Smoke & Mirrors by Barry Jonsberg

Smoke & Mirrors by Barry Jonsberg Author Interview at PaperbarkWords “ ‘I want to be a magician,’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to be. It’s all I want to be. I don’t know if I can earn a living from it. Maybe I can’t. But when I think about the future, that’s what I […]

The Crying Room by Gretchen Shirm

The Crying Room by Gretchen Shirm Author Interview at PaperbarkWords Gretchen Shirm is a writer’s writer. Her new novel The Crying Room is a masterclass in writing. It’s an immersive story about women (mainly) and their relationships but it’s inimitable quality, in my opinion, is the writing, which adeptly moves from introspection to pathos, pain […]

DEEP IN THE FOREST by Erina Reddan

Deep in the Forest by Erina Reddan Author Interview for Joy in Books at PaperbarkWords “I know I’ve spent too much time lost in the river runs of these pages, making notes on the last things to be done before the binding. The moment when all the words, the ideas, the song of it come […]

The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead & Wendy Mass

The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead & Wendy Mass ‘ “All of life is a mystery, in a way. And that makes every single one of us a detective.” … Evan sat there for a few seconds, looking at his desk. He was trying to solve a mystery, he realized: the mystery of the little […]

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Book Review: The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki “Stories never start at the beginning, Benny. They differ from life in that regard. Life is lived from birth to death, from the beginning into an unknowable future. But stories are told in hindsight. Stories are life lived backward.” (The Book of Form and […]

The History of Mischief by Rebecca Higgie

“I took the people, stories and books I loved, and added magic.” (The History of Mischief) I am awestruck at The History of Mischief, Rebecca Higgie’s debut novel for young people (Fremantle Press). It has an engaging storyline and overarching narrative and a rich backstorybrimming with fascinating, often unexpected, historical information. The skill, complexity and magic […]