Well Told book reviews

A young homeless artist uncovers past secrets

2/12/2023

LOLA IN THE MIRROR
By Trent Dalton

The sentimental story of a young artist living rough with her mum in a scrapyard in Brisbane's West End, which opens a window to the violence, addiction and self-harm, balanced with hope and love, prevalent in the lives of the homeless.

Published by Harper Collins, October 2023 | Fiction, Australian author

Retrieving a lost life from the historical black box

13/11/2023

WIFEDOM: MRS ORWELL'S INVISIBLE LIFE
By Anna Funder

The result of author Anna Funder’s plunge into the historical “black box” of George Orwell's wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy is a biography quite unlike any I’ve ever read.

Published by Penguin, July 2023 | Fiction, Memoir, Australian Author

Power of words shine in brilliantly imagined slice of history

24/7/2023

Published by Affirm Press, March 2023 | Historical Fiction

THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO
By Pip Williams

A perfect companion to Pip Williams’ wildly successful debut, The Bookbinder of Jericho explores the power in words by weaving a brilliantly imagined story around a slice of very real history, with a cast of women who rise in the face of the brutal upheaval of World War One.

The minefield of a woman’s introspection

6/6/2023

Published by Other Press 2018 | Fiction

EVENTIDE
By Therese Bohman

An introspective wander through the tumult felt by a Swedish art professor in her 40s, freshly separated and overindulging as she reassesses her choices and unexpectedly turns the tables.

A family portrait, complete with dysfunction

27/3/2023

Published by Riverrun an Hachette UK imprint 2022 | Fiction

I'M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY
By Rebecca Wait

In this family saga, very British humour barely conceals the molten dynamics at play, each character bearing to a different degree the scars of mental illness.

A bold retelling of an ancient myth

20/3/2023

Published by Canongate 2005 | Fiction, Mythological Fiction

THE PENELOPIAD
By Margaret Atwood

Because the version of Penelope in Homer's ancient epic poem, The Odyssey, "doesn't hold water", Margaret Atwood retells this ancient legend, adding a contemporary and memorable spin.

Titillating Hollywood tale

26/2/2023

Published by Simon & Schuster 2017 | Fiction

THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO
By Taylor Jenkins Reid

Splintering the mythical splendour of Hollywood’s golden age, this tale provides a titillating and entertaining (although, truth be told, not terribly challenging) exploration of the price of fame.

A portrait in shedding past pain

18/11/2022

BODIES OF LIGHT
By Jennifer Down

Bodies of Light is a compelling masterwork in the effects of trauma, painting a portrait of a protagonist dealt a distressing hand of life cards, and her quest to start over to leave her pain behind.

Published by Text Publishing September 2021 | Fiction

Rebelling against the blinding power of oppression

16/10/2022

Published by Faber & Faber 2021 | Fiction

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE
By Claire Keegan

The shame, secrecy and fear that hangs over the treatment of women and children who spent time in Ireland’s so-called Magdalen laundries has fuelled the imaginations of many writers, most recently Claire Keegan in her Booker-shortlisted novella Small Things Like These.

Small kindnesses triumph in this WWII epic

8/10/2022

Published by 4th Estate 2014 | Fiction

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
By Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winning 2014 novel All The Light We Cannot See is a captivating story celebrating the small triumphs scattered among the tragedies experienced by many during the second world war.

Zen parable celebrates human difference

22/9/2022

THE BOOK OF FORM AND EMPTINESS
By Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki turns the story of a mother and son’s struggles with grief into a celebration of human difference in her fourth novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness.

Published by Text Publishing September 2021 | Fiction

A haunting tale of a school girls’ ghostly tragedy

13/9/2022

Published by Head of Zeus, April 2022 | Fiction

SHADOW GIRLS
By Carol Birch

A suspenseful tale steeped in 60s nostalgia with a tragic twist, Shadow Girls by Carol Birch captures the feel of a classic coming of age story as a cover for a sinister paranormal revelation.

Peculiar mystery in a parallel realm

15/8/2022

PIRANESI
By Susanna Clarke

For all its fantastical strangeness, the mystery that unfolds in Piranesi keeps you pondering until the very end.

Published by Bloomsbury, 2020 | Fiction

Hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of a loner

31/7/2022

ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE
By Gail Honeyman

Hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measures, the story of Eleanor Oliphant – an eccentric loner with a harrowing past – shows the transformative effect of small kindnesses on purging loneliness.

Published by Harper Collins 2017 | Fiction

Darwin shines in this Aussie allegorical quest

22/7/2022

ALL OUR SHIMMERING SKIES
By Trent Dalton

As young gravedigger Molly Hook’s odyssey unfolds, bleakness gives way to an almost mystical narrative, ripe with the comical, sensory, over-the-top feels for which Trent Dalton has become known.

Published by Fourth Estate, December 2020 | Fiction

A celebration of the complicated nature of love

5/7/2022

TIN MAN
By Sarah Winman

There are tendrils of hope and redemption in Tin Man, but there’s no escaping the loss and loneliness, prejudice and abandonment that permeates this love story, the third novel by the British author of Still Life.

Published by Tinder Press, June 2017 | Fiction

Wolves steal the story in this Scottish Highland eco-thriller

29/5/2022

ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES
By Charlotte McConaghy

Domestic abuse, buried trauma, a rare neurological condition, ecological catastrophe, death, love and the mystery of wolves – all of these strands are interlaced in Australian author Charlotte McConaghy's Once There Were Wolves.

Published by Penguin Random House, August 2021 | Fiction, Australian author

A merry, multi layered mystery

13/4/2022

THE WOMAN IN THE LIBRARY
By Sulari Gentill

From the moment the action kicks off in The Woman in the Library, through its myriad twists as the murderous crime is solved, there's a buoyancy to Australian author Sulari Gentill’s prose that keeps the mood light, fun and fast-paced.

First published in Newtown Review of Books 

Published by Ultimo Press, June 2022 | Fiction, Thriller, Australian author

Big issues wrapped in the energetic veil of campus life

28/3/2022

LOVE & VIRTUE
By Diana Reid

Diana Reid injects youthful vitality into some big contemporary issues – sexual consent and the role of privilege in power – in this fresh Australian campus novel.

First published in The Newtown Review of Books.

Published by Ultimo Press | October 2021 | Fiction, Australian author

Quirky, sensory thriller unveils power of scent

15/3/2022

PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER
By Patrick Suskind

A terrifyingly humorous and sinister examination of blind obsession, explored through the mind of a man who perceives the world not through vision but by smell.

Published by Penguin | 1985 | Historical Fiction

A stunning tale that will hook all word lovers

26/1/2022

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS
By Pip Williams

In a wonderfully original debut, Pip Williams weaves a moving and brilliantly imagined fictional story around the very real case of a word quite literally lost as the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled.

Published by Affirm Press 2020 | Historical Fiction, Australian author

A wildly imaginative epic

16/1/2022

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND
By Anthony Doerr

A kaleidoscopic novel, superbly told, Cloud Cuckoo Land reveals the power of stories in binding us over millennia.

Published by 4th Estate | September 2021 | Mythological saga

A broody, atmospheric Kiwi noir by budding NZ author

7/1/2022

TO THE SEA
By Nikki Crutchley

The shocking events in the opening pages of To The Sea provide a brutal first taste of this seaside thriller set on New Zealand’s east coast.

Published by HarperCollins Australia December 2021 | Crime fiction, Thriller

Women front and centre of this dystopian thriller

24/12/2021

THE HUSH
By Sara Foster

An unsettlingly plausible near-future UK provides the backdrop for Sara Foster’s dystopian thriller, The Hush.

This review was first published in Newtown Review of Books.

Published by HarperCollins, November 2021 | Fiction, Australian, Women

A wondrous gem that will charm book lovers

10/12/2021

THE CAT WHO SAVED BOOKS
by Sosuke Natsukawa

Despite its simple prose and slim spine, this little gem of a book packs in a whimsical adventure of courageous self-discovery while underscoring the tremendous power of books.

Published by Pan McMillan, October 2021 | Fiction

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