Australian fiction
Archipelago of Souls by Gregory Day
Step onto the chariot that is Gregory Day’s Archipelago of Souls and canter through the dark emotions and turgid ruminations of a man’s troubled soul. Like other soldiers returned from World War II, Wesley Cress carries a burden of unspeakable…
In the Quiet by Eliza Henry-Jones
I approached this debut Australian novel with some caution, because it centres on a literary device that I can find off-putting: main character Cate is dead and narrating the story from her afterlife. But In the Quiet isn’t at all…
The Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffman by John Tesarsch
When Henry Hoffman dies unexpectedly his children are forced to execute a will they didn’t know existed. There’s some prime Yarra Valley real estate at stake and unexpected beneficiaries. Few families are immune to the grubby battle that invariably accompanies…
The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop
Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World is a brilliant work of art. Bishop’s intensely visceral writing has a haunting beauty reminiscent of the writings of Emily Brontë and Virginia Woolf. Set in the 1960s, The Other Side of…
Relativity by Antonia Hayes
Panic, like pain, is hard to remember after it passes. Hayes pulls you into the moment like you’ve unexpectedly pin-dropped through Antarctic ice. Having seized your attention, she then introduces the three main characters of Relativity, a little more…
Almost Sincerely by Zoë Norton Lodge
Zoë Norton Lodge is one hysterically funny lady. A born performer and story-teller, she’s skilled in combining traditional forms of comedy like stand-up with a narrative form. She started a yarn-spinning night called The Story Club, which grew into a…
Leap by Myfanwy Jones
Three years on from a tragedy that claimed the love of his life, twenty-something Joe loses himself in menial work, parkour and his mentorship of a teenage delinquent, using burnout and exhaustion as a coping mechanism. When a beautiful nurse…
The Mothers by Rod Jones
I vividly remember Rod Jones’ 1986 novel Julia Paradise, the story of a Scottish psychoanalyst and his eponymous patient set in pre-war China. It quite justifiably caused a sensation with its exploration of female sexuality and earned the then…
The Lost Swimmer by Ann Turner
I knew The Lost Swimmer had won me over when I was standing in line at the supermarket and all I could think about was what was going to happen next in Ann Turner’s impressive debut novel. This suspenseful and…
The Wonder Lover by Malcolm Knox
Malcolm Knox is a respected literary editor and journalist, known to many for his Walkley Award winning exposé of the fraudulent literary memoir of Norma Khouri. In addition to his achievements in non-fiction, he is an esteemed writer of fiction…
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