RaveThe Sydney Morning HeraldIt is a rare pleasure to watch a writer at the top of her game extract from the bewildering moment we are living through, truths that most of us are too overwhelmed to articulate or even to see ... From the streets of New York and London, Zadie Smith fashions gritty lockdown vignettes as she wrestles with how the pandemic has laid bare the flimsy superstructure of our lives.
Leila Slimani
RaveThe Sydney Morning HeraldMoroccans’ motto is simple, says Leila Slimani: ‘Do what you wish, but never talk about it.’ The consequences of this double-standard are profound, especially for women who speak out about the violence and repression they are subject to. Slimani, journalist and author of a bestselling novel, Lullaby, combines their courageous stories of defiance with reflections on her own experience and the emerging resistance among young people. The result is a gripping portrait of a society riven by inner conflict, poised on a power-keg of desire.
Mark O'Connell
PositiveThe Sydney Morning Herald (AUS)What saves this engrossing work of reportage from being a form of ‘apocalypse tourism’ is O’Connell’s wry self-awareness and his penetrating analysis of the ‘prepper\' (those preparing for the end) narrative as an escapist, masculine frontier fantasy dressed up as hard-headed realism.
Marina Benjamin
PositiveThe Sydney Morning HeraldBenjamin\'s...account of how the sleepless mind wanders, free-associates, roams and transgresses is mimicked by the form of this book with its episodic fragments of reflection and trains of meandering thoughts on literature, poetry, philosophy and love. While lack of sleep might render her daytime self sluggish and vague, her experience of insomnia is \'turbo-charged\' ... Insomnia is not an island you\'d want to be shipwrecked on but it\'s definitely worth an armchair visit.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
