Tag archieven: Text Publising

Nieuw-Zeeland, Nieuw-Zeelandse roman, Nieuw-Zeelandse schrijver, Queer boeken

Jeffrey Buchanan – The Birds Began to Sing

26 augustus 2025 Redactie

Jeffrey Buchanan The Birds Began to Sing review, recensie en informatie queer roman van de schrijver uit Nieuw-Zeeland. Op 26 augustus 2025 verschijnt bij Text Publishing de roman van de Nieuw-Zeelandse schrijver Jeffrey Buchanan. Winnaar, Michael Gifkins Prize, New Zealand in 2024 Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Jeffrey Buchanan The Birds Began to Sing review en recensie

“Heartbreaking, hilarious and boldly written. A bona fide page-turner about the importance of living your own truth.” (Nigel Featherstone)
“A novel filled with humanity, warmth and humour.” (Lloyd Jones)

The Birds Began to Sing

Auteur: Jeffrey Buchanan (Nieuw-Zeeland)
Soort boek: Nieuw-Zeelandse roman
Taal: Engels
Uitgever: Text Publishing
Verschijnt: 26 augustus 2025
Omvang: 352 pagina’s
Uitgave: paperback / ebook
Prijs: $A 34,99
Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de roman van Jeffrey Buchanan de Nieuw-Zeelandse schrijver

Reggie was still missing after five days, and Gladys Harris was saying things about him that quivered in my mind, which now, four years later, I see as being that opening sentence leading me to this burden of what happened to Reggie Kingsley.

In the harbour city of New Plymouth in the 1960s there’s a fizz of seedy sexuality beneath a veneer of respectability. Godfrey’s world is the Balmoral Hotel his parents own, where visiting sailors drink and local fringe-dwellers congregate.

When Reggie, the openly gay barman, goes missing Godfrey senses something sinister. There’s a prevailing attitude of inevitability. Godfrey doesn’t get it, but he’s hungry to understand. Guided by his daytime-television and pulp-fiction detective heroes and a very active imagination, he attempts to solve the mystery—in the process stumbling into his own sexual adventures and discovering a new-found power in a perplexing adult world.

The Birds Began to Sing delves into a world of shadows, nods and unspoken understandings with a warmth and humour that make this novel a delight.

Jeffrey Buchanan has written five novels concerned primarily with LGBTQI+ issues, Sucking Feijoas being his first. He worked in international development for thirty years and lives with his husband on a remote stretch of beach in North Canterbury in New Zealand’s South Island.

Bijpassende boeken en informatie

Australië, Australische roman, Australische schrijver, Beste Romans

Marcus Clarke – For the Term of His Natural Life

15 augustus 2025 Redactie

Marcus Clarke For the Term of His Natural Life review, recensie en informatie roman uit 1874 over de gevangeis op Tasmanië. Op deze pagina lees je uitgebreide informatie over de roman For the Term of His Natural Life van de uit de Australië afkomstige schrijver Marcus Clarke die in Engeland was geboren. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van de roman verkrijgbaar.

Marcus Clarke For the Term of His Natural Life recensie, review en informatie

“Terrible and tragic, but seething with intense human life…A masterpiece.” (Canberra Times)

For the Term of His Natural Life

Auteur: Marcus Clarke (Australië)
Soort boek: roman over Tasmanië uit 1874
Taal: Engels
Uitgever: Text Publishing
Omvang: 512 pagina’s
Uitgave: paperback / ebook
Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de roman van Marcus Clarke over Tasmanië

A masterpiece in style and scope, Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life is an ambitious tale of tragedy, redemption, and the ugliness and resilience of man.

Wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit, a young aristocrat is sent to pay his dues in Van Diemen’s Land. As a criminal in this new colony, Rufus Dawes is forced to endure tremendous suffering and inhumanity, from the baseless cruelty of those in power to the harsh brutalities of an untamed country. Yet, with enduring human spirit and unrelenting determination, Dawes remains ever desperate to clear his name, no matter the trials that come his way.

First published in 1874, Marcus Clarke’s vivid and brutal depictions of convict life have come to define our colonial history. Still beloved by readers today, For the Term of His Natural Life remains the most important Australian book of the nineteenth century, and a vital part of our cultural and literary identity.

Marcus Clarke was born in on 24 April 1846 in Kensington, London. At age seventeen Clarke left England for Australia, where his uncle was a county court judge. Despite an early career in banking, Clarke had begun to write professionally by 1867, penning stories for the Australian Magazine and working as a theatre critic for the Melbourne Argus. Commissioned by the Australian Journal to write a serial about convict life, Clarke produced his masterwork, His Natural Life. Republished as a novel in 1874 under the new title For the Term of His Natural Life, Clarke’s epic tale of crime and punishment was later distributed in Britain, America, Germany and many other countries. Marcus Clarke died in Melbourne on 2 August 1881, aged thirty-five.

Bijpassende boeken

Australië, Australische schrijfster, Beste Boeken, True Crime Boeken, True-Crime

Helen Garner – This House of Grief

6 augustus 2025 Redactie

Helen Garner This House of Grief review, recensie en informatie true crime-boek uit 2014 van de Australische schrijfster. Op deze pagina lees je uitgebreide informatie over de het boek This House of Grief, The Story of a Murder Trail. Het boek dat inmiddels is uitgegroeid tot een true crime klassieker, is geschreven door Helen Garner, de uit Australië afkomstige schrijfster. Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Helen Garner This House of Grief recensie en review

“This House of Grief makes its complexity out of an honest vulnerability…Garner’s book is superbly alive to the narrative dynamics of the case; she tells a grim story of unhappy marriage, limited social opportunity, bitter divorce, and spousal grievance. Again, as in The First Stone, what consumes her are the difficult questions that seem to lie beyond the reach of formal narration: the deepest assumptions of class and gender and power; the problem of how well we ever understand someone else’s motives…Attracted and repelled, Garner circles around the unspeakable abysmal horror. Can any story “explain” why a man might murder his children? She doesn’t pretend to possess the explosive answer, and frequently confesses stupefaction, but her book walks us along an engrossing and plausible narrative fuse…Her narrative is lit by lightning.” (James Wood, New Yorker)
“Helen Garner is an invaluable guide into harrowing territory and offers powerful and unforgettable insights. This House of Grief, in its restraint and control, bears comparison with In Cold Blood.” (Kate Atkinson)
“In This House of Grief, Helen Garner describes with wonderful subtlety and honesty the trail of a man accused of drowning his three sons; she is fascinated by what we’re capable of and how fiercely we hide it from ourselves.” (Helen Simpson, Times Literary Supplement)
“As involving, heart-rending and unsettling a read as you could possibly find, a true-life account of three deaths and a trial that leaves you with a profound sense of unease as its drama unfolds, and disturbing questions about how we judge guilt and innocence…Tailor-made for those who have gorged recently on the popular true-crime podcast Serial.” (The Times)

This House of Grief

The Story of a Murder Trial

Auteur: Helen Garner (Australië)
Soort boek: true crime boek uit 2014
Taal: Engels
Eerste editie: Text Publishing
Uitgever: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Omvang: 320 pagina’s
Verschijnt: 14 maart 2024
Uitgave: paperback / ebook
Prijs: £ 9,99
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van het true crime boek van de Australische schrijfster Helen Garner

Anyone can see the place where the children died. You take the Princes Highway past Geelong, and keep going west in the direction of Colac. Late in August 2006, soon after I had watched a magistrate commit Robert Farquharson to stand trial before a jury on three charges of murder, I headed out that way on a Sunday morning, across the great volcanic plain.

On the evening of 4 September 2005, Father’s Day, Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home to their mother, Cindy, when his car left the road and plunged into a dam. The boys, aged ten, seven and two, drowned. Was this an act of revenge or a tragic accident? The court case became Helen Garner’s obsession. She followed it on its protracted course until the final verdict.

In this utterly compelling book, Helen Garner tells the story of a man and his broken life. She presents the theatre of the courtroom with its actors and audience – all gathered to witness to the truth – players in the extraordinary and unpredictable drama of the quest for justice.

This House of Grief is a heartbreaking and unputdownable book by one of Australia’s most admired writers.

Helen Garner is born 7 November 1942 in Geelong, Victoria,
Australia. She writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction. She was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature in 2019. And in 2023 she was awarded the ASA Medal for her outstanding contribution to Australian literature. Her works include five novels Monkey Grip, Moving Out, The Children’s Bach, The First Stone, Cosmo Cosmolino and The Spare Room (De logeerkamer). She also wrote non fiction books like This House of Grief, The Season and three volumes of her diaries. Garner lives in Melbourne.

Bijpassende boeken

1966, Australië, Australische roman, Australische schrijfster

Elizabeth Harrower – The Watch Tower

30 juni 2025 Redactie

Elizabeth Harrower The Watch Tower review, recensie en informatie Australische roman uit 1966. Op deze pagina lees je uitgebreide informatie over de roman The Watch Tower van de uit Australië afkomstige schrijfster Elizabeth Harrower. De Nederlandse vertaling van de roman met als titel De wachttoren is verschenen als L.L. Veen Klassiek uitgave.

Elizabeth Harrower The Watch Tower review en recensie

“This is a harrowing novel, relentless in its depiction of marital enslavement, spiritual self-destruction and the exploited condition of women in a masculinist society. It reminded me of Zola in its unflinching depiction of two sisters entangled with a moody, violent man, one of them being gradually crushed into subservience, the other struggling desperately to save her own soul. It is a brilliant achievement.” (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post)
“I read this book twice. Once for sheer pleasure – if pleasure can be the correct term for an experience that is so distressing – and once for the purposes of this review…It left me with the strongest sense I have had for a very long time of the infinite preciousness of consciousness, at whatever cost, and of our terrifying human vulnerability.” (Salley Vickers, Sydney Morning Herald)

The Watch Tower

Auteur: Elizabeth Harrower (Australië)
Soort boek: Australische roman uit 1966
Taal: Engels
Uitgever: Text Publishing
Omvang: 352 pagina’s
Uitgave: paperback / ebook
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de roman uit 1966 van de Australische schrijfster Elizabeth Harrower

Breaking their poses like trees snapping branches, the women urgently regarded each other, cleared away all signs of work in an instant, examined their souls for defects, in a sense crossed themselves, and waited.

After Laura and Clare are abandoned by their mother, Felix is there to help, even to marry Laura if she will have him. Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control.

Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power.

Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney on 8 February 1928 in Newcastle, New South Wales. She moved to London in 1951. She travelled extensively and began to write fiction. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower’s ‘lost’ novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower died in Sydney on 7 July 2020 at the age of ninety-two.