reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Lionel Shriver
I’ve been a fan of Lionel Shriver since the best-selling, prizewinning novel that made her name, We need to talk about Kevin, appeared in 2003.
Any woman who at 15 changes her name from Margaret Ann to Lionel and sticks with it, has got to be fierce. And fierce she is. We need to talk about Kevin examined maternal ambivalence and a high school shooting. The post … Read more »
reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Richard Osman
In 2020 forty publishers bid for the rights to this first novel by television presenter and producer, Richard Osman. It has become the biggest selling adult crime novel since records began and Spielberg immediately purchased the film rights. Osman has since written three more novels in the series with equal success: The man who died twice in 2021, The bullet that missed in 2022 and The last devil to die in 2023. He … Read more »
Reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Tony Birch
Tony Birch is an author, activist and academic. This is his fourth novel. He is best known for his award-winning novel The White Girl and his short story collection Dark as Last Night.
Women & Children has just won the 2024 Age Book of the Year for Fiction and will probably win more awards. It is set in 1965 in a poor inner-city suburb of Melbourne. Our protagonist is Joe Cluny, ‘a wide-eyed, … Read more »
reviewed by Wendy Tucker
written by Bruce Nash
This is the third novel from local author, Bruce Nash, and it has, deservedly, found a respected commercial publisher with all the advantages of overseas publishing and audio books.
Rose, who is our unreliable narrator throughout, is in her 80s, in a nursing home and has dementia. When Rose finds that her Scrabble partner has died by apparently falling from her window, she remembers other strange deaths and … Read more »
Reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Paul Murray
This is the fourth novel by Irish writer Paul Murray. It was short listed for the Booker Prize 2023 and won The Irish Post Book of the Year 2023.
It is essentially a tragicomic family saga set in a dull town in Ireland and told in four voices. Murray slips back though time, moving from each section though the mind of each family member as much is revealed and … Read more »
Reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Christos Tsiolkas
Christos Tsiolkas is the author of eight novels, he is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the international best seller The Slap and for his historical novel Damascus.
Christos and his partner holiday at Narooma and love the area. They especially love Cobargo and Well Thumbed Books, ‘… one of his two favourite bookshops in the world’.
Well Thumbed Books was … Read more »
