Australian fiction
The Restorer by Michael Sala
The Restorer is often surprisingly beautiful, at times lulling us into quiet coastal domesticity or the coming-of-age story of Freya, the daughter of the family the novel is centred around. With exhaustion, pugnaciousness, slipperiness, and intelligence Freya swings between finding…
The Trapeze Act by Libby Angel
The Trapeze Act, the debut novel from Australian writer Libby Angel, is an expertly layered, lyrical rumination on family and identity. Growing up in suburban Adelaide in the 1960’s, Loretta is the daughter of Leda, an eccentric Dutch trapeze…
Barking Dogs by Rebekah Clarkson
Set in Mount Barker, a once-sleepy country town now enveloped by Adelaide’s urban sprawl, Rebekah Clarkson’s Barking Dogs brings together multiple stories and perspectives to form a vivid snapshot of the town and its people, their anxieties and private tragedies…
The Permanent Resident by Roanna Gonsalves
The sixteen stories in the collection The Permanent Resident by Roanna Gonsalves depict modern Indian immigration to Australia. Gonsalves, who came to Australia in 1998 as an international student, is a specialist in contemporary Indian literature.
Many of her stories…
The Birdman's Wife by Melissa Ashley
The Birdman’s Wife is a novel that will appeal to bird fanciers and devotees of John Gould’s monographs. The story is told from the perspective of Gould’s wife, Elizabeth, and begins in 1828 when she is twenty-four, and meets Gould…
Goodwood by Holly Throsby
Goodwood is a quintessential NSW country town – sandwiched between a river and a mountain, known for its timber and its fishing – the sort of town where not much happens, everyone knows everyone else’s business, and nobody much bothers…
The Better Son by Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson’s debut novel Pescador’s Wake was highly praised, and her original, descriptive language made her an Australian writer to watch. While Pescador’s Wake was set on the rough seas of the far Southern Ocean, Johnson has chosen another intimidating…
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
I pounced on The Museum of Modern Love as soon as I heard about its subject matter: the performance artist Marina Abramovic. Written by Australian author Heather Rose, this blend of fact and fiction centres on those two and a…
The Love of a Bad Man by Laura Elizabeth Woollett
The women in Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s assured short-fiction collection The Love of a Bad Man are the kind that get under your skin and stay there. This collection offers readers an unusual and affecting reading experience, coupling true crime with…
We. Are. Family. by Paul Mitchell
Paul Mitchell’s first novel is an exploration of Australian masculinity and the suffocating limitations we place on our boys and men. The first page is a family tree, but not a sprawling tangle that reaches back and across oceans, rather…
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