Review: ‘Sisters of Freedom’ by Mary-Anne O’Connor
Australia’s queen of historical romance Mary-Anne O’Connor has done it again.
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Review | ‘Grace Under Pressure’ by Tori Haschka
Show me a mum who claims she hasn’t, at some point while mothering in contemporary Australia, fantasised about how much easier life would be if she formed a commune with other mums… and I will show you a liar.
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Review | The Valley of Lost Stories
Vanessa McCausland’s latest novel, The Valley of Lost Stories (HarperCollins, 2020), is a beautifully written story which takes place largely in a creepy abandoned mining town. Four women and their children are invited to the beautiful but remote Capertee Valley, west of the Blue Mountains. Once home to a burgeoning mining industry, now all that remains are ruins slowly being swallowed by the bush and the jewel of the valley,…
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Book Review | Lapse (Sarah Thornton)
Lapse (Text Publishing, 2019) is set in the sleepy country town of Katinga, where protagonist Clementine Jones is coaching the local AFL team while she wrestles with some dark, dark secrets from her shady past.
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Five Norwegian shows you can stream in Australia right nå
I’ve always been very proud of my Norwegian background, and lately I’ve been learning, speaking, cooking, reading and watching Norwegian whenever I can. I’m not much of a fan of Nordic Noir, so I’ve had to dig a little. Here are some of my favourites, all of which are available to watch in Australia at the moment. Twin (SBS OnDemand)A bit of a freaky Friday scenario, but in a deep…
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Review | Where Fortune Lies (Mary-Anne O’Connor)
Where Fortune Lies (HQ Fiction, 2020) is the fifth novel from Australian author Mary-Anne O’Connor, and tells the story of plucky migrants finding their way in rugged colonial Australia in the early 1880s.
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Bushfires and the summer holidays that never were
Down the back, in a gently sloping part of our yard, sits our fairy tree, a magical grevillea adored by kids and fairy wrens alike. A “prize tree” my brother-in-law called it. It’s always been a bit wonky but that was part of its charm. We planted some seaside daisies next to it for the fairies, and later zinnias and bunny ear succulents. The past few months, however, the tree…
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Review | The Bell in the Lake (Lars Mytting)
The Bell in the Lake (Hachette, 2019, trans. Deborah Dawkin) is the latest novel from acclaimed Norwegian author Lars Mytting. The story is set in rural Norway in 1880, which lags about fifty years behind the cities of Europe with their electric lights and medicine, and which is also suffering both a population boom and mass-emigration to places like North America and Australia. The tale centres on an ancient stave…
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Buccarumbi
It’s barely a year since the last fire went through my aunty’s neck of the woods, consuming everything in its path – all their sustainably farmed crops that they’d worked so hard to tend, their very livelihood, all of it gone. Back then the fire stopped just a metre from their home. They were lucky. This time they’ve lost a caravan and god knows what else. Right now my aunty…
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Victoria Brookman 