Tag Archives: Book reviews

Book Review: The Ledge by Christian White

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I always enjoy Christian White’s novels. He is known for his twisting crime mysteries and this one is no exception.

Human remains are found under a cliff which sends three friends into a tail spin of panic about what happened to their friend Aaron in 1999.

This one is a dual-narrative story which I always enjoy as I love reading about the past meeting the present. In this case it catches up to the friends who have a lot to hide.

 The Ledge certainly delivers as we’re taken on a journey through Justin’s teenage diary and then see how his life as a mid-thirties man turns out. There is a lot at stake for the friends as the authorities close in on the mystery. To say more would give it away. But the twist is one you won’t see coming.

It’s fast-paced an well written and an ideal holiday read. Check it out.

Book Review: Wifedom by Anna Funder

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It seems everyone is talking about and reading this book. It has courted controversy, admiration and much discussion.

Wifedom was one for our book group and created quite a discussion about George Orwell the man, the writer, and the husband. What Anna Funder does superbly in this book is to put the meaning of what it is to be wife, front and centre and in particular what was to be George Orwell’s wife.

Eileen O’Shaughnessy, herself an Oxford scholar and poet marries George Orwell and Funder meticulously explores her impact and influence on George Orwells’ work as an author, in particular of Animal Farm and the later works, 1984.

Having read both novels many years ago they made a significant impact on my younger self. Understanding the story behind the works now gives me the impetus to read them again.

Funder’s research takes us behind the scenes of this married couple’s life in Spain when Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War, his writing and his battle with tuberculosis. More importantly she sees Eileen’s own struggle, to bring in an income to support them, her heath struggles and her utter devotion to doing everything to support her husband’s art.

It’s completely fascinating as Funder draws on the patriarchal system not just in the 1930’s but in current day of unacknowledged work done by women everywhere.

Orwell comes out poorly. His behaviour could be put down to the patriarchal system of the day yet Funder shows us that he was a very poor excuse for a human being.

I wasn’t sure about Funder’s imposition of her own story, while interesting, hardly added much. I did appreciate the incredible research to bring about such an enlightening story about a woman who was truly amazing in her own short life.

Read this one for yourself and you’ll get what all the fuss is about.

Book Review: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

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I’ve read most of Sally Rooney’s books and I think Intermezzo is her best so far.

However it may not be everyone’s taste as the paragraphs are long and meander and quotation marks aren’t used for dialogue which can be off putting. But if you persist, then you may just be as surprised as I was with this delightful novel about grief, loss and love.

The novel is centred around three main characters, two of whom are brothers, Ivan and Peter who have just lost their father. Theirs is a complicated relationship made more difficult by a ten year age gap and a divorced and remote mother. The third main character is Margaret, separated from her alcoholic husband who falls for twenty-two year old Ivan, a star chess player. Peter on the other hand as the older brother has his own issues as he navigates the loss of his father all while dealing with the love of two women.

It sounds like a complicated web of relationships and it is. What makes it so compelling is the characters. I stopped reading this one halfway through for two weeks while I was away and went back into not missing a beat as I was so invested in each character. Rooney is skilled at making you care enough to hope for each of them. It’s tender-hearted and beautifully written.

I really enjoyed this one. Give it a go.

Book Review: The Disappearing Season by Cienna Collins

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I’m only now just recovering enough to write a few words about this gripping and thrilling novel by Cienna Collins.

 With the aid of her sister, Georgia Wright escapes the clutches of violent and controlling Andreas to Far North Queensland. There she manages to start a new life as a nanny to young Reilly whose father, kind-hearted Daniel has a few issues of his own. Together with housekeeper Margie the family quickly embraces her.

Georgia handles the dynamics of the household, a spiteful ex-wife and makes friends with Nayla. However, Andreas has other ideas about letting her go and when a full-scale cyclone looms things get very interesting.

Collins cleverly alternates the chapters with background snippets about Georgia’s life with Andreas and this creates a slow building tension from the beginning. Like Georgia, we the reader are never quite settled and relaxed with her new life. The relationships she builds with Daniel, Reilly and Margie are touching and engaging. Indeed, all the characters are well drawn.  We are also privileged to be in Georgia’s head feeling every bit of her uncertainty and insecurity making sure we never entirely relax.

The description of the tropics is vivid and I felt like I was there or maybe since I was in chilly Melbourne, I just wished I was there.

 “The day’s torrid heat is yet to kick in and lift the overnight rain from the shrubs, drops large and glassy on russet and emerald leaves.”

The second half of the book is a heart-racer when things quickly spiral out of control as Georgia’s races to survive in the middle of a violent and deadly tropical cyclone.

The writing is beautiful and this page-turner never lets you be. An excellent read and highly recommended.

Thank you to the publisher for an advance copy and I leave this honest review voluntarily.

Book Review: Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

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I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this memoir about Flanagan’s family interspersed with their connection to war, Tasmania, colonialism and the birth of the atom bomb, but I liked it.

Flanagan takes us back in history to when his father was a POW arguing that if the atomic bomb hadn’t been dropped on Hiroshima he would never have been born.

It’s an interesting proposition as he takes us down the rabbit hole of the atom bomb’s invention due to an affair between the writer H G Wells with Rebecca West. Confused? He makes a compelling argument that Wells wrote a futuristic novel called The World Set free where he imagined the splitting of the atom, forecasting its impact as a weapon which would be used to kill hundreds of thousands. And that much is true.

Flanagan’s father was indeed a POW in Japan.  However, on a visit there Flanagan found little acknowledgment of that fact in Japanese history. When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the war ended allowing Flanagan senior to be released.

Interestingly there were a further series of events:  physicist Leo Szilard discovered the nuclear chain reaction, a concept created because the man had read HG Wells’ novel The World Set Free.

Flanagan’s study of HG Wells’ writing correlates a link to the attempted genocide of Tasmanian aborigines, and of course we know the deep connection he has to Tasmania.

I loved the chain of events and was enthralled with the possibilities. I also deeply appreciated Flanagan’s own love  and grief for his father. Indeed he’s the man today because of his family and also because he has faced his own mortality after nearly drowning when he was young. If you’ve read any of Flanagan’s books you will know he has mined his own experiences and that of his family often into fictional narrative. This book will be all the more richer if you have read any of his works.

Likewise, this book has so much in it, I don’t think it’s possible to absorb it all in one reading because the themes are deep and thought provoking. I wondered about my own interesting family history and it certainly gets you thinking about who you might be because of where you’ve come from.

Loved this one.

Book Review: Prima Facie by Suzie Miller

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This story was first written as a play which I unfortunately missed last year when it was on in Melbourne. When the novel from which the play was based was selected by our book group I was looking forward to reading it.

The novel is about Tessa, a young brilliant barrister in London. She’s worked hard to get there having come from a working-class background where her mother is a cleaner and her brother is trying to stay out of jail having been there for a short time when he was younger. She has clawed her way through the class system to be the best at her job as a criminal defense barrister. But she also knows she works in the hallowed turf of London establishment where her colleagues come from privileged and entitled backgrounds.

She loves the law and believes in it.  Then one night she finds herself in a position, like one in three women, where she is raped by a colleague.  She won’t be silent and takes it to court with all the consequences that you can imagine.

This is an emotional and raw story and the author doesn’t hold anything back as she explores the price that victims play not just from the crime but from the process of seeking justice.

The first half of the novel gives insights into Tessa’s life from her family background of domestic violence and poverty, to her climb to  Cambridge where she’s told one in three will never make it in Law. Through dogged determination she is the one who does make it but the feeling of being inadequate and of being of the wrong class is emphasised over and over again. For me that was a little too repetitious. The second half of the novel was all about the court case which was cleverly interspersed with the events immediately after the crime occurred.

Tessa does have full faith in the law and I did wonder as a criminal barrister why she was naïve enough to believe that the law could protect her in this case when the law itself works against sexual abuse cases. But like others who have gone before her, to make a stand and have a voice is what ends up being as important.

It’s a powerful story and one that everyone should read. Although it was set in London, the issues around misogynistic law applies equally in Australia and reminds me of Louise Milligan’s book called Witness where she deals with the factual inadequacies in our own legal system when it comes to sexual abuse crimes.

Highly recommend this one.

Book Review: Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

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You can never go wrong with a Sally Hepworth book and I’ve read most of them now. Darling Girls is no exception.

Three foster sisters,  Norah, Jessica and Alicia have come from diverse traumatic backgrounds to meet in a new foster home run by Miss Fairchild who shows the outside world a different persona to the one behind closed doors.

Years later, Miss Fairchild’s old house is demolished to make way for a new building and human bones are discovered under the house. Police call on the three women to help them with their investigation and the three who have remained close into their adulthood, reluctantly go back to Port Agatha where the house was and back in time to their ugly childhood.

Each of the sisters, has their own difficulties in adulthood and the narrative takes us into each of their points of view with a shock twist at the end.

Hepworth tackles the world of foster carers, vulnerability of children as well as mental health from trauma. At times I found it quite confronting but Hepworth gently leads the reader out of the tension, providing relief in all the right places. It’s also a novel about love and friendship.

The chapters are short and it’s an enjoyable and easy read.