The Bookshelf
The Bookshelf
ABC Australia
Madeleine Gray & Tim Rogers review: Wayne Marshall/Ellena Savage/Lena Dunham/Douglas Stuart
54 minutes Posted May 15, 2026 at 5:00 am.
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Show notes
We head by rackety ferry to Scotland in John of John, the latest, quietly devastating novel from Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart. Henry Lawson reimagined - brawling poets, strange tunnels, time loops, and a warped tussle between city and bush in Wayne Marshall’s Henry Goes Bush, reviewed by You Am I's Tim Rogers. From there, novelist Madeleine Gray turns her eye to Lena Dunham’s sharp, self‑aware memoir Famesick, before moving to Ellena Savage’s The Ruiners, which shifts between a Melbourne lobster shack and a smoke‑wreathed Greek island.
~ OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Norman Lindsay, Bohemians of the Bulletin
Ruth Park, Playing Beatie Bow
Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays
Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl
Joan Didion, works
Eve Babitz, works
Ellena Savage, Blueberries
Charles Dickens, works
Charmian Clift, works
George Johnston, works
Michael Winkler, Griefdogg
Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch
Colum McCann, Apeirogon
Steve MinOn, First Name Second Name
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
James Bailey, Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark
Lee Lai, Cannon
~ CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Craig Tilmouth and Roi Huberman
Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown