What was it like?
From international best sellers to literary classics and quirky book store finds, take a look at our latest book reviews.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azari
Twenty years ago, I fell in love with the magical realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude. I had never read this type of novel before and was carried away…
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
There is no shortage of books about the Holocaust, or other horrors of war, but in The Tattooist of Auschwitz focuses on an intriguing story of one character. The tattooist,…
Extinctions by Josephine Wilson
Some books are painfully clever. They are dense with ideas, and their dialogue is so witty as to be almost undecipherable – even the characters are cleverer than the average…
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
Many of Australians' favourite books of all times, according to the Dymocks 101 list are familiar. Unsurprisingly, there was Harry Potter and The Handmaid’s Tale, alongside more recent bestsellers like The…
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
It’s hard for a booklover not to be drawn to a novel that is about …. a book. And what a book it is. The Sarajevo Haggadah at the centre…
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine has attracted a lot of hype, including taking the top spot on the Sunday Times bestseller list. And for me, it lived up to that…
Wimmera by Mark Brandi
It’s hard not to love a book in which Ballarat plays a minor role, but there are plenty of other reasons that made Wimmera so easy to recommend. The first…
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
I had high hopes for Anything is Possible, after enjoying Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, and it didn’t disappoint. In both books, Strout beautifully captured intimate moments of significance in the…
The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser
Some books come with such glowing reviews that it is difficult for them to live up to the hype. Perhaps that is what happened when I read de Kretser’s The…
The Dry by Jane Harper
It has been some time since I have come across a book that has been so widely read and talked about. There seem to be very few people who have…
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
There is something endearing about an author who introduces a book by saying that the final story was nothing like he had planned, and he expected it to be a…
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
Evie Wyld’s All the Birds Singing is like a beautiful dot-to-dot for grownups, tracing the story of Jake’s life back to the distant past in order to make sense of…
Head Over Heel: Seduced by Southern Italy by Chris Harrison
Most tourists see a certain side of Italy. There are the rolling hills of Tuscany, fascinating cities and idyllic coastal towns, topped off by warm and friendly locals and some…
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
It is not hard to see why W.Somerset Maughan wrote The Painted Veil after he was inspired by a fascinating story he read while on vacation as a student. According…
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
I had been told that The Elegance of the Hedgehog would make me cry. For me, the ability to make a reader cry is high praise, and even though the…
The Bodysurfers by Robert Drewe
There’s a strange sense of synchronicity when an event in the news closely aligns with a book that you are reading. That happened when I was finishing The Bodysurfers by…
Review: Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Often, family sagas centre on a great love, either thwarted or consummated. While Behind the Scenes at the Museum might be the story of a family, with limbs reaching back…
Autobiography suffers from a missing chapter
“Everyone has a chapter they don’t read out loud.” (Anonymous) Bob Dylan’s memoir might be as lyrical as his songs and offer fascinating insights about his arrival on the music…
Book Review: Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
It can sometimes be difficult to describe what a book was ‘about’. While some might centre on an earth shattering event, others carry on quietly, with the reader bobbing along…
Book Review: Chronicles: Volume 1 by Bob Dylan
I don’t usually read memoirs, or much non-fiction of any type, but I was curious about reading Bob Dylan’s book after he (controversially) won the Nobel Prize for Literature. At…
Book Review: The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
I am no modern art lover – at best I am curious and at worst I am bewildered. However, in reading The Museum Modern Love, I found that I have…
Book Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Sibling relationships are at the heart of many novels, with Little Women, My Family and Other Animals and The Cement Garden among the most memorable. However, to that list we…
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Childhood never seems as close by as when you read it in a book. That is particularly true of reading My Brilliant Friend. Despite being set in a working class…
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Labelled by some as historical fiction and others as science fiction, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is a book that does not slot easily into any one category. I came…
Book review: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Much has been written about Jane Eyre, and it’s true that it is a hard book not to like. Its protagonist is a feisty, principled woman who was brought up…
Book review: Book review: Regeneration by Pat Barker
Regeneration is a different type of war book to what readers or students might be used to, with the action taking place in a hospital rather than in the trenches.…
Review: The Way to Paradise
Books can either reflect the world as the reader already knows it, but in a new and surprising way, or introduce a whole new world, which is unfamiliar and exotic.…
Freedom Song, Amit Chaudhuri
It feels as if spring has gone on strike, enabling winter to continue until December. The mercury is sluggish and the wind is fierce, and I have been stuck at…
On Love, Alain de Botton
From the popularity of The Bachelor to the amount of paraphernalia surrounding Valentine’s Day, it seems that romance is having a renaissance. And with all the roses, candlelit dinners and…
As sweet as a madeleine by the Seine – The Little Paris Bookshop, Nina George
I usually prefer books that can be described as moving, heartbreaking, uplifting or captivating. I like to be lifted up and shaken when I read, and I love books that…
Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut
Oh Billy Pilgrim, you are one of a kind. Has there ever been a character so pitiable, so pathetic, but so likable as the lead character in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse…
The Natural Way of Things – misogyny out loud
Sometimes it is not the spoken but the whispered threat that is the most menacing. So it is with sexism. While important issues such as the gender pay gap and…
Charlotte Gray shines a light on the children of the Holocaust
It is very difficult to empathise with people we have never met, who lived a long time ago, in a country on the other side of the world. It is…
Review: The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Some books are so unlike any others that it takes a while to understand what is happening when you start reading them. Their characters are unfamiliar and the situations unrecognisable,…
