Kathryn's Inbox

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M.L. Rio's novel about student rivalries turned ugly starts strong but goes downhill in the second act. As the novel opens, Oliver Marks is being released from prison, having spent the past ten years there. The detective responsible for putting him away is waiting at the gate. Now retired, he wants to know the truth. And so, Oliver begins a story of an elite group of Shakespearian actors in their fourth and final year of college. Only the best of the best are allowed to continue in to their final year at Dellecher Classical Conservatory and, unsurprisingly, rivalries and tensions are quite high. But the biggest challenge of all occurs when a terrible crime is committed and the six remaining students have to convince the police that they are innocent ... In many ways, this novel feels like a poor cousin to The Secret History.  Much like the eccentrics that fill the pages of Donna Tartt's modern classic, this group of students are wealthy and part of an exclusive group who do eve

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A book that is part memoir, part manifesto about the past few years by one of Australia leading comedians? I'm in. And luckily for me, this one delivers on what the blurb promises on the back cover. Most Australians will be familiar with Wil Anderson whether it be for his long and successful career as a stand up comedian, his work as the host of Gruen, his podcast Wilosophy or like I do, you remember his time hosting Triple J Breakfast with Adam Spencer. Or perhaps you're familiar with him for work that I haven't mentioned on here. Anyway, for the benefit of international readers Wil Anderson is very popular, very funny and he's worked successfully across a number of mediums. In I Am Not Fine, Thanks, Wil Anderson takes his experiences over the past few years--basically from the bushfires to the pandemic to the floods--and puts his spin on things. Mostly notably that his experience is the world has gone to shit and when people ask him how he is, he can no longer give

Willa Drake has always had the course of her life laid out for her by other people, her mother who would disappear at times and her boyfriend who proposed to her at the airport (and a marriage that forced her to give up her degree,) and then by her husband's unexpected death when she was in her forties. So when she gets a phone call out of the blue to say that her son's ex-girlfriend (who she never met,) has been shot, no one is more surprised than Willa herself when she volunteers to look after Denise and her daughter Cheryl. What follows is a series of events that causes Willa to think about what she actually wants out of life and how she may be able to choose her own path after all. Anne Tyler has a unique talent for writing about the inner lives of the kinds of people who go unnoticed in everyday life. Although she does her best with Willa, this novel does not hold up as well as some of her other works, such as Booker Prize nominated Redhead At the Side of the Road. With th

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Emma Watson gets five stars for deceptive marketing. Touted as Jane Austen's unfinished novel completed by Joan Aiken  it is actually a reimagining and reworking of The Watson's a manuscript that a young Jane Austen started but left incomplete. Austen's version tells the story of Emma Watson, a young woman raised by her wealthy aunt who returns to her family home after her aunt marries. The story has all of the markings of Austen--Emma's very future, her personal happiness as well as her situation in life depends on her making a decent match. As does the Emma Watson in Joan Aiken's version. Except there is one small problem. Aiken disregards the original source material and has a complete do-over with many of the characters. She creates a different match for Emma Watson than the author intended, changes a number of characters and rewrites each chapter a little differently. In other words, this isn't a completion. It's the kind of fan fiction that shifts so f

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