Category Archives: Reviews

No comments

Vagrancy in a Post-Apocalyptic Landscape

  By
THE VAGRANT
Peter Newman
Harper Collins, RRP29.99
April 2015

Vagrant

An unnamed man makes an illegal drug deal in a post-apocalyptic city, no sooner has he walked away from the deal than he is betrayed, such is our first introduction to the character The Vagrant in Peter Newman’s debut science fiction novel.* Thankfully The Vagrant has enough tricks up his sleeves that he continues on if not unscathed then at least free to continue his journey. Lucky, really, or else the novel would have been several hundred pages shorter than what it was. Continue reading

No comments

Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much

  By
HAMISH AND THE WORLDSTOPPERS Book Cover HAMISH AND THE WORLDSTOPPERS
Danny Wallace, illustrated by Jamie Littler
Simon & Schuster, RRP $25.99
March 2015

What would you do if the whole world suddenly froze? Would you panic? Would you pinch yourself to see if you were dreaming? I’ll tell you what you’d do, you’d get your phone out and start filming, let’s be honest. But, BUT, imagine if time did freeze. Just for a few minutes. Think of all the sweets you could loot or the mischief you could get up to with a Sharpie and the top lips of your office mates… just sayin’.

Of course this is the boring old real world and time doesn’t freeze. Or does it? You wouldn’t know, would you? Unless you’re a Pausewalker… just like Hamish.

Continue reading

No comments

Nothing, Nothing will Keep Us Together

  By

AFortunateAge_smA FORTUNATE AGE
Joanna Rakoff
Bloomsbury, July 2015, RRP $32.99

I took up A Fortunate Age under considerable misapprehension as to the time period in which it is set. Somehow missing both the details in the blurb and the first line, which literally features the word “1998″*, I launched into it believing it was about my generation. I am 26 right now and was interested to “see what an author some twenty years my senior thought about it all. Would it involve angering stereotypes? Would I find it self-deprecatingly humorous? Despite very quickly correcting the flaws in my understanding, and after fighting a bout of cynicism about reading a book about 20-somethings in the late 90s, I decided to persevere. And admittedly, I expected to hate this book. I didn’t.

On the face of it, Joanna Rakoff’s novel about coming of age is not something I would have chosen to read. It is contemporary fiction, a genre I generally dislike, and once the immediate connection with myself had gone**, I expected I would despise the characters in all their trust-funded, New York whininess. Yet something in Rakoff’s confiding, urgent tone, which reminded me a little of 19th century novelists, kept me going. Though I found most of the characters irritating and some themes and elements troubling, I enjoyed A Fortunate Age. I enjoyed it rather a lot.

Continue reading

No comments

The Iron Council

  By

The Iron Council220px-IronCouncil
Miéville, China (Del Ray, 2004 ISBN: 0-345-46402-8)

One of my friends emailed me recently and said “Ok, I’m a quarter of the way through The Iron Council. Tell me it gets better.”

And I said, “Keep reading.”

And the next day she said, “WOW. THANK YOU!”

I knew what she meant. The first section of the novel can be confusing – I’ve known friends to discard the book before the plot starts to become cohesive. I’ve read reviews where people have disliked it; I suspect they also gave up early and didn’t keep going. If you keep reading, the brilliance starts to kick in and you end up engulfed in this wonderfully insane world with its insane physics and marvelous storytelling.

Continue reading

No comments

He Makes Milton Friedman Look Middle-of-the-Road.

  By

23Things23 THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT CAPITALISM
Ha-Joon Chang
First published 2010

Ah, capitalism.  Can’t live with it; can’t live without it.  Whether you’re a free marketeer or dreaming of a communist future, at least capitalism’s ubiquity is something we can all agree on.  And whatever your stance on market control, there are probably things you don’t know about capitalism and its various orthodoxies.  Even I, who expected to receive little more than confirmation of things I knew or at least suspected*, was surprised by some of the content of Ha-Joon Chang’s popular economics book.

Continue reading

No comments

Granny Against the World

  By

MyGrandmotherSends_smMY GRANDMOTHER SENDS HER REGARDS AND APOLOGISES
Fredrik Backman, translated by Henning Koch
Sceptre, June 2015, RRP $29.99

It can be hard to be different in a world where conformity is the nature of the game. Society has rules, and those rules must be followed. A little bit different might be cute, but a lot different can be dangerous, and “dangerous” people often find themselves kicked and punched and ridiculed as others try to force them into a hole that has no space for them.

That’s why those of us who are different need a granny like Elsa’s granny. Continue reading

No comments

Candles Among Us

  By

The MothTHE MOTH: THIS IS A TRUE STORY
Edited by Catherine Burns
Allen & Unwin, May 2015, RRP $21.99

It is an opportune moment to review the printed collection, The Moth: This is a True Story. At the upcoming Melbourne Writers Festival there will be a session transporting The Moth from its natural habitat in New York to Melbourne. You should head across to the MWF website to purchase tickets if you have a chance. It’s likely to be a beautiful night of good stories well told, cunningly spun and woven and cast into the audience to lure you. As if to a flame.

For the stories are the flames here.

Continue reading

No comments

Beware of Southerners Bearing Gifts

  By ,

41Bik09kqwL._SX316_BO1,204,203,200_TIME WILL DARKEN IT
William Maxwell
Vintage Classics, 2012, RRP $14.99
First published 1948

Sometimes it is not only what a book is about but the way it is written that makes it special. Time Will Darken It is one of those. After reading the first chapter I got on the internet and ordered two more of William Maxwell’s books. I fingertip tappingly await their arrival. If a dead guy can write as well as this I want his books.

First published in 1948, Time Will Darken It is set in a small American town in 1912. It tells the sad tale of Austin King and his wife, Martha, receiving visitors from Mississippi. The Potters, mother, father, son and daughter sow the seeds of the destruction of Austin King, a decent man whose only crime was trying to keep everybody happy and doing it quietly.

The story opens with a quite scene of marital tension before a house party to welcome the Potters. In this, Maxwell gives himself the almost impossible task of introducing a myriad of characters almost at once. Any teacher of writing will tell you that is a no-no…unless you can write like William Maxwell. His words take the reader by the hand and leads him or her from room to room, catching snippets of conversations, auditioning the characters for their roles and hinting at things to come.

Continue reading

One Comment

Don’t Pay the Theremin – Until It Gets You to the Other Side

  By

US CONDUCTORSus conductors
Sean Michaels
Bloomsbury, July 2015, RRP $29.95

There are a number of different ways to write a novel based on historical characters. You can go for a modernisation of the characters and follow the general story but change bits of the plot – Susan Kay’s Elizabethan Legacy, which is a total romp and hugely enjoyable despite it’s lack of accuracy.

You can interweave an imaginary character into a historical narrative; Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon introduces Lawrence Waterhouse into the development of the code breaker during WWII to such an extent that I have no longer any idea what really went on because my memory of the history is so tarnished by reading it. Loved that book: I have a cat named after Enoch Root, one of the minor characters. Continue reading

No comments

Survival of the Sinistral Warrior

  By
A LEFT HAND TURN AROUND THE WORLD Book Cover A LEFT HAND TURN AROUND THE WORLD
David Wolman
First published 2009

Alright, listen up. I’m about to alienate roughly 90% of the world’s population here and I won’t be apologising for it. We 10% or so get a lot of shtick from you guys so here’s what’s going to happen. You’re quite welcome to stay but know this: if you have nothing constructive to say, your opinions on the upcoming subject are about as welcome and legitimate as a notorious sexist appointing himself representative of an entire sovereign nation’s female population. Obviously that’s a far fetched scenario but, y’know, I’m just throwing out an example here.
If you aren’t prepared to sit there with lips zipped then be off with you. Go sit in that corner, with your easy to find, off-the-shelf scissors and cut some denim for 20 minutes, alright. Go learn any instrument you want without having to adjust every movement in your brain, and think about what you’ve done.

Ok, I think they’ve gone…  Continue reading

No comments

They Live in You

  By

BlueBtwSkyAndWater_smTHE BLUE BETWEEN SKY AND WATER
Susan Abulhawa
Bloomsbury, June 2015, RRP $29.99

The Blue Between Sky and Water is one of those rare novels that takes devastating themes and events, but fills them all with a sense of hope.  Set in Palestine during and after the Naqba, up until the mid-2010s, the novel could very easily have been many things.  While its bias is obvious*, Abulhawa avoids diatribe and sentimentality in building her story of a family and a country torn apart.

Continue reading

No comments

Joy and Colour, Oh My!

  By

ADoubleShotOfHappiness_smA DOUBLE SHOT OF HAPPINESS
Judy Sharp
Allen & Unwin, June 2015, RRP $32.99

One could imagine Judy Sharp, small and grey-haired, lifting the heavy steel of a car, straining and breaking muscles and bones in order for her children to be pulled free. Motherly love is an extraordinary thing. After all, lifting a car is a small act when compared to battling the prevailing wisdom of the 1980s; that severely autistic children would never love, never communicate, and never have relationships. When door after door seemed to be closing for her son, Tim, to have a normal life, Judy Sharp forced new doors to open. Continue reading

  • You might also like

    • Slippery Little Suckers

      Hello human… at least, I assume you are a human.* Shall we play a game? I want you to think of ten creatures you consider to be intelligent using whatever parameters you yourself deem intelligence to be defined by. Alrighty. Done? Now, I’m going to make some extremely presumptive generalisations … Continue reading