Susan Johnson

And so although there were emotions there, they weren't hot emotions.

There's a real clarity and sharpness through here.

But Cassie and I have read Kudos as a standalone novel.

You two have read it as part of a trilogy.

How did it stack up, Mireille, when you looked at the three?

Was it satisfying?

That was terribly funny, though, because he also goes on to expound why he believes in literary fiction, but that his whole publishing company only survives because they sell Sudoku books.

And her descriptions of other women are often very cruel.

What about you, Kate?

I really liked it and I liked the sort of fragmentary novel of ideas, but it certainly means that I will put the other two on my

to be read pile, although the way that this year's going, this is the 25th edition of the bookshelf.

We've got another 20 or more to go.

I probably won't get to it until summer.

Maria Tamarkin is a writer and historian.

She's a blender of ideas and styles.

Her earlier books include Traumascapes and Otherland.

And Axiomatic is a book that quite deliberately, I think, uses fictional forms as well as analytic ways of telling her stories.

Now, it has a really distinct style, one Tamarkin herself described as an accented one.

English is her second language.

She came to Australia from Ukraine as a 15-year-old speaking Russian, already wanting to be a writer.