This year I came nowhere near my long term goal of reading a book a week with this year’s tally of 34 books read for the whole year. I do have a genuine excuse as the first four months was spent preparing my latest novel for publication. Despite the best of intentions my reviewing was … Continue reading 2022 – A Year of Reading
Australian fiction
Book Review – First Person by Richard Flanagan
First Person is a first person narrative set in the early 1990s in the depths of the ‘recession we had to have’. Kif Kehlmann, an aspiring writer, is struggling both financially and artistically. He lives in a rundown house in Hobart with his wife Suzy who is expecting twins, and their three year old daughter. … Continue reading Book Review – First Person by Richard Flanagan
Book Review – The Battlers by Kylie Tennant
At the height of the Great Depression of the 1930s it is estimated that 30,000 unemployed Australian men took to the road in search of work, often leaving their wives and children to struggle on in the cities and towns. A few women did the same. They took whatever work came their way, fruitpicking, laboring, … Continue reading Book Review – The Battlers by Kylie Tennant
Book Review – Whipbird by Robert Drewe
Whipbird is the story of a family reunion. Hugh Cleary, a Melbourne barrister with a recently acquired vineyard in the Ballarat area, has decided to celebrate the 160th anniversary of his forebear Conor Cleary’s arrival in the colony of Victoria in 1854. Over 1000 of the possible 2946 descendants of Conor and his three wives … Continue reading Book Review – Whipbird by Robert Drewe
One Minute Book Review – Tomaree by Debbie Robson
Tomaree begins in 1972 with Peggy Lockwood returning to Nelson Bay, a coastal town in New South Wales where she had grown up. In 1943 Peggy had married an American naval Lieutenant, Tom Lockwood, who was stationed at Nelson Bay and, as a war bride, Peggy had moved to the United States following the war. … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Tomaree by Debbie Robson
Book Review – Jungfrau by Dympna Cusack
Jungfrau is the story of three independent young women who have been friends since university, living in Sydney in the mid-1930s. Eve is an obstetrician who has recently returned to her Catholic faith, Marc a social worker with progressive philosophies who lives life to the full and Thea, a teacher, sensitive and lacking the clear-eyed … Continue reading Book Review – Jungfrau by Dympna Cusack
Catherine Meyrick 