New ‘Books+Publishing’ reviews out now

Books+Publishing’s latest Reviews newsletter contains 14 reviews of books publishing in May and June 2017.

Eva Hornung’s The Last Garden (Text, May) is one of two books to score 4.5 stars, with reviewer Hilary Simmons describing it as ‘vivid, visceral and disconcerting’. ‘The book raises fundamental and confronting questions about how our animal and our human selves can or should co-exist,’ writes Simmons, who predicts it will be ‘much discussed by fans of literary fiction’.

Briohny Doyle’s mix of memoir, sociology, pop-culture analysis and journalism, Adult Fantasy (Scribe, June), also scored 4.5 stars. Reviewer Jo Case calls the book ‘smart, insightful, and a pleasure to read’, and recommends it ‘beyond [Doyle’s] fellow millennials to anyone interested in how societal change affects individual lives’.

Also reviewed are:

Fiction:

Closing Down (Sally Abbott, Hachette, May); The Dark Lake (Sarah Bailey, A&U, June); The Gulf (Anna Spargo-Ryan, Picador); The Hot Guy (Mel Campbell & Anthony Morris, Echo, May); No More Boats (Felicity Castagna, Giramondo, June); Some Tests (Wayne Macauley, Text, June); This Water (Beverley Farmer, Giramondo, June); and Year of the Orphan (Daniel Findlay, Bantam, June).

Nonfiction:

Australian Lives: An Intimate History (Anisa Puri & Alistair Thomson, Monash University Press, May); The Good Girl Stripped Bare (Tracey Spicer, ABC Books, May); Understory: A Life with Trees (Inga Simpson, Hachette, June); Woman of Substances: A Journey into Addiction and Treatment (Jenny Valentish, Black Inc.).

This month also features an interview with Briohny Doyle here.

To read the full newsletter, click here.

Sign up to the Reviews newsletter here.

Category: Recently published by B+P