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Book Review – Julia by Sandra Newman
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. When I first read George Orwell’s 1984 back in school, I was part terrified, part mesmerised, and absolutely captivated by Orwell’s capacity for capturing this chilling vision of a future, totalitarian world presided over by the ominous and omnipresent Big Brother. So when I read…
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Book Review – The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
The Wren, The Wren is a story of three parts, three people: Nell, a young woman in search of adventure, her mother Carmel, and Carmel’s father Phil, the famous poet. Moving back and forth in time, between characters, between first person narrative and third, this multi-generational novel explores love, sex, the complexities and messiness of…
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Book Review – The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan
In her prologue, Vanessa Chan tells us that The Storm We Made is inspired by her grandparents’ generation’s reluctant stories about the period 1941 – 1945 in Malaya (now Malaysia) known as the Japanese Occupation. Unfolding through four perspectives – that of Cecily and her three children Jujube, Abel and Jasmin – this is a…
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Book Review – One Friday in Napa by Jennifer Hamm
Deep in the Napa Valley, a story of past and present unfolds. When Vene learns that her mother Olivia is nearing death, she reluctantly returns to her family home, only to find her mother as cold and difficult as ever; but when Vene discovers an old cookbook, filled with revelatory notes, a whole new side…
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Book Review – The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
A strange, strange tale so full of hardship but also balanced by moments of real beauty. There is starvation, disease, punishing cold, desolation, violence and sublime but unforgiving terraines, but also startling moments of clarity, of profound realisation, and deep connection with the natural world. The story opens with our protagonist, known for most of…
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Book Review – Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a story told to us by our narrator Kathy in 1990s England, as she looks back on her adolescence beginning in a picturesque, rural boarding school. As the reminiscing begins, and unfolds, this could be any adolescence; the friendships, in particular with her best friends Ruth and…
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Book Review – Silent City by Sarah Davis-Goff
A nightmare vision of Dublin with only whispers of the city as we know it, Silent City is a world of warrior women called banshees, foul and terrifying beings called skrake that fall somewhere between the living and the dead, breeders, wallers, farmers, and shanties, all ruled by the ominous and brutish management. Inside the…
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Book Review – The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I’ve loved everything I’ve read so far by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a writer who weaves captivating and compelling stories of great strength, populated by characters so vividly brought to life that we find ourselves really feeling with them. From the devastating effects of political and social unrest on everyday families to traditional religion and culture…
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Book Review – My Husband by Maud Ventura
My Husband, the debut novel by Maud Ventura, translated from the original French by Emma Ramadan, is a slow moving, intense and deliciously dark psychological portrait of a marriage and domestic dynamic; a marriage of games and rules, offences and corresponding punishments, of hypothetical drama… all in our narrator’s head alone. The novel opens strong,…
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Book Review – Weave by Oein DeBhairduin & Deirdre Sullivan. Illustrated by Yingge Xu
Weave is a stunning work of literary art; a collaboration between writers Oein DeBhairduin and Deirdre Sullivan, and artist Yingge Xu. Containing eight stories inspired by the eight festivals in the wheel of the year, the flip reverse format – one side of the book starts with Sullivan’s stories and to read DeBhairduin’s you flip…
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The Resting Willow 