Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Part murder mystery, part coming of age story, part portrait of the bored housewives of 1950s New England, Liza Klaussmann’s debut novel is a compelling and richly evoked story about the fracture lines that run through relationships. The narrative of Tigers in Red Weather swings back and forth over two decades …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. A man takes a trip with his overbearing, difficult mother to scatter his father’s ashes. A new mother returns to work from maternity leave, feeling dislocated and empty in a suddenly uncomfortable environment. A young girl writes in her journal about her unstable family, longing desperately for a beautiful set of …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Deep in the heart of rural Wisconsin, 13-year old Ruth and her cousin Naomi are grappling with sin, penance and the dark tensions of adulthood. Living in a small community tightly bound by their Pentecostal faith, the two girls are like sisters, wrapped up in an unconditional devotion to one another …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Simmering darkly with unspoken traumas and longings, Steeplechase is a compelling novel about the tremulous bond between sisters. The first non-erotic work from Brisbane writer Krissy Kneen, following on from the memoir Affection and short story collection Triptych, this is a stirring Australian Gothic where the tangled threads of art, desire …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. For decades, Alice Munro has been publishing collection after collection of beautiful, utterly masterful short stories. Often revolving around the lives of women in rural Canada, her fiction takes a close look at ordinary people dealing with beginnings, endings, confusions, frustrations and betrayals. Now, the 82-year-old writer has been recognised for …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. My Brilliant Friend is the alluring first part of a quartet following the lives two young women growing up in a poor village in 1950s Naples. This is the fourth novel of Italian author Elena Ferrante to be translated into English, and presents a compelling portrait of a friendship that is …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Brave and beautiful at times, In One Person is a tragicomic story of desire, longing and sexual identity. It both delights in and agonises over sexual differences and gender-bending, with a diverse cast of characters and a conflicted narrator who comes to understand that “we are formed by what we desire.” …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. There’s something seductive about the legacy of F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald that makes them the perfect subjects for fiction. Beautiful and volatile, the novelist and his muse were icons of the 1920s Jazz Age, where everything seemed shimmering and decadent and reckless. But the aftermath of youth hit them hard, …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Seeping with darkness, pulsing with dread and jagged as barbed wire, Gone Girl delves deep into the trenches of a very twisted marriage. A compelling and sharp-edged psychological thriller, Gillian Flynn’s bestselling novel grapples with the manipulations, games and lies that go on in relationships, and asks the chilling question: how …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Anyone who has ever loved a pet will tell you without hesitation that animals have thoughts and feelings – but what do we really know about how they think and feel? In Animal Wise, science journalist Virginia Morell delves into the current pool of knowledge we have about the minds of …