Australian fiction
Flames by Robbie Arnott
A cremated woman returns after her ashes are scattered in the bush. A water rat searches for the Cloud God. A wombat farmer who dreams of cormorants every night wakes to find his bed full of feathers.
To try to…
The Madonna of the Mountains by Elise Valmorbida
Set in the Veneto region of northern Italy, this novel about life in rural Italy between the 1920s and 50s is compulsively beautiful. It opens with a young woman, Maria, waiting for her father to bring home a husband for…
The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones
Mattanza is a Sicilian word to describe a seasonal ritual of hunting and killing tuna in the waters around Sicily; it also the term used to describe periodic mafia killings. Noah Glass, an art historian, travels to Sicily and shortly…
The Fortress by S.A. Jones
The Fortress has a fascinating premise. Alongside a world that appears the same as our own, there exists an all-female civilisation. Its native women are called the Vaik. They are proud, Amazonian and powerful; bound by their own laws, rituals…
Pink Mountain on Locust Island by Jamie Marina Lau
Sometimes a book comes along that doesn’t just make me very happy, but also makes me excited for the future. Jamie Marina Lau’s debut novel, Pink Mountain on Locust Island, is one such book. Told in snippets, this is…
Little Gods by Jenny Ackland
Olive Lovelock is curious, independent, and beguiling. She is growing up between her parents’ home in a small town in the Mallee and her cousins’ farm, a (long) bike ride away. For Olive, Grade 6 is becoming less enjoyable by…
The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman
There is a saying in Hungary: You know you’re a Hungarian when you can’t say anything positive about politics. I live with a Hungarian and this statement is totally accurate. However what it doesn’t say, and what you need to…
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland
The challenge with reviewing The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland is to convey in only a few hundred words the stunning achievement of this debut author. Ringland has written a heartbreaking yet hopeful work about trauma, healing…
The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton
Jaxie’s dad ‘wasn’t always a c#%t. Like he was probably decent once and you were happy and so was your mum.’ But he is now, or was; he’s dead now and Jaxie Clackton, 16 and desperate, is on the run…
In the Garden of the Fugitives by Ceridwen Dovey
Ceridwen Dovey won the inaugural Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction in 2014 with her book of short stories, Only the Animals, an audacious and original work of imagination. Dovey’s new novel confirms she is one of the most…
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