Australian Fiction reviews
A Lovely and Terrible Thing by Chris Womersley
It is a testament to the quality of Chris Womersley’s short fiction that sixteen of the stories in this collection have already been published in journals such as Meanjin and Kill Your Darlings. Thes…
Bodies of Men by Nigel Featherstone
We all know that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but how often do we find ourselves doing exactly that? When I first saw Bodies of Men, I thought it looked like a blokey war story, which is n…
Daughter of Bad Times by Rohan Wilson
Daughter of Bad Times is set in the not-so-distant future, where rising sea levels have begun to swallow entire islands. Levee walls are built around cities that can afford it – those that can’t are …
Room for a Stranger by Melanie Cheng
Melanie Cheng arrived on the Australian literary scene in style. Her debut story collection, Australia Day, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript; then, upon public…
Simpsons Returns: A Novella by Wayne Macauley
Ninety years after his death in World War I, Jack Simpson is still alive, still donning his uniform, still helping the sick and still trudging alongside his donkey, Murphy. In Wayne Macauley’s novell…
The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean
Felicity McLean creates a wonderful eleven-year-old narrator, Tikka, in her debut novel, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone. It is through Tikka’s eyes the reader sees the events of the long, hot summer of…
The Artist’s Portrait by Julie Keys
Suffering from late night nausea, nurse and aspiring writer Jane Cooper starts pacing suburban streets, trying to exhaust herself. Walking one morning at sunrise she is unceremoniously sprayed by a g…
The Place on Dalhousie by Melina Marchetta
A generation has grown up with Melina Marchetta’s writing since she debuted with her impeccable young adult novel Looking for Alibrandi in 1992. As one of that generation, it’s a joy to read The Plac…
The Shining Wall by Melissa Ferguson
An idealist city lies surrounded by shining metal walls that were created by LeaderCorp to benefit all within their borders. Here, the Citizens have the leading technology of medi-nanities, brain imp…
A Universe of Sufficient Size by Miriam Sved
With her second novel, A Universe of Sufficient Size, Miriam Sved again demonstrates her ability to write about highly specific human preoccupations in a way that renders them interesting and engagin…
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