Stella Charls
Stella Charls is a former bookseller at Readings Carlton
Review — 28 Jun 2022
The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays by C.J. Hauser
When C.J. Hauser’s personal essay ‘The Crane Wife’ was first published in The Paris Review in 2019, it quickly became a viral sensation. This essay charts Hauser’s research trip to…
Review — 2 Mar 2022
Paradais by Fernanda Melchor & Sophie Hughes (trans.)
With her award- winning English- language debut Hurricane Season, Mexican journalist and novelist Fernanda Melchor demonstrated her remarkable ability to grapple with violence on the page. In this dazzling…
Review — 2 Mar 2022
A Great Hope by Jessica Stanley
Every so often a novel comes along with a magic, broad appeal; an inevitable conversation starter. Jessica Stanley’s A Great Hope is that kind of magic novel; a literary, multi-generational…
Review — 27 Jan 2022
Sweat: A History of Exercise by Bill Hayes
Bill Hayes is deeply fascinated by the human body. A writer and photographer best known for his generously moving memoir Insomniac City, Hayes has built a career in weaving…
Review — 3 Oct 2021
I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins
‘I’ve tried to tell this story a bunch of times. This will be my last try…’ So begins Claire Vaye Watkins’ crackling original novel I Love You but I’ve Chosen…
Review — 2 Nov 2021
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett has made a habit of keeping me company over Melbourne lockdowns. In March 2020, as the world began to shut down, I immersed myself in her multilayered family…
Review — 3 Oct 2021
Whole Notes: Life Lessons Through Music by Ed Ayres
Writer, musician, teacher and broadcaster Ed Ayres had the idea for his fourth book, Whole Notes: Life Lessons Through Music, long before the pandemic. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to…
Review — 6 Sep 2021
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Calling Sally Rooney’s third novel (in only four years) highly anticipated doesn’t quite cut it. Thanks to the immense global success of both Conversations with Friends and Normal People…
Review — 1 Aug 2021
The First Time I Thought I Was Dying by Sarah Walker
In the opening chapter of her extraordinary essay collection, Sarah Walker introduces the notion that ‘the out-of-control body can be a radical site’. This statement is the powerful heart of…
Review — 28 Jun 2021
Where We Swim by Ingrid Horrocks
At a time when we can’t travel very far from home, let Ingrid Horrocks take you to bodies of water across the world in Where We Swim, a warm…
