Bridge of Clay is an intimidating book, the size of a brick and as eagerly anticipated as it was, following the success of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. And at…

In literary fiction, it is often the language that rises above the plot. Sometimes, little seems to happen, but the reader is carried away with the lyricism of the language.…

I’ve been holding off on reviewing Toni Morrison's Beloved because how can you really critique such a book? It won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and its author Toni Morrison won…

With the follow up just published, I finally got around to reading Dervla McTiernan’s The Ruin. Set in Galway, The Ruin spans two decades, from a time a young police…

Kamila Shamsie's award-winning novel Home Fire begins as a story of two families on either side of the fight against terrorism, but becomes an exploration of  love, loss, politics and…

A child goes missing in the US, only to be found decades later on the other side of the world. Who wouldn’t want to read a book about the search…

Who knew a book about death could be so uplifting? Maggie O’Farrell’s  I Am I Am I Am details 17 brushes with death, ranging from a chillingly close encounter while…

This book came highly recommended – my mum loved it and even though she had a copy of her own, she bought another one for me. Fortunately for our family…

I had heard a lot about Australian author Emma Viskic before I had picked up any of her books. From the Wreck had recently been shortlisted for various literary awards,…

There have been a few books this year which have been unlike any I have read before, and this is certainly one of them. A kind of essay or meditation…

It is hard to comprehend how Sally Rooney has managed to capture the dynamics of a relationship as well as she has in Normal People. Aged just 27, Rooney tells…

I’m not usually drawn to memoirs, but I’d heard such good reports about Magda Szubanski’s Reckoning that I happily picked it up when I saw it was available at the…

By Sam, 7 What was the book about? It was about a girl, Amelia, who went to Elfhelm to live with Father Christmas and a woman called Mary. The girl…

Young journos are famously advised to start their stories as if they are telling their best friend the most exciting thing that has happened that day. Rachel Cusk’s widely celebrated…

I was almost relieved when, partway into reading The Kite Runner, I realised this was definitely a ‘good’ book. Otherwise, I’m not sure that I could have written a review.…

Sam, 7 years * Caution - there may be spoilers below The story was about: It was a story about science and a place that used science to make people’s…

This year I’ve read some extraordinary books written by Australian writers, from the perspective of a child, including Sofie Laguna’s The Choke and Mark Brandi’s Wimmera. Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows…

The Fish Girl seems at first glance to be a light book, easily read in a day, perhaps even one sitting. But within the Stella Prize shortlisted novella is story…

I have read a lot about World War II, from brutality of the concentration camps in The Tattooist of Auschwitz to the ‘what ifs’ of Life After Life and the…

I never read The Little Prince as a child, so I was looking forward to reading it with my seven-year-old son. Unfortunately, this strange and charming little story didn’t capture…

Review by Elizabeth Morrison, 10 years old Nevermoor is a heartwarming story that will soon become the favourite of most children and adults. I liked if from the start and…

What is it about this series that so takes hold of the reader? Is it the Italian setting, so vividly evoked by Ferrante? Or is it the gorgeous, understated language?…

Don’t let the title fool you – Toibin’s book is just as much about Ireland as it is about Brooklyn. Place looms large in the novel, set in the 1950s,…

The Geography of Friendship is set in a beautiful bush land setting, through which a group of friends retraces a bush walk of decades earlier. However, there is nothing calm…

For anyone who is curious about the ancient classics, but reluctant to give them a go, Circe is the perfect introduction. However, it is equally appealing as a stand-alone story…

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…

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…

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…