seduce Me by Megan Clark
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