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 honoured … Read more »
reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Charlotte Wood
This is the seventh novel by the Australian writer, Charlotte Wood. The first novel of Wood’s I read was the multi-award winning The Natural Way of Things, a very disturbing, harsh and political novel. But brilliant. I eagerly awaited the next – a lighter, funnier novel but with a tough ironic bite, called The Weekend with five elderly woman as main characters. I was disappointed but most readers were not … Read more »
by Bonnie Garmus
Reviewed by Wendy Tucker
Bonnie Garmus was 65 years old when this, her first novel, was published in 2022 and this fact should give hope to all those procrastinating writers out there. She was a senior copy writer and the only woman at a meeting where she was yet again spoken over, interrupted, disregarded and her ideas usurped. That night she wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry while thinking of her mother, a nurse … Read more »
reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by 
Shankari Chandran
Ultimo Press
Chandran, a Sydney-based lawyer of Tamil heritage won this year’s prestigious Miles Franklin prize of $60,000. I like to read the winning book, judged by an esteemed group and deemed to be the best book of the year with an Australian theme. I’m still reeling from this confronting and sometimes confusing novel.
I had by-passed it because of its cosy cover and cute title, assuming it was … Read more »
by Salena Godden
Reviewed by Wendy Tucker
Salena Godden is an English poet, author, activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist. Born in the UK, Godden is of Jamaican-Irish heritage. She is known for the graphic power of her poetry and is considered one of the foremost performance poets in the UK.
This is her debut novel. I had heard a lot about this prize-winning prose/poetry novel and because of the enthusiastic reviews regarding the beauty and … Read more »
reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Ben Aaronovitch
How to describe this novel, the first in a series of nine?
It’s a crime novel, a police procedural novel, a fantasy/magical realism novel,
a love letter to London and a commentary on race. And it’s rollicking good fun and totally addictive. I am a fan of good crime writing but not usually of fantasy.
Rivers of London is a … Read more »
