Reviews/Essays

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 being chased […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]