Chris Somerville
Chris Somerville is a former member of the Readings online team. He is the author of a short-story collection, We Are Not The Same Anymore.
Review — 8 Nov 2020
The Silence by Don DeLillo
On an aeroplane a man recites flight data to his partner, half listening and writing in her notebook in the adjacent seat. Their conversation, spanning several pages, has somewhat of…
Review — 22 Jul 2019
Dolores by Lauren Aimee Curtis
This very short novel from Lauren Aimee Curtis follows the titular character, Dolores, as she arrives at a remote convent of nuns. She’s sixteen years old, dehydrated, pregnant, and has…
Review — 28 Jun 2020
Rise & Shine by Patrick Allington
Patrick Allington’s second novel is a quick-moving and lively tale set some thirty years after an ecological collapse has rendered the earth almost uninhabitable. Those who remain of the human…
Review — 23 Feb 2020
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Native American author Louise Erdrich’s new novel, set amongst the inhabitants of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, is a welldrawn and sprawling portrait of a community in peril. Based in part…
Review — 25 Jun 2019
A Constant Hum by Alice Bishop
‘I learned pretty quickly that people don’t like talking about my work,’ a character says midway through Alice Bishop’s debut, A Constant Hum. The character continues, ‘Unless there’s an…
Review — 22 Apr 2019
Attraction by Ruby Porter
‘My earliest memories don’t come in images, but in thoughts,’ says the unnamed narrator early on in Attraction, the debut novel from New Zealand writer Ruby Porter, and it…
Review — 26 Mar 2019
Simpsons Returns: A Novella by Wayne Macauley
Ninety years after his death in World War I, Jack Simpson is still alive, still donning his uniform, still helping the sick and still trudging alongside his donkey, Murphy. In…
Review — 30 Apr 2018
Chemistry by Weike Wang
Can a novel be propelled by indecisiveness? Chemistry, the debut novel by Weike Wang, makes a pretty strong case that it can. In the beginning, the un-named narrator is…
Review — 28 May 2018
Ironbark by Jay Carmichael
While it feels like a cliché to call a novel – especially one by a first-time author – ‘assured’, it is the phrase I kept returning to while reading this…
Review — 25 Feb 2018
The Lebs by Michael Mohammed Ahmad
The new novel from Michael Mohammed Ahmad is a bold and wired read; tension is coiled tightly within every paragraph. The way the prose comes at you, you’d swear it…
