Latest blogs

I’m honoured to be among the first authors to help American entrepreneur Ben Fox add flesh to the skeleton of a brilliant idea at https://shepherd.com/. A book-lover and tech expert, he wants readers to be able to access easily the tomes they enjoy reading. So Shepherd, the website, is sub-titled ‘Discover the best books’. Ben describes it as browsing in your favorite bookstore ‘reimagined for the online world’. Authors, experts and creators recommend books in many categories. You search under …

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I haven’t reviewed restaurants professionally for almost a decade. But I’d like to comment a little on a new restaurant called lene, its first letter fashionably lower-case. Owner-chef Cameron Williams is 25 and has an impressive background in cooking. Apprenticed at 17 to Jacques Reymond, whose comprehensive and rigorous culinary skills I’ve admired and written about for decades, he went on to work in Michelin-starred restaurants in London and Copenhagen before returning to his home town Melbourne with a dream …

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So far, there’ve been only positive reviews of my debut novel The Hands of Pianists. (I wouldn’t dare to predict that negative ones won’t come!) The book has been out a little over a month, and four critiques have been especially satisfying. Peter Craven’s rave, which I’ve written about already, is stupendous. My book is ‘virtuosic in its technique and grand in its achievement’, he wrote in The Weekend Australian. It’s written with ‘absolute gravity, grace and a moody, constantly …

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