lip lit: ruby j. murray, running dogs (+giveaway)
Running Dogs is the debut novel by Australian author Ruby J. Murray, and is about the complex friendship between two women living in Jakarta. In the present day, it follows Diana, an Australian woman who has taken up a job working for an aid agency. From the beginning, Diana is haunted by the presence of [...]
lip lit: isobelle carmody, metro winds
I don’t like reading fantasy. It is not that I don’t have an imagination; it is simply a matter of plausibility. I don’t find fantasy plausible and I would much rather read about something with some connection to the real world (no matter how small) than something set in a completely different world. I was [...]
lip lit interview: kathy lette
Every Australian girl remembers the moment she read the classic Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey. My mother gave it to me when I was 13 – I think in a sneaky effort to warn me about the unromantic side of sex – and I remember being scandalised, intrigued and mystified all at [...]
lip lit: the spider king’s daughter, chibundu onunzo
The Spider King’s Daughter is the debut novel from Chibundu Onunzo – a young woman born in Nigeria in 1991. It is a story about a rich girl named Abike living in Laos supported by the wealth of her father. She rides around poverty-stricken suburbs in a big, black jeep protecting her from those with [...]
lip lit: teju cole, open city
‘Open City’ is not an easy book to discuss. The city it refers to is New York, where the majority of the book is set, besides a jaunt in Brussels and flashbacks in Lagos. Perhaps continue reading this review with LCD Soundsystem’s New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down in the background. [...]
lip lit: riikka pulkkinen, true
True by Finnish author Riikka Pulkkinen is a tender and heartbreaking examination of secrets families keep from each other, and how even if we try to file it away, the past always informs our present. The novel centres around a family who gather when the matriarch, Elsa, is dying of cancer and wishes to live out [...]
lip lit: gil scott-heron, the last holiday
In theory, The Last Holiday is an autobiographical account of the concert tour which resulted in legislation to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a public holiday. Author Gil Scott-Heron did a huge 41-city tour, supporting Stevie Wonder throughout America. The tour promoted Wonder’s Hotter than July album, which included the song “Happy Birthday” – a [...]
lip lit: interview with deborah forster (the book of emmet, the meaning of grace)
Deborah Forster’s debut novel ‘The Book of Emmet’ was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, and her second book ’The Meaning of Grace’ has recently been released. ‘The Meaning of Grace’ explores momentous issues surrounding family: parents who leave for various reasons, the complex bonds between siblings, the pull-push we feel towards our parents as [...]
Books for budding feminists: Caitlin Moran, How to be a woman
Finding something that makes you laugh hysterically, clutch your chest at a shared painful memory and then reminisce fondly on the way you fumbled through it is really quite difficult. It’s pretty hard to write something that one person, let alone thousands, can relate to like this, but Caitlin Moran has done just that in [...]
lip lit: stieg larsson, the girl with the dragon tattoo
Contemporary crime novels were neatly fitting into predictable plots with universally understood characters. The excitement of Sherlock Holmes and Hannibal Lector were becoming stories from the past, and there were no modern publications to challenge them. Then, in 2005, Stieg Larsson`s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was published in his native Sweden. The combination [...]
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