Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan

Death of a River Guide tells the story of, well, a dying river guide. Aljaz Cosini is drowning in a Tasmanian river, trying to save a tourist from the swollen water, and as he dies he tells the complicated story of his family (over 300 pages worth, which made me think of those opera characters [...]

Addition by Toni Jordan

Additionstarts out as the memoir of a woman obsessed with counting everything, from the bananas she buys at the supermarket to the steps she takes to get there. Actually it’s the bananas that get the book started since she must filch one from another shopper’s basket to get to her required 10, which gets her [...]

The Good Parents by Joan London

I liked The Good Parents a lot and I’m not sure why the critics did not rush to deliver a more enthusiastic response to it. It’s the story of an Australian family through three generations delivered as a series of smooth flashbacks from the life of a young woman who has an inadvisable affair with [...]

The Lure of the Bush by Arthur Upfield

The Lure of the Bush has a lot going for it: a detective with the magnificent name of Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony for short), an elaborate mystery a la Sherlock Holmes, in which we know pretty much from the start what happened (well, almost) but need the whole book to confirm it, and the exotic background [...]

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Tolz

A Fraction of the Whole is a grandiose saga of the Dean family, starting and ending in Australia but ranging to Paris and Thailand with unprobable situations every few pages but anchored in the outsized and definitely out-of-the-norm personalities of the narrator’s father and uncle. I thought the first part (based in Australia) was brilliant. [...]