Mia Jacob grew up on a commune in Massachusetts with a love of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing and The Scarlet Letterin particular. The first half of The Invisible Hour deals with Mia and her mother, Ivy, and their time in ‘the Community’ and their battles with its leader (and Ivy’s husband), Joel Davis. The second half is a magical realist time travel where Mia meets Hawthorne before he’s written that book … which Mia found in her first venture into a library, with its dedication to her. It’s convoluted but it works.
Ivy flees to the commune from Boston after falling pregnant with Mia. Initially life is free, but Joel’s intrusive, overbearing rules begin to chafe at her, and Mia too, as she grows older. Both are keen readers, but books are forbidden. When the Community sells produce in town, Ivy shows Mia the library and suggests she go there. Mia finds a friendly librarian, Sarah, as well as Hawthorne’s book.
Mia has plans for her and her mother to escape. Before they can enact them, though, Ivy is killed in a farm accident. Mia must escape Joel and turns to Sarah for help. Sarah and her partner, Constance, become Mia’s new family. She finishes school and attends university … but Joel still stalks her, wanting to take her back to the Community.
The Scarlet Lettermirrors Ivy’s life and is the talisman allowing Mia to travel back to 1837. She meets Hawthorne, who’s immediately attracted to her. He feels a failure and Mia convinces him of his future success. Joel manages to follow her, though. She must overcome her fear to free herself. Her journey is an awakening on multiple levels.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alice Hoffman has become one of the most distinguished novelists. She has published over thirty novels, three books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults. Her novel, Here on Earth, an Oprah’s Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Practical Magic was made into a Warner Brothers film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools. Hoffman’s advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA. Hoffman has written a number of novels for young adults, including Aquamarine, Green Angel, and Green Witch. In 2007 Little Brown published the teen novel Incantation, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly chose as one of the best books of the year.
Hoffman’s work has been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay “Independence Day,” a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her teen novel Aquamarine was made into a film starring Emma Roberts. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and other magazines.
She’s done it again. Miles Franklin Award-winning author, Melissa Lucashenko has written a vibrant, tragic novel with dashes of humour that will resonate with all Australians, and particularly those living in and around Brisbane.
The author carried out extensive research into colonial Queensland history, but stresses that this novel is fiction, and although some characters did exist in that era, others are her creations. The title is that of a colonial name given to the inner Brisbane area now called Newstead.
Lucashenko has melded a tale of the 1850s Aboriginal people of that area with a story set in the modern Brisbane of 2024.
In that year, enter Eddie Blanket, a matriarch of the urban Aboriginal community, who is 100, maybe 103, or maybe neither. When in hospital after a fall, the difference between her attitudes and that of her granddaughter, Winona, becomes clear.
Winona is beautiful, clever, well read, an activist, and an angry young woman; while Eddie maintains that their people should not be sunk in bitterness or stuck in the past. She also knows more about the lore of her people than her granddaughter and prevents her from committing unspeakable errors in her activism.
The story set in the 1850s, just before Queensland became its own State, concerns the love of Mulanyin, a young saltwater man from the Nerang area, for Nita, an Aboriginal servant of the Petries, his interactions with that prominent family, and the white justice system.
Fast forward to 2024, and the elderly Eddie becomes the poster girl of celebrations marking 200 years since John Oxley named the Brisbane River. This is where the story takes a magical turn.
The 1850s Aboriginal residents named the river Warrar, and that is the term Lucashenko uses. She peppers the narrative with Yagara and Yugambeh words, having been guided by custodians of those local languages.
There is no glossary to explain the words, but the reader soon realises what they mean, with the novel melding settler and Aboriginal language. Edenglassie provides a deep understanding of the dispossession of the 1800s as well as urban Aboriginal viewpoints.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
Released October 2023
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage. She has been publishing books with UQP since 1997, with her first novel, Steam Pigs, winning the Dobbie Literary Award and shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Hard Yards (1999) was shortlisted for the Courier-Mail Book of the Year and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and Mullumbimby (2013) won the Queensland Literary Award and was longlisted for the Stella Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Kibble Literary Award.
She has also written two novels for teenagers, Killing Darcy (UQP, 1998) and Too Flash (IAD Press, 2002). In 2013 Melissa won the inaugural long-form Walkley Award for her Griffith REVIEW essay ‘Sinking Below Sight: Down and Out in Brisbane and Logan’.
Ann and her mother, Huong, have never been close. Ann was always closer to Minh, her grandmother. However, when Ann’s grandmother dies, and she finds out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her, she realises that she has nobody to turn to for help with her grief. She returns to the Banyan House in Florida to mourn and say goodbye to her beloved grandmother.
The Banyan House is an enormous ramshackle old house in which the three women lived. The house is left to Ann and her mother in her grandmother’s will. The Banyan House feels like a character itself and is integral to the story. It is full of memories and secrets.
Ann, Huong, and Minh, all take turns telling a narrative that dips back in time to the past. Minh narrates her story as a ghost ‘haunting’ the Banyan House, watching and listening to her daughter and granddaughter.
The story builds from the three different perspectives revealing how each woman feels toward the other and the secrets which exist between the three. The guilt, love, anger and sadness. Huong feels resentment towards Minh, exasperated by how close her daughter and grandmother still are. Ann’s life is in a transitional stage. Pregnant and not sure if she even wants to return to the father, she misses her grandmother more than ever.
Banyan Moonis all about relationships between the three women; the strength, the fraying, the rebuilding of these relationships. Most especially between a mother and daughter. Thai’s writing style is descriptive and metaphorical adding to what is a brilliant character-driven debut novel.
Reviewed by Neale Lucas
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thao Thai is the author of Banyan Moon. Her work is published in theLos Angeles Review of Books, WIRED, Elle, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, Catapult, The Sunday Long Read, Cup of Jo, and other publications. She lives in Ohio with her husband and daughter.
As Captain Thunderbolt emerges from his hideout one morning it’s not long before he checks his pockets only to realise that he is in need of shillings to buy himself a hot meal and a piece of sweet sugar loaf for his horse, Spirit.
He lay in wait behind a boulder until along came a horse and cart with a German band of musicians. As he rushed out on Spirit he shouted, ‘Stop there! I am Thunderbolt! The King of the Bush!’ The players quivered with fear as he waved his gun around. Thunderbolt laughed and insisted they play for him, but to also pay him to listen to them.
This tale is based on a true story. Thunderbolt robbed the band, but he was also known to repay those he robbed so there is a surprising ending.
Jolly has written the characters well and Duthie’s illustrations brings them to life on the page.
Captain Thunderbolt’s Recitalis a fun read that also educates us on a time in history. Great information is squirrelled away at the back of the book to learn more about this story from history.
Reviewed by Jane Stephens Age Guide 4
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I was born in Adelaide in 1957 and raised at Henley Beach (quite often on the beach!) where I attended the local primary and high school. I then went on to Torrens C.A.E. where I spent three years socialising and emerged as a primary school teacher in 1976.
In 1992 I married and now have a 28 year old daughter (and a husband), three adult step-children and six grandchildren. I have now retired after 45 years off being a Primary School classroom teacher.
I have had three children’s picture books published by Limelight Press (Limpopo Lullaby illus. Dee Huxley 2004, Glass Tears illus. Di Wu 2005). Both of these books were listed as Notable Books by the CBCA. Ali the Bold Heart illustrated by Elise Hurst was released on June 1st 2006 .
I have a large organic fruit and veg garden. I love eating the fresh produce from my garden. I also love bottling, drying and pickling it. I love eating. Especially chocolate. If I could grow a chocolate tree I would. I have a theory about eating and that is, that our whole lives revolve around eating. Think about it! The last time you went somewhere or met a friend … what did you do? Eat or drink or both!
I also love my chooks! And their big brown eggs. Which I eat!!
It was a month before Christmas and time for a tree, but where, oh where, could the decorations be?
As the family searches from the attic to the garage to under the house where Dad had to crawl, no-one heard the quiet BEGERK! That night as they tucked up the hens into bed they discovered that one was missing. Gloria. They searched high, they searched low. They noticed up in a tree, right by the chicken coop, was a hunter – a hawk – having a snoop.
The facts were quite clear, the facts were quite grim: that hawk was no longer particularly trim.
The flock of hens is not too fussed that Gloria has gone missing. After all, None of them liked her, they thought her quite strange. She had weird ideas – completely free range.
Where oh where could Gloria be!
Honestly, while writing this review I am hard-pressed not to burst into rhyme. You can’t help but get caught up in the rhythm as the rhyming words swish along.
I giggled my way through reading The Daring Tale of Gloria The Great. When I finished, I read it again. I laughed out loud. Then I read it again, out loud, and my heart was filled with joy. Such hilarious fun, fabulous illustrations. A book you simply have to go and borrow or buy.
Don’t miss it!
Reviewed by Rowena Morcom
Age Guide 3+
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacqueline Harvey worked in schools for many years but has had a passion for storytelling since she was a child.
She is the author of the popular Alice-Miranda, Clementine Rose, Kensy and Max and Willa and Woof series, which have sold almost two million copies in Australia alone. In 2022, she released a picture book, That Cat, illustrated by one of her former students, Kate Isobel Scott. Jacqueline’s books have received numerous shortlistings and awards while her picture book, The Sound of the Sea, was a CBCA Honour Book.
Jacqueline speaks to thousands of young people at schools and festivals around the world, and says the characters in her books are often made up of the best bits of children she’s met over the years. While she is not a twin, like Kensy and Max she does have excellent powers of observation and has always thought she’d make a great spy.
Jacqueline lives between Sydney, Australia, and Queenstown, New Zealand, and is currently working on more Willa and Woof adventures, several picture book projects and an exciting new middle-grade story.
One man, handsome, kind, Mr Nice Guy, a favourite of everyone in town. Two women, caught up, helpless in his presence and his power, both careening down the dangerous highway to Hell. One woman knows this, the other is naively oblivious. Who lives, who dies … only one of the three has the power … But which one?
I chose The Quiet Tenantfor an early night bedtime read, snuggled under the electric blanket, a new book. How good is that? After less than half a page of reading, time exploded and evaporated. When I next checked the clock it was four am. Still I couldn’t put it down.
In all my years of reading, rarely have I had such a compelling, subconscious reaction to a novel. And never, in all my years of reading have I been so swept up that I shouted at the book page, (TV screen, yes, book, never!). ‘Run, run NOW’, praying the character would hear my warning and save themselves!
The storyline is not a loud blockbuster plot. It is a hook-in-the-gut, hypnotically and tensely written piece of work. It is necessary that you, dear reader, experience this book from the very first sentence. You, like I, will feel the quickening in your gut, the outright appreciation of the author’s enormous talent and the incredible storyline and then savour the effect it will have on you all for yourself.
A rare and superbly tense and thrilling read.
Reviewed by Alison Logie
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I’m an author and an award-nominated journalist at The Independent, based in New York. My debut thriller The Quiet Tenant is published in 2023 by Knopf in the US and Little, Brown in the UK. Rights have sold in 30 territories. I also wrote a novel in French, which was published in 2020. It’s about a female bodybuilder tasked with managing her sister’s bakery. Really, it’s about bodies and the ways in which we try to feel at home in them. I studied political science and journalism at Sciences Po in Paris, as well as journalism at City, University of London, and I have an MS degree from Columbia Journalism School.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR