Nikki Gemmell is certainly adept at both genres. Her anonymous novel, The Bride Stripped Bare (2003), was a tour de force, and many of her ‘notes on life’, Gemmell’s columns from the Weekend Australian, collected in Honestly, are entertaining, and some of them are moving. There is also an absorbing essay on the writing and publication of The Bride, and another on the price she is paying for indulging her own homesickness and bringing her London-born children home to Australia. Many columns are vintage Gemmell – provocative, intimate pieces on women’s sexuality and parenthood; the evils, joys, and difficulties of modern life.

But there has been little attempt at winnowing. All the columns for more than a year seem to be included, as well as the two essays and some slightly mawkish prose poems, which she developed from especially popular columns. The last piece is dated 6 October 2012: the book was published less than two months later. That left little time for editing. Gushy expressions recur, like ‘the great mad whoosh’ or ‘the great gallop of life’ – everything is ‘great’. This book is perhaps best consumed by admirers of Gemmell’s columns who want to revisit them, to dip into them and reread favourites. Reading the book beginning to end, one can find the verbal tics irritating and the sentiments facile.