Literary discursiveness in novels can be tedious. So can surprising plot turns in narratives that have been ticking along quite nicely without them. Such antics and glissandos in Sean Rabin’s debut novel, however, are welcome and enjoyable: A smart and compelling game that leads to a surreal ending that (by the skin of its teeth)
Ice floes and frostbite in The North Water made it the perfect novel to read during Sydney’s February heat wave, which saw the mercury hitting the high 30s for days at a stretch. Set partly on a Yorkshire whaling vessel in the late 1850s, the novel also transported me from the irritating Trump mania and
Australian Indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckerman has won a Windham-Campbell prize—a US literary prize worth US$165,000 (A$215,000). This is wonderful news. Eckerman is a marvelous poet and her most recent poetry collection Inside my Mother is a tender and moving work: largely a love song to the mother that she was separated from for 30 years
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