Fiction – paperback; Ginninderra Press; 84 pages; 2023. Approaching Zero is a collection of short stories, flash fiction and poetry by West Australian writer Roland Leach. Most of the pieces have been published elsewhere but have been brought together in one (slim) volume for the first time and published by Ginninderra, a small independent press based in South Australia. The stories are strange and wonderful. I loved their compelling, haunting and often suspenseful nature. Most are focused on human connection and written with warmth and humour. Change of heart I particularly loved the story ..read more

Congratulations to Irish writer Darragh McKeon. His novel Remembrance Sunday was named the winner of the 2024 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award last night. As many of you know, this is my favourite literary prize to follow (see all my many posts about it here), and I generally read and review the entire shortlist every year. This year, I didn’t do that because, for the first time ever, I had read four of the five titles already — typically, the only one I hadn’t read was Darragh’s book. (See my post here.) I read it last weekend but haven’t yet had time to review it. It’s an amazing no ..read more

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday, an ad-hoc series I kicked off in 2010, which has been on hiatus for several years — but has now returned for 2024. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers. If you’d like to take part, simply visit this post and fill out the form! Today’s guest is Madamebibilophile, who blogs at Madame Bibi Liophile Recommends. Madame Bibi started blogging i ..read more

Non-fiction – memoir/poetry; JOAN; 128 pages; 2023.  Madison Godfrey’s Dress Rehearsals is a book that defies easy categorisation. It’s a brash and bold memoir told in prose poetry, unafraid of exploring the deepest, darkest places of what it is to be human and trying to find your (safe) place in the world. The author, who identifies as non-binary and whose pronouns are they/them, embraces radical and inclusive storytelling. Her book focuses largely on womanhood and femininity and explores desire, sex and sexuality; music, fandom and the mosh pit; domesticity and home life; the femme fat ..read more

Fiction – paperback; Faber & Faber; 44 pages; 2019. Translated from the Czech by Suzanne Rappaport. French-Czech writer Milan Kundera (1929-2023) penned the short story Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead in 1969. It appeared in English for the first time in 1974 — in Kundera’s short story collection Laughable Loves — and was reissued by Faber as part of its Faber Stories series to mark the publisher’s 90th birthday in 2019. It tells the story of a man who bumps into his former lover, a woman much older than him whom he has not seen in 15 years. “I wouldn’t have recognised you ..read more

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday, an ad-hoc series I kicked off in 2010 which has been on hiatus for several years — but has now returned for 2024. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers. If you’d like to take part simply visit this post and fill in the form! Today’s guest is Radz Pandit who blogs at Radhika’s Reading Retreat. Radz is from the bustling city of Mumbai ..read more

Non-fiction – hardcover; Black Inc; 96 pages; 2024. In recent years I’ve become a fan of Black Inc’s Writers on Writers series in which “leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and influenced them”. I have previously reviewed volumes on Tim Winton, Helen Garner and Kate Jennings, and have many more in my TBR. They are excellent “deep dives” into writers who have shaped, and continue to shape, Australia’s cultural discourse. The latest in this series is about Kim Scott, a Noongar writer who has won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice — for Benang, from the Hea ..read more

Fiction – paperback; Daunt Books; 201 pages; 2021. I have long wanted to read something by Barbara Comyns (1907-1992), an English novelist widely respected and often championed by book bloggers but her work is hard to come by in Australia — unless you want to place a special order. So when I saw Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, her third novel, sitting on the shelves at Readings Emporium store on a recent trip to Melbourne, I snapped it up. First published in 1954, the novel is set about 20 years earlier in the small English village of Warwickshire at around the time of King George VI’s coro ..read more

Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 112 pages; 2018. Translated from the Italian by W.J. Strachan. The Beautiful Summer by Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) won Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Strega Prize for fiction, in 1950. (The author sadly died by suicide a couple of months later.) It’s the story of a teenage girl whose friendship with an older woman draws her into a bohemian artistic community in 1930s Turin, showing her an alternative way of life. It has been reissued as part of Penguin’s European Writers series. A girl’s life Sixteen-year-old Ginia works at a dressmakers and lives wit ..read more

 Fiction – paperback; Magabala Books; 96 pages; 2023. I am partial to a verse novel (although I have only read a handful), so I was keen to read Ali Cobby Eckermann’s She is the Earth, which was longlisted for this year’s Stella Prize. The book is a luminous love letter to Mother Nature, including her life-sustaining ecosystems, weather patterns and landscapes. In many ways, it reminded me of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, but instead of looking at Earth from above, it looks at Earth from the ground up and presents it as a living, breathing organism. I am staring at the new day it grows bri ..read more