Tag: reviews

The Bedside Bookstack – July 2025

Time of the Child by Niall Williams, Bloomsbury, 2024

Initially I got Niall Williams and Alistair MacLeod mixed up. I ordered this book on the back of my love for McLeod’s No Great Mischief. What a beautiful mistake. The writing in this is so rich you could lick it off the page.

This is 1960s rural Ireland where a lot is noticed but unsaid and the sudden appearance of an abandoned baby isn’t going to be a secret which is easy keep. The child of the title only appears at the midpoint of the book but it doesn’t matter, because you’re with these characters, the stoic Doctor Troy, his daughter Ronnie with a rich inner world and young Jude Quinlan who has had to grow up too fast in the shadow of a drunk father. Any journey with them is a joy to take. 

Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido, Bloomsbury, 1982

I only got a recent tip about Barbara Trapido but everyone else got the memo way-back. This edition had an introduction by Rachel Cusk who said it’s been in her mind since reading it at uni. I can see why. It’s sharp and witty and British in a Nancy Mitford or Brideshead Revisited outsider-falling-in-love-with-a-sprawling-and-vivid-family way.

It also spans the intense social and political change from the late 60s to 80s with a female protagonist who hasn’t quite realised the power she could now demand. The generations show how time has changed (or not) with the evolution of gender roles.

Here is the matriarch talking to the narrator, “I know all about these clever chaps like yours and mine you see. I know all about their nice impressive commitments to the rights of women and the division of labour, because they’re very good at articulating these things and it costs them nothing to say it all as nicely as they do…..Jonathan must mind that babe for you, either every morning or for four whole working days a week. Not as a favour mind, but as a necessity. Along with the shopping and the cooking and cleaning and laundry. Just as women do it. Make him earn the right to sit at his typewriter.”

Passing by Nella Larsen, Penguin 1929

This book charts Irene Redfield’s conflicted friendship with Clare Kendry. The two grew up together in Harlem but fell out of touch when Clare moved away. Years later they meet by chance in a hotel. Clare has ‘passed’. She is married to a white man who thinks she’s also white. This puts Irene in a difficult situation where she isn’t sure whether she owes her loyalty to her race, gender or friendship. Things becomes even more intense when Irene’s husband and Clare start to get along too well.

The internal psychological reflections in this feel so modern and the themes or race and identity land with as much relevance now as back when it was written in the late twenties.

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, Sphere, 2021

This. Was. Fun. (Lots). And exactly what I needed. It’s a grumpy meets sunshine STEM romance set in the Stanford Biology Department and anyone who’s spent time in academia will recognise the intense landscape of being a higher degree research student.

Olive Smith kisses a random guy in an attempt to convince her best friend Anh that she’s over the last guy she dated (and that Anh can now go out with him). The guy she kisses is Adam Carlsen, young wunderkind Professor who is great at what he does but notoriously difficult to work with. Cue a fake-dating agreement leading to real feelings.

How to be an Artist by Jerry Saltz, Hachette, 2020

Jerry Saltz was the chief art-critic for New York magazine. This book is his advice about how art can be for anyone. He uses ‘art’ to mean creative expression across disciplines and mediums. From his own artistic work to his years watching others, he shares what he thinks it takes to be an artist. This is a collection of rules, recollections, tips and exercises to keep going. I’m dipping in and out of this one, so can’t deliver a verdict yet about if this will make it into my go-to creative motivation books but it was on someone else’s, so we’ll see.

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The Bedside Bookstack – May 2025

The Burrow by Melanie Cheng, Text, 2024

Amy, Jin and their daughter Lucy have been a family caught on a loop ever since the death of baby Ruby. But then they get a rabbit and Amy’s mother comes to stay and the rub of company be it welcome or not forces them out of their stasis.

Set during the pandemic, lockdown feels like the perfect backdrop for a grieving family. Life already feels like it has no future just more of the same on repeat. This beautiful book is subtle and understated and the right read for me at the right time.

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose, Allen & Unwin, 2016

You need to sit a moment with this one if you want to capture and contemplate the questions it raises about art and love, loyalty and self, amongst life’s other big questions. Arky Levin is a New York composer of nearly-great heights. His wife Lydia has a blood condition which leads to deteriorating health and eventually a stroke. Before she was completely incapacitated and moved into care, she made a legal provision for Arky not to visit her.

At the same time, performance artist Marina Abramovic is sitting for 75 days in MoMA for The Artist is Present. The experience of this both collective in the gallery and individual for those who sit opposite her connects disparate characters and leaves everyone asking their own questions about art and their own lives.  

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, Walker Books, 2015

Reading this absolute explosion of a books feels like you’re standing in the middle of a rainbow. It’s constant ka-pow and total absorption into the lives of twins Noah and Jude. Don’t think you’re too old for it because of the YA listing – first love, artistic agony, sibling rivalry and grief are timeless!

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, Granta, 2008

Whoa, give me a moment. This one is so cleverly plotted and well executed that I did have one of those, ‘Why do the rest of us even bother?’ moments. As if Eleanor Catton winning the Booker Prize at 28 wasn’t enough. This is her debut novel, published when she was 23 and successfully pulling off a premise which could easily not work.

The Institute is an elite drama school and every year their First Years put on a self-devised production. This year it’s about a teacher/student scandal at a local high school. The novel concurrently covers the fall-out from the scandal as well as the rehearsal process and you are never entirely sure what’s real and what is performance.

Love, just In by Natalie Murray, Allen & Unwin, 2024

Natalie was our guest for the May Books at the Bowlo and her debut contemporary romance was so much fun to chat about. What’s not to love about a little bit-of-friends-to-lovers set in your own city? As much a love letter to Newcastle as it is the love story between school besties Zac and Josie, this one keeps you turning the pages as the will-they-won’t they sexual tension ramps up.

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The bedside bookstack – Summer 2023 & 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this Summer.

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell, Tinder Press, 2013

Wow!!! I already loved Maggie O’Farrell and marvelled at how it is she does what she does in Hamnet. I liked The Marriage Portrait and After You’d Gone but this is one of those books where I just had to keep putting it down for a moment and taking it in. The thought on repeat was Yep, that’s exactly how it is!

She just nails it in this one with her observations of young children, her recreation of parenting, her family dynamics which are that perfect mix of infuriating and endearing and of course how irritated and scratchy everyone gets in the heat. I loved everything about this book and want to reread it again to see if I can pinpoint the alchemy and find how this perfection is possible.

The Body Country by Susie Anderson, Hachette, 2023

This collection of poetry captures all moments great and small, the memory of a mother or riding on the back seat of the school bus. She shares how sacred some of life’s simpler moments can be. There is a strong sense of place, Country and culture throughout the collection and it’s just as good to have on the bedside and read one at a time as it is to just gobble up.  

Complement this with her interview on the First Time Podcast. She has some sage and beautiful words about process which I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.

Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny, 4th Estate, 2023

Love short stories. Tick. Big fan of Katherine Heiny. Tick. So, obviously her short story collection was very welcome under the Christmas tree. If you’re not familiar with Heiny from Early Morning Riser or Standard Deviation, let me prepare you. Expect giggles, bad decisions, regrettable sex, characters who walk to the beat of their own drum, plenty of ‘oh no she didn’t’,  the quotidian at its very best and worse and moments of truth so uncomfortable that you just need a moment to let it sink in.

Lioness by Emily Perkins, Bloomsbury, 2023

If you like angry ageing women having a gutful and shedding their usual social niceties, then this cracker of a book is for you. Throw in some wealthy voyeurism and pitch perfect blended family dynamics, personal identity and the ethics of privilege and it still doesn’t do justice to the energy and breadth of this story.

Therese comes from humble beginnings but has married older and into money. When her developer husband is accused of corruption she starts to question blind loyalty. At the same time her neighbour, Claire, is suddenly liberating herself from everything she’s been told to be as a woman – mother, wife, employee. She’s made strong by presence of something primal and innate and proximity to this makes Therese wonder who she is anymore after all these years of adapting and who she might be if she too just dropped the act.

The Sitter by Angela O’Keefe, UQP, 2023

In the early outbreak of COVID, an Australian writer sits in her Paris hotel room trying to write a book about Hortense Cezanne, Paul Cezanne’s wife. She often struggles with it and eventually it is her own story that comes out as a gift for her daughter.

Hortense narrates the story. She’s been released from the past and watches the writer as she moves through the motions. There’s a touch of the Claire Keegan in this story, in the unhurried actions and observations as women’s lives and regrets play out quietly.

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler, Chatto & Windus, 2018

This is only my second Anne Tyler. French Braidwas my first andI love loved how it was put together almost as a set of linked short stories. Clock dance is similar except the stories always follow Willa Drake and the final one is much longer than any of the others. We see the 24 hours her mother goes missing when she’s a teenager, the day she is incidentally proposed to in her twenties, the accident that kills her first husband 20-years later and the phone call she gets to come and look after the daughter of her son’s ex-girlfriend.

It’s hard to describe Anne Tyler but she’s all about the quotidian and relationships and for me that’s where all the gold is!

Salt River Road by Molly Schmidt, Fremantle Press, 2023

The previous three books I’ve read have been set in New York, Baltimore and Paris, so it was brilliant to be back under Southern skies in Molly Schmidt’s debut. It made me realise how important local stories and publishers are.

Set in Noongar country in South Western Australia, this follows the Tetley family and its five children in the immediate aftermath of their mother’s death. Grief, racism, legacy and family all play out under the hot sun and long days of a summer of loss.

Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain, Chatto & Windus, 2023

Marianne falls in love with Simon Hurst when she’s still at high school. She loses her virginity to him and they swap letters but then he moves to Paris. It’s 1960s England and her options to ‘make something of herself’ are down to marriage or secretarial work. She’d happily marry Simon but that’s not going to happen.

This is the story of a broken heart and how life does goes on, eventually.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, Vintage 2009

I only knew this as a movie from the mid-noughties. It had Kate and Leo who made it look good like they do with everything. I now know that though they’re good at what they do, a large part was because they had excellent material to work with.

The story is actually pretty depressing, two people who thought that they’d make more of themselves or for themselves desperately trying to revive (Him) and survive (her) their life together in the suburbs with two young kids.

It’s so oppressive and stifling but so magnificently written. With a light touch he scratches the surface and there it all is the gaslighting, power plays, dishonesties and desires that can get normalised in relationships and parade themselves around as love.

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley, Bloomsbury, 2022

Lola is the chronically cynical, pithy quipping thirty-something we’ve come to expect from New York narrations. She’s engaged but unsure and suddenly starts bumping into ex-boyfriends everywhere.

I didn’t finish this one. It’s clever and funny and there’s plenty of people who love the super-cynic but I was sick in bed and needed a little more wonder and a little less over-everything in my life.

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