Tristen Brudy
Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton
Review — 6 Sep 2020
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
I loved God, my brother, and my mother, in that order. When I lost my brother, poof went the other two.
Yaa Gyasi’s sophomore novel is a study of relationships…
Review — 29 Mar 2020
How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang
‘Generations of authors have molded the mythology of the American West for their own purposes … I take the lesson that what we call history is not granite but sandstone…
Review — 23 Sep 2018
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia, hundreds of girls and women would wake every morning feeling bruised, abused, and battered. This was attributed for many…
Review — 19 Aug 2018
French Exit by Patrick deWitt
‘French Exit’: hastily leaving a social gathering without saying goodbye (see also, Irish Goodbye, taking English Leave, ghosting). Frances, her adult son Malcolm and their cat, Small Frank, are out…
Review — 28 May 2018
84K by Claire North
Company men would run for Parliament, Company newspapers would trumpet their excellence to the sky, Company TV stations would broadcast their election promises this is how democracy worked: corporate and…
Review — 30 Apr 2018
A Sand Archive by Gregory Day
Award-winning author Gregory Day’s latest novel opens in Geelong with our narrator, a nameless writer, coming across a ‘slim grey-brown volume, cheaply printed but essential to [his] research: The Great…
Review — 25 Feb 2018
What the Light Reveals by Mick McCoy
Mick McCoy’s latest novel opens in 1954 as Conrad Murphy travels from Melbourne to Sydney to appear before the Royal Commission on Espionage. An active and unabashed member of the…
Review — 28 Jan 2018
Oliver Loving by Stefan Merrill Block
There are many ways to describe the titular Oliver Loving – his mother’s favourite son, a beloved older brother to Charlie, and an aspiring poet. He has also been comatose…
Review — 27 Mar 2017
The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova
Elizabeth Kostova’s The Shadow Land follows a young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, as she travels to Bulgaria in memory of her lost brother. On her first day there, she accidentally…
Review — 29 Jan 2017
The Brittle Star by Davina Langdale
The Western seems to be making a bit of a comeback these days so, after relishing every blood-soaked minute of Hell or High Water and HBO’s Westworld, I jumped…