Reviews/Essays

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 have become her students. […]

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 […]

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 Private, […]

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 […]

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 loss in […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Daisy and Woolf by Michelle Cahill ISBN: 9780733645211 Hachette Red River 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]