Angela Costi reviews Witness by Louise Milligan
Witness by Louise Milligan ISBN: 9780733644634 Hachette Reviewed by Angela Costi The Trauma of Trial for Survivors of Crime Traditionally, an investigative journalist provides an in-depth analysis of a matter or issue of public concern without having experienced the problem being uncovered. This is not the case in Witness. In Louise Milligan’s book […]
Deborah Pike reviews The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp
The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp Ultimo Press ISBN: 9781761151668 Reviewed by DEBORAH PIKE Sharlene Allsopp’s debut novel, The Great Undoing, has a great cover that undoes history with a red crayon. Ernest Scott’s A Short History of Australia (1916) is struck out and bold typeface declares an angry and urgent call for […]
Katie Hansord reviews The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat by Sara M Saleh
The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat Sara M Saleh UQP 2023 Reviewed by KATIE HANSORD How to begin to do justice to reviewing a book of poetry this important, this powerful, and in this moment? If I were to recommend one book to people this year, it would be this. […]
Isabel Howard reviews Dirt Poor Islanders by Winnie Dunn
Dirt Poor Islanders by Winnie Dunn Hachette ISBN 978-0733649264 Reviewed by ISABEL HOWARD Intercultural struggle is the main question at hand in Winnie Dunn’s Dirt Poor Islanders: how do you define yourself between two different cultures that shape every aspect of your life? Dunn’s novel is written from the perspective of Meadow, a […]
Gan Amin reviews Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck translated by Michael Hofmann ISBN 9781783786121 Granta Reviewed by GAN AINM It’s hard to avoid the idea of allegory when approaching Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker Prize-winner, Kairos. Right from the cover, we are told by Neel Mukherjee that ‘Erpenbeck has written an allegory for her nation, a […]
James Gobbey reviews Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar Pan Macmillan ISBN: 9781035026074 Reviewed by JAMES GOBBEY If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among those that survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe […]
Misbah Wolf reviews Moon Wrasse by Willo Drummond
Moon Wrasse by Willo Drummond Puncher and Wattmann ISBN 1922571679 Review by MISBAH WOLF When I first picked up Willo Drummond’s debut poetry collection, Moon Wrasse, I was torn between a deep panic of knowing I wanted to become mixed up in the muck, blood, and bloom of the work and wanting to also turn away […]
Javaria Farooqui reviews The Djinn Hunters by Nadia Niaz
The Djinn Hunters By Nadia Niaz Hunter Publishers ISBN: 978-0-6453366-9-6 Reviewed by JAVARIA FAROOQUI The Djinn Hunters is a literary fusion of colours, words, shapes, and heritage, which has been carefully crafted in very interesting and distinct poetic styles. Nadia Niaz plays with the strands of her memories of Lahore to build evocative narratives in […]
Violence, Pain and Blistering Power: Women in Lauren Groff’s Matrix by Az Cosgrove
Az is a 26-year-old trans wheelchair user with an acquired brain injury. His works of both fiction and non-fiction have appeared in such publications as Voiceworks, Archer, Overland, Mascara Review, ABC News, and the 2023 anthology of the Australian Short Story Festival. He is currently completing a Master of Literature and also graduated with distinction […]
Holly Friedlander Liddicoat reviews meditations with passing water by Jake Goetz
meditations with passing water Jake Goetz Rabbit Poetry Reviewed by HOLLY FRIEDLANDER LIDDICOAT It’s a sophisticated piece of work that imparts its subject matter through its form. This is what I distinctly remember from first reading Jake Goetz’s ‘meditations with passing water’, in one sitting, in 2018, and what still rings true […]
Luoyang Chen reviews The Open by Lucy Van
The Open by Lucy Van ISBN: 9780648917601 Cordite Books Reviewed by LUOYANG CHEN Perth is getting colder and I am getting cold. I am on my way to get some jumpers from Target. Writing this review in my head while walking to the bus stop, I am thinking: This is great. I want to […]
Liz Sutherland reviews Breath by Carly-Jay Metcalfe
Breath by Carly-Jay Metcalfe ISBN 9780702268359 UQP Reviewed by LIZ SUTHERLAND Breathing was one of the few things in life I took for granted. Until I was 20, out with pneumonia for four months, three fractured ribs from excessive coughing. Then again at 32, post-COVID coughing for three months, two fractured ribs that time. Sickness […]
Jennifer Compton reviews Leaf by Anne Elvey
Leaf By Anne Elvey Liquid Amber Press ISBN 9780645044966 Reviewed by JENNIFER COMPTON Anne Elvey was recently shortlisted for the David Harold Tribe Poetry Award for one of her elegant, prayerful compositions, that hardly seem to be composed of words as we know them, and yet I suppose they must be. They lift up […]
Pip Newling reviews Women and Children by Tony Birch
Women & Children By Tony Birch UQP ISBN: 9780702266270 Reviewed by PIP NEWLING Tony Birch holds a rare place in Australian literature – a male writer focused on telling domestic and working class stories. His pages shimmer with the dirt of hard work, difficult choices, and everyday of life. The joys in reading […]
Samuel Cox reviews Murnane by Emmett Stinson
Murnane by Emmett Stinson Melbourne University Publishing ISBN: 9780522879469 Reviewed by SAMUEL COX Emmett Stinson’s Murnane offers a critical and enlightening assessment of the Gerald Murnane’s four late fictions, and through these incredibly self-reflexive works, a reading of the eponymous author’s entire oeuvre. Stinson’s superb introduction gives way to chapter- length considerations of Barley Patch […]
Naomi Milthorpe reviews H.D. Hilda Doolittle by Lara Vetter
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) by Lara Vetter Reaktion Books ISBN:9781789147599 Reviewed by NAOMI MILTHORPE It may say more about my own tastes than about the culture more broadly, but most of my reading in the past months has been about misunderstood and multifaceted women. Lara Vetter’s slim critical life of the modernist poet H.D. has slid […]
Holden Walker reviews But The Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
But The Girl Jessica Yu Penguin ISBN: 9781761046148 Reviewed by HOLDEN WALKER Jessica Zhan Mei Yu’s novel But The Girl (2023) is the story of protagonist and narrator “Girl”, as she embarks on a study abroad experience in the UK while immersing herself in British culture, contemplating her thesis, attempting to write her […]
Caroline van de Pol reviews Slipstream by Catherine Cole
Slipstream By Catherine Cole Valley Press ISBN: 9781915606341 Reviewed by CAROLINE VAN DE POL As an admirer of Catherine Cole’s earlier novels, short story collections and memoir such as Sleep, Seabirds Crying in the Harbour Dark and The Poet Who Forgot, I awaited the publication of her new book, Slipstream: On Memory and Migration, with […]
Katie Hansord reviews slack tide by Sarah Day
slack tide by Sarah Day Pitt St Poetry ISBN 978-1-922080-04-2. Reviewed by KATIE HANSORD “Rules are what people think, They aren’t a law of nature”. (House Like a Folk Tale, 42) Deeply thoughtful and brilliant, Sarah Day’s most recent collection, slack tide (Pitt Street Poetry, 2022), deftly invokes the wider world of natural imagery and […]
Lisa Collyer reviews Carapace by Misbah Wolf
Carapace by Misbah Wolf ISBN 978-1-925735-41-3 Vagabond Reviewed by LISA COLLYER You can imagine tracing the spiral on the white snail shell on the front cover of Misbah Wolf’s second poetry collection, Carapace to find yourself centred in a temporary house. Wolf’s scintillating and edgy collection of prose poems form individual houses with […]
Jennifer Compton reviews The Detective’s Chair by Anne M Carson
The Detective’s Chair by Anne M. Carson LiquidAmber Press ISBN 9780645044980 Reviewed by JENNIFER COMPTON Poetry has many pleasures, and, as quite a few of us might suspect, an almost equal share of pains. But every so often, every so often, a book comes along that panders to my desire to loll about […]
Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn reviews Every Version of You by Grace Chan
Every Version of You by Grace Chan ISBN: 9781922806017 Reviewed by Zowie Douglas In 2022, as AI-generated images began to populate our social media feeds, RnB artist SZA released Ghost in the Machine, in which she sings: ‘Robot got future, I don’t.’ The future and the present are uncomfortably close in Grace Chan’s Every […]
Dominique Hecq reviews she doesn’t seem autistic by Esther Ottaway
she doesn’t seem autistic by Esther Ottaway Puncher and Wattman ISBN 978-1-922571-76-2 Reviewed by DOMINIQUE HECQ Esther Ottaway’s third book of poetry, she doesn’t seem autistic, explores a neglected area of psychological medicine: autism in women. It is by default that Ottaway herself was diagnosed, when a specialist established that her youngest daughter was autistic. […]
Varuna Naicker reviews We Need to Talk by Manveen Kholi
We Need To Talk by Manveen Kholi ISBN-10 9392494297 Red River Press in partnership with Centre for Stories Reviewed by VARUNA NAICKER We Need To Talk is raw, truthful and confronting. Manveen Kohli, a British-Indian poet, captures the brutal hypocrisy of what it is like to live in a society where the existence of […]
Natalia Figueroa Barroso reviews Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías
Pink Slime By Fernanda Trías Scribe ISBN:9781922585356 Reviewed by NATALIA FIGUEROA BARROSO Within the womb we are connected to our mothers by an umbilical cord. After birth, that cord is cut, but our psychological attachment remains no matter the complexities of our relationship. Under the metrics of neoliberalism, the inequalities of carbon trading and the […]
Nicole Smith reviews Admissions Ed David Stavanger, Radhiah Chowdhury, Mohammad Awad
Admissions Ed. David Stavanger, Radhiah Chowdhury, Mohammad Awad Upswell ISBN: 9780645248098 Reviewed by NICOLE SMITH Within these pages is a cohort of activist consumers, neurodivergent creatives, psychiatric and trauma survivors, dreamers, community leaders and mind-bending writers. I dive into Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health. A mosaic of 105 Australian voices follows, in the […]
Ben Hession reviews Inland Sea by Brenda Saunders
Inland Sea by Brenda Saunders Gininderra Press ISBN 9781761091445 Reviewed by BEN HESSION Inland Sea is the third full collection by Brenda Saunders, a Wiradjuri writer, following a somewhat lengthy hiatus. Saunders’ last collection, The Sound of Red, was published back in 2014. Her debut volume, Looking for Bullin Bullin, had won the 2014 […]
Joshua Klarica reviews Son of Sin by Omar Sakr
Son of Sin By Omar Sakr Affirm Press ISBN: 9781922711038 Reviewed by JOSHUA KLARICA On Laylat al-Qadr, Islam’s sacred Night of Power, the young protagonist of Omar Sakr’s debut novel, Son of Sin, dies. Jamal is dead, if death is to be filled with the absence of what life could have been. On the night […]
Meeta Chatterjee reviews Hospital by Sanya Rushdi
Hospital by Sanya Rushdi translated by Arunava Sinha ISBN 9781922725455 Giramondo Reviewed by MEETA CHATTERJEE Hospital was released in May this year and has been very favourably reviewed. Reviewers have commended it as a remarkable study of self and of ‘mind outside of its mind’ (Eda Gunaydin). Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll sum up the […]
Misbah Wolf reviews Untethered by Ayesha Inoon
Untethered By Ayesha Inoon ISBN: 9781867267065 HarperCollins Reviewed by MISBAH WOLF In the act of reading, an ostensibly solitary and intimate experience unfolds as a journey not just within the pages of one book but as an exploration of the myriad conversations that books engage in with each other. Books, whether intentionally or […]
Adele Dumont reviews The Archipelago of Us by Renee Pettitt-Schipp
The Archipelago of Us by Renee Pettitt-Schipp Freemantle Press Reviewed by ADELE DUMONT Renee-Pettitt Schipp first journeys to Christmas Island in early 2011, arriving in the immediate aftermath of a boat tragedy which has claimed the lives of some fifty asylum seekers. Some of the victims, she assumes, would […]
Paul Giffard-Foret reviews Coming out as Dalit by Yashica Dutt
Coming out as Dalit by Yashica Dutt Aleph Books Reviewed by PAUL GIFFARD-FORET Yashica Dutt’s memoir about coming out as Dalit, written in the tone of a manifesto, ought to be seen against the backdrop of a burgeoning literary scene by lower-caste women authors hailing from the Indian subcontinent or the diaspora, including recent […]
Anne Brewster reviews Borderland by Graham Akhurst
Borderland by Graham Akhurst UWA Publishing Answers Deferred Graham Akhurst’s debut young adult novel Borderland is a tour de force. It is a coming-of-age story, set on the lands of the Turrbal, Yuggera and Gungarri people. We are introduced to Jonathan Lane, the first-person narrator, who has just graduated from St Lucia […]
Mark Seton reviews Text Messages from the Universe by Richard James Allen
Text Messages from the Universe by Richard James Allen Flying Islands Press Reviewed by MARK SETON It’s 2023, and our world flounders under an encroaching deluge of Artificial Intelligence apps, especially ChatGPT, that might enable anyone to ‘generate’ poetry, so why bother! The good news, I believe, is that the poetry […]
Kavita Nandan reviews Once a Stranger by Zoya Patel
Once a Stranger by Zoya Patel Hachette ISBN 9780733647079 Reviewed by KAVITA NANDAN A significant part of the success of a story is the degree to which we are moved by it in some way. Once a Stranger, a novel about the search for acceptance, is written with heart and an awareness of […]
Eman Elhelw reviews Bitter & Sweet by Amal Awad
Bitter & Sweet by Amal Awad Pantera Press Reviewed by EMAN ELHELW Kicking off in a flooding kitchen, Amal Awad’s Bitter & Sweet, as the title suggests, is a story of the highs-and-lows of life. The life of Zeina, Palestinian-Australian chef, unfolds in Sydney’s inner-city restaurant scene with its fusion of cuisines, fine dining, […]
Judith Huang reviews Who Comes Calling? by Miriam Wei Wei Lo
Who Comes Calling by Miriam Wei Wei Lo WA Poets Reviewed by JUDITH HUANG Miriam Wei Wei Lo’s Who Comes Calling? begins with an open hand of a poem, its structure mimicking five uncurling fingers numbering off the things which Australia means to the persona, as a girl growing up in Singapore […]
Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn reviews Why We Are Here by Briohny Doyle
Why We Are Here by Briohny Doyle Penguin ISBN:9781760899639 Reviewed by ZOWIE DOUGLAS-KINGHORN Clairaudience, says the Macquarie dictionary, is the alleged power of hearing voices of ‘spirits’, or sounds inaudible to normal ears. The protagonist of Why We Are Here is not a psychic, but she is an aspiring dog-whisperer, and her […]
Nina Culley reviews The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt
The Jaguar Sarah Holland-Batt UQP ISBN 9780702265501 Reviewed by NINA CULLEY Sarah Holland-Batt’s Stella Prize-winning poetry collection, The Jaguar (2022), is entirely absorbing and accessible. It does not work to evade or obscure, rather its precise language and imagery culminates in a narrative that is incisive and moving. The collection is structured into four distinct […]
Jenny Hedley reviews Icaros by Tamryn Bennett
Icaros by Tamryn Bennett Vagabond Press ISBN 978-1-925735-56-7 Reviewed by JENNY HEDLEY The use of medicinal plants or herbs originates from Indigenous knowledge systems which predate colonisation by thousands, or in the case of Aboriginal pharmacopeia, tens of thousands of years. Phytotherapy, a science-based medical practice first described by French physician Henri Leclerc […]
Gurmeet Kaur reviews The Dancer by Evelyn Juers
The Dancer by Evelyn Juers Giramondo Reviewed by GURMEET KAUR The Dancer is an unusual biography. Dedicated to the subject, it is written ‘for’ rather than about Phillipa Cullen. The author’s close relationship with Cullen determines the biographer’s intentions — Juers and Cullen were university friends and remained in touch until she unexpectedly […]
Theodora Galanis reviews Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright ISBN 9781922725325 Giramondo Reviewed by THEODORA GALANIS ‘Listen!’ cries an oracle. ‘Look proper way. Carefully. See detail, if you want to see properly.’ (p.368). This instruction arrives almost halfway through Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy, opening the chapter titled, ‘Goddess of Scales’. Before I had reached this page, I was […]
Phyllis Perlstone reviews Cities by Petra White
Cities by Petra White ISBN 978-1-925735-30-7 Vagabond Reviewed by PHYLLIS PERLSTONE Each time I have read Cities, I have felt more of the affect of the poetical language. Yet there is a way of looking at it as a whole. Given Petra White’s themes, I can’t help alluding to Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck, […]
Anne Brewster reviews Daisy and Woolf by Michelle Cahill
Daisy and Woolf by Michelle Cahill Hachette Reviewed by ANNE BREWSTER Michelle Cahill’s debut novel Daisy & Woolf is accomplished and exhilarating. A re-reading of Virginia Woolf’s iconic modernist novel Mrs Dalloway, it excavates and reconstructs the literary worlding of a minor character, Daisy Simmons – the ‘dark, adorable’ Eurasian […]
Adele Dumont reviews A Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan
A Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan Ultimo Press ISBN: 9781761150739 Reviewed by ADELE DUMONT From its outset, A Kind of Magic establishes two distinct kinds of language. There’s Spargo-Ryan’s narration, as she recounts meeting with her new therapist: this voice is warm and confiding. The language she employs is vibrant and […]
Alison Stoddart reviews After the Rain by Aisling Smith
After the Rain by Aisling Smith Hachette ISBN 9780733648793 Reviewed by ALISON STODDART After the Rain is the debut for Melbourne-based author, Aisling Smith, a previous winner of the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers. The novel is an enticing exploration of diaspora and all its inherent obstacles encountered by migrants, including the internalised racism that […]
Paul Giffard-Foret reviews Anam by André Dao
Anam by André Dao Penguin ISBN:9781761046940 Reviewed by PAUL GIFFARD-FORET André Dao’s debut novel Anam is like a house with many rooms and windows, to use an image employed by its author. Its multiple locales account for the shattering, scattering, and smattering of Vietnamese people across the globe, and their resettlement in outer […]
Marie-Claire Colyer reviews Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran
Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran ISBN 9781761151408 Ultimo Press Reviewed by MARIE-CLAIRE COLYER Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, Shankari Chandran’s third published novel, is a narrative of substance. You could be excused for expecting a light-hearted romp through an old people’s home, if you judged this book by the […]
Samuel Cox reviews Harvest Lingo by Lionel Fogarty
Harvest Lingo Lionel Fogarty Giramondo ISBN 9781925336177 Reviewed by SAMUEL COX Despite having been named the ‘poet laureate’ of Aboriginal literature by author Alexis Wright and the ‘greatest living poet in Australia’ by poet John Kinsella, Lionel Fogarty’s poetry, previously published by small independent presses, has remained both critically and popularly underappreciated. I count myself […]
Marion May Campbell reviews I Have Decided To Remain Vertical by Gayelene Carbis
I Have Decided To Remain Vertical by Gayelene Carbis ISBN: 978122571489 Puncher and Wattmann Reviewed by MARION MAY CAMPBELL I Have Decided To Remain Vertical is an exhilarating extension and intensification of some of the major themes of Carbis’s first collection Anecdotal Evidence: her never leaving Carnegie; a family strangely functional in the wake of […]
Fernanda Dahlstrom reviews Freedom, Only Freedom by Behrouz Boochani
Freedom, Only Freedom By Behrouz Boochani (Author), Moones Mansoubi (Anthology Editor), Omid Tofighian (Anthology Editor) Bloomsbury Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM For the years that he was in immigration detention on Manus Island, Kurdish Iranian journalist Behrooz Boochani was known as ‘the voice of Manus.’ Writing on a smartphone, Boochani documented events, conditions and […]
Adele Dumont reviews Childhood by Shannon Burns
Childhood by Shannon Burns Text Publishing ISBN: 9781922330789 Reviewed by ADELE DUMONT Anyone writing about their childhood must grapple with the intervening gulf of time, and with the strange slipperiness of memory. This is especially so for Shannon Burns, who today lives a stable, contented life in the higher echelons of Australia’s middle class, […]
Michelle Cahill reviews This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham
This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham Ultimo Press ISBN 9781761150937 Reviewed by MICHELLE CAHILL I go on believing in the power of literature, and also in the politics of literature. —- Adrienne Rich Sophie Cunningham messaged me on Twitter when I was working on the edits of my novel, Daisy & Woolf, then titled, […]
Ben Hession reviews Sydney Spleen by Toby Fitch
Sydney Spleen by Toby Fitch Giramondo ISBN 9781925818758 Reviewed by BEN HESSION Sydney Spleen is the latest collection of poetry by Toby Fitch. Its title alludes to Charles Baudelaire’s volume of prose poems, Paris Spleen. Whilst for Baudelaire, there was a desire to import the expansiveness and consequent wider palette of […]
Laura Pettenuzzo reviews Open Secrets Ed. Catriona Menzies-Pike
Open Secrets Ed. Catriona Menzies-Pike Giramondo ISBN 9780648062165 Reviewed by LAURA PETTENUZO As both a reader and writer, I was eager to dive into Open Secrets, to immerse myself in the wisdom of those with far more literary experience. As a disabled writer still shielding from COVID-19 and knowing that many of these pieces […]
A distinct personal vocabulary by Audrey Molloy
Audrey Molloy is an Irish-Australian poet based in Sydney. Her debut collection, The Important Things (The Gallery Press, 2021), received the 2021 Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the 2022 Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize. Ordinary Time, a collaboration with Anthony Lawrence, was published by Pitt Street Poetry in 2022. She has an […]
Alison Hatzantonis reviews Stamiata X by Effie Carr
Stamiata X by Effie Carr Primer Fiction Reviewed by ALISON HATZANTONIS Years ago, when my first baby was a few months old, my half Greek, Australian born husband and I took Greek language lessons. In the depth of winter on cold cold nights I would leave my baby sound asleep in her Yia yia’s […]
Natalia Figueroa Barroso reviews How not to Drown in a Glass of Water
How not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz Macmillan Reviewed by NATALIA FIGUEROA BARROSO Over a round of yerba mate is where I’ve heard the best storytellers. In these circles of trust, tongues and tales become tangible and ideas are formed. Before the written word came to lay […]
Adam Aitken reviews Spirit Level by Marcelle Freiman
Spirit Level by Marcelle Freiman Puncher and Wattmann, 2021 ISBN 9781922571144 Reviewed by ADAM AITKEN Marcelle Freiman’s collection poems Spirit Level, her third book, surely deserves Jill Jones’ endorsement as a book where ‘clarity of memory [sits] alongside a shimmer of location’, whose ‘presences and absences’ are to be savoured. As restless, dynamic, and ‘unsettled’ […]
Michael Hannan reviews Unsettled by Gay Lynch
Unsettled by Gay Lynch Ligature Publishers ISBN 192588323X Reviewed by MICHAEL HANNAN What does it mean to tell the stories of one’s ancestors? How do human beings endure landscapes dominated by scarcity, isolation, gruelling labour, and patriarchal cruelty? And what is the price to be paid for survival? These questions animate Gay Lynch’s Unsettled, an […]
Holden Walker reviews Clean by Scott-Patrick Mitchell
Clean by Scott Patrick-Mitchell Upswell Reviewed by HOLDEN WALKER Western-Australian poet Scott-Patrick Mitchell has spent the best part of the last decade appearing in some of Australia’s most celebrated literary journals, headlining spoken-word poetry showcases, and contributing to acclaimed anthologies. However, in 2022, Upswell published Mitchell’s first full-length collection of poetry titled […]
Martin Edmond reviews mō taku tama by Vaughan Rapatahana
mō taku tama by Vaughan Rapatahana Kilmog Press Reviewed by MARTIN EDMOND I first encountered Vaughan Rapatahana in 2010, in the pages of brief magazine, in the days when it was being edited by Jack Ross. Rapatahana’s writing was bi-lingual ― English and te reo Māori ― typographically inventive and uncompromising in its […]
Jenny Hedley reviews Body Shell Girl by Rose Hunter
Body Shell Girl by Rose Hunter Spinifex Press ISBN 9781925950502 Reviewed by JENNY HEDLEY I first encountered author Rose Hunter late in 2020 when I wrote about the decade I sold lingerie in strip clubs, hinting at but not claiming my own experience on the pole. Rose called me out on social media, furious at […]
Zarlasht Sarwari reviews My Pen is the Wing of a Bird
My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women Ed Catherine Boyle MacLehose Press Quercus London Hachette Australia ISBN: 9781529422214 Reviewed by ZARLASHT SARWARI My Pen is the Wing of a Bird, draws us into the lives of fictional characters in Afghanistan in an anthology of twenty three unrelated but deeply […]
Fernanda Dahlstrom reviews Homesickness by Janine Mikosza
Homesickness by Janine Mikosza Ultimo Press ISBN 9781761150234 Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM Homesickness is a memoir that strives, as Emily Dickenson urged, to tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Memoirs are reconstructions that seek to capture the voice and perspective of one or more of the writer’s younger selves. Their truth claims […]
Joshua Klarica reviews Nostalgia has ruined my Life by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle
Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle Giramondo ISBN 9781925818772 Reviewed by JOSHUA KLARICA A technique commonly employed by poets is the announcing of the setting or theme of the piece in its title. Consider T. S Eliot’s poem ‘In a Station of the Metro’, whose title functions as a covert, preliminary line that […]
Brenda Saunders reviews Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray by Anita Heiss
Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray by Anita Heiss Simon and Schuster Reviewed by BRENDA SAUNDERS In the ‘Prologue’, to her novel, Heiss introduces us to Aboriginal tribal life at the onset of colonial expnsion in southern NSW. This is Gundagai in 1838. She provides the historical setting for the action and events to follow. […]
Sophie Cunningham launches Daisy and Woolf by Michelle Cahill
Daisy and Woolf by Michelle Cahill Hachette ISBN: 9780733645211 Launched by SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM I felt some trepidation when I heard that Michelle Cahill had written a novel about the Woolfs because I’ve been researching a book about Leonard Woolf, but, inevitably, about Virginia and other Bloomsbury sorts, for more than 15 years. I, like Michelle, […]
Gemma Parker reviews Where We Swim by Ingrid Horrocks
Where We Swim by Ingrid Horrocks UQP ISBN 9780702263408 Victoria University of Wellington Press, NZ Reviewed by GEMMA PARKER Where We Swim by Ingrid Horrocks is a hybrid work of creative nonfiction, an exploratory memoir that combines travel narrative and nature writing with meditations on ecology, community and responsibility. These meditations revolve around a series […]
Fernanda Dahlstrom reviews Nothing to See by Pip Adam
Nothing to See by Pip Adam Giramondo ISBN 9781925818680 Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM Pip Adam’s third novel, Nothing To See, deals with female identity, addiction, digitization and impending climate disaster. Penny and Greta sleep in the same room in a shared flat. They reflect on sobriety, share clothes, receive help from the Salvation Army […]
Matthew da Silva reviews Southerly
Writing Through Fences: Archipelago of Letters Southerly 79.2 Brandl & Schlesinger Reviewed by MATTHEW da SILVA It was while reading this issue of Southerly 7.2 Writing Through Fences— Archipelago of Letters that news emerged of the Australian government’s decision to allow some refugees in its care to resettle in New Zealand and for […]
Winnie Dunn reviews The Kindness of Birds by Merlinda Bobis
The Pigeons Are Taking Over: The Kindness of Birds by Merlinda Bobis ISBN 9781925950304 Spinifex Press Reviewed by WINNIE DUNN Ibis The beloved bin chicken is always feeding off scraps of bread whenever I walk to Fairfield station. Because it is a sin to throw away the sacredness of bread, those leftovers become a […]
Claire Qu reviews Love & Virtue by Diana Reid
Love & Virtue By Diana Reid ISBN 9781761150111 Ultimo Press Reviewed by CLAIRE QU The prim and vaguely Austenian title of Diana Reid’s debut novel offers a tongue-in-cheek self-description consistent with the book’s plentiful irony. Many labels could be applied to it: campus novel, bildungsroman, #MeToo novel, story of contemporary female friendship. Perhaps that is […]
Dave Clark reviews Born Into This by Adam Thompson
Born Into This by Adam Thompson ISBN 9780702263118 UQP Reviewed by DAVE CLARK As a technique pioneered and refined over the past hundred years, keyhole surgery involves a surgeon making small incisions in the skin, so tiny that at times it is hard to tell afterwards that something significant has taken place beneath the […]
Tom Munro-Harrison reviews Exo-Dimensions Mixed Feelings & Storm Warning by Stick Mob
Exo-Dimensions, Mixed Feelings, Storm Warning by Seraphina Newberry & Justin Randall, Declan Miller, Lauren Boyle & Alyssa Mason Stick Mob Studio Reviewed by TOM MUNRO-HARRISON Black eyes and a scaly, reptilian maw are met with fist and boomerang upon the unmistakable dusty red, muted tones of the Central Australian landscape. […]
H.C. Gildfind reviews Everything, all at Once
Everything, all at Once Ultimo Press Sydney, 2021 ISBN 9781761150173 Reviewed by H.C. GILFIND Everything, all at Once presents fiction and poetry from the ‘thirty writers under thirty’ who won the inaugural Ultimo prize in 2021. This prize asked entrants to explore the theme of ‘identity’—a pertinent choice, considering how central and contested particular identities […]
Lesh Karan reviews Eurydice Speaks by Claire Gaskin
Eurydice Speaks by Claire Gaskin ISBN: 9780648848127 ] Hunter Publishers Reviewed by LESH KARAN I feather my empty rest with writing I gave up relationships to right it Orpheus didn’t have to make that choice (sonnet 12) When I read Eurydice Speaks, what struck me the most (among many other things) was voice, and how it […]
Jennifer Mackenzie reviews Sudeep Sen’s Anthropocene
Anthropocene By Sudeep Sen Salt Desert Media Group Ltd. 9781913738389 Reviewed by JENNNIFER MACKENZIE Sudeep Sen, the poet, is in his study — where he can usually be found when in Delhi, sequestered, engaged with the world. His companion is the neem tree, light refracting through the pattern of its leaves. The tree, […]
George Mouratidis reviews An Embroidery of Old Maps and New by Angela Costi
An Embroidery of Old Maps and New by Angela Costi Spinifex, 2020 Reviewed by GEORGE MOURATIDIS In some topoi of poesy lore, it is believed that the first iteration of Homeric oral verse as a material text was woven by women on a loom – deft fingers spinning, immortalising […]
Fernanda Dahlstrom reviews Gentle and Fierce by Vanessa Berry
Gentle and Fierce by Vanessa Berry Giramondo ISBN 9781925818710 Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM Gentle and Fierce is a book of essays that provides glimpses of Sydney author Vanessa Berry’s life by dissecting her encounters with non-human animals in various contexts – in the household, in captivity, in art and in the form of ornamental […]
Izzy Roberts-Orr reviews My Friend Fox by Heidi Everett
My Friend Fox by Heidi Everett ISBN 9781761150159 Ultimo Press Reviewed by IZZY ROBERTS-ORR At night, I can hear the foxes screaming. Nothing is wrong, this is just what they do, particularly during mating season. The first time I heard it, I thought something was seriously wrong – that a small child was […]
Christine Shamista reviews How Decent Folk Behave by Maxine Beneba Clarke
How Decent Folk Behave By Maxine Beneba Clarke Hachette ISBN 9780733647666 Reviewed by CHRISTINE SHAMISTA Building glass walls to show ‘how decent folk behave’ From the beginning to the end, front and back covers inclusive, Maxine Beneba Clarke’s newly released book, How Decent Folk Behave, is rich with carefully curated images and words that connect […]
Adele Aria reviews Racism edited by Winnie Dunn, Stephen Pham, Phoebe Grainer
Racism: Stories on fear, hate and bigotry Edited by Winnie Dunn, Stephen Pham, and Phoebe Grainer Sweatshop Literacy Movement Reviewed by ADELE ARIA I was eager yet simultaneously exhausted to begin reading Racism: Stories on fear, hate & bigotry. This is not a criticism but rather acknowledges my visceral familiarity with the phenomenon. I […]
Fernanda Dahlstrom reviews One Hundred Days by Alice Pung
One Hundred Days Alice Pung Black Inc Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM Alice Pung’s fifth book and second novel, One Hundred Days (Black Inc, 2021), deals with the difficult relationship between sixteen-year-old Karuna and her manipulative and overbearing (but also loving and hardworking) Chinese Filapino mother. Karuna’s father, who is Anglo Australian, has left the […]
Bec Kavanagh reviews Ordinary Matter by Laura Elvery
Ordinary Matter by Laura Elvery UQP ISBN 9780702262760 Reviewed by BEC KAVANAGH Laura Elvery’s second collection of short stories, Ordinary Matter, takes its inspiration from the mere twenty times women have won the Nobel Prize for science. And yet it isn’t science that connects the pieces in this collection, but the ‘softer’ stuff: the women […]
Ben Hession reviews Whisper Songs by Tony Birch
Whisper Songs by Tony Birch UQP ISBN 9780702263279 Reviewed by BEN HESSION Tony Birch is a Naarm (Melbourne) based writer, who is probably better known for his prose, including his short story collections and novels, of which, The White Girl, won the Indigenous Writers’ Prize of the 2020 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards. He […]
Kevin Hart reviews The Strangest Place by Stephen Edgar
The Strangest Place: New and Selected Poems Stephen Edgar Black Pepper ISBN 9780648038740 Reviewed by KEVIN HART Poetry always involves a delicate negotiation between craft and art. Craft can easily be misunderstood as a set of skills completely external to what is being written. Yet a poet shows craft by moving confidently within the work […]
Donnalyn Xu reviews Take Care by Eunice Andrada
Take Care by Eunice Andrada Giramondo ISBN 9781925818796 Reviewed by DONNALYN XU How do we give shape to what resists language? How do words move against the body, in dialogue with its silence, its noise? These tangled questions emerge from my reading of Eunice Andrada’s second collection of poems, TAKE CARE, and the writing of […]
Lesley Lebkowicz reviews While I am drawing breath by Rose Ausländer (trans)
While I am drawing breath By Rose Ausländer, translated by Anthony Vivis and Jean Boase-Beier ISBN 978 1906570 30 9 Arc Publications Reviewed by LESLEY LEBKOWICZ Black milk: the poetry of Rose Ausländer Many poetry readers, asked about the poetry of the Holocaust, will think of Paul Celan’s Todesfuge and its powerful opening image: Black […]
Amy Walters reviews The Everlasting Sunday by Robert Lukins
The Everlasting Sunday by Robert Lukins ISBN UQP Reviewed by AMY WALTERS Robert Lukins’ debut novel follows seventeen-year-old Radford as he commences at Goodwin Manor, “a place for boys who had been found by trouble” (19). The Manor is a dilapidated institution of reform in the Shropshire countryside, which the Queensland-raised Lukins has said was […]
Katelin Farnsworth reviews Our Shadows by Gail Jones
Our Shadows by Gail Jones ISBN 9781922330284 Text Publishing Reviewed by KATELIN FARNSWORTH Our Shadows by Gail Jones is a family saga that examines the intimate lives of three generations living in Kalgoorlie. The story starts with Paddy Hannan, an Irish-born prospector who discovered gold back in 1893. Paddy’s history is woven in and out […]
Dženana Vucic reviews Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt by Elena Gomez
Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt by Elena Gomez Puncher and Wattmann ISBN 9781925780741 Reviewed by Dženana Vucic To read Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt (2020), Elena Gomez’s second full-length poetry collection, is to be propelled headlong through the dizzy intersect of postmodernity and Marxist-feminist critique, to be flooded with possibilities for […]
Joshua Bird reviews British India, White Australia by Kama Maclean
British India, White Australia by Kama Maclean ISBN 9781742236216 New South Books Reviewed by JOSHUA BIRD Perhaps one of the most under-appreciated elements of systems of racial discrimination is their sheer banality. Whether it be the efficient genocidal bureaucracy of the Nazi holocaust or the complex racist laws and policies that held together the system […]
Anne Brewster reviews The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar
The Mother Wound Amani Haydar Panmacmillan ISBN 9781760982454 Reviewed by ANNE BREWSTER Strong Women Amani Haydar’s powerful memoir takes its title from Dr Oscar Serrallach’s term ‘the mother wound’, which describes how ‘the relationship between mothers and daughters is affected by unhealed traumatic experiences passed down matriarchal lines’ (333). In her family, Haydar says, the […]