Australian fiction
The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts
Against a backdrop of familiar ecological catastrophe – fires, floods, and the terrifying spectre of the future of a warmed world – a young woman’s life is unravelling in Sydney’s inner west. She works in a call centre connecting emergency…
Desire Lines by Felicity Volk
Paddy is seven years old when his parents hand him over to the care of the nuns. It is 1952, and some might say he is lucky to get away from his abusive father and the family’s poverty-line existence, but…
Melting Moments by Anna Goldsworthy
Fans of Anna Goldsworthy’s award-winning writing to date will be delighted – and far from surprised – to find that many of the notable qualities of her nonfiction and memoir writing are adroitly deployed in her debut novel, Melting Moments…
We Were Never Friends by Margaret Bearman
I approached this book curiously, thinking, ‘Why George Coates?’ The George Coates I know of was a distinguished war artist, who worked in London and Paris, where he met, and married, fellow art student Dora Meeson. He died in 1930…
Sweetness and Light by Liam Pieper
Liam Pieper’s unsettling, atmospheric second novel, Sweetness and Light, is set first on the west coast of India and later on the east. We initially encounter Australian expat Connor, who is ostensibly a dive instructor in the semi-isolated tourist…
Shirl by Wayne Marshall
It’s evident from the first page of Wayne Marshall’s debut collection of short stories, Shirl, that writing is inescapable for the author. As deep and fundamental as this creative drive may be – and deep it must be as…
Riptides by Kirsten Alexander
There are three immediate elements you can expect from local author Kirsten Alexander. You can expect the story to be multi-layered. You can expect there to be twists and turns in the plot. And you can be sure that at…
A Couple of Things Before the End by Sean O'Beirne
All hail Sean O’Beirne, and his brilliant debut collection of short stories, A Couple of Things Before the End, a timely excoriation of the nostalgic myths of Australianness. With a master satirist’s hand, O’Beirne exposes the failings of our…
Cherry Beach by Laura McPhee-Browne
Laura McPhee-Browne’s Cherry Beach is an assured debut with a distinct voice. I read it in two nights: cringing and sometimes gasping in recognition. Although set mainly in Toronto, the story also flashes back to a version of Australian adolescence…
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
Evie Wyld returns with another novel in which narratives converge over historical time, as they did in her Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning All the Birds, Singing. In The Bass Rock, Wyld constructs three stories linked by family ties…
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