A review of The Steele Diaries by Wendy James

The novel is easy to read and moves quickly, effortlessly creating that fictive dream that makes for a pleasurable reading experience, but this is anything but a lighthearted read. The complexities of parenting, the shifting trends of the art world, the struggle to balance self-actualisation and artistic fulfilment with responsibility and love, the way we create and define ourselves, and the relationship between the interior world and the exterior one are all covered with great subtlety and depth.

A review of Dirty Money by Richard Stark

Stark as a crime writer is beyond criticism. He does pretty much everything well. The way he writes dialogue, especially scenes where three or more people are talking, is well worthy of study. His art as a storyteller is to create problematical situations, uncertainties, iffy anxious stuff – and then to resolve them in a felicitous manner.

A review of Qmin by Anil Ashokan

Ashokan has come up with some nice options that are still Indian, but light, and so nicely presented, that you could serve them to the Queen. Most don’t take hours and hours of reducing either, which is another problem I’ve encountered with Indian desserts. The Kulfi has been drastically simplified by using condensed milk, and when served with figs and walnuts, it’s really lovely.

A review of Swimming with Crocodiles by Will Chaffey

This sense of both the fragility of nature, and the fragility of man within nature, becomes an underlying theme that carries Swimming with Crocodiles (Picador Australia) beyond simply a travelogue. We begin to identify with Chaffey as a character, and his development becomes meaningful, but we also put his experience into our own context, and it therefore becomes meaningful to us.

A review of God of Speed by Luke Davies

Though Davies’ Hughes isn’t exactly a likable character, the intimacy is so striking and the intensity of the portrait so great that Hughes becomes someone entirely familiar. Not so much the grand aviator with all the superlatives of his status: richest, fastest, most inventive, but instead, a man like any other, pursued by demons and running hard to find a way to live through them.