In "The Bulletin", Barry Oakley looks at James Bradley's The Resurrectionist and considers that: "Like [the anatomist] exposing layer after layer in his quest for the secret of life, Bradley pushes past the blood and gore in a search for the secret of identity." We also have the "transcends the genre" phrase in the review. Not one I'm keen on, as it comes across as condescending. I don't think Oakley meant it that way but grumpy old bastards like me tend to look for stuff like this.
Also, at the same webpage, Salley Blakeney reviews M.J. Hyland's second novel Carry Me Down, which turns out to be "a page turner -- a gripping story told so well that it changes the way you see things. M.J.Hyland has the potential to be an Irish literary artist, not one of the blarney gang." And Judith White looks at Tegan Bennett Daylight's novel Safety and finds: "This is a young writer who more than fulfils her early promise. Ten years after her first book, Bombora, the writing is still fresh, elegant and precise. And now her canvas is expanding, her characters gaining depth. May she continue to take her time; her work is worth waiting for."
In "The Age", James Ley reviews the novel Rifling Paradise by Jem Poster: "There are indications that Poster has the capacity to be an accomplished stylist, but his dialogue is as mawkish and wooden as that of any soap opera. This would be less of a problem if he did not force the dialogue to carry so much of the burden of exposition...Rifling Paradise is, nevertheless, a readable and well-paced novel, but one which is, for all it good intentions, rather unremarkable."
Christoper Bantick is impressed with Sara Douglass's new novel Darkwitch Rising, the third volume in her Troy Game series. "Douglass's feel for character melds real time with imagined place most felicitously. With an assured narrative voice and animated characters - who quickly begin to matter to us as people - Darkwitch Rising is a book that will please Douglass's established audience. It also deserves to win new readers."
Andrew Reimer thinks DBC Pierre's novel Ludmilla's Broken English is "weird and wonderfully outrageous". So the verdicts on this are going to be widely spread it seems.
