Chris Flynn

Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment) and The Walking Dead: A new frontier (Telltale Games)

ABR Arts • 31 March 2017

The worlds of literature and video games appear at first glance to be distinctly at odds. Book lovers may feel that playing video games is puerile, a waste of time that could be better spent improving oneself by reading. Some gamers regard books as old hat, a stuffy waste of time that could be better spent enjoying oneself conquering digital guardians. But these worlds are merging more with each p ... (read more)

Chris Flynn reviews 'Inexperience and other stories' by Anthony Macris

December 2016, no. 387 • 29 November 2016

Given the Australian propensity for travel, it is odd that the global wanderings of our citizens are not much explored in literary fiction, which is still in the anguished throes of self-examination, arguably stuck in a loop. How refreshing, then, to read Anthony Macris’s fourth book, Inexperience and Other Stories, a short volume which drops the reader into the discomfiting world of an Australi ... (read more)

Chris Flynn reviews 'The Dry' by Jane Harper

June–July 2016, no. 382 • 23 May 2016

There is an odd moment halfway through The Dry when Aaron Falk, the Federal Police officer unofficially investigating the apparent murder–suicide of the Hadler family in the dismal country town where he grew up, is sifting through items left behind by Karen Hadler, one of the dead. Falk comes across a library book, 'a battered paperback crime novel'; he describes it as, '[s]tandard stuff. Not qu ... (read more)

Chris Flynn reviews 'Abacus' by Louis Armand

December 2015, no. 377 • 27 November 2015

Abacus is Prague-based Australian author and poet Louis Armand's seventh novel, his fifth in as many years. Such a prolific work rate is admirable, but in telling a story which covers the entirety of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of ten disparate yet loosely connected members of the same Australian dynasty, two hundred pages falls short of doing this epic narrative justice. What ... (read more)

Chris Flynn reviews 'Everything Is Teeth' by Evie Wyld and Joe Sumner

September 2015, no. 374 • 27 August 2015

The age of apex narcissism has opened the publishing floodgates to myopic and often unnecessary confessionals, personal tales of shame and struggle that, in the past, would more likely have been recounted to a priest or therapist. The memoir genre is at its peak, and the descent may be swift and brutal. Miles Franklin-winning author Evie Wyld cleverly subverts the genre with her graphic memoir, ... (read more)

Chris Flynn reviews 'Quicksand' by Steve Toltz

May 2015, no. 371 • 27 April 2015

Penguin Australia’s recent fiction output has been remarkable. Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals, Omar Musa’s Here Come the Dogs, and James Bradley’s Clade have all been idiosyncratic and inventive reads, bristling with energy and ideas. Steve Toltz’s Quicksand proves to be the cherry on the cake – a beguiling novel that confounds and astonishes in equal measure, often on the same page ... (read more)

Chris Flynn reviews 'Blood' by Tony Birch

December 2011–January 2012, no. 337 • 24 November 2011

As Christos Tsiolkas notes in his back cover puff, Tony Birch’s storytelling skills have been widely acknowledged since the publication of Shadowboxing in 2006. Many people have been waiting to see how Birch would fare with a full-length novel. His début, Blood, is nothing short of outstanding. Birch has finally found a home at University of Queensland Press, where he has his staunch champion, ... (read more)

'Testing times for mid-list authors' by Chris Flynn

October 2011, no. 335 • 26 September 2011

British author Glen Duncan released his eighth novel this year, the title of which, The Last Werewolf, is fairly self-explanatory. Although a much more philosophical (and entertaining) read than one might imagine in our current supernaturally-dominated ‘box-office’ novel landscape, Duncan’s book was a marked departure from an author better known for his explicitly literary output. Of his pre ... (read more)

Chris Flynn reviews 'Shakespeare's Hamlet' by Nicki Greenberg

December 2010–January 2011, no. 327 • 08 June 2011

Lawyer Nicki Greenberg spent six years converting The Great Gatsby to graphic novel format, an interesting project that was universally acclaimed and respected. It took half that time for her to render Shakespeare’s Hamlet (is the author’s name really necessary?), which she has ‘staged on the page’ for stalwart Australian graphic novel publisher Allen & Unwin. An ambitious task, Greenb ... (read more)

Chris Flynn reviews 'You Lose These + Other Stories' by Goldie Goldbloom

June 2011, no. 332 • 24 May 2011

A native of Western Australia, Goldie Goldbloom now resides in Chicago with her eight children, whom she gleefully admits, in her amusing introduction to this volume of short stories, to trouncing regularly at Scrabble, ‘with little or no compunction’. Her lyrical and inventive use of language in these eighteen stories comes as no surprise, then. More puzzling is that only four of these origin ... (read more)