Book Review: Aftershocks by Michelle Tom

​Memoirs are too often judged only by the power of the story. Tom’s story is powerful and moving all right, but also as beautifully written as any literary fiction. Aftershocks is Tom's first book but she began her career as a print journalist, in New Zealand, and it shows - in a good way. Arresting imagery, compelling characterisations and a driving narrative are contained within a swirling structure that beautifully captures the circular and  fragmentary nature of memory. Remarkably, though, Aftershocks remains an 'easy' read. Tom's prose is clear and purposeful; [...]

2022-04-18T12:28:35+10:00April 18th, 2022|Book Review|2 Comments

Book Review: Hunger by Roxane Gay

Hunger is so raw, poignant and compelling that it hurts to read it. At the most superficial level Hunger is a memoir about Roxane Gay's body - specifically her very tall (6'3), very large (200 kgs +) body. Gay details her daily indignities and humiliations as a woman of size moving through a world designed for much smaller people. And if that were all Hunger was about it would probably be enough. But at a deeper level Hunger is really about Gay's mental discomfort. Her shame, her anger, her guilt [...]

2018-03-25T00:55:18+11:00August 18th, 2017|Book Review|4 Comments

Book Review: ‘Death by Dim Sim’ by Sarah Vincent

Every day at about 3pm Sarah Vincent would get up from her desk at work and haul her 122kg body across the car park to the food van across the way. Every day she would order three dim sims (or four or five) and eat them. And every day as she lumbered back to her desk she would sneer inwardly as she passed the smokers huddled outside the hospital where she worked, with their hospital gowns, and intravenous drips, and missing limbs - all desperate for their nicotine [...]

2018-03-25T01:14:28+11:00April 21st, 2017|Book Review|0 Comments

I’ll read anything – if it’s good enough. H is for Hawk is better than good.

A market researcher once asked me "What do you want to read about?"  I can't remember what I said but I'm pretty sure it wasn't "I'd like to read about how an academic Englishwoman lived out her grief through raising and training a goshawk." And that's the thing, isn't it?  We read in order to be taken to places we didn't even realise we wanted to go.  To learn about things that it hadn't occurred to us to learn about. H is for Hawk is remarkable.  A compelling, lyrical, insightful [...]

2018-03-21T14:55:39+11:00February 28th, 2015|Book Review|12 Comments

Bonkers: My Life in Laughs by Jennifer Saunders

Given that I can't BE Jennifer Saunders, I do wish I were her BFF.  Or a meet-occassionally-for-coffee friend.  Or even just an acquaintance.  Because having read her recently released memoir Bonkers I seem to have fallen just a tiny bit in love. Wonderfully absurd in partnership with Dawn French, absolutely fabulous as Edina Monsoon in Absolutely Fabulous, Jennifer Saunders is a gifted comedian, actor and writer. And while we knew she could write for TV - and we find out why she didn't write a movie for Goldie Hawn - [...]

2018-03-21T14:56:20+11:00June 20th, 2014|Book Review|0 Comments
Go to Top