What feels at first like a somewhat cheeky bait-and-switch turns out to be rich ground for investigating the passage of time, fate, and the many people we are over our lifetimes.
Category: Reviews
The best books I’ve read 2019
In 2019 I gravitated to stories of radical, political change (can you blame me?), and there seemed to be a surplus available.
Review: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other is a book intensely concerned with the politics of identity and creativity, and how they have shifted over the 20th century.
Review: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
The Testaments is now a book that is completely inseparable from the politics surrounding it.
Review: The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat by Tim Bonyhardy
The long-haired rat proves to be an excellent subject for an environmental history of Australia since colonisation.
Review: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin
The Obelisk Gate is the second part of N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, set in alternative world known ironically as the Stillness.
Review: Damascus by Christos Tsolkias
Caravaggio perfected painting people at the exact moment when dark gives way to light. In Damascus, Tsolkias achieves the same effect in words.
Review: Australia Day by Melanie Cheng
Australia Day is a revealing and uncomfortable diagnosis of Australia’s multicultural insecurities.
Review: The Pillars by Peter Polites
The Pillars is a novel where property power is everything and each word seems to take on a menacing aura.
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