LIAM MURPHY The Roadmap of Loss. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
Liam Murphy’s debut novel is both a road trip across the US and a journey into the past. It’s tempting to invoke the first stanza of Philip Larkin’s famous poem ‘This Be The Verse’ here. That’s because The Roadmap of Loss is about unresolved childhood psychological...
ROBYN BISHOP The Rust Red Land. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Through the story of Matilda, Robyn Bishop’s novel reveals the constrained lives of women in rural New South Wales in the late 1800s. It is July 1892 and Matilda is just old enough to help Clara out of her cot, change her nappy and dress her, but not old enough to...
MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM Day. Reviewed by CJ Pardey
In this new novel, New Yorker Michael Cunningham takes inspiration from lockdowns and their impact on relationships. In his most recent novel, Day, Michael Cunningham takes on the difficult business of fictionalising the Covid experience. In his Pulitzer-winning novel...
TRACY RYAN The Queen’s Apprenticeship. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Tracy Ryan’s latest novel evokes the social divisions of sixteenth-century France and the stories of two independent-minded women. In The Queen’s Apprenticeship, Tracy Ryan tells the stories of two women. One, Jehane/Josse, the daughter of a journeyman printer who...
IAIN RYAN The Strip. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith
The new novel from the author of The Spiral and The Student delivers a noir excursion into the underbelly of the Gold Coast in the 1980s. Steeped in corruption, incompetence, and alcohol, 1980s Queensland seems like the perfect setting for a distinctly Australian...
SUSAN McCREERY All the Unloved. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Susan McCreery’s novel recounts the lives of the residents of a block of flats in 1990s Bondi and the complexities of love. A few short sentences and a scene is set, a mood caught, a character revealed: all this is beautifully done. Then short passages are linked...
MELISSA LUCASHENKO Edenglassie. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
The new novel from the award-winning author of Too Much Lip entwines Brisbane’s past and present to reveal the impact of colonisation. As I was reading it, Edenglassie received the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. It is an ambitious novel and as I read...
AYESHA INOON Untethered. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Winner of the the ASA/HQ Fiction Prize, Ayesha Inoon’s debut novel explores the experience of moving from Sri Lanka to Australia. It was the silence that she noticed first. As they drove, Canberra unfolded in a series of stunning panoramas … The streets were empty,...
MYKAELA SAUNDERS Always Will Be. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Mykaela Saunders’ stories imagine a future where the connection to land and culture is central. Mykaela Saunders won an Aurealis award for her exciting and thought-provoking anthology of First Nations speculative fiction This All Come Back Now. In the same year her...
JO RICCIONI The Rising. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
The conclusion to Jo Riccioni’s high fantasy series The Branded Season brings Nara and her sister Osha to the Shadow City of Reis. This exciting sequel to The Branded concludes a thought-provoking and fast-paced story about two sisters finding their place in a harsh,...
FERNANDA TRIAS Pink Slime. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The new novel from Uruguayan writer Fernanda Trias is set in a dystopian city and has unsettling echoes of recent events. When the fog rolled in, the port turned into a swamp. Shadows fell across the plaza, filtering between the trees and leaving the long marks of...
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