Carrie Tiffany
Exploded View
$29.99
I really enjoyed two earlier novels by Carrie Tiffany, particularly Mateship with Birds, which won the Stella Prize. Exploded View is another thing altogether, and as one reviewer warned, not for the faint-hearted.The narrator is a young girl whose mother has a new partner, referred to as ‘father man’. He sets up an illegal car repair workshop in the backyard. His abusive behaviour leads the girl to resist him through acts … Read more »
Gillian Triggs
Speaking up
$45.00
I chose this book for The Triangle because I thought that the work of the Human Rights Commission and of its President has seldom been out of the news for the last few years. Here is the chance to understand the importance of the Commission and to try to understand why Gillian Triggs has attracted so much criticism from the government and from conservative commentators. What the book does is outline the arguments and the ideological struggles over such issues as … Read more »
Steven Carroll
The Year of the Beast
$29.99
This is the sixth and final novel of Steven Carroll’s Glenroy series, Glenroy being a suburb of Melbourne known to few, and which grew after the Second World War to accommodate the explosion of home ownership. The six novels can be read in any order, and this one actually goes right back to the beginning of the family saga in 1917. The main character is Maryanne, a 40 year … Read more »
Behrouz Boochani, No friend but the mountains: Writings from Manus prison. $32.99
It is hard to know where to start with this, except to say if there was ever a book that should be compulsory reading (especially for politicians) it is this one. It has just won the Victorian prizes for Literature and for Non-fiction, and it easy to see why.
The book was produced over five years from within the Manus detention centre, relayed to his translator in Melbourne by mobile … Read more »
Joanna Nell, The Single Ladies of the Jacaranda Retirement Village, $29.99
Well, here’s something new for the New Year, a new literary ‘genre (don’t you hate that word!) It’s called Uplifting Literature or Up Lit—as if Jane Austen isn’t! ‘Something to lift readers into a warm, fuzzy, happy place’ is how it’s described—an antidote to reading about disasters, violence, misery and Donald Trump. Apparently, Up Lit was the leading trend at recent international book fairs, so it’s probably alright to review at least one for the year.
I got sucked into … Read more »
Amy Bloom,
White Houses
$27.99
When I read an advance review of this book, I immediately got onto Candelo Books to order my copy. I have been a huge fan of Eleanor Roosevelt all my life so I was excited to see a new book on her. Eleanor and Franklin entered the White House in 1933, living through one of the most tumultuous times in American history – the Great Depression … Read more »
