Biography and memoir
The Chain: The Relationships That Break Us, the Women Who Rebuild Us by Chimene Suleyman
In January 2017, Turkish-Cypriot London-raised author Chimene Suleyman sat in an abortion clinic in Queens, imagining her boyfriend sitting in the waiting room, ready to take her home. The closest she’d get to seeing him again was on her apartment…
Servo: Tales from the Graveyard Shift by David Goodwin
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had? Maybe a dead-end retail role, or a nightmare stint in hospitality? For David Goodwin, that answer is as clear as the glass on a pair of automatic doors. Fresh out of high school…
Eventually Everything Connects: Eight Essays on Uncertainty by Sarah Firth
Sarah Firth is a Melbourne cartoonist, who (among her other arts practices) produces drawings-plus-words documentation of meetings and presentations, so that participants and attendees later have a record of what was discussed, and the ideas that arose live in that…
Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A Memoir by Shoji Morimoto & Angus Turvill (trans.)
This is a memoir from someone who rents nothing and describes themselves as having ‘zero spec’ or no special qualities. In the foreword, Shoji Morimoto says he worked with a writer and an editor, and typically, despite the book materialising…
George: A Magpie Memoir by Frieda Hughes
I’ll confess I wanted to review this memoir, in part, because of a prying curiosity. What might the daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes reveal to me about her parents, that I don’t already know? Frieda Hughes, a painter…
Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life by Amy Key
What if being single isn’t a transient state? Is a life without romantic love necessarily intolerable? These are just two of the tough, weighty questions from which Amy Key’s introspective and raw memoir unspools. Now in her mid-40s, Key hasn’t…
Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder
Anna Funder’s new masterpiece, Wifedom, is the story of the invisible life of George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy. It is a brilliant work of counter-fiction that uses letters written by O’Shaughnessy during her marriage to Orwell, the many biographies…
Half Deaf, Completely Mad by Tony Cohen with John Olson
As a wannabe hippy, young Tony Cohen found enough trouble with his school, parents and the law for his family to decide to help him find a job in the music business. Obsessed with music, he did work experience at…
Heartbake by Charlotte Ree
Heartbake is a call to arms written by a tenacious and hungry woman. This is the type of book you read because you understand that reading another person’s story can give voice to your experiences and, good lord, it is…
Fat Girl Dancing: A Memoir by Kris Kneen
Kris Kneen is quite the force in Australian literature. Fat Girl Dancing, their latest memoir, confirms Kneen as an outstanding writer. This is a memoir of fatness, and Kneen’s journey with their body, both in terms of gaining and…
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