Australian Fiction reviews
Seven and a Half by Christos Tsiolkas
It’s been too long since we last felt the excitement of a new Christos Tsiolkas novel. Exactly two years in fact since his award-wining epic Damascus was released in November 2019, and haven’t we fac…
Devotion by Hannah Kent
Prussia, 1836: a small village of Old Lutherans is forced to practice their religion in secret or face persecution. Deliverance comes with the opportunity for settling in the new colony of South Aust…
Cold Coast by Robyn Mundy
July, 1932: It is high summer up in the Arctic Circle and the widow Ivanna ‘Wanny’ Woldstad is the only female taxi driver in the Norwegian town of Tromsø. When she picks up seasoned trapper Anders S…
The Last Woman in the World by Inga Simpson
I’ve been a fan of Inga Simpson’s writing ever since I read and reviewed her 2016 novel Where the Trees Were. The natural world always features heavily in her work, and she makes the reader feel like…
Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser
Michelle de Kretser has written an unusual book. Told in two narratives, the title is inspired by the David Bowie song, ‘Scary Monsters’: ‘Scary monsters, super creeps / Keep me running, running scar…
Love and Virtue by Diana Reid
Diana Reid’s Love and Virtue is an outstanding debut novel that balances multiple issues, including female friendship, intellectual curiosity, class and gender privilege, with a coming-of-age story.
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Permafrost by S.J. Norman
The seven short stories in S.J. Norman’s Permafrost present us with word-etchings of varied settings – apartments, hotel rooms and front yards – against which the emotional action shudders uneasily i…
Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down
After being named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist two years running, it should come as no surprise that Jennifer Down has delivered another gem. But Bodies of Light is streets …
Wild Abandon by Emily Bitto
It is a tale as old as travel fiction itself: young, immature man-child is heartbroken and unwilling to examine his deeply troubling feelings or reflect on his contribution to the heartbreaking situa…
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
I was relatively late to the party with Liane Moriarty. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was basically bullied into reading her by a workmate who correctly interpreted my rolling eyes as literary snob…
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