Emily Paull

The Perth Writers Festival comes but once a year, and for us writerly types in the West, it can be better than Christmas.  Under the excellent direction of Katherine Dorrington and her team, each year we are treated to a three day program of talks which complement one another in different and sometimes surprising ways, meaning that each year's festival has a distinct personality all of its own.  The 2017 Festival has been no exception, and to me, the theme of this year's festival seemed to be all about the political.  From an opening address by Ben Rawlence on world's largest refugee camp, Dadaab, on the Kenyan border with Somalia, and tonight's closing remarks by Syrian writer and architect, Marwa Al-Sabouni, to sessions on feminism, American politics, Australian politics and more, this was a weekend of big ideas. For those of us whose interests lay more in the realm of fiction, there was an abundance of sessions to choose from, and some particular highlights for...

Scribe Publishing  Published 2017 (I own a copy courtesy of the publisher) When my copy of  The Possessions arrived in the post earlier this week, I stopped reading what I was reading and started it right away.  I have been excited to read this book ever since I first heard it was coming out, late last year.   The Possessions  is the story of Eurydice, called Edie, who works as a 'body' for the Elysian Society, a secretive organisation which offers the bereaved the opportunity to speak to their lost loved ones again.  The bodies' job is to channel those spirits.  Edie has been working for the Elysian Society for five years, longer than anyone else has ever stayed, and then she meets Patrick.  Patrick Braddock's wife Sylvia has drowned, and he chooses Edie to be the method he will use to speak to her again.  From the moment Edie first channels Sylvia, she begins to feel different.  Are the strong feelings she is experiencing towards Pat...

HarperCollins Australia  (I own a copy, courtesy the publisher) 9781460752371 Published February 2017 Blogger Lizzy's life is buzzing, happy, normal.  Two gorgeous children, a handsome husband, destiny under control.  For real-life Beth, things are unravelling.  Tensions are simmering with her husband, mother-in-law, and even her own mother.  Her teenage daughters, once the objects of her existence, have moved beyond her grasp and one of them has shown signs of, well, thoughtlessness... Then a classmate of her daughter is callously bullied and the finger of blame is pointed at Beth's clever, beautiful child.  Shattered, shamed and frightened, two families must negotiate worlds of cruelty they are totally unprepared for.  Last weekend was a good reading weekend.  Straight off the back of devouring one of my most anticipated reads of the year ( The Fifth Letter by Nicola Moriarty), I picked up another HarperCollins new release, The Golden...

Harlequin Books  Published 2016 (I bought myself a copy) It's no secret that I am huge fan of the Tudor period, and that I love books set around that time-- though it seems I like the ones which give voices to women more than I like the ones which fictionalise all the battles and focus on the men, because I gave Conn Iggulden's War of the Roses series a go and it didn't grab me in the same way.  I was intrigued by The Locksmith's Daughter  because, while it's heroine Mallory Bright was not a real person, her position in the novel as a watcher for Mister Secretary Walsingham, the Queen's Spymaster during the Elizabethan period, promised to give me as a reader an insight into the time period I had not been afforded before.  While I found some of the adherence to a Shakespearian language still (for example, calling people 'Sirrah' when they annoy you, saying 'Zounds' as an exclamations etc) a bit overdone and distracting, the book did take me...