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‘Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder’ by Salman Rushdie – Reading Matters
Non-fiction - paperback; Jonathan Cape; 224 pages; 2024. When Sir Salman Rushdie, an Indian-born British-American novelist, was recovering from the violent knife attack that almost ended his life (aged 75) in 2022, he told his agent and friend Andrew Wylie he wasn't sure he'd ever write again. "You shouldn't think about doing anything for a…
‘Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead’ by Barbara Comyns – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Daunt Books; 201 pages; 2021. I have long wanted to read something by Barbara Comyns (1907-1992), an English novelist widely respected and often championed by book bloggers but her work is hard to come by in Australia — unless you want to place a special order. So when I saw Who Was…
‘The Beautiful Summer’ by Cesare Pavese (translated by W.J. Strachan) – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 112 pages; 2018. Translated from the Italian by W.J. Strachan. The Beautiful Summer by Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) won Italy's most prestigious literary award, the Strega Prize for fiction, in 1950. (The author sadly died by suicide a couple of months later.) It's the story of a teenage girl whose friendship with…
‘She is the Earth’ by Ali Cobby Eckermann – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Magabala Books; 96 pages; 2023. I am partial to a verse novel (although I have only read a handful), so I was keen to read Ali Cobby Eckermann's She is the Earth, which was longlisted for this year's Stella Prize. The book is a luminous love letter to Mother Nature, including her…
Remembering John McGahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006) – Reading Matters
The best of life is lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything... Today marks the 18th anniversary of Irish writer John McGahern's death. Long-time followers of this blog, particularly when it was hosted on Typepad, will know that McGahern is…
‘Kids Run the Show’ by Delphine de Vigan (translated by Alison Anderson) – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Europa Editions; 300 pages; 2023. Translated from the French by Alison Anderson. Children’s right to privacy in the Internet age is at the heart of Kids Run the Show, a provocative novel — part crime thriller, part social commentary — by French writer Delphine de Vigan. The story focuses on Mélanie Claux,…
‘The Magician’ by Colm Tóibín – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Picador; 436 pages; 2021. Colm Tóibín is one of my favourite writers, but The Magician didn't quite work for me. It’s an account of the life and times of Nobel Prize-winning German author Thomas Mann (1875-1955), whose work — Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain et al — I’ve never read,…
Two longlists for two women’s writing prizes announced this week – Reading Matters
Two longlists for big prizes for women’s writing have been announced this week: the Stella Prize (in Australia) and the Women’s Prize for Fiction (in the UK). The 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist The Women’s Prize for Fiction was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage, respect and reverence given…
‘Intimacies’ by Katie Kitamura – Reading Matters
Fiction - hardcover; Jonathan Cape; 225 pages; 2021. Can there be a more intimate act than listening to a war criminal’s testimony and then interpreting it — in real-time — in an international courtroom setting? Such interpreters often deal with sensitive subjects — including violence, death and ethnic cleansing — but must maintain impartiality and…
‘Sula’ by Toni Morrison – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Vintage Classics; 208 pages; 2022. “Begging you to read Sula by Toni Morrison,” my niece Monet said in a WhatsApp message in mid-January. “Finishing that book felt like a break-up… it’s my new favourite book.” With such high praise, I put in a reservation request at my local library and a few…
‘The Singularity’ by Balsam Karam (translated by Saskia Vogel) – Reading Matters
Fiction - Kindle edition; Text Publishing; 208 pages; 2024. Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel. Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley. The Singularity is a hypnotically powerful novel about the strength of a mother's love for her missing teenage daughter. But it's also a compelling story about what it is like to…
‘Serengotti’ by Eugen Bacon – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Transit Lounge; 288 pages; 2023. Review copy courtesy of the publisher. Eugen Bacon's Serengotti is a rare and unique novel. The author is African-Australian and her writing marries the rhythm, colour and folklore of her native Tanzania with Melbourne’s sporting obsessions, Aussie slang and dry wit. The result is an intriguing cultural…
‘Nancy’ by Bruno Lloret (translated by Ellen Jones) – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Giramondo; 144 pages; 2020. Translated from the Spanish by Ellen Jones. It's widely acknowledged that the letter X holds a special place in Elon Musk's heart (assuming he has one). There's SpaceX, Tesla's Model X and the social media channel X (formerly known as Twitter). He even has a child named X…
‘Book of Life’ by Deborah Conway – Reading Matters
Non-fiction - paperback; Allen & Unwin; 400 pages; 2023. Back in 1998, not long after I first arrived in the UK, I went to Edinburgh to attend the renowned comedy festival. One day I got talking to a monk on the Royal Mile (as you do) — I think he must have been handing out…
‘Valentino’ by Natalia Ginzburg (translated by Avril Bardoni) – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Daunt Books; 80 pages; 2023. Translated from the Italian by Avril Bardoni. What is it to be a "man of consequence"? And what happens if you don't live up to that descriptor? This is the focus of Natalia Ginzburg's Valentino, the tale of a much-doted-upon son who fails to live up to his…
‘The Guest’ by Emma Cline – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Chatto & Windus; 293 pages; 2023. Manipulators and con artists make great fodder for novels. Think Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley or Abel Magwitch in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Even Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby could be seen to engage in various forms of…
‘The Secret Guests’ by B.W. Black (aka John Banville) – Reading Matters
Fiction - Kindle edition; Penguin; 275 pages; 2020. The Secret Guests is one of John Banville's "entertainments" written under his pseudonym B.W. Black. It's a story that could have fallen right out of the hands of the scriptwriters of The Crown because it posits what might have happened if the two royal princesses — Elizabeth…
Australian writer Gerald Murnane gets a much overdue turn in the spotlight – Reading Matters
Proving that it's never too late, it seems Australian writer Gerald Murnane — at 84 years old — is finally getting his time in the international spotlight. His 1988 novel, Inland, has been reissued in the UK by small indie press & Other Stories, and has been widely reviewed in the Guardian UK, the Guardian…
‘The Berry Pickers’ by Amanda Peters – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Fig Tree; 304 pages; 2023. In Australia, state-sponsored programs forcibly removed generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities in what we now call the Stolen Generations. This shameful separation of children severed significant cultural, spiritual and familial bonds, and caused long-lasting intergenerational trauma, which First Nations…
‘All the Lovers in the Night’ by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd) – Reading Matters
Fiction - hardcover; Europa Editions; 224 pages; 2022. Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd. Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. Set in contemporary Tokyo, Mieko Kawakami’s All the Lovers in the Night tells the story of a 30-something woman who isolates herself from the real world because she has…
‘Where I End’ by Sophie White – Reading Matters
Fiction - Kindle edition; Tramp Press; 178 pages; 2022. We will wash the thing and dry the thing. New clothes, fresh sheets. We’ll brush its hair and brush its teeth. We do the bath every Thursday but on a Thursday before Dada comes, we take extra time. (p20) Meet 19-year-old Aoileann. Yes, that's how she…
‘The Bee Sting’ by Paul Murray – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Hamish Hamilton; 645 pages; 2023. We are only two weeks into January and I think I have already found my favourite book of the year! Paul Murray's The Bee Sting is a spellbinding tragicomic tale that explores the emotional and financial outfall of the 2008 economic crash on one well-to-do Irish family.…
Quarterly Review: October-December 2023 – Reading Matters
Here is a round-up of books read and reviewed on this site between 1 October and 31 December 2023. They have been arranged by theme and then in alphabetical order by author’s surname. As ever, hyperlinks take you to my reviews in full. Australian literature 'Cold Enough for Snow' by Jessica Au (literary fiction, 2022)A woman…
A Year with William Trevor wrap-up: What I learned from reading 12 books in 12 months – Reading Matters
A Year With William Trevor | #WilliamTrevor2023 Last year I read 12 books — one per month — by the late Irish writer William Trevor (1928-2016) as part of a project I co-hosted with Cathy from 746 Books. Immersing myself in his work like this, a kind of extended binge read if you will, was…
‘Stone Yard Devotional’ by Charlotte Wood – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Allen & Unwin; 320 pages; 2023. Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood, is a gentle, deeply contemplative novel but it's not about gentle things. It's a chronicle of slights and the wrongs we do other people, and asks how do we atone and rectify our wrongdoings? Seeking solitude The story takes the…
‘The Easy Life’ by Marguerite Duras (translated by Emma Ramadan and Olivia Baes) – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Bloomsbury; 208 pages; 2023. Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan and Olivia Baes. It took almost 80 years, but it's wonderful that Marguerite Duras' second novel, The Easy Life, has finally been translated into English for the first time. Originally published in her native France in 1944, this extraordinary novel is…
My favourite books of 2023 – Reading Matters
It's New Year's Eve. Forget the parties and the champagne. At Chez Reading Matters, it's all about celebrating the books! And what a reading year it has been. I read more books than usual this year, cracking the 100-mark for the first time since 2010. These were mainly books I bought myself, with less than…
‘The Trouble with Sunbathers’ by Magnus Mills – Reading Matters
Fiction - Kindle edition; Quoqs Publishing for Magnus Mills/Kindle Direct Publishing; 181 pages; 2020. English bus driver turned writer Magnus Mills is a longtime favourite author of mine. His deeply allegoric novels take the gentle piss out of British exceptionalism — the idea that Britain is morally, culturally and politically superior to other nations —…
Month by month: the Australian books due to be published in 2024 (updated) – Reading Matters
Yesterday The Guardian (Australian edition) published an article about Australian books to be published in 2024. But it was written as a feature that arranged the books by theme, which made it hard work to figure out what was being published when. So, I've taken the time to arrange the books in a way that…
Month by month: the Australian books due to be published in 2024 – Reading Matters
Yesterday The Guardian (Australian edition) published an article about Australian books to be published in 2024. But it was written as a feature that arranged the books by theme, which made it hard work to figure out what was being published when. So, I've taken the time to arrange the books in a way that…
‘Inishowen’ by Joseph O’Connor – Reading Matters
Fiction - Kindle edition; Vintage; 482 pages; 2011. I couldn't have picked a more appropriately seasonal book to entertain me over the Christmas break than Inishowen, an early career novel by Irish writer Joseph O'Connor. Set between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve 1994, this hugely immersive story is about a dysfunctional American family from…
‘Keep Her Sweet’ by Helen Fitzgerald – Reading Matters
Fiction - Kindle edition; Orenda Books; 238 pages; 2022. Australian writer Helen Fitzgerald writes slightly surreal and often blackly funny psychological thrillers mainly set in Scotland, where she lives. Keep Her Sweet — her 15th novel — is a dark tale about a toxic family living in rural Australia. Like most of her previous work,…
‘True West’ by David Whish-Wilson – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Fremantle Press; 264 pages; 2019. We all know that teenage life can be angst-ridden and problematic, but for the 17-year-old protagonist in True West, by David Whish-Wilson, it is positively deadly. In this gritty crime thriller, Lee Southern is on the run from the Geraldton-based bikie gang he betrayed. His father was…
‘The In Between’ by Christos Tsiolkas – Reading Matters
Fiction - paperback; Allen & Unwin; 400 pages; 2023. Review copy courtesy of the publisher. Australian author Christos Tsiolkas is known for bold storytelling that is provocative, salacious and socially aware. But as he matures, so, too, does his work. His latest novel, The In-Between, is a tender love story between two middle-aged men who have…