Books

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Whenever we’re asked to pick the highlights for anything, whether it’s a relationship or an overseas trip or our childhood, we unerringly pick the glowingly positive high points, driven by some unspoken acknowledgement that for something to be a highlight it must have unquestionably upbeat qualities. But Continue Reading

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) It is hard, if not next to impossible when you are caught down in the depths of grief and loss, and the suffocating smallness of life that often comes with it, not to feel as if there is any hope left in life. But as Continue Reading

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) It’s all too easy to have someone create your life story for you. None of us set out to do that, of course; we dream and plan and hope based on the very firm idea that we are the masters of our destiny but somehow we Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) The grand and noble quest across vast distance in pursuit of the decisive victory of good over evil is a staple of fantasy novels. It crops up again and again and for very good reason – here is the perfect vehicle for putting disparate people together, Continue Reading

(courtesy Text Publishing) Life, so youthful expectation dreamily romanticises, is supposed to fall into all kinds of predictable (and, of course, satisfyingly successful) places. But as we all soon discover, some more than others, life is not to be dictated to, benignly and excitedly or otherwise, and so what often Continue Reading

(courtesy Transit Lounge Publishing) Despite this book’s title, The Maskeys, and no, this does not require a spoiler alert, are not the centrepiece of the novel which bears their rather blighted name. Penned by Stuart Everly-Wilson, who brought us the superlatively good Low Expectations, The Maskeys revolves instead around Rodney, Continue Reading

(courtesy Tor Publishing Group) The crime genre, early teenage voracious consumption of Agatha Christie’s entire output aside, has never really compelled this reviewer to sit down and read like, say science-fiction or slice-of-life quirky dramas. While most sections of my favourite bookshops see regular footfall from me, the crime section Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Life can often like a series of existentially testing events, punctuated by rare moments of levity and joy and wrapped in a lifetime of pain, hurt, loss and hard-won gains. That might seem bleak but for most it’s an accurate take on this thing called life, and Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Plunging into the latest novel by John Scalzi, and fortunate to have read a number of his books before this, I was well aware of just good a writer this man is and how well he imagines realities beyond our own, bringing them to life with Continue Reading