Quarterly Review: October-December 2023

Here is a round-up of books read and reviewed on this site between 1 October and 31 December 2023. They have been arranged by theme and then in alphabetical order by author’s surname. As ever, hyperlinks take you to my reviews in full.

Australian literature

• ‘Cold Enough for Snow’ by Jessica Au (literary fiction, 2022)
  A woman takes her mother on an uneventful holiday to Japan.
  
  
• ‘Paradise Estate’ by Max Easton (literary fiction, 2023)
  A group of disparate, mainly working-class 30-somethings share a house in Sydney’s inner-west at the tail end of the pandemic.
  
  
• ‘Keep Her Sweet’ by Helen Fitzgerald (psychological thriller, 2022)
  Two sisters take their sibling rivalry to a murderous level.
  
  
• ‘The In-Between’ by Christos Tsiolkas (literary fiction, 2023)
  Two middle-aged men, scarred by past relationships, fall in love and begin again.
  
  
• ‘Stone Yard Devotional’ by Charlotte Wood (literary fiction, 2023)
  A middle-aged woman living in a cloistered religious community reflects on grief, despair, guilt and atonement.
  
  
• ‘The Disorganisation of Celia Stone’ by Emma Young (literary fiction, 2023)
  A young woman controls every facet of her life until a health scare kicks in and forces her to rethink her obsessions.
  
  
• ‘True West’ by David Whish-Wilson (crime, 2019)
  A resourceful 17-year-old goes on the run from a criminal bikie gang and gets caught up in the illegal activities of a right-wing extremist group.
  

British literature

• ‘Peach’ by Emma Glass (literary fiction, 2018)
  A teenage girl endures the aftermath of an unreported sexual assault.
  
  
• ‘The Quiet American’ by Graham Greene (literary fiction, 1955)
  A jaded British journalist and an idealistic American undercover agent fall in love with the same woman during the French-Indochina war.
  
  
• ‘The Western Wind’ by Samantha Harvey (historical crime, 2018)
  In the mid-15th century, a dedicated young priest investigates the murder of a local man in a close-knit community.
  
  
• ‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey (literary fiction, 2023)
  A group of astronauts onboard the International Space Station grapple with their emotions when they observe Earth from space.
  

• ‘The Trouble with Sunbathers’ by Magnus Mills (literary fiction, 2020)
  Two chaps man one of four ceremonial inauguration gates put in place when the American president buys the UK and turns it into a national park.

Irish literature

• ‘Inishowen’ by Joseph O’Connor (literary fiction, 2001)
  A terminally ill American woman walks out on her family and goes on an Irish road trip with a bereaved Dublin detective she meets by chance.

US literature

• ‘Wildlife’ by Richard Ford (literary fiction, 1990)
  In 1960, a teenage boy watches his parents’ marriage fall apart amid the background of ongoing forest fires.

Non-fiction

• ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over: The Remarkable Life of Neil Finn’ by Jeff Apter (music biography, 2023)
  A traditional biography tracing the life and hugely successful career of the New Zealand-born singer-songwriter from Split Enz and Crowded House.
  
  
• ‘Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir’ by John Banville (memoir, 2016)
  Part memoir, part nostalgic travel guide, this is an intimate glimpse of the author’s life and his personal recollections of the city he eventually called home.
  
  
• ‘The House That Joy Built’ by Holly Ringland (self-help, 2023)
  An uplifting book, which marries memoir with practical tips, about the importance of breaking through your fear of failure to pursue your creative urges.
  

Translated fiction

• ‘Against the Loveless World’ by Susan Abulhawa (Palestinian, 2020)
  A Palestinian woman imprisoned in an Israeli jail cell writes her compelling life story on the cinder block walls.
  
  
• ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’ by Georgio Bassani (Italian, 1962)
  A young man falls in love with the daughter of an affluent Jewish family in Italy during the rise of fascism.
  
  
• ‘The Easy Life’ by Marguerite Duras (French, 1944)
  A young woman from a secluded French farm takes a 15-day holiday by the sea in the wake of two family tragedies.
  
  
• ‘The Opposite of a Person’ by Lieke Marsman (Dutch, 2022)
  A young climate scientist working on a project in the Italian Alps begins to realise that the world is undergoing an existential threat.
  
  
• ‘Minor Detail’ by Adania Shibli (Palestinian, 2020)
  A modern-day Palestinian becomes obsessed with the story of a young Arab woman who was brutally assaulted in August 1949.
  

William Trevor books for #WilliamTrevor2023

• ‘After Rain’ (short stories, 1996)
  Twelve stories about ordinary people whose lives are turned upside down by milestone events such as love affairs, divorce, pregnancy and bereavement.
  
  
• ‘Two Lives’ (two novellas, 1991)
  A pair of novellas (in one volume) that showcase Trevor’s different styles of writing; the first is a heartbreaking tale set in rural Ireland about a woman in the wrong marriage; the second, is a black comedy about a landlady who opens up her home in Umbria, Italy, to survivors of a terrorist attack on a train.
  
  
• ‘Bodily Secrets’ (short series, 2007)
  Five short stories revolving around love in all its many forms, including unreciprocated love, adulterous love, sexual love and convenient love.

Have you read anything from this list? Or has it made you want to explore anything from it?