New ‘Books+Publishing’ reviews out now
Books+Publishing’s latest Reviews newsletter contains 16 reviews of books publishing in June, July and August 2016.
The highest scoring fiction title was Liam Pieper’s The Toymaker (Hamish Hamilton, July), which received five stars from reviewer Hilary Simmons. ‘The Toymaker gives immediate and absorbing pleasure, and has similarities to J M Coetzee’s Disgrace in terms of the main character’s wretched search for redemption, both for himself and for humanity,’ writes Simmons.
In nonfiction, reviewer Clive Tilsley also gave Ashleigh Wilson’s biography Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing (Text, August) five stars, praising its combination of good subject matter (Whiteley was ‘a ball of art, intellect, sex and life that eventually exploded,’ he writes) and good writing (‘fast-paced, thrilling’ and with a ‘clever selection of detail’).
Elspeth Muir’s memoir Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane (Text, June) also scored highly with 4.5 stars. Reviewer Emily Laidlaw writes: ‘Muir’s book straddles that half-confessional, half-reportage line; her style is reminiscent of writers such as Chloe Hooper and Helen Garner.’
Also reviewed are:
Fiction: After the Carnage (Tara June Winch, UQP, August), Love Elimination (Sarah Gates, Mira, July), The Paper House (Anna Spargo-Ryan, Picador, June), Shibboleth and Other Stories (ed by Laurie Steed, Margaret River Press, August) Skylarking (Kate Mildenhall, Black Inc., August), Their Brilliant Careers (Ryan O’Neill, Black Inc., August), The Island Will Sink (Briohny Doyle, The Lifted Brow, August) and Truly Madly Guilty (Liane Moriarty, Macmillan, August)
Poetry: Writing to the Wire (ed by Dan Disney & Kit Kelen, UWA Publishing, August)
Nonfiction: City Dreamers: The Urban Imagination in Australia (Graeme Davison, NewSouth, August), Ghost Empire (Richard Fidler, ABC Books, August), Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes and Memories (Kim Mahood, Scribe, August), and The Priests (James M Miller, Finch Publishing, August).
To read the full newsletter, including interviews with Liam Pieper, Kate Mildenhall and Elspeth Muir, click here.
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Category: Recently published by B+P
