Spectrum
The late Jurassic Park author’s final book gets a roaring release
Our reviewers cast their eyes over new fiction and non-fiction releases including the late Michael Crichton’s Eruption, completed by thriller writer James Patterson and a memoir of hidden sexuality in Victorian-era regional Australia.
- by Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll
Latest
Cancel culture is a boogeyman: feminist author Roxane Gay
The Bad Feminist author, who will appear in Melbourne and Sydney later this year, on progress for women, Trump and being recognised in public.
- by Cassidy Knowlton
Opinion
Motherhood
Is my biological clock faulty, or is motherhood just not for me?
It’s not that I hate kids. I just don’t want one of my own.
- by Genevieve Novak
His crime shocked France. This film reveals why his wife stayed silent
A Silence unpacks the complicity that allowed a celebrated lawyer to commit horrific acts. For its director, it was also a reckoning.
- by Stephanie Bunbury
Sheila Heti gets playful and philosophical in her scrambled diaries
As part of her ongoing investigation into her own life and art, Sheila Heti’s new book is composed of sentences taken from her diaries, arranged alphabetically.
- by Jane Gleeson-White
America’s problems lie in its traumatic childhood, author argues
In his new book, Nick Bryant argues that the division and hate in the US today are rooted in the nation’s past. But he doesn’t fully explain the Trump factor.
- by Dennis Altman
This play is set in 1947. What it says about us will surprise you
A Streetcar Named Desire lands with impeccable timing for the MTC. As the nation grapples with the awful toll of gendered violence, what we’re seeing feels anything but dated.
- by Lindy Percival
We cross these roads every day, but what lies beneath the bitumen?
A new exhibition at ACMI follows long-hidden Indigenous pathways to create the ultimate Australian road movie.
- by Andrew Stephens
Literature and music in harmony in Kazuo Ishiguro’s new book
The Nobel Prize–winning author’s new book is a gorgeously illustrated volume of lyrics written for the jazz singer Stacey Kent.
- by Peter Craven
Amor Towles creates an alluring world in his noirish short stories
The author of A Gentleman In Moscow has written a collection of six stories set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, as well as an experimental novella.
- by Luke Slattery
Thrice Were Warriors: Director wraps trilogy with The Convert
The figure of the Maori warrior was central to Lee Tamahori’s first film, and his latest. But is he at peace with it at last?
- by Karl Quinn