Tag Archives: book reviews

  In The Quiet by Eliza Henry-Jones. Bit hard to resist a novel in which the first-person narrator is already dead. She doesn’t remember how she died, but she drifts, unseen and sealed away in her deadness, around the lives … Continue reading →

  The Blue Salt Road    Joanne Harris Thirty years ago I learned to sing The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerrie.  Selkies were  legendary seal creatures who were capable of changing into human form. Their home was Sule Skerrie, a remote … Continue reading →

  The Lost Man by Jane Harper In her third novel, Jane Harper takes us to cattle country in outback Queensland. Cameron Bright is found dead at an old landmark, a stockman’s grave. The circumstances may be suspicious – or … Continue reading →

The Year of the Farmer  by Rosalie Ham. Here is a brilliant, satirical evocation of Australian rural life. Mitch Bishop’s farm is going to hell in a handbasket, owing mainly to drought. Water is more precious than gold, and is … Continue reading →

  Seeing George by Cassandra Austin.  As a young woman, Violet met a man named George – except that he didn’t look like a man. He looked exactly like a dragon. And nobody but her saw him as a dragon. … Continue reading →

    A Month of Sundays by Liz Byrski. Those of us who read fiction know that a thoughtful novel can illuminate our own lives in gratifying ways. In this recent novel by Byrski, four women from different backgrounds gather … Continue reading →

The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt. It’s bracing to read a novel that deals with the lives of women respectfully, intelligently, and with compassion and sly humour. Nothing cosy or PC about her observations, either. Several narrative strands run … Continue reading →