Celia Paul’s extraordinary, art-focused life is captured in two brilliant autobiographies. Stella longlisted Stephanie Radok makes the ordinary special in her art.
- Visiting Research Fellow, Department of English and Creative Writing, Adelaide University
We found out the favourite 2025 books of 35 expert readers – and the Books & Ideas team shares our own picks, too.
Carol Lefevre stumbled on tai chi while recovering from cancer, and after losing her mother and her aunt. It transformed her life.
Literature is full of dysfunctional families. We asked critics to nominate their least favourite mothers.
Literature is full of dysfunctional families. We asked critics to nominate the most troublesome fathers.
As cost-of-living soars, wars rage and stock markets fluctuate, we could all use a respite. The natural world has been proven to have a healing effect.
We were dismayed to see no Australians on the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century – so, with the help of 50 experts, we created our own, all-Australian list. You can have your say, too!
Loneliness is an enduring theme across art, music and literature. What makes us lonely, and how can we address it as a society?
Lives that matter: new novels by Trish Bolton and Graeme Nash defy the stereotypes of older women in fiction.
Plan your summer reading or catch up on what you missed with The Conversation’s selection of the best books of the year.
As we age, it can be hard to fathom the gap between our younger selves and the bodies we inhabit. Carol Lefevre explores this strange form of homesickness.
Love and intimacy are valuable for wellbeing at every age. But for older people, especially those in aged care, intimacy can be complicated. Carol Lefevre explores, through real life and fiction.
John Banville calls Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill’s Hotel, ‘an inexplicably neglected 20th-century masterpiece’. Carol Lefevre shares her fascination with William Trevor’s ‘crazed’ photographer Ivy Eckdorf.
Elizabeth Strout’s novel Oh William! has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her follow up book takes us inside the head of a small, loving, anxious, slightly neurotic person during lockdown.
Old women remain the butt of jokes; they are some of society’s most marginalised people. But age also invites us to become our most authentic selves, writes Carol Lefevre.
This brainy feminist romp of a novel, loved by Rachel Cusk and Maria Semple, is often compared to Brideshead Revisited. But Carol Lefevre says it’s more like a sexy, sweary version of Nancy Mitford in 1960s London.
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