Review by Robert Goodman The blurb for An Officer and a Spy refers to its subject – the Dreyfus Affair – as ‘the most famous miscarriage of justice in history’. …
Illuminating the Dangers of Going Too Far: Dave Eggers’ The Circle
Reviewed by Robert Goodman Imagine if Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google and Microsoft were all hoovered up into a single social-media driven, tech-savvy organisation. The Circle is Dave Egger’s vision of …
New and Enticing Shapes: Andrew Galan’s That Place of Infested Roads (life during wartime)
Review by Nigel Featherstone What is it that we are to make of poetry, especially in an era when even well-written and relevant fiction is being ignored for reality cooking …
Believing in the Book: Finlay Lloyd’s new smalls
Review by Phill Stamatellis The death of the book has become a tiresome mantra that in recent years has reached fever pitch. That beast Amazon has stretched its tentacles beyond …
Goodness and Dangerous Freedom: Beryl Fletcher’s Juno & Hannah
Review by Tristan Foster The story opens with a river in flood. The rain has kept Juno and Hannah inside, and at the first opportunity they hurry out, down to …
Bloodbaths and Romance: Lenny Bartulin’s Infamy (Robert Goodman)
Review by Robert Goodman The Western is making a comeback. That venerable tradition of horses, six-shooters and life on the frontier is being reimagined in a more visceral form. From …
Rich Evocations of Harsh Realities: Paul Hetherington’s Six Different Windows (Robyn Cadwallader)
Review by Robyn Cadwallader Paul Hetherington’s eighth and latest collection of poetry, Six Different Windows, offers the reader the assurance of being in the hands of a thoughtful, intelligent poet. …
Taut and Quivering Narrative Traction: Susan Hawthorne’s Limen
Review by Lucy Alexander Limen is the notion of barely perceptible difference, where the senses can barely detect that there is sound, for example, or that the river has edged …
Evoking Former Selves: Ali Cobby Eckermann’s Too Afraid to Cry (Sarah St Vincent Welch)
Review by Sarah St Vincent Welch If a title is the doorway to a book, Too Afraid to Cry, seems to open with a warning, but the reader soon realises …
Back to the (post-apocalyptic) Future 3: Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam
Reviewed by Robert Goodman Margaret Atwood sits comfortably on the literature shelf. Winner of the Booker Prize and numerous other awards particularly in her native Canada, Atwood has been challenging …