I had no interest in picking up Helen Garner’s latest novel The Spare Room. Helen has always seemed a little worthy, a little hard core for me. I based this assessment on what I’d seen of her in the media and some vague memory of her writing something on sexual harassment… I haven’t actually read [...]
Books
I like Val McDermid’s writing. I always have. From Wire in the Blood to her lighter novels, they never fail to entertain. Highly descriptive, great character profiles, a page-turning plot. In The Grave Tattoo the action centres around the discovery of a 200 year old body in the peat of the Lakes District. The body [...]
First of all, I LOVED Gone With the Wind. The sweeping saga, the feisty heroine, the dashing, rich, and rather butch hero… with a soft side. *Swoon* And I’ve not loved sequels written by random authors. It was there on the “new” table at the library and well, what was a girl to do? I [...]
This Jane Austen novel has at it’s heart an anti-heroine. Miss Fanny Price is invited to live with her rich uncle, aunt and cousins as an act of charity and is treated perhaps a little unfairly, a little more strictly. Made to feel her inferiority. She is a prim and proper miss. Timid and shy. [...]
Last Horse Standing by Mike Keenan tells the story of Jack Camp, a Kimberley stockman who went on a near fatal mustering expedition to Walcott Inlet in 1971. Based on a true story as told to Mike by Jack’s young jackeroo Peter Wann, the story tells of how Jack crossed the King Leopold Ranges and [...]
Donna Tartt doesn’t write many books. It was at least ten years between The Secret History – which I loved – and this new novel The Little Friend. Donna Tartt’s books are dense novels. Rich novels. Long novels. At the end you feel intimately connected with her characters (possibly because it has taken so long [...]
In this novel by Jodi Picoult our heroine Delia – a search and rescue person with a bloodhound – discovers that she herself is lost. To find herself she travels across the country and piece by piece her memory comes back. Sometimes coming back is hard. I find Jodi’s writing easy to read. You are [...]
Julian Fellowes you might remember wrote the screenplay for Gosford Park – and won an Oscar for it.. In this novel of manners he tells the story of a social climbing young lady who manages to capture the heart of a young heir. Once ensconced in the aristocracy she puts it in jeopardy. The story [...]
