Book reviews

House Of Glass

Susan Fletcher

It is summer 1914, and life is changing for Clara Waterfield and England. Hopelessly naive, and mourning her mother, our sheltered narrator is summoned to Gloucestershire to create a greenhouse the country will envy. But at Shadowbrook, bodiless footsteps sound at night, flowers shed their petals within hours, and the master of the house never wanders the sprawling gardens he supposedly loves. Determinedly atheist, Clara is keen to explain these unnerving goings on, and clear up the rumours swirling around the prior occupants. Fletcher skilfully constructs a world where war looms with a heavy inevitability, where rumours twist and strangle like vines, and the most straightforward of scenarios are riddled with deceit.

8/10

Flames

Robbie Arnott

Flames is a bold book that will leave any reader yearning to visit the wild Australian landscape of Tasmania. Robbie Arnott takes his native island as the setting and injects it with a magic realist flair that will appeal to fans of Karen Russell and Angela Carter. Loosely, it tells the story of the McAllister family. After Charlotte and Levi’s mother dies, she is briefly reincarnated, only to burst into flames on their father’s lawn. Levi worries the same thing will happen to his sister so he becomes obsessed with building her a coffin. Each chapter is written in the voice of a different character, some only tangentially connected to the main thread, giving it some of the breadth of a short story collection. It is glorious, messy, and a bit weird. But it works.

7/10

The Wolves Of Winter

Tyrell Johnson

In today’s materialistic world this book asks: What would you do if the world as you know it disappears? This is the fate that Lynn McBride, protagonist of The Wolves of Winter, faces after nuclear war and a deadly flu pandemic wipes out the modern world.

In his debut novel, Tyrell Johnson tells the story of one family’s quest for survival in the bleak winter landscape of the Yukon. He creates an all-toobelievable world, so much so that you feel you could almost be there. Exciting and gripping, though at times a little predictable, this is the perfect book to curl up with in front of the fire on a cold winter’s day.

7/10