Books

“The end of the world” is one of those soul darkening phrases that sounds definitively, irrevocably, irreparably final. But what if the end of the world wasn’t so much an end, though in many ways it is, but simply a “pause”? What might that be that like? In The Beginning Continue Reading

On title alone, you could be forgiven for thinking that The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson is one of those deliciously escapist slice-of-life British adventures where idiosyncratically good things happen to people who really need some good to come into their beleaguered lives. And while, there is Continue Reading

When you think of the end of the world, you picture it happening in colours bold and wild, events unfolding on screens before you, death and destruction beckoning, with streets filled with screaming people and sights beyond horrific imagining. But in Rumaan Alam’s intimately unnerving and gloriously beautifully-written novel, Leave Continue Reading

Being different is wonderful, amazing and thrilling. But when you are growing up, still trying find that authentic sense of self, it can be excruciatingly awful too, especially if you are alone in your arduous growing up journey and also beset by the usual unthinking torch-and-pitchforks mobs of idiotic bullies Continue Reading

Flights of imagination are gloriously good and wonderful things. Flights of imagination that come with a fully-realised, beautifully rendered world, compelling characters and a bravely moralistic backbone that isn’t afraid to tackle some substantial issues are even better. Something like Tom Miller’s exquisitely good, The Philosopher’s Flight, a novel that Continue Reading

Fiction is in love with the idea of the multiverse. And why would it not be? The idea that there are multiple earths all strung together, cheek-by-jowl on a daisy chain of quantum mechanical marvelry is a beguiling one, ripe as it is with the alluring prospect of infinite possibilities Continue Reading

Giving someone a place they can belong which is safe and secure, which allows them to thrive and not simply get by, and which is loving and full of care is just about the greatest gift you can give someone. Deep down somewhere, 14-year-old autistic teenager Ginny Moon, the eponymous Continue Reading

Love, in and of itself, is almost universally a good and perfect thing. It encompasses and supports, it fill us with hope and security and a sense of purpose and care, and it makes once dull things feel vital and alive in ways their once vapid sheen never suggested. In Continue Reading

First contact with alien species usually go one of three ways. Either they turn up in ships beyond number and equipped with power and technology beyond imagining and invade the hell out of us; or they arrive bearing bouquets of world peace and the sharing of all knowledge and then Continue Reading

If ever there was a love letter to the power, surety and steadfast supportiveness of friendship, it is The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas. First published in 1996, this much-loved novel came upon this reviewer’s path in a secondhand bookshop in Newtown, Sydney called Elizabeth’s in the form of Continue Reading