Author Archives: susan

It is my observation over many years that those who most powerfully resist convention quite peaceably accept the state of being reviled. A woman leaves her marriage and her work for the Threatened Species Rescue Centre because she’s lost faith … Continue reading →

I have a new interest – spooks. I am writing a novel (could be YA, could be adult) about a young Australian librarian, working in London, who becomes involved with an MI5 investigation run entirely by women. Her name is … Continue reading →

A few days of sweet and nostalgic re-reading last week; The Painted Garden by Noel Streatfeild and The Rescuers by Margery Sharp. I loved them both when I was a child; reading was my ‘happy place’ and these two were … Continue reading →

…this theme – this transcendent theme – of fulfillment and non-fulfillment; and those who bind themselves to limitations… Shirley Hazzard, with a small output, has a huge reputation. And this biography, by Australian academic Brigitta Olubas, is also huge – … Continue reading →

‘And who the devil are you?’ asked Lawrie. Mr Scratch appeared uneasy. He even blushed. ‘That’s what they used to call me,’ he said. ‘But it’s very old-fashioned. I don’t like it. To tell you the truth, I never did … Continue reading →

The world out there seems so broken and divided and ugly and violent. Is it bothering me more than usual because it’s nearly Christmas? In the West, anyway, isn’t it the time of love and peace, over-eating and gifts? I’m … Continue reading →

I have been re-reading. All the Light We Cannot See was the last book of the year for my Castlemaine library reading group. I read it seven or eight years ago; I was happy to read it again. It’s an … Continue reading →

  I’ll start this review by admitting that Thin Places is a book I have not really read properly, but rather skimmed with the occasional comprehensive stop. I have inserted lots of paper slips to mark passages I want to … Continue reading →

The merging of knowledge and experience can happen because we have a multi-tiered brain memory system, where new experience is held in the plastic hippocampus, the memory maker, and gradually integrated into the less plastic, more consolidated  cortex. Current experience … Continue reading →

  The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. He’d been dead for ten days before they found him, you know. It was … Continue reading →