All posts by Oak Web Design
HISTORY OF THE RAIN
BY NIALL WILLIAMS
Published by Bloomsbury, 2014
Review by Pip Williams
The words of Jane Austen, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Charles Dickens and so many others, are woven like snail trails across the cover of this book. They are only visible when light strikes them in just the right way, so I didn’t notice them until I was about a hundred pages in and had found a sunny spot Continue reading
WHAT DAYS ARE FOR
By Robert Dessaix
Published by Knopf, 2014
Review by Pip Williams
I need to preface this review with a bit of context. I recently sat among the greying crowd of Adelaide Writers’ Week enthralled, amused and occasionally titillated (in that delightful way heterosexual women can be when gay men tease them with sexual innuendo). Robert Dessaix was being interviewed, and he was in fine form. He had just Continue reading
DEPT. OF SPECULATION
By Jenny Offill
Published by Granta, 2014
Review by Pip Williams
Speculators on the universe … are no better than madmen.
This quote, from Socrates, begins a story of an ordinary marriage within an ordinary life. But it is told in such an extraordinary way that it demands to be read to the end in one sitting. Of course, I have kids and I work and there are Continue reading