Limberlost 

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by Robbie Arnott 

Text Publishing 

Reviewed by Wendy Tucker

This is the third novel from the Tasmanian Wunderkind, Robbie Arnott. Some readers may have been disappointed as Limberlost seems to be a departure from the previous highly imaginative, magic realism novel Flames, where people burst into flame. Also, a departure from the prize-winning The Rain Heron where a bird made of rain may save a dystopian world. I loved both these amazing novels – although they are far from what … Read more »

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All the Broken Places 

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by John Boyne 

reviewed by Wendy Tucker 

All the Broken Places is a sequel, of sorts, to the best-selling Boy in the Striped Pyjamas that, like Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, was originally published as Young Adult Fiction but both books quickly became best-selling novels in the adult fiction category and both were made into successful films. Both are set during the Holocaust of WW2. Both authors felt that Young Adult readers should know about the Holocaust and both were criticised by survivors for a too soft approach. That … Read more »

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Lessons     

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Reviewed by Wendy Tucker

Lessons by Ian McEwan

This is Ian McEwan’s seventeenth novel and has become known as his pandemic novel and also his baby boomer novel (as much as I hate that term it is accurate here). Lessons is a meandering journey of a novel where McEwan returns to his beloved subject of the contemporary middle-class Englishman. And he does this so well.

We follow the … Read more »

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Bodies of Light

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Bodies of Light
by Jennifer Down

reviewed by Wendy Tucker

This novel won the 2022 Miles Franklin Award and was short listed for the Stella Prize. Bodies of Light was praised by reviewers and compared to A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain so I was excited to read it but aware that it may be confronting.  Maggie has escaped her life … Read more »

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Cecile the Seal

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by Christine McKnight

Reviewed by Georgina Adamson

This month, just for a change, we are reviewing a children’s book written by local author, Christine McKnight, a resident of Wallaga Lake where this story is set. Many will know her from the Cobargo Preschool. In creating Cecile the Seal, she has fulfilled her dream of writing a children’s book and we hope many more will follow.

The story is set in and around Wallaga … Read more »

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The Good Wife of Bath: A (Mostly) True Story 

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reviewed by Wendy Tucker

The Good Wife of Bath: A (Mostly) True Story

Karen Brooks 

This is Karen Brooks’s fourteenth novel of historical fiction with a focus on women’s work, ranging from chocolate makers to brewers and bawds. Her novels have often been assigned to the romance genre and this does both the author and the novels a disservice and has excluded the wider readership they deserve. 

But not so with The Good Wife of Bath that has been widely … Read more »

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