Mohsin Hamid, Exit West, $32.99
Reviewed by Heather O’Connor
Many of you will have read The Reluctant Fundamentalist (or seen the film), an earlier work of the author. In Exit West, he brings a really interesting take on the refugee experience, writing with a mix of stark reality and a touch of magical realism which you don’t expect in books dealing with displacement and incredible hardship.
You don’t know the identity of the city about which he … Read more »
Georgia Blain, Between a Wolf and a Dog, $29.99
Reviewed by Heather O’Connor
This is a novel that will move you to tears. While completing the work, the writer found out she was suffering from brain cancer, the same fate facing Hilary, one of the characters in the book, and the mother of the main character, Ester. Hilary is widowed and determined to take control of her life and the manner of her death, which she does, independently of her family—food for thought as we all debate the ethics … Read more »
Zoe Morrison, Music and Freedom, $32.99
Reviewed by Heather O’Connor
Zoe Morrison has a broad and interesting background in music and in issues surrounding violence against women, two themes at the heart of this award-winning first novel.
Music and Freedom is the story of a young girl from country Victoria whose life is transformed when she wins a scholarship to Oxford to study music. Her early days there are marked by loneliness and overwhelming homesickness, but she gradually becomes absorbed in the life and culture, and seems destined for … Read more »
Annie Dunne, by Sebastian Barry, $19.99
Reviewed by Heather O’Connor
One of the greatest joys of my life is reading almost anything written by almost any Irish writer – and Sebastian Barry is in my top five favourites. Over Christmas I read Days Without End, and then found Annie Dunn. Set in the 1950s in Ireland, it could have been describing the lives of 19th century rural women. So little had … Read more »
Margaret Drabble, The Dark Flood Rises, $29.99
I haven’t read any book by Margaret Drabble for years, so this was a bit of trip down memory lane. I can’t remember her being quite so “earnest” – I’ll have to re-read some of her earlier works. One reviewer of this, her nineteenth novel, remarked that people under 60 might not get much out of this book, but … Read more »
Nutshell
Ian McEwan
Reviewed by Heather O’Connor
I think I have mentioned before how excited I get when my favourite authors bring out a new book: here we go again! Ian McEwan has surpassed himself this time: the novel is short (200 pages) and can easily be read in one sitting—which I did. The narrator is his youngest ever—in fact, a third-term foetus. He’s described as a modern day Hamlet, who lies helpless in his mother’s womb, listening to her plot to kill her husband, the … Read more »
