Archive for category: Fiction

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 judgement … Read more »

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 »

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 »