Adam Rivett

For a work that deals heavily with culinary aspirations, it is going to be hard to review Wayne Macauley’s brilliant new novel The Cook without reference to Masterchef, so let’s get it out of the way early. This year, after each new episode of the television show aired, the assorted snark-addled wits of the Fairfax press gathered online to do their mocking work. The mechanics of the show were ... (read more)

How would Dennis Keith – or, if we’re using the language of legends, DK – characterise it? ‘The Life was this mythic world where you could surf as much as you want, every day, any day, go anywhere [...] Getting waves was everything, every day.’ In Malcolm Knox’s exceptional new novel, this world – with its singular focus, and its sacred ecstasies – is revealed in a language both ne ... (read more)

Writing in the Guardian late last year, Philip Pullman said this of what he regards as the dominant style in contemporary fiction: ‘What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness. I feel claustrophobic, always pressed up against the immediate.’ This description highlights both the virtues and the flaws in Jennifer Mills’s second novel, Gone. Frequentl ... (read more)