Australian fiction
Death of a Foreign Gentleman by Steven Carroll
One of Steven Carroll’s superpowers as a novelist is to look back at history and make very astute observations about how society works. We have seen this skill in his other works, and now with this quiet detective novel, we…
The End of the Morning by Charmian Clift & Nadia Wheatley (ed.)
There is both a joy and a sadness in reading Charmian Clift’s unfinished novel, The End of the Morning, as it is published now, 55 years after her death. Nadia Wheatley, Clift’s long-time advocate, biographer, and champion of the…
No Church in the Wild by Murray Middleton
Murray Middleton won the 2015 Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, an award for an unpublished manuscript by an author under 35 and known for uncovering writers like Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, and Andrew McGahan. The resulting book of Middleton’s award, When There’s…
Pheasants Nest by Louise Milligan
Should a story, which begins in a suburb you know well, which involves sexual assault, and ends in the middle of nowhere, come with a warning even if there is a love story in it? I think so. Here is…
Cool Water by Myfanwy Jones
In the 1950s a dam was constructed in Far North Queensland. In the process, the town that had existed there previously was emptied and flooded, remaining beneath the water even today. There is something haunting and unsettling about this idea…
Lead Us Not by Abbey Lay
Millie is in her final year of high school at ‘Our Lady’s’, a Catholic school that Abbey Lay ensures is dripping with recognisable details of at least an element of every Australian’s education experience. The school is not our –…
Appreciation by Liam Pieper
Oliver Darling is a young(ish) queer artist from the country, according to his bio, who has made it big not only in the Australian art scene, but also internationally. If he were remotely competent with money, he would be extremely…
One Another by Gail Jones
A story within another story. A research thesis within a distraction. Layer upon layer, Gail Jones has skilfully woven multiple narratives into a tightly held novel that will undo the reader with its poignancy. This is a novel about betrayal…
Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh
Thanks for Having Me is a novel told in interlinked stories, and even though you might think, ‘I don’t like short stories,’ it’s worth considering that some of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels – Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout; A Visit…
My Brilliant Sister by Amy Brown
Stella Miles Franklin. Literary hero, feminist trendsetter, trailblazer for Australian women to come – but what of her sister? Linda Franklin has remained largely unacknowledged in the whirlwind of Miles Franklin’s life, often relegated to the role of unassuming wife…
Browse our reviews by category
