Our digital content manager Bronte Coates shares six of her favourite reads from this year – including a wholly immersive fantasy tome, a moving blend of poetry and memoir, and a provocative bestseller from Norway.

A book that helped me escape…

The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox

This epic fantasy tome from New Zealander Elizabeth Knox follows Taryn Cornick as she is drawn into a mysterious plot involving the fae, Norse gods, demons, angels, and other non-human beings. Taryn’s grief-stricken, vengeful history and her extensive knowledge of books and libraries uniquely place her to play a role in these events. Pursed by demons and under suspicion by human law enforcement, she’s taken under the care of Shift, a shadowy figure who has his own past to contend with. This is a myth-soaked fantasy driven by moral questions: How do you be a good person? What does it mean to make reparations for the past? Is the world even worth saving? I was bereft when I turned the final page.

A book that moved me…

Nganajungu Yagu by Charmaine Papertalk Green

This slim volume of poetry is inspired by letters Charmaine Papertalk Green exchanged with her mother in the 1970s, after the author had left home to attend high school in Perth. Green presents poems alongside selected transcripts from her mother’s original letters, along with her responses to them years later, and snippets extracted from government files. A member of the Wajarri, Badimaya and Nhanagardi Wilunyu cultural groups of Yamaji Nation in Western Australia, she also weaves Wajarri and Badimaya languages into the work and reading this work was an astonishingly immersive and intimate experience. I finished it in a single sitting and cried more than once.

A book that thrilled me…

Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth (translated by Charlotte Barslund)

Opening with a dispute over a family will, Will and Testament is a gripping family drama and a brilliant meditation on trauma and survival. The legal dispute draws the novel’s narrator, Bergljot, back into her family’s circle after having been largely estranged from them for 20 years due to a shocking event in her childhood. (A slight spoiler and a warning for readers: sexual abuse is explored in this work.) Will and Testament caused a sensation when it was first published in Norway due to the apparent similarities between Bergljot’s life with her creator’s. But whether it’s autobiographical or not, this novel is one of the most authentic depictions of the aftermath of trauma I’ve ever read.

A book that challenged me…

Blueberries by Ellena Savage

Ellena Savage has long been one of my favourite Australian writers and her first full-length book is an exciting collection of experimental non-fiction that interrogates the conventions of memoir. As she ranges over an array of topics – memory, trauma, literary culture, class, Australian history, what it means to make art – the tone moves from sardonic to ardent, from tender to vicious, from wry to intimate. Savage pushes boundaries in form and content, and she’s ruthless and relentless in pursing her ideas; Blueberries is a work to engage with, not read passively.

A quiet book that crept up on me…

Indelicacy by Amina Cain

Vitória is a cleaner who aspires to be a writer. After she marries into wealth and privilege, she finally has the freedom to work diligently on her craft, but she soon discovers her new life comes with its own costs. Pitched to me as a ghostly feminist fable, Indelicacy has a timeless and slippery quality that keeps the reader hovering on a precipice. Amina Cain elegantly explores ideas of creativity, class, desire, power and authenticity through Vitória’s story. This book made a quiet impact on me at first, but it is one I keep coming back to as the year draws to an end.

A classic that utterly delighted me…

Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson (translated by Thomas Warburton)

I’ve been slowly reading my way through Tove Jansson’s works for some years now. Her fiction is – at turns – playful, thoughtful, nostalgic, bittersweet, heartbreaking, very funny, imaginative, enchanting, and immensely pleasurable. This year my favourite discovery of hers was Moominland Midwinter. While Moomins usually hibernate through the winter, this novel sees Moomintroll wake in the middle of the season – unexpectedly and alone. The young troll plunges into an existential crisis as attempts to navigate his eerie and bewildering new landscape, helped and hampered along the way by the strange creatures he meets. Yet despite being a novel about despair and loneliness, Moominland Midwinter is filled with lightness and funny moments. Truly, this is a perfect novel.