In the Listener this week, Charlotte Grimshaw dissects Fiona Kidman’s Songs from the Violet Café. After a quick run through the plot, Grimshaw notes: “The unlikely coincidences pile up, and the novel's second half is a rapid tidying up of the first.” One can usually rely upon Listener writers to tell it as it is - and Grimshaw doesn’t pussyfoot around. She concludes: “The story is conjured with eagerness, with energy. But wouldn't we be better able to believe in it if its tone were more rigorous and authentic, its humanity more closely observed?”

Paula Morris reviews Change of Heart by Barbara Anderson and Yet Another Ghastly Christmas by Shonagh Koea. Morris has mixed feelings about Anderson’s latest: although the book is “a witty, wry and absurd novel, as you would expect from a writer as sharp as Anderson”, Morris finds that “the novel is too slight for its own story and winds up far too soon”. Koea fares slightly better, since her novel contains “brilliant detail and broad comedy”. But Morris downgrades the marks at the end, saying “Readers may accept the coy, overfamiliar conclusion, but the author might consider varying her winner and losers next time around”.