Australian Fiction reviews
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 heartbreak…
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 …
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 histor…
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 …
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 an…
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 …
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 –…
The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan
If you’re on the hunt for a crime story that’s going to consume every other thought in your head, wring you out like a wet towel, and then deposit you back in the real world with your nerves fried to…
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 c…
What the Light Reveals by Mick McCoy
Mick McCoy’s latest novel opens in 1954 as Conrad Murphy travels from Melbourne to Sydney to appear before the Royal Commission on Espionage. An active and unabashed member of the Communist Party, Co…
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