Families are, by and large, rather wonderful things. They give us a sense of belonging, a place to call home, people who notionally, and often, literally have our back and a vital brick in our identity. We need our families – but do we, for all those laudable positives, want Continue Reading
Books
Book review: Miss Treadway & the Fields of Stars by Miranda Emmerson
Those jarring sounds you hear as you dive deeper and deeper into the emotionally complex but thoughtful accessible novel Miss Treadway & The Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson are illusions being comprehensively and almost irretrievably shattered. In the world of 1965 London, smack bang in the middle of the Continue Reading
Book review: Freckles by Cecilia Ahern
At the heart of every one of us is this insistent need to belong, to fit in, to be unconditionally cared for, loved and part of something that extends far beyond ourselves. It’s understandable; we are social creatures who have evolved to always be in concert with others, to find Continue Reading
What the world needs now … Station Eleven drops evocative trailer
SNAPSHOTBased on the book of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven is set before and after a fictional flu pandemic. The inhabitants try to rebuild their world while holding onto the best of what they lost. (synopsis via nine.com.au) If watching the teaser trailer for HBO Continue Reading
Book review: Happy Hour by Jacquie Byron
One of the great pleasures of life is sitting down with a book and finding that the blurb on the back cover, though wonderfully poetic, beautifully written and fulsomely enticing, does not do full justice to the novel before you. Clearly it’s done a brilliant job of luring you in Continue Reading
Book review: Daphne by Will Boast
Keeping people at bay is something that Daphne has become frighteningly good at over the years. But before you leap to conclusions about a scarred and lonely childhood (though that plays a part as a result of the initial and ongoing source of trauma) or an abusive relationship that left Continue Reading
#Halloween book review: In His Words – Stupid Gets You Killed by M. R. Cullen
For people who have experienced great and enduring trauma, the kind that begins at birth and never really lets up, seeping into every pore of a blighted existence so profoundly terrible there is no adequate way to describe it or exist well with it, reality is a cruel and awful Continue Reading
Book review: Sunfall by Jim Al-Khalili
It is, once again poor beleaguered citizens of planet earth, the end of the world as we know it. Or, at least the possible end of the world, anyway. In Jim Al-Khalili 2014-set, fast-paced race to a likely extinction line, Sunfall, there’s a very good chance that humanity is facing Continue Reading
Book review: The Hush by Sara Foster
Thrillers are wonderfully escapist books to read. Fuelled with adrenaline, powered by judiciously-placed reveals and always moving at something near to the speed of narrative light, they are a genre that is perfectly placed to take us on a wild journey that, happily in our famously loose end-addicted world where Continue Reading
Book review: The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
There are some words that are thrown around with such giddy abandon and greeting card snappiness that we’re apt to see them as lightweight sentiments that have no real substance and can bear no real weight. “Hope” is one of those words, filled with longing and expectation and optimism, it Continue Reading