Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Melinda Kearns

26 POSTS

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Salman Rushdie is someone who has famously lived a significant portion of his life under the threat of death and, through his writing, the powerful insistence upon life in all its glorious variations.

Green Dot

The eponymous green dot of this novel has a very significant role in the relationship of the two central characters of this text, it being the green dot that tells others that you're online when you’re on Instagram.

Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything

The premise of Bright Shining is both profound and simple – grace is everywhere and we are enriched by it as individuals and as a community when we are receptive to its power and beauty.

In/Out: A Scandalous Story of Falling into Love and Out of the Church

Steph Lentz rose to prominence in 2021, after being sacked by her conservative Christian school when she spoke about her lesbianism.

In/Out: A Scandalous Story of Falling into Love and Out of the Church

In/Out: A Scandalous Story of Falling into Love and Out of the Church gives an insight into the damage that conservative Christianity can do.

Yellowface

The success of Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang is well-documented and well-deserved.

Orphia and Eurydicius

Elyse John has reinvented this classic tale to consider ideas about gender, identity and sexuality and how ideas about love, heroism and virtue derived from mythology need to be overturned.

The Vanishing Half

The Vanishing Half is a moving story about the ways in which our identity, particularly race, shapes us and our perceptions of the self and others.

In Her Voice: Raising Women’s Voices in Preaching the Gospel

This inspiring volume of liturgies and reflections comes from Women and the Australian Church (WATAC), one of the cofounders of the Australian Women Preach project.

The Passenger and Stella Maris

The two companion novels of Cormac McCarthy’s latest writings follow the lives of brother and sister Bobby and Alicia Western, focused on their mutual devastation at the hands of their father’s involvement in Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic project and how to come to terms with the scale of such violence.

Willowman

Willowman is an engaging story about the role of excellence. A good yarn well told.

Lessons

As Lessons stretches over several decades, and Alissa establishes herself as one of the most insightful writers of the century, the possible sentimentality of motherhood is interrogated and rejected.

The Space Between the Stars: On love, loss and the magical power of nature to heal

The majority of Iindira Naidoo’s memoir concerns her youngest sister’s suicide at the beginning of the first Melbourne lockdown in 2020.

Finding my way

‘My journey on the path to ordained ministry has been a long one ... ’

Bedtime Story

After her partner, journalist Don Watson, is diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, Chloe Hooper is faced with telling their two young sons that their father is dying.

Ten Steps to Nanette

Ten Steps to Nanette is a stimulating memoir from a visionary voice.

The Shape of Sound

Fiona Murphy’s beautiful memoir, The Shape of Sound, records the human body as a “disjointed poem of mixed metaphors and similes”.

To Paradise

To Paradise, like Washington Square, artfully considers the role of identity and integrity of personhood in the formation of a country.

Matrix

In Matrix, Lauren Groff is exploring and exploiting all the complicated implications of its title, including one of the word’s archaic meanings as womb and, by extension, mother.

Growing Up Disabled in Australia

On Sunday, May 2, Carly Findlay, editor of Growing Up Disabled in Australia, spoke to an attentive audience at the 2021 Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF). Our reviewer, Melinda Kearns, offers insights here about the session and the book.

Reuse, recycle – care for community

WATERLOO: At the base of the Turanga building at 1 Phillip St, a busy bustle of community service takes place every Friday morning under...

Klara and the Sun

In many of Ishiguro’s novels, his protagonists are not quite telling us the truth, or are perhaps, telling us only their perspective on what occurs around them.

Growing Up Queer in Australia

As Benjamin Law writes, Growing Up Queer in Australia is the book that he wishes he had had when he “was growing up queer in Australia”.

Machines Like Me

Ian McEwan’s latest novel explores the age-old question of what it means to be human and what moral dilemmas arise when the delineation between machine and human is increasingly hazy.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed

Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed establishes as its thesis that shaming is more prevalent than ever in the modern world through the advent of social media.

Yabun – a diverse and instructive experience

The Yabun festival was an experience that all Australians should have.