I was intrigued by the cover claim on North – that it’s a post-apocalyptic game changer. That’s a pretty big call in this genre. Not a lot changes, really. There’s an apocalypse, and then people have to survive afterwards. Normally there are the ‘good’ people who try to survive while keeping their humanity intact. Then […]
Books
Review: The Truths and Triumphs of Grace Atherton, by Anstey Harris
On finishing The Truths and Triumphs of Grace Atherton I dearly wanted to stand up and shout, ‘Bravo! Bra-vooo!’, clap wildly and whistle as though I were at an orchestral concert. But I would have woken up everyone in my house. So I settled for a mental fist pump instead. Grace Atherton inhabits the edges […]
Review: The Helpline, by Katherine Collette
The Helpline, by Katherine Collette is plain good fun. Set in a local council in one of Melbourne’s bayside surbubs, Geraldine is the unwilling newest employee on the Senior Citizen’s Helpline. It irritates her that some of the local residents seem to be calling just for a chat. It’s so… inefficient. The Helpline is somewhere […]
Dark post-apocalyptic novels that’ll have you stocking your bunker
I can’t really explain why I love post-apocalyptic novels and dystopian fiction so much. Maybe it’s because, deep down, I fear we humans won’t be able to pull it together in time to beat climate change. Rising sea levels, record-breaking weather events and increased toxicity are quickly becoming reality. It’s nice to think that fiction […]
Review: Book of Colours, by Robyn Cadwallader
To me, Book of Colours is a novel about art and artists. The process of creating art, what goes on in the head of an artisan, and how do they reconcile artistic independence with the need to eat and pay rent? Set in 1321 London in a small illustrators’ workshop in Paternoster Row, three people […]
The Other 4 Best Novels of 2018
I’ve read 55 books this year, smashing my goal of 50 in 2018. They’ve been a mixture of novels (mostly), memoir, kids books and non-fiction. It was pretty tough to pick a ‘best of’ list but I’m a sucker for tradition (when it suits me). I paused at the halfway mark to write up my […]