Tag: book-reviews

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JENNETTE MCCURDY I’m Glad My Mom Died.

My latest review, I'm Glad My Mom Died, by Hollywood child star, Jennette McCurdy, is up now at Newtown Review of Books. This one took hold of me in strange ways. Memoir is not my favourite genre and I'd never heard of McCurdy but she writes powerfully and in the voice of the small child, betrayed by the one she loves and trusts the most. It is compelling from the start, where the title lets us know she frees herself, to the end, where we find out how and when and what came next. And laugh-out-loud funny too. Hats off.

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The In-Between, Christos Tsiolkas

Reading Christos Tsiolkas is a bodily experience. Smells, tastes, touch inhabit the pages. When a character makes the sign of the Cross, there is a pull to mimic the quick touches of thumb, index and middle fingers to the forehead and abdomen, right and left shoulders. Tsiolkas’s characters celebrate their bodies – they are a source of delight, to their owners and to lovers. And he writes good sex.