Emily Paull

Bloodlines Nicole Sinclair Margaret River Press 2017 (I own a copy, courtesy the publisher.) Nicole Sinclair's debut novel Bloodlines  is set between Western Australia and a small island in Papua New Guinea.  It is the story of Beth, who heads to PNG to work with her father's cousin at a mission school, in an attempt to run away from the recent breakdown of a relationship.  From page one, we know that Beth feels guilty for this breakdown, and that she thinks she has done something very bad indeed.  It's a classic tale-- after a life changing event, the protagonist seeks healing through travel.  But there are many layers to Bloodlines  besides this.  Told in a literary style, this is a novel which examines the clash between traditional and Western culture, the hangovers of colonialism, relationships, romance, and the power of female friendships.  Strong women abound in the pages of this book, from Beth herself, to her father's cousin Val, who...

Crimson Lake by Candice Fox Published by Penguin/Random House, 2017 (I borrowed a copy from the library) I wasn't going to review this book.  In fact, not being a crime reader by nature, I probably wasn't even going to read it, until the lovely Erin chose it for our June Book Club meeting.  That being said, from the prologue, I was totally hooked, and I read the entire book in a twenty-four hour period.  What made Crimson Lake  so appealing, I think, mainly comes down to the excellent characters.  We've seen the sleuthing duo trope done many times before, both in books and on television (it's rife on television!  One quirky optimist + one tough pessimist, one or other of them a cop or an ex-cop etc etc) but in Crimson Lake , while this dynamic is still in play, the characters' backstories feed directly into active subplots.  So really, while the plot of Crimson Lake  revolves around the disappearance of a Far North Queensland fantasy wr...

The Hope Fault Tracy Farr Fremantle Press, 2017 (I own a copy, courtesy of the publisher) Australia seems to have a habit of claiming talented New Zealanders for their own when it suits them-- but if the talented Kiwi in question is Tracy Farr, I have no problem naming her a West Australian.  After all, she's originally from here.  Tracy's first novel, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt  was longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award, and remains to this day one of my favourite novels of all time.  Her second novel, The Hope Fault  was released early in 2017, and I have been kicking myself for not getting to it sooner.  More experimental in style than The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt , The Hope Fault  tells the story of an unconventional family, who spend one rainy long weekend packing up a holiday house ready to sell it.   Yet, to sum up this novel in just that one sentence seems horribly wrong to me.  This is a slow burn...

After months of 'not feeling it' creatively, it's really great to be back at the desk (or the kitchen table), working on a project. It's great to be reserving more books than I could possible read over three weeks from two different libraries, in order to immerse myself fully in the dialect of the era I am writing about. It's great to feel my fingers flying along the keyboard, retyping familiar words.  It's even better when they go off script, adding or replacing words which are defunct or have no place. It's great to be showing my work to beta readers, getting feedback-- though always jarring to hear that the things I thought I'd done well were not the parts that stood out, and things I'd overlooked were the parts that shone.  Writing is bizarre. It's great to be drinking cups of tea.  It's even great to be getting so caught up in writing that I forget said cup of tea, only to take a tepid sip an hour or two later. It's great t...

The Midsummer Garden by Kirsty Manning Allen and Unwin 2017 (I bought a copy) I have been wanting a copy of The Midsummer Garden  ever since I saw the cover a few months back.  Yes... I judge books by their covers, or rather, I lust after them and want desperately to have them in my collection.  Never underestimate the value of a great jacket design, folks!  When I read the blurb for this gorgeous looking book, I was sold.  Multi-narrative historical fiction, a found object tying the past to the present-- yes please.  It sounded like exactly my cup of tea.  The kind of book I could get absolutely lost in. And boy, did this book live up to expectations! Pip Arnet is given a big set of cast iron pots for an engagement gift.  Inside, she finds papers with French recipes written on them, and is intrigued.  Who wrote them, and how long ago?  The answer, revealed to the reader, takes us back to Medieval France, where Artemesia is coo...