JO LENNAN In the Time of Foxes. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
Predator or prey? Jo Lennan’s debut collection of stories lures the reader into a world where foxes can mean many things. In 2011, when the London Shard was under construction, workers were stunned to discover a fox had taken up residence on the...
LUKE HORTON The Fogging. Reviewed by Amy Walters
Luke Horton’s tense debut novel asks uncomfortable questions about intimate relationships. In hindsight, the end of a relationship can take on an air of inevitability. But is it possible to pinpoint the exact moment when it irrevocably breaks down? Or is the end...
KIM KELLY Her Last Words. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Historical novelist Kim Kelly (author of Walking, Sunshine and Wild Chicory) turns to the 21st century in her new novel to deliver a tale of intrigue and literary ambition. What a strange year 2020 has been. The world has already had bushfires, floods, pandemics,...
VICTORIA HANNAN Kokomo. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, Victoria Hannan’s debut is a rewarding journey. Victoria Hannan’s Kokomo takes us deep into the conundrum of love, with its heartbreak and trauma. In this, her first...
SL LIM Real Differences. Reviewed by Ann Skea
SL Lim’s debut won this year’s UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and explores questions of race, religion and culture. Nick, who tells this story, is a rather disengaged white Australian man who, as he tells us, ‘graduated...
IMBI NEEME The Spill: extract
This week we’re delighted to bring you an extract from Imbi Neeme’s debut The Spill, winner of the 2019 Penguin Literary Prize and published just last month. It’s an absorbing novel about two sisters, and how differently each remembers the past. When Nicole was 11 and...
LAURA JEAN MCKAY The Animals in That Country. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
Laura Jean McKay’s novel asks us to see the world through animals’ eyes. It was just past Goulburn on the Hume Highway, heading back to Sydney last Christmas. The Southern Highlands were aflame, and a southerly had pushed up smoke clouds as thick as a...
JESSIE TU A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing: extract
This week we’re thrilled to bring you an extract from Jessie Tu’s novel A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing – an exhilarating, disturbing, unputdownable debut about music, sex, and, yes, loneliness and connection. Jena Lin was a musical child prodigy, touring the great...
ELLIOT PERLMAN Maybe the Horse Will Talk. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Elliot Perlman’s latest novel is a timely chronicle of lawyers and sexual harassment. Stephen Maserov has problems. He is a 32-year-old second-year lawyer at the prestigious Melbourne law firm Freely Savage Carter Blanche, where he lives ‘in a collapsible...
DANI POWELL Return to Dust: extract
This week we’re delighted to bring you an extract from Dani Powell’s debut novel Return to Dust. As the title suggests, it is a novel about grief, but it is also a vivid and intimate portrait of the landscape and people of central Australia. Of long road trips with...
LUKE HORTON The Fogging: extract
This week in our series of extracts from recent Australian books, we’re delighted to bring you an extract from Luke Horton’s debut novel The Fogging. The fogging of the title refers to the routine spraying of insecticide around hotels in Bali, and it is during the...
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