Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Jon-Jon Goulian is one of the strangest people I’ve ever met. He’s also one of the sweetest, and his utterly lovable memoir is both heartbreaking and heart-warming, leaving you with an intense desire to give him a big hug – and maybe go out shopping with him. For anyone who has …
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Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Carefully distilled into a slim novella, Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending is a sombre and intriguing story that questions the reliability of memory and highlights the limits of self-knowledge. The winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, the exquisitely written book centres on the frustrating puzzle of “not getting …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. The complexities of sibling relationships and the bittersweet passage of time are at the heart of this charming little gem of a novella. Short, meandering, and told with Anna Gavalda’s characteristic lightness of touch, Breaking Away has a warmth and hilarity that belies the depth of emotion simmering beneath the surface. …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Jeffrey Eugenides had a tough task ahead of him with The Marriage Plot. After the brilliant success of the chilling, dream-like The Virgin Suicides and the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Middlesex, his long-anticipated follow-up was always either going to be received in one of two ways: rapturously praised as yet another work …
<Dark, unsettling but told through brilliantly lyrical language, One Foot Wrong is a story of coming of age in a nightmarish domestic world. This is the first adult novel from Melbourne children’s writer Sofie Laguna, and with its deftly crafted balance between macabre detail and beautifully constructed prose, it certainly earned its place on the …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. As an animal person, it’s hard to really understand those who are not animal people. Stephen, who is most decidedly not an animal person, has the opposite dilemma. “He was not an animal person in the same way he was not a musical person, or an intellectual person,” Charlotte Wood writes. …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. Dark clouds, harsh winds and the threat of hurricanes blow throughout Janette Turner Hospital’s exquisitely crafted collection of short stories, saturating the slim volume with an unsettling sense of dread. Forecast: Turbulence brings together a compelling cast of characters, each somehow floundering in an uncertain world. Some stories are gentle and …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. The dazzling beauty of Paris provides a sensual background for this story of seduction, frustration and the failure to live up to expectations. You Deserve Nothing is Alexander Maksik’s debut novel, and takes what threatens to be a tired storyline – a teacher everyone reveres becoming romantically involved with a student …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. An absorbing and affecting story about the bond between siblings and the strength of children in a world where the adults are unreliable, Blood was an impressive contender for the 2012 Miles Franklin Award. This is the first novel from Tony Birch, author of the short story collections Shadowboxing and Father’s …
Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine. The image of a drowned woman – beautiful and pale, her hair splayed around her like a waterlily – is at the centre of Therese Bohman’s debut novel, quietly haunting its pages with a persistent feeling of dread. Drowned is an exquisitely crafted, deceptively simple short novel about desire, betrayal and …