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Book review: The Warrumbar, by William J. Byrne

December 5, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Warrumbar

Author: William J. Byrne

Publisher: UWA Publishing, 2025; RRP: $34.99

Review by: Frank Thompson, Ballarat Writers Inc. book review group

The Author

William J. Byrne grew up on Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal country (Southern New South Wales). He has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, a Graduate Diploma in Government Administration and has worked at a variety of jobs including travel agency manager, tour guide in India, art consultant, and hospitality worker. An avid reader and storyteller, Byrne is intrigued by the ways history and circumstance shape people’s lives.

The Book

The title of the book, The Warrumbar, is the name of a fictional river. The town of Warrumbar Bridge is located at a river crossing point. This town is the setting for much of the story.

As debut novels go, I thought this book “pretty bloody good”.  Structurally it opens with a note from the author, then a note on language and then a prelude. These contain useful information and background, giving credence and grounding to what is a fictional story. The story is told in two parts, which I thought of as the fall and the redemption.

The main character, Robbie, is thirteen when we meet him. On the day mankind takes that giant leap on the moon, Robbie first meets Moses, an old man camped by the side of the road. Robbie is drawn to Moses, despite his father forbidding contact. Robbie’s mother reveals Moses’s identity, and it is through Moses that Robbie learns about the early days of his mother’s life on the Aboriginal mission.

Robbie’s relationship with his father is a mixture of love and fear. This is a household of anxiety, eking out an existence, not only physically on the edge of town but socioeconomically on the edge. The rabbits caught in Robbie’s traps make a tangible difference to the food on the table.

Robbie’s fourteenth year is a defining one. There is love and promise but, the world is full of injustices, often accompanied by significant grief. How we deal with these largely defines who and what sort of person we become. And so it is for Robbie: he witnesses a tragic event. Silenced by age, social position and further tragedy, he is doomed to carry this trauma into adult life. This is where part one ends.

Part two of the book jumps forward in time. The reader is given small glimpses into the ensuing lives of the main characters. Robbie, now an old man with adult children of his own, needs to resolve the events of the past.

Byrne seemed to be in a hurry to bring about this resolution, which detracted from my reading experience. However overall, it is well done, and there is a final twist that will give the reader something to think about. On how the resolution is achieved, I’ll say no more – no spoilers.  This story is finely layered, and it is difficult to talk about it without giving too much away.

This is a coming-of-age story exploring themes of identity, injustice, and the courage it takes to do the right thing. Some might suggest this story has an allegorical or metaphorical element to it overlaying broader social issues.

I felt Byrne has tackled these themes in an honest, relatable style and made them relevant to the individual. I hope we hear more from William J. Byrne in the future.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – Tenderfoot, by Toni Jordan

November 7, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: Tenderfoot

Author: Toni Jordan

Publisher: Hachette 2025; RRP: $32.99

Review by: Heather Whitford Roche

Toni Jordan is a seasoned writer; Tenderfoot is her eighth book. Based in Melbourne, Toni holds a Bachelor of Science and a PhD in Creative  Arts. Critically acclaimed for her work, her debut novel, Addition, has been made into a film due for cinema release in early 2026.

Set in Queensland in 1975, Tenderfoot is a coming-of-age story about a young girl, Andie Tanner, who lives a mostly unspectacular life with her parents. At the centre of their existence is the world of greyhound racing. Andie loves their dogs who live under the house and admires her father’s expertise as a trainer. She imagines herself as a future trainer just like her dad. But first, she has to finish school and then the world of greyhound racing will be waiting for her.

Andie’s life changes dramatically when her father leaves home without telling her and shortly after that, her mother, who sees life through the lens of needing a male partner to survive, becomes besotted by a new man in her life who moves in with them. Andie is desperate to find her father and her dog that has also disappeared. Her young life is further complicated by bullying incidents at school and at home where she is expected to conform with her mother’s ideas, which are often harsh and unreasonable. Mystery surrounds her mother’s new partner and Andie learns to avoid him where possible.

Toni Jordan on Tenderfoot

@ The Australian Women’s Weekly Book Club

Of interest and of entertaining value is the greyhound racing knowledge and all that happens within that industry. It makes the story quite unique, it’s been well researched, it’s entertaining and gives the reader insight into another lifestyle.   

The story is achingly difficult to read, but at the same time it’s written with clarity and honesty making it so very real. Andie is brave, she doesn’t know that life can be different and does her best to survive in challenging circumstances. The characters are superbly developed and the storyline is one that is often repeated in real life.

I loved reading Tenderfoot. Toni Jordan has crafted a story that is profound, beautiful and unforgettable.  

Book review – The Pull of the Moon, by Pip Smith

October 10, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Pull of the Moon

Author: Pip Smith

Publisher: UWA Publishing, 2025; RRP: $26.99

Review by: Rhonda Cotsell

THE AUTHOR

Pip Smith won SMH Best Young Novelist of 2018. Her 2017 debut novel, Half Wild, was shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize and longlisted for the Australian Book Industry award for Best Debut Fiction. This is her second novel.

THE BOOK

When we recall, or watch footage of the tragedy at Christmas Island, December 2010, and the horrifying images on our screens, what fades into the background are the Christmas Islander people and the island itself. All we see is a boat lurching helplessly through enormous waves, and anonymous, desperate people half concealed by spray clinging to its sides for dear life. Like toys. We don’t see the Islanders, but they were there. 

The Pull of the Moon tells the whole story, bringing the natural world and human face of Christmas Island to focus from the first pages without lessening the tragedy. It simultaneously sets a richly detailed background of the daily life of a fictional family in Tehran, representing those on that boat, before the decision to leave. The reasons for leaving are touched on briefly, but painfully, and memorably. What dominates, however, is how precious and rich that life and home were to each family member, shown through the eyes of a young son who loves his life just as it is and does not want to leave it.

The backgrounds of both Islanders and the family headed their way unfold deceptively slowly towards those terrible moments where the boat is floundering helplessly towards the rocky island edge. The story does not judge, analyse or preach but merely shows, weaving a story of people – refugee and Islander – set within a detailed picture of life on Christmas Island itself extending after the tragedy.

 The pages are filled with Christmas Island wildlife, with startling images of the resident red crabs spawning like a brilliant red river taking over the island, the elusive pipistrelle bats, the sea turtles, snakes, the giant yellow centipedes with their venomous bites, and the huge and ungainly Christmas Island frigate bird. The rich luxury of a tropical rain forest filled with orchids, ferns and vines, with its tropical monsoonal climate and deep soils, is described so vividly I could almost smell it – and feel that ever-present threat of extinction shared with wildlife globally. 

Islanders reflect on how the disaster changed their lives

@ THE GUARDIAN

The central focus, however, is the people. Those in the horrendously inadequate craft whose occupants had been tricked by a family member into believing was going to be one that could take them safely and in comfort to a life free of the dangers and restrictions they had left, and the Islanders safe in their everyday lives. The pages are filled with the small details of school and work,  references to the local phosphorous factory and the refugee camp that looms in the background with its heavy, wired fences. And within this, sensitive and believable portraits of Christmas Islander inhabitants like the environmental activist mother who sympathises with the refugees, her diving instructor husband who worries about their impact, their relationship breaking up and their daughter, Coralie, dealing with an unsettled home life. Life for all continuing as it does but, even though we know what is coming, shattered abruptly by what both Islanders and those on the boat experienced and did on that day, and what was endured in the days and weeks following.

There is also a slightly magical fantasy element to the narrative. Local gossip speaks of the ghosts that lurk in the forest that surrounds the town, something that captures and unhinges the minds of many even before the event, but especially Coralie, through whose eyes the events are described – a sensitive preteen whose parents are fighting, whose mother suddenly leaves, and who needs a happy ending for the boy in the boat whose eyes meet hers as she runs with the other Islanders frantically throwing life jackets and whatever else they think might help towards the sinking boat.

The story was unsettling to read, being aware that this happened on our watch, in our familiar home, the imperfect and difficult country we occasionally grumble about, one however we can survive and grow within despite an imperfect history and a Prime Minister who spoke of parents throwing children off boats and the too many who believed him.

I think its an important work, and I hope it is read by many.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review — The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin

September 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Vanishing Place

Author: Zoë Rankin

Publisher: Moa Press/Hachette, 2025; RRP: $34.99

Review by: Marian Chivers, August, 2025

THE AUTHOR

Zoë Rankin grew up in Scotland.  She studied International Relations before going on to qualify as a teacher. Zoë spent many years travelling in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, eventually settling in New Zealand. Her father was in mountain rescue in Scotland, so her passion for the outdoors grew from a young age. She spends a lot of time hiking and cycling with her two young children in NZ, and the more remote locations inspired the idea for The Vanishing Place.

THE BLURB

On the remote West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, vast forests stretch out between mountain ranges and rugged beaches. In the small town of Koraha, not a lot happens – until a young girl with blood on her hands walks out of the bush and into the local store, collapsing from hunger to the floor.

She can’t – or won’t – speak to anyone.  It’s the town’s sole policeman who recognises her face. She looks exactly like a local girl who disappeared seventeen years ago. She has the same red hair, the same green eyes

What horrors has she left behind in the bush? Who will come looking for her? And what secrets are about to come to light?

THE BOOK

This thriller drew me in and left me feeling unsettled as it tells how those closest to you can be even more dangerous than the deadliest wilderness. Rankin draws the reader into the rugged Isle of Skye and the unforgiving but beautiful West Coast of NZ. This, her debut novel, is an atmospheric and chilling tale about family, love, loyalty and survival.

The story jumps between three different time periods. Most of the book alternates between Effie’s childhood (the child who disappeared) and her present-day circumstances when she is called back for the child (Anya) who has appeared from the bush, the one who looks just like her. The back and forth can be a little disruptive but really makes the past and the present come together when the finale is reached and everyone is safe – or are they?

A well written, evocative and downright scary story because such things have happened, are probably happening now, and sadly will continue to occur.

• Marian Chivers has a lifelong interest in reading and writing with her work and study involving books from children’s literature to post graduate studies. 

> Review copy supplied by the publisher.

Book review – The Midnight Estate, by Kelly Rimmer

August 29, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Midnight Estate

Author: Kelly Rimmer

Publisher: Hachette Australia, 2025; RRP: $34.99

Review by: Marian Chivers, August, 2025

Ballarat Writers Inc Book Review Group

THE AUTHOR

Kelly Rimmer is the author of historical and contemporary fiction, including The Warsaw Orphan, The Things We Cannot Say and The Secret Daughter, with 3 million books sold.  Her books have been translated into dozens of languages and have appeared on bestseller lists around the world.  Since 2022, Kelly has owned and operated Collins Booksellers Orange, the last remaining bookstore in the regional city where she lives. The setting of regional NSW is one that Rimmer knows well and brings to life through her writing.

THE BOOK

Fiona Winslow has been through a tumultuous year that sends her searching for solace in the restoration of a dilapidated country mansion, Wurimbirra. A mansion that she once called home. Her mother is against the restoration and the locals consider the place haunted.

When she finds a book, The Midnight Estate, and begins to read it, she finds a tale of love, loss and betrayal to mirror her own. How well does she know her old home and how well does she know her family? A book-within-a-book mystery covering two generations with the family’s darkest secrets coming to light.

Although I could see how the plot would unravel, the writing kept my interest to find out exactly how it would all play out.

The regional setting and her return to the friends of her youth provide a nice depth to the work and Fiona and her mother. The main characters are well defined and the emotions are real. It even made me cry (sad and happy tears).

This is the first of Rimmer’s books that I have read and I would definitely consider any of her other works after devouring The Midnight Estate. 

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – Arborescence, by Rhett Davis

August 15, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: Arborescence

Author: Rhett Davis

Publisher: Hachette, July 2025; RRP: $32.99

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Arborescence had me hooked from the prologue, in which an unidentified ‘she’ stands unmoving in the backyard, while the narrator and someone called Travis have a brief exchange. The passage is 10 sentences long. Who is this ‘she’? Why is she standing in the rain and not caring for a brolly? If she hasn’t given up – as the narrator asserts – what is going on here?

This is Geelong-based Davis’s second novel – his first, Hovering (2022), won the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award, and is now on my library list – and it fulfils the promise.

As the prologue suggests, the prose is economic and to the point, savvy, no words wasted. The first chapter is a series of vignettes that introduce the narrator Bren’s ecosystem – his mysteriously pointless job, the friends he meets at the pub, his relationship with Caelyn and their families. While the vignettes continue to feature, longer passages are introduced as the listless Bren and aimless Caelyn find something of a calling – a sense of purpose, even as the world is getting the wobbles.

As it turns out, as the blurb indicates so no spoiler here, there is a growing international movement of people turning into trees. For reasons little understood, they stand still in a spot and become at one with the planet, quite literally putting down roots. In investigating this phenomenon, Caelyn finds her direction, and Bren is pulled along in her wake.

This arborescence is contentious and challenging for the world, and in Davis’s hands becomes the entry point for topics such as the messiness of life (as opposed to the order of fictional narratives), climate change, and connections between people as well as between humanity and the natural world. For instance, says Caelyn to Bren,

(H)umans hoard and consume far more than we need just to make life slightly easier for ourselves. We will never give up anything, not really, unless we’re forced to…trees do not do this.

Those left behind by those who undergo the transformation face confusion, anger and guilt, trying not only to find a rationale for this change of being, but how to cope with a world where systems begin to break down due to population loss. Arborescence is not a simple solution, either to the stresses of modern life or the overheating of the planet – people die, directly and indirectly. As with any solution, there is a cost. Bren’s self-aware narration, leavened with dry humour and pithy observations, acknowledges this: even AI are left adrift.

There’s more, of course – Bren’s boyhood friend Miles and the comic they loved, for instance – but mostly it’s a beautiful story beautifully written about compassion and care, for each other and the planet that sustains us.

As for that ‘she’ in the backyard, well, we get to that in due course. Much like the book, it’s a moment of sadness and hope, and quite touching.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, by Anna Fitzgerald Healey

August 8, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: Etiquette for Lovers and Killers

Author: Anna Fitzgerald Healey

Publisher: Fleet/Hachette; RRP: $34.99

Review by: Marian Chivers, July, 2025

This is Anna Fitzgerald Healy’s debut novel. Her writing has been featured in several literary magazines and short story anthologies. She grew up on the Maine coast (where this story is set). She now works in Los Angeles, living in a (possibly haunted) miniature castle in the Hollywood Hills.

The author writes in a letter to the reader at the beginning: “Set in my grandparents’ dilapidated Cape Cod-style house in the 60s, this story follows Billie through the woods and windswept islands of my childhood. Etiquette for Lovers and Killers is a novel like a tall, dark, nerdy stranger. A partner in crime for all the girls who couldn’t decide between the pulpy thriller or the rom-com in the bookstore. Because honestly, why can’t we have both?”

I wonder whether Anna has read much romantic suspense with period settings, Gothic thrillers like Victoria Holt’s immediately spring to mind and the like of Mary Stewart for later 20th century tales. This novel has strong elements of these with some nerdy 21st century ethos channelled into the 1960s setting. Each chapter starts with a piece of etiquette and Anna’s and Billie’s love of language is shown in the use of footnotes defining certain words and their histories. At first the footnotes annoyed (uncomfortable reminders of academic research and writing) but they started to grow on me as they showed aspects of Billie’s character and also hinted at happenings within the mystery.

Listen to an audiobook preview of Etiquette for Lovers and Killers

@ Google Play Books

Bille (Wilhelmena McCadie) is a 26-year-old virgin, qualified as an archival linguist trying to find a job but working as a seamstress in the small Maine town of Eastport in the early 1960s. She lives with her grandparents as her parents were killed in a car crash two years earlier. In the summer the tourists and the rich come to spend time in their “cottages”. Billie is bored – she’s surrounded by dull people – until an engagement ring and a cryptic love letter appear in her post box, addressed to “Gertrude”. She then meets rich, handsome Avery Webster, who owns a boat, as many of the rich characters do. Then the unsettling phone calls and visits from a man in a fedora begin. Events really start to heat up when she’s one of the last people to see Gertrude alive… and the first to see her dead.

There follows an intriguing mix of stalking, blackmail, champagne secrets and M&Ms (did you know they were first manufactured in the 1940s?). Everyone has a secret and as the body count rises and danger looms, Billie begins to suspect that she is more than a side character. Who killed Gertrude and the others? One killer or many? Just how innocent is the handsome, squeaky-clean Avery? The plot draws you in as the bodies and the suspects mount. It is written in a witty, erudite way and conveys the era well. The reader is left wondering just what Billie will accept in behaviour from this collection of characters, especially her love interest.

Marian Chivers has a lifelong interest in reading and writing with her work and study involving books from children’s literature to post graduate studies.

Review copy supplied by the publisher

The winner of the 2025 Pamela Miller Flash fiction prize is…

August 4, 2025 / / 0 Comments

David McMillan with his story, Alas and Alack. Congratulations David!

Second place went to Wendie Daniels for With What Remains, and third place to Barry Kay for The Last Act.

There were 23 entries this year, on the theme of THE LAST ACT. The judges were BWI members Liam Monaghan, Cassandra Arnold, AJ Lyndon and Bruna Pomella.

Now, for your delight, here is the winning story in full:

Alas and Alack

“At last, a last act. An actual act, a finale, a finish, a final fucking finish. That’s it for me Smith. Alas, as they say, alas and alack…”

Dobson was delirious. Raving. Spittle drooled from his slack mouth.

His jaundiced face gaunt, cheekbones protruding like volcanic hills over deep valleys, pale blue irises desert billabongs ringed with dirty yellow clay.

I sat at the bedside holding his skeletal hand, muttering blandishments.

“It’s okay. I’m here. It’ll be alright. The doctor will be here soon.” 

I glanced toward the doorway, to the hospital corridor that glowed like a luminescent portal to the bright business of life, contrasting as it did with the darkened palliative care room. They called it a comfort room, comfort care. Euphemisms abounded in this place. It was furnished like a chapel, or maybe a funeral home, wood panelled walls, soft carpet, bland prints on the walls, and yet a hospital bed.

He, Dobson, would hate it, would have railed against the ersatz religious surroundings, the attempt to deny ‘the last act, the final fucking finish’ as he had ranted.

“It’s that bastard, over there.”

He squirmed in the hospital bed and tried to point toward the corner of the room where I’d hung my coat, his arms twisting, IV tubes snagging.

“Get him out of here. That bastard. Smith? Get him out of here. Smith?”

He turned to face me, untrimmed fingernails digging into the callused skin of my fist.

“I’m here mate. Don’t worry. He’s not there. It’s just you and me comrade.”
“Comrade. Yeah that’s right. We fought the good fight didn’t we.”

“We did. Didn’t we?”

“Sure, we did Dobbo.”

“Where are we Smith? Why’s it so dark? Like a bloody confessional. You sure he’s not here?”

“Who?”

“That bastard in the black cassock. You remember him don’t you. Just a minute ago in the corner. Over there.” His finger shook as he pointed to the shadows, knuckles like swollen wasp galls.

I took a teaspoon of the ice chips the nurse – the older one, not the pretty one – had brought with an expression that said, ‘I’m being kind here, you can see that, but there’s no hope’. A grim twist of the lips.

Dobbo’s lips were dry and cracked, his tongue the colour and texture of mould on cheese. He lapped at the ice greedily, bright eyes beseeching.

“You remember don’t you? The confessional. The sacristy?”

“Nah mate, that was you. You’re the ‘mick’ not me.”

“You don’t remember? The belfry?  Come up for a smoke, he said.”

“More…” I spooned ice.

Dobson swallowed and stared at me intently.

“He touched. I pushed. Surplice flapping. Gold and white. Thought he might fly like a bird. More like a stone in the end.”

“Shit, mate.”

“Yeah. Flapping in the wind like those coloured ribbons on a church fence. It’s all shit. Help me mate. I’m scared.”

Dobson closed his eyes and sighed.  His grip relaxed. His breathing stopped.

* * *

Congratulations to everyone who entered and especially to the winner once again!

Book review – Never Flinch, by Stephen King

July 25, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: Never Flinch

Author: Stephen King

Publisher: Hachette, 2025; RRP $34.99

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung, Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

This is my first encounter with private investigator Holly Gibney, enjoying a run as a leading character after appearances of varied standing in other volumes. She is certainly able to carry the weight, given her serious powers of deduction tempered by a deep-seated mistrust of her own abilities.

The events in the Bill Hodges trilogy and other titles contribute to the backstory here, not just for Holly but a strong supporting cast, none of whom are the cardboard sidekicks or light relief one might expect in an ensemble performance. It’s quite the juggling act, keeping all the characters in play as they are caught up in two concurrent but converging storylines.

A serial killer is on the loose in the city of Buckeye, the motivation slowly revealed as King makes us front-seat passengers in an increasingly fraught spree. Notably, King knows how much to show to engage but not repel: we see that the killer is proficient, but there is no revelling in the minutiae of the killings – they are nasty, but not gory.

Holly, while brought in by detective pal Izzy as an unofficial consultant on the puzzling case, also signs up for a tilt as bodyguard to women’s rights campaigner Kate McKay, facing death threats on her latest tour. A tour that coincides with a concert by renowned singer Sista Bessie in Buckeye. Again, we are riding shotgun with the perpetrator and the victims, adding to the tension as unsuspecting bystanders are pulled into the twin plots. To his credit, King manages to not demonise the right-to-life politics that underpin McKay’s stalker, though there’s a list of murder victims in his afterword that reminds us that that movement has spawned its share of real-life killers.

Dave Musson delves into Holly Gibney’s appearances

@ YouTube

King’s mastery of character is to the fore as he manoeuvres his cast across the board, at times split-screening his scenes with updates on key characters at the hour of the day, two trains with their passengers heading for an inevitable, lethal collision. His use of the omniscient viewpoint allows backward glances and plenty of foreshadowing – perhaps a little too much; the momentum of the story doesn’t need a lot of teasers to keep the reader wondering what will happen next.

Such is King’s skill that ignorance of Holly’s other appearances didn’t feel to diminish the experience here, though some of the references to those adventures are tantalising. Unlike those intimations, there are no supernatural elements at play here (well, maybe just a wink) – rather, twisted human obsession and guilt, with a nod to dysfunctional families and the damage they can do. Rising above that, though, is the strength of the friendships in Holly’s circle: Izzy, compadres Barbara and Jerome, and the massive character of Sista Bessie, among others.

The book may take its title from the maxim of one of the bad guys, but it’s also pretty good advice for those encountering evil, and indeed the reader of the book: as horrible as some of the events are, we are in safe hands.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Book review – Gallagher: The Fall and Rise of Oasis, by PJ Harrison

July 18, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: Gallagher: The Fall and Rise of Oasis

Author: PJ Harrison

Publisher: Sphere/Hachette, 2025; RRP: $3499

Review by: Frank Thompson

In the foreword for this book, legendary Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, through anecdote, tells us to be open to PJ (the author): “You will hit it off and he will be good for you. Just let him in.” A curious comment considering forewords set the tone for a book. It turned out to be good advice.

Ever since hearing Oasis as a teenager, Harrison has been a big fan. These days Harrison is a music industry insider. He has toured with Oasis and their crew. Originally conceived as a dual biography covering the solo careers of the Gallagher brothers, the sudden announcement of a reunion tour prompted a change of direction for the book.

Harrison’s adulation for the brothers and their music shows in his writing style, which I thought verged on the excessive in its use of superlatives. In hindsight his writing serves as a metaphor encapsulating the Oasis sound and energy. Harrison would probably use the word sonic. His track-by-track descriptions of Liam’s and Noel’s solo albums are couched in a “hip” music guru language, which I initially found tiresome. But on reflection, and heeding Oldham’s advice, I just went with the flow. And enjoyed it; after all, what’s wrong with feeling a bit Rock ’n’ Roll. Or perhaps I just need to get out more.

Oasis back on the road

@ ABC

Leaving the music facts and figures aside, the focus shifts to the Gallaghers as people rather than rock stars. These sections make the book interesting and insightful. Harrison’s writing steadies, allowing the reader to gain a better understanding of the brothers and the pressures in their lives. It is likely that Oasis’s success was largely due to the dynamics of the relationship between the brothers, a polite way of saying sibling conflict nurtured in an environment of working-class poverty. These are tough people, clearly talented but also incredibly vulnerable.

As I read this book I wondered how much of it would be a revelation for an Oasis fan. One could be cynical about Harrison’s motivation for authoring this book. But whatever his motives I found this an enjoyable and informative read, and I am glad to have had the opportunity.

Which brings me to one last oddity of this book. The first of the reunion concerts was held as I was editing this review. Indeed, Harrison admits that at the time of finalising the book he could not confirm the lineup of the band for the reunion performances. I can report that the lineup included Gem Archer, Bonehead and Andy Bell, who all previously played in Oasis.

The concert tour is sold out, I believe, but one might still ask, was it brave or optimistic of Harrison to title the book as he did.

Review copy provided by the publisher

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