Must-read Australian debut fiction from 2022
2022 was a stellar year for Australian fiction, and we saw many debut local authors experimenting boldly with various literary forms: speculative dystopia, Gothic psychodrama and riveting page-turning mysteries. If you’re looking for a new writer to fall in love with, or just want to catch up on some of the most talked-about new Australian fiction of the year, here are just a few highlights. And don’t forget to stay tuned to part two of our debut spotlight, where we focus on international fiction.
Sunbathing by Isobel Beech
A young unnamed woman has a quietly transformative stay at a friend’s family villa in Italy. Initially suffocated in a looping web of devastation over losing her father to suicide, the narrator spends her days washing dishes, picking vegetables from the garden, and walking the sun-dappled Abruzzo landscape.
Within the contained space of this small Italian refuge, she starts to heal. Sunbathing is a sensitive and lyrical work of great care that manages to find the words for an otherwise inconceivable experience.
Hovering by Rhett Davis
After 16 years abroad, Alice returns to her Australian city of birth, only to find the city seems to be moving of their own accord. As online conspiracy theories proliferate about these perambulating landmarks, Alice must navigate her own strained relationships with a perpetually online teenage son and her sister.
This elliptical, beguiling novel is a remarkable feat of imagination, featuring a high-wire act of different genres, forms and styles – from SMS messages to chat room transcripts and HTML code – all expertly controlled by a gifted new writer.
All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien
In the wake of her brother’s murder at a local restaurant, Ky Tran returns to Cabramatta determined to interview the dozen or so witnesses to find the truth of what happened. What she uncovers however is a journey into her own family and community’s past – their secrets and what people had to do to survive.
Tracey Lien’s extraordinary debut mixes gripping drama with unforgettable characters to create a textured, considered examination of family trauma and community relationships.
Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls by Anne Casey-Hardy
In these 18 jewel-like short stories, we meet excitable girls who rush out to the creek for a New Year’s Eve party; a sleep-deprived woman who must face her scathing 16-year-old self; and a woman who wakes up in a Van Gogh painting. Underpinned by a sense of wild abandon and sly menace, Anne Casey-Hardy’s female characters tread the liminal space between innocence and experience, girlhood and womanhood, mothers and daughters, and freedom and fear.
Funny and full-bodied, Casey-Hardy’s writing crackles with a restless energy.
Hydra by Adriane Howell
This highly original debut blends black humour and Gothic mystery to tell the story of a woman in the process of unravelling, as her job, her home, her marriage, her friends and her identity are all stripped away.
Set along the windswept coast of the Peninsula, and featuring an inventive use of historical naval documents, Hydra is a cool, stylish psychodrama with an unapologetic and flawed heroine at its heart.
Every Version of You by Grace Chan
The Melbourne of the near future is a place both familiar and uncanny in Grace Chan’s hypnotic speculative fiction debut. Here, people choose to upload their consciousness to a lush, idyllic virtual reality called Gaia rather than spend their time in a ravaged ‘reality’. The protagonist Tao-Yi, however, struggles with the loss of tangible things, and is reluctant to divorce herself from the past.
Chan masterfully evokes complex philosophical questions of authenticity, selfhood and the mind-body problem in this unique and original dystopia.
An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Dalla Rosa
Newcomer Paul Dalla Rosa raises a wry eyebrow at the absurdities of modern life with this collection that poses questions around themes of work, alienation and (often failed) relationships. Whether working in food service or in high-end retail, lit by a laptop in a sex chat or by the camera of an acclaimed film director, sharing a dangerous apartment in the city, a rooming house in China or a vacation rental in Mallorca, the protagonists of the ten stories navigate the spaces between aspiration and delusion, ambition and aimlessness, the curated profile and the unreliable body.
Dalla Rosa proves himself a writer to watch, with assured prose and sharp slices of bleak humour.
The Registrar by Neela Janakiramanan
The life of a young ambitious registrar is punishing: 20-hour days, interminable schedules, life-and-death decisions with all the accountability but little support. With her insider's knowledge of Australia's medical industry, surgeon and debut author Neela Janakiramanan brings a rush of adrenaline and a shot of authenticity to this pacy novel. As we watch the protagonist Emma struggle with the demands of a medical field stretched to breaking point, it becomes all too easy to remember just how topical this page-turner really is.
Wake by Shelley Burr
The low hum of terror in Australia’s outback is ever present in this unsettling small-town thriller. Though she’s now an adult living alone on her family’s drought-stricken farm, Mina has never fully moved on from that night her twin sister disappeared from their bedroom. When a new private investigator comes into town, with an eye on solving the cold case and collecting that reward money, Mina is reluctant to cooperate.
Shelley Burr controls plot, pace, character and the all-important twists and turns in this wonderfully calibrated puzzle that readers will want to gulp down in a few short sits.
Losing Face by George Haddad
George Haddad’s thought-provoking debut shuns easy answers and judgements, bringing the complex currents and contradictions of Western Sydney to life through the eyes of Joey, a young Lebanese-Australian teenager just out of high school, and his family. When a bad night goes horrifyingly wrong, Joey and his family are caught up in a case that threatens to upend everyone’s life.
This is a book of complex, thorny questions around consent and inherited trauma, all handled with a tender touch.
Abomination by Ashley Goldberg
Centred on an Orthodox Jewish community in Melbourne rocked by a scandal, Abomination carefully maps the relationship between Ezra and Yonatan, two schoolfriends whose lives led them down very different roads as adults but who are brought together again years later by the aftershocks of the scandal.
Ashley Goldberg unfolds these two men’s clashing worlds of faith and secularism with care and respect, and the result is a novel that is absorbing to read but also treats its characters and situations with deep understanding and sympathy.
Basin by Scott McCulloch
This hallucinatory debut novel erupts with vice, violence and viscera. As Figure aimlessly travels the coastline of a continent falling to pieces, he crosses from village to village, meeting outcasts, grifters, cult leaders and people seeking refuge. What emerges from his journeying is an uncompromising dark mirror into the recesses of one man’s mind.
With rich and evocative language, Melbourne-born author Scott McCulloch conjures up enigmatic, indelible set-pieces that are both bleak and beautiful, with frequent descriptions of the abject and absurd nature of the human body.
The Torrent by Dinuka McKenzie
The first book in first-time author Dinuka McKenzie’s Kate Miles series is a cracking opener that weaves dual narratives to a heart-pounding conclusion.
The last week before she goes on maternity leave is not the ideal time to be handed a new case, let alone two. Unfortunately for Detective Kate Miles, that’s exactly how her final days are shaping up, looking into a missing-presumed-drowned husband and a teenager injured in a robbery at the local Maccas. McKenzie gradually, meticulously unspools how it all connects, all while imbuing her lead character with a no-nonsense gutsiness that will have readers hoping for many more escapades with Kate.
Forty Nights by Pirooz Jafari
Born in Iran, Pirooz Jafari migrated to Australia more than two decades ago and has worked in various community-based organisations. His debut is a deeply personal work centred on Tishtar, a lawyer with his own practice in Melbourne, who takes on a client and becomes deeply enmeshed with that client’s story.
Spanning countries and decades, from war-torn Somalia to the upheavals of post the Islamic Revolution, Forty Nights is a story with great scope and heart. It is a moving look at the effects of dispossession and dislocation, and a loving character study of those who seek to lift others into something that feels like belonging.
Electric Mad and Brave by Tom Pitts
Writing from the mental health facility where he’s receiving care, Matt Lacey is going back over the seismic, tragic and life-altering moments of his past. Chiefly, his teenage relationship with the beautiful, fierce Christina.
Melbourne-based teacher and musician Tom Pitts’ Electric Mad and Brave is a whirling cascade of emotions, a work of storytelling unafraid to pull on your heartstrings and press on the bruises of memory.