Category: Book Reviews
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A Story of a Special Child
My Year with Sammy by Libby Sommer Have you ever had, or known, or heard tell of a child who was amazing, beautiful, special, and … difficult? Not just difficult, but impossible? Impossible to discipline, impossible to educate, impossible to fit in … tearing her families apart … yet unable to be slotted into any…
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The Anna Karenina Principle
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way(Leo Tolstoy 1878) Tolstoy’s Impact Tolstoy is a philosopher/narrator within his novel Anna Karenina. He invites the reader to philosophize about happiness, as they read the doings, the thoughts and the feelings of his characters. The Oblonsky family’s happiness is destroyed by…
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Irony and Fun in “Double Madness”
Double Madness by Caroline de Costa Published by Margaret River Press, 2015 If you like detective stories and a rollicking good read, with a nice dose of voyeurism thrown in, this first novel by Caroline de Costa, is definitely for you. “Double Madness” is a crime novel set in far North Queensland. Not surprisingly, place…
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There’s Something About Helen
I’ve always enjoyed reading Helen Garner’s works, from the very beginning when my girlfriend Julie gave me the first novel by this gifted writer, Monkey Grip. Admittedly, her reputation as a crusader or rebel grew with The First Stone, one of her more polemical works. In this work, she leant support to a master at…
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Writing a Book Review
HOW TO WRITE A BOOK REVIEW: At a Bondi Writers Group meeting, we discussed the question of how to write a book review. One of our long-term members had just published her book of poems: Barking at Shadows, and she had brought along copies of a review written by one of the members of the…
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The Trouble With Flying: A Review
The Trouble With Flying, from the 2014 Margaret River Short Story Competition, edited by Richard Rossiter, Published by Margaret River Press, 2014 Review first published by Margaret River Press This was the third year of the Western Australia Margaret River Story Competition; 24 stories were chosen from 218 entries from all over Australia and one…
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Brave Novels and Memoirs
I’ve just finished reading a memoir by a writer, Alan Close: Until You Met Me: A Memoir Of One Man’s Troubled Search For Love about his lifetime struggle to have a committed relationship with a woman. It is a redemption story that relates his hard-won victory over his emotional problems linked to this situation. He…
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Memoirs I Read 2013
Lately I’ve been reading reading reading … especially memoirs, as I come closer to sending one of mine off to a competition at Finch Publishing. I’ve also been attending Beth Yahp’s Memoir Evenings at the Randwick Literary Institute on the last Tuesday of the month. One of the books I’ve enjoyed recently is Marzipan and Magnolias…
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Best Australian Books 2012
It’s that time of the year again when people start talking about the best books read during the year. I recently attended the 2012 “Nib Prize” awarded by the Waverley Library at Bondi for the best book linked to research. There were six finalists, including one work of fiction, Kate Grenville’s Sarah Thornhill about white…