The Lucy Family Alphabet (Judith Lucy, read by Judith Lucy, Bolinda audio, cd, $34.95, ISBN 9781742017709) Comedienne Judith Lucy says her family’s ‘view of normal wasn’t always everyone else’s’ and she’s not kidding! She had her first shower at 15. Until then, her mother had told her the shower was broken. The maggots her father [...]
I love a banned book don’t you? Neil Gaiman’s back of book blurb snippet for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian says: “Excellent in every way, poignant and really funny and heart-warming and honest and wise and smart … I have no doubt that in a year or so it’ll be winning awards [...]
This is an enthralling novel about love, imaginings, the borders of sanity and madness and the ultimate triumph of hope. In his sharp depictions of small-town savagery and finely detailed portraits, Hall sweeps the reader away with powerful, breathtaking prose. Love Without Hope (the title comes from the Robert Graves poem of the same name) [...]
With the novella Vertigo, award-winning author Amanda Lohrey (The Philosopher’s Doll, Camille’s Bread) once more taps into the Australian zeitgeist. Luke and Anna, 30-something corporate editors living in Sydney’s Glebe, are affected by a familiar convergence of affluenza, crippling mortgages and pollution. They are also linked by a shared tragedy. In pursuit of the ‘rural [...]
Tennis star Andre Agassi sets the record straight in a candid autobiography encompassing his public career and his private struggles. “I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.” No would have believed Andre Agassi had he told them this. Yet it [...]
This short, shatteringly beautiful memoir gets five stars out of five from me; I read it in one sitting and was mesmerised. It may be short in terms of pages but it is masterful in the scale it encompasses. The story is very simple and is told very simply. Gaberielle Carey’s mother, Joan, aged 80, [...]
“Hell to my nerves. If I were dead, I should still fly an aeroplane”. Charles Kingsford-Smith This is the biography of famous Australian aviator, Charles Kingsford Smith, also known as ‘Chilla’ and ‘Smithy’. The foreword is by Charles Kingsford-Smith Jnr. “If any one man typified the Australian character at its best, with all its great [...]
Published UQP, 2009 Print ISBN: 978 0 7022 3711 9 This is the remarkable story of Shia Muslim, Iraqi-born couple, Selma Masson and Mohammad al Jabiri (now Australian citizens), and the personal impact of Saddam Hussein’s regime on their lives and families. Australian Michelle McDonald was working with asylum seekers when she met Selma Masson [...]
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