How to Mars, by David Ebenbach, was really great fun: a reality TV show about 6 people taking a one-way trip to Mars. One of them gets pregnant, even after they were all strictly forbidden from having sex, and all the men have had the snip. What happens next? Some of it’s told in first […]
humour
Review: A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, by Jane Rawson
I watched an interview with Jane Rawson on ABC’s The Mix recently and was struck by her comment that she tries to insert humour into climate fiction, which is not an easy thing to do. After reading her novel, A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists I can happily attest that she absolutely succeeded. […]
Review: Battle Beyond the Dolestars, by Chris McCrudden
Battle Beyond the Dolestars is deliciously funny, clever and quirky while also being viciously political in a subversive way. Fans of Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde and Douglas Adams will love this novel. The second book in the Battlestar Suburbia series, Battle Beyond the Dolestars is set thousands of years into the future where the machines […]
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 […]
Book review: You Wish, by Lia Weston
What if you could erase your ex from your history entirely? What if you could go back and change that hideous choice of wedding dress you made 30 years ago? Or watch your deceased child grow into adulthood, picture by picture? You wish. Enter IF, the Melbourne-based creative team, headed by Tom Lash, which can […]
Stand-up comedy in print: Kitty Flanagan’s ‘Bridge Burning & other hobbies’
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it gave me plenty of laughs when I was very much in need of them. Kitty Flanagan is one of my favourite comedians. Reading Bridge Burning & other hobbies was like enjoying a stand-up routine in print – and every bit as funny! The first time I came across Kitty Flanagan was […]
