Clare Morrall’s Astonishing Splashes of Colour was shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, an extraordinary achievement for a first novel. It’s about “an intelligent but slightly unstable woman … a Peter Pan who has residency in adulthood but a perpetual passport to childhood”. Philippa Jamieson of the Herald finds it “well-crafted” and “a good read” but concludes, “Unfortunately, what could have been an electrifying climax seemed contrived and left me unmoved”.

Meanwhile, clinical psychologist Ralf Unger looks at Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler for The Press. Haffner was a historical journalist who reported at first-hand the evolution of the National Socialist party in Germany. The book was first published in Germany in 2000, and wins praise for being a “vivid passionate account”.

John F Kennedy: An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek was favourably reviewed in the Herald last week, and Press day news editor Brian Prebble likes it too. “The rather brief review of the assassination, which can’t compete with William Manchester’s weighty Death of a President, is the only frustrating part of an otherwise outstanding biography.”

Both The Press and the Herald review The Pythons Autobiography by The Pythons. Both make favourable comparisons with the Beatles Anthology. And both comment on the size of this $99 hardback. The Press finds it “engrossing, vibrant and spectacularly illustrated”. The Herald finds it “lavish” and the story is told “with honesty and, inevitably, humour”.