Date: Saturday 12th September
Venue: Uniting Church Hall 104 – 106 Albert St Sebastopol
Time: 9:30 am – 12:30 pm
Cost: $15 Members’ $30 Non – Members’
Click here to book
Martha Richardson Memorial Poetry Prize is open for submissions ( 1st July to 31st October )
Theme: Night
Line count: Poems to be 40 lines or less
Submissions: Submission can be emailed to competitions@ballaratwriters.com
1st prize $1000
2nd prize $400
3rd prize $100
Submission fee Members $25
Non Members $35
Additional Entry $15
Pay entry fee here https://www.trybooking.com/DMUNE
Title: Second Place
Author: Rachel Cusk
Publisher: Faber & Faber / Allen & Unwin, 2021; RRP: $39.99
Reviewed by: Frank Thompson, Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group
The author
Rachel Cusk is a Canadian British writer. Her debut novel Saving Agnes (1993) received the Whitbread First Novel Award. Since then, she has produced a significant body of work, including at least nineteen novels and several nonfiction works. Second Place was longlisted for a Booker Prize and awarded second place (ironically) in the French Literary award Le Prix Femina Étrange in 2022.
Cusk studied English at New College Oxford and has been a professor of Creative Writing for Kingston University UK.
The book
This novel, a chance discovery in the library, was inspired by the 1932 memoir Lorenzo in Taos by Mabel Dodge Luanne covering the time D. H. Lawrence came to stay with her in Taos, New Mexico. This is not the first novel by Cusk drawing inspiration from other literary works. The Country Life in 1997 drew inspiration from Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
For Second Place Cusk employs a unique narrative style, bordering on epistolary. The protagonist M addresses a character named Jeffers. The intimacy feels like a letter. M begins by reminding Jeffers that she once told him that she had met the Devil. She now reveals to Jeffers that earlier on that same day she experienced a personal epiphany when she came across a gallery exhibiting the work of the artist L. M was struggling with her identity, motherhood and quite possibly her sexuality.
I found the use of single capital letters for some characters a little awkward at times.
Having set the story’s context, Cusk moves the time frame forward some fifteen years. M is now married to Tony, she feels strongly connected with her husband and the marshland on which they live, but is looking to understand that connection. To resolve this, M decides to invite L to come and stay.
M and Tony lead lives of sustainable isolation. Their acreage borders an estuary and has significant natural beauty of an ethereal nature. They appear to live a kind of subsistence lifestyle supplemented by earnings from Tony’s fishing with the other villagers. Details are scarce.
Indeed, Cusk is oblique about several things including the timing for the story which appears to be towards the end of the pandemic. Also, the actual geographic setting is left unclear.
Rachel Cusk on her writing process
@ Louisiana Channel
The name Second Place comes from the building Tony and M find when clearing an overgrown area of their property. They fix it up with the intention of using it to accommodate guests – artists, writers and others, thus creating a second dwelling / place on the property.
The story line is relatively simple: M writes to L, inviting him to come and stay on the expectation he will find the surrounding landscape interesting enough to paint.
After initially accepting M’s invitation, he cancels in favour of spending time on an island. Finally, he agrees to come but his circumstances have changed greatly. He is down on his luck – the bottom has fallen out of the art market, and he is financially hard pressed. Eventually, he turns up with another woman in tow: Brett, a wealthy younger woman having a fling with an aging and fallen star of the art world.
The relationship between M and L is difficult, not hostile but strained. M is disappointed with L and his attitude to the Second Place.
I could see parallels in L and Lawerence’s attitude towards their patrons. Perhaps this has something to do with the expectations people like M can have of an artist. On the surface L appears to be exploiting M’s hospitality. However, L was the one being exploited by both M and Brett, albeit for varied reasons. Perhaps, Brett and M were giving L something physical but in return they wanted part of his artistic soul. This is the basis for the story: the tension and the relationship between the artist and the viewer and/or patron.
Second Place is an intriguing story, and the character exploration is excellent. I enjoyed the way it was constructed and the way Cusk resolved the ending. It is a well-paced story with clever, readable writing. Well worth the trip to the library.
Congratulations Gabbi, winner of BWI Pamela Miller Flash Fiction Competition.
RIPPLES
Her father feared many things. Anxieties chittered and scurried through his brain each day and filled each night with dark dreams. But underneath it all, a constant, built into the very foundation of his life, was the greatest fear, the fear of a watery death.
As a young man he’d joined up to defend King and Country. It looked so bold, that brash confidence, volunteering before the call-up became compulsory. But underneath, he knew it was the only way to escape the trap of the cloying family, the passive aggressive dutiful older sister, the brilliant changeling younger brother.
And so a sensitive boy, a vulnerable boy, was sent out on the high grey seas, the mountainous waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Waves like monstrous arms that rose up, threatening to bind him in a suffocating embrace. Water walls that towered over the ship, smashed over the deck, reaching, grabbing, pulling. He was sent out to spend his days and nights peering into mists and horizons, seeking signals, checking codes, sending words into the emptiness. Always alert. Always aware. Captains’ decisions were made or not made depending on what her father saw or related. Telescopes, flags, Morse code. Responsibility.
Loneliness.
His posting was to guard the Atlantic convoys, the merchant ships bringing vital cargo from the United States to the United Kingdom. A ragbag fleet zig zagging across the ocean, protected by destroyers, frigates, and corvettes. The latter were the smallest of the warships, but warships nonetheless; grey metal giants, improbably named after flowers – Cowslip, Hollyhock, Primrose. Her father was a signalman on one such ship, helping keep the convoy safe from submarines and attack.
Until. Until.
Until the night he stood and watched the ship in front, the ship behind, explode and sink. Ships he was duty bound to protect.
The watery death. Men floundering in the oily sea, their thick uniforms dragging them under. Lifeboats hopelessly launched. And worst of all, the screams, the smell of burning, the sea itself on fire. Then the awful, long, long silence. Only the wind and the rain and the engines, and orders barked through to carry on.
Later, on chilly Welsh beaches, he’d help his daughters build sandcastles, always with fantastic moats, turrets, bridges. But when the tide came in, he’d back away, move his deckchair further up the beach, saying he was just going for a smoke.
And as the water flooded the children’s carefully constructed defences and crumbled their kingdoms, he’d call them back, away from the waves.
When he was much older, she asked what kind of funeral he wanted.
‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Anything but burying me at sea.’ His eyes filled with sea fret as he remembered watching the bodies softly, silently sinking into forever.
Gabbi Brown
Martha Richardson Memorial Poetry Prize is open for submissions ( 1st July to 31st October )
Theme: Night
Line count: Poems to be 40 lines or less
Submissions: Submission can be emailed to competitions@ballaratwriters.com
1st prize $1000
2nd prize $400
3rd prize $100
Submission fee Members $25
Non Members $35
Additional Entry $15
Pay entry fee here https://www.trybooking.com/DMUNE
Title: The Final Target
Author: Nora Roberts
Publisher: Piatkus/Hachette, 2026; RRP: $34.99
Review by: Marian Chivers, Ballarat Writers Inc. book review group
The author
Nora Roberts is a prolific multi-published author. She also pens the In Death series under the pseudonym J.D. Robb. Nora began writing when stuck at home in a blizzard with her two young sons. Several manuscripts and rejections later, her first book, Irish Thoroughbred, was published by Silhouette in 1981. Her bio can be read on her website Noraroberts.com
Nora was one of the first authors to use the Internet to connect with her fans. She launched her site in 1996 and it receives over 140,000 visitors a month.
Since her first bestseller in 1991, Nora’s books have spent a total of 1325 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list… that’s equivalent to over 25 consecutive years of weekly bestsellers. The Final Target is Nora’s 257th book.
The book
Nora Roberts is an established name in the romance/intrigue/suspense genre and I have read several of her novels over the years. As her statistics above show, she is a consummate storyteller who keeps you turning the pages and this story proves her skill and staying power.
Although the romance genre is often belittled, its power lies in the fact that it is written by women for women and deals with many of the trials that women face such as assault, stalking, misogyny and PTSD. There is a dedication at the beginning of the novel that sums up the main theme of The Final Target:
To women.
We’re stronger than we look.
As the blurb explains, Dustin Dubecki, an aspiring writer, turned up at the launch of Arden Bowie’s debut novel; he bought a copy of her novel, showered her with compliments and got her autograph. Then he came to her next event and the one after that. After giving in to his incessant invitations and chatting with him over coffee, she discovers that ignoring her intuition has been a terrible mistake. “He thinks his job is to protect her. But, who will protect her from him?”
Roberts crafts a nice balance of romance and safe, happy family times while evil lurks in the background. The final confrontation is inevitable and we know there will be a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean the characters don’t suffer along the way.
Read an excerpt of The Final Target
@ Fall into the Story
Dustin is jailed following an assault, and Arden re-establishes herself in another state to escape him. In her new town of Riverbend, Oregon, Arden meets Gideon Riley, a former detective from LA who happens to be gifted at woodwork. Romance blossoms as Gideon crafts bookshelves for her new library (interesting aside: Roberts met her second husband when he built bookshelves for her home).
The tensions build as Dustin is released earlier than expected and the body count rises. The story is told from both Arden and Dustin’s perspectives. Dustin is downright creepy and enough to make any woman bolt her doors and windows: “He fantasized about the different ways he’d hurt her – to teach her a lesson. It gave him a nicer buzz than the wine.”
Arden shows her learned strength and resilience by rescuing herself and Gideon steps in to clean up the mess. How she saves herself is no doubt very satisfying for any woman who’s been treated as a possession by anyone.
Roberts has delivered another satisfying story to add to her impressive opus.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Title: The ADHD Field Guide For Adults
Authors: Cate Osborn & Erik Gude with Rennie Dyball
Publisher: Monoray/Hachette, 2026; RRP: $34.99
Review by: Frank Thompson, Ballarat Writers Inc. book review group
Cate Osborn and Erik Gude are writers and educators. They are products of the internet age. Osborn is an author, speaker, Tik Toker, actor, pod cast host, sex educator, and mental health and disability advocate. She is based in Atlanta, Georgia. Gude is known for co-hosting the podcast “Catie and Erik’s Infinite Quest” and for his engaging content on platforms such as TikTok.
Rennie Dyball is a USA Today bestselling author and ghostwriter and editor.
Despite the best attempts of Gude, Osborn and Dyball to bring order to this project, there is clearly a lot of chaos. Though there is a method to the madness. Right at the beginning they explain how to read the book. It is not a book that needs to be read from start to finish; it can be, but also it can be dipped into, flipped through and bits chosen at random. Key information is presented in bite-sized pieces making it easy to grasp. Over the years I have discussed ADHD at length with various people, including psychologists, and I think this book captures the spirit of ADHD and I agree with the importance of building coping mechanisms.
A lot of time is spent reinforcing the idea that because you don’t appear to fit the normal behaviour patterns of society it is alright, you are okay. I find this kind of language almost self-defeating, as it highlights difference. But for some people these statements will be reassuring. The book is trying to cover a very broad spectrum of readers. The authors hint at the challenge this presented for them. There are sections covering ADHD and co-morbidities. I found these enlightening.
Listen to an interview with Osborn and Gude
@ Hacking Your ADHD
A key takeaway from the book is the need to work out how to cope and function in society to participate in all the usual things. Things like relationships, work/career, education, even sex. You do not have be an outsider. It is not about trying harder. Rather, you need to find what works for you. And sometimes medication helps, as does tolerance from others. It should be about the outcome, not how it is achieved.
Gude and Osborn have not tried to produce a book on the psychology of ADHD, though they inevitably had to provide some background in places and they do draw on formal expertise where necessary. The book is about the experience of living with ADHD in its many variations. It is based on their own lives and on comments from others.
This is an informative book for anyone dealing with ADHD or with people diagnosed as having ADHD. However, on the downside, there are large slabs of the book which I think are culturally and jurisdictional dependant. For example, the advice on dealing with the health system is irrelevant to anyone outside of America.
Overall, I found it an interesting and useful read.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Title: The Bookshelf Below
Author: Georgia Summers
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette, 2025; RRP $34.99
Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell, Ballarat Writers Inc. book review group
The author
Georgia Summers is a half-British and half-Trinidadian writer who spent most of her life travelling overseas including Russia, Columbia and the US. She currently lives in London. She is the author of City of Stardust .
The book
The Bookshop Below is a work of magical realism based around Chiron’s bookshop – being the previous owner who has mysteriously disappeared. Beneath it is a second bookshop accessible only by an archway that comes and goes. This subterranean bookshop contains the remains of a dying river made up of ink which imbues magical power to words read loud by those skilled in the use of its magic. So I was in.
Cassandra had been Chiron’s protege until expelled from his employ for sharing that power with others prepared to pay. We meet her first working part-time in a bar to supplement her income as an expert thief, and continuing to use her skill with ink. But then she finally opens a letter from Chiron, to find he has left the bookshop to her, which means he is no longer alive. It also means, as unwilling inheritor, she is now responsible for maintaining and protecting both bookshop and the dying river.
Georgia Summers discusses The Bookshop Below
@ Confessions of a Book Collector podcast
The main focus of the plot is Cassandra’s trials and tribulations as the bookshop’s caretaker surrounded by a colourful cast of characters who in differing degrees play a role in her search to find out what exactly happened to Chiron. The bookshop was also linked to other tributary bookshops that shared the knowledge of the river and the ink. These are people who already knew her from working with Chiron via the everyday business of selling and buying books. It is also where her reputation as a thief remained, with trust now an issue for some.
Among them is Lowell Sharpe, manager of one of the tributary bookshops who had expected to be Chiron’s successor. Between them however a romance simmers and stumbles with multiple reference to moody eyes, lean and stunning torso, firm and upright stance both personal and physical, and exquisite dress sense. It is also he who forces Cassandra to face her own dark side, not only her thieving but also the role she played in the death of a young man who had begged and paid for her to use her skills with ink on him, and the doubts she herself had ignored.
There is also a secretive, strange and powerful society in the mix, historically connected to the bookshops, but acting separately from Cassandra and company. Its power is ancient, torn by internal dissension and conflicting ambitions as these things tend to be. The members’ names reference the tarot: the Hanged Man, the Empress, Lady Fate, the Magician, Temperance, the Sun, Judgement, the Moon, the Fool and, inexplicably, a Kevin.
Interposed throughout are excerpts, utilising different fonts and formats, including ancient and current from the bookshop: letters, ledgers, diary entries, meeting minutes, notes, scraps, an unsent, half burnt apology from Cassandra to Lowell. The detritus of time. These add a depth and width of time, positioning the society itself and the narrative overall simultaneously in both past and present.
Read an excerpt of The Bookshop Below
@ Hachette
Though a fascinating plot, my immersion was interrupted by many small things that didn’t fit. Some that either didn’t work or were glossed over. The ink repeatedly referred to as being oily and having a sharp and unpleasant smell, whereas ink smells a bit muddy at worst, and is a thin liquid, not viscous as those of us who use it know it as. A reference to a stone shivering as it skimmed across a lake when describing the eeriness of the river, though those of us who skim stones know they do not shiver so much as hurtle headlong. The name Kevin in the secret society among a list of tarot related other members just didn’t work; it jarred and rather than coming across as funny it read as contrived.
These things undermine the willing suspension of disbelief vital in works such as this. Authors of anything magic especially have a responsibility not to unhinge their readers’ readiness to hand over, in absolute trust, a willingness to believe the unbelievable. To be confident that somewhere a river of ink transfers words that turn readers into someone they are not – which it could be said they actually do, but that’s not the point.
I also found use of the f-word scattered throughout incongruous, not quite fitting naturally within the way characters spoke the rest of the time, nor always fitting the context in which used, seeming to there more for shock value than anything else. Some silliness, like an unfortunate scene drawing attention to Cassandra’s favourite fluffy socks, performing no obvious role except an invitation to conjure them up and see as something adorable? – yes, she does wrong, and is involved in all sorts of strangeness, but look! Fluffy socks!
My overall feeling on finishing was disappointment. However this is only one reader’s experience. There are some pleasing descriptive backgrounds of setting and characters. The world created is full of drama and emotions, romance and danger, and moves forward at a good pace. In conclusion, I lean more to the thought that this is one of those books readers will either love or hate – which is not a bad thing, nor uncommon.
Review copy supplied by the publisher
Title: The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains
Author: Reena McCarty
Publisher: Orbit/Hachette, 2026; RRP: $34.99
Reviewed by: Marian Chivers, Ballarat Writers Inc. book review group
The author
Reena McCarty is a lifelong Montanan who’s constantly looking for the perfect balance of hiking, camping and impulse baking cakes. She has a BA in theatre, a Masters in library science and somehow ended up cooking for a living and also for fun. When not writing, Reena can often be found wandering in the woods with her husband, admiring every dog she sees. The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains is her debut novel.
The blurb
Poppy Cook Hill was stolen as a child from her family’s Montana homestead and taken ‘Otherside’ to the land of the Fae, where she spent more than a century as a cook in the Wild King’s castle. Having been returned to the human world, she works for Carter Lane, a company that brokers faerie bargains, checking for loopholes in their contracts because Othersiders (Faerie) are excellent at spotting and making use of loopholes. It’s all in the wording.
When a dodgy bargain that Poppy is negotiating goes badly wrong, she has to return to the world where she grew up (and really the only world she had known) to try to rectify her mistake, facing danger, intrigue, plots and a pesky ex-boyfriend along the way.
The review
Told in the first person, the reader slips effortlessly into Poppy’s world where she is just now adjusting to human life and finding it hard to leave the Otherside behind as it is familiar, though not always comfortable. Her best friend (or is she?), Sloan,
was tall, close to seven feet. Her hair was gold – not blonde, but the garish color of the pure metal. The last time I’d seen her it hung nearly to her knees, but was now cropped close to her skull like a gleaming helmet. Her skin was gold too, but paler, electrum dusted with flour to dull its shine, and her teeth were sharp in her wide smile. Her eyes were blank and black all the way across, empty of expression. The fingers of her hands, which she reached toward me, were longer than a human’s by an extra knuckle each, with talon-like nails as gold as her hair…Sloan didn’t like it when I showed too much emotion. She thought being human was undignified (p.24)
These faeries rarely look like Tinkerbell.
The worldbuilding is consistent and logical. The author’s interests of hiking, camping and cooking all come through strongly within the story as Poppy finds herself trekking around the Wild Lands trying to find the bargained human and bring her back. But there is a lot more happening than Poppy is aware of and she needs to make choices about who to trust, what she needs to do and ultimately what and who is best for her.
The story kept me reading and all that trekking up and down mountains was quite exhausting but it kept me turning the pages and led to a satisfying ending with enough left open to perhaps lead to a sequel.
I loved the cover of this book. It features many of the elements within the book in a pleasingly aesthetic way. My only hesitation is with the standing stones at the bottom of the cover as they’re not exactly as those described in the story. The flat picture here does not do the cover justice. If you enjoy exploring the Otherside/Faerie, this story with violence but no sex will provide an engaging read.
Title: The General Hospital
Author: Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion
Publisher: Hatchette 2026; RRP: $34.99
Review by: Heather Whitford Roche, Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group
Professor Anne Buist and Dr Graeme Simsion are no strangers to the writing world. Anne Buist, a psychiatrist and chair of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, has written five psychological novels as well as co-writing with her husband Graeme the Menzies Mental Health series: The Glass House, The Oasis, and now The General Hospital.
Graeme Simsion authored the international best seller The Rosie Project and its two sequels. The series was produced in forty languages and sold seven million copies worldwide. Currently a film is being developed with Sony Pictures.
Having read the two earlier novels in this series, I enjoyed this third book the most. The story is largely driven from a psychiatry perspective. Hannah, a trainee psychiatrist, is the main character and the story moves seamlessly between her home, family and her hospital patients. Hannah grew up in a country town with parents who were foster carers for fifty-three children. The consequences of this lifestyle are still affecting the family dynamics today.
Hannah is doing her psychiatry traineeship at the same hospital as she did her internship but this time her focus is on her patients’ mental health, not so much medical conditions, although Hannah discovers the two are linked more than she might have thought.
Her personal life changes when she moves in with a fellow trainee, and his involvement with her family raises questions for Hannah about their ongoing relationship.
Buist and Simsion discuss The General Hospital
@ The Women’s Weekly book club
Some of her patients include Christina, who plans to sue the hospital, and Hannah’s ex-boyfriend. Max, another patient is a larger-than-life character with bi-polar and kidney disease who creates chaos whenever admitted. His journey is real, sad and humorous. And then there is Ishani, a self-inflicted burns patient with a complicated marriage. Hannah digs deeper into Ishani’s circumstances to discover that all is not as it seems. Hospital dynamics and the pecking order in relation to disciplines and status are cleverly played out by Buist and Simsion in this book.
The General Hospital is a page-turner and easy to read. Buist and Simsion have pulled together a novel that is entertaining, has meaning in today’s world and provides insight into the private and psychological lives of people faced with personal and psychiatric concerns.
It also cleverly places the professionals who work within psychiatry under the spotlight. Psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists in general are ordinary people who have their own issues and complications; the book integrates this notion very well.
Review copy provided by the publisher