MELISSA LUCASHENKO Too Much Lip. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
Melissa Lucashenko’s latest novel reveals the impact of history on contemporary Indigenous lives, and richly deserves its Miles Franklin Award. In telling the truth about the reality of many Aboriginal families’ lives, Melissa Lucashenko has created a...
SALLIE MUIRDEN Wedding Puzzle. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Sallie Muirden’s fourth novel explores love and life choices. How does anyone ever manage to choose a partner for life? Given the imperfections of every choice, given that we are all complicated individuals with our own distinct bundles of neuroses, Muirden asks...
SUZANNE DANIEL Allegra in Three Parts. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
The adults seem determined to make the world a baffling place for Allegra. Suzanne Daniel brings the 1970s to life in this debut novel. Sometimes when I get information from secretly listening in to the adults, it feels as though growing up is not so much about...
Marvellous Monday Giveaway
This Monday we’re giving away two very different novels about life outside Australia’s cities: Jennifer Mills’s Dyschronia, set in a small coastal town and longlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award, and previous Miles Franklin winner Sofie...
BELINDA CASTLES Bluebottle. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Belinda Castles navigates the dark undercurrents of a family in her new novel. Bluebottles are common on Australian beaches, their attractive hue concealing the painful poison within. Belinda Castles’ new novel (she previously won the Vogel for The River Baptists and...
ANDREA GOLDSMITH Invented Lives. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
This new novel from the author of the award-winning The Memory Trap explores what happens when an imagined life meets reality. The preface of Andrea Goldsmith’s Invented Lives cites Romanian author Norman Manea’s The Fifth Impossibility. ‘We are all exiles,’ writes...
NIGEL FEATHERSTONE Bodies of Men. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
Nigel Featherstone’s new novel explores what it means to be a man. This latest work of fiction from Australian writer Nigel Featherstone is in many ways a timeless novel of love between men in wartime. But while its elegant structure turns on revelations of...
JACLYN MORIARTY Gravity is the Thing. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Where is the truth? Jaclyn Moriarty’s second novel for adults pairs a single mother and a mysterious guidebook to deliver a story that reflects the lived experience of the 21st century. ‘Oh!’ he said suddenly. ‘Oh, you’re thinking it’s a metaphor! No! No!’ His...
JULIE KEYS The Artist’s Portrait. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Shortlisted for the the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers in 2017, this debut novel from Julie Keys explores the life of a woman artist in Sydney in the 1920s. The first couple of times I passed her house there was no one around. Not that I saw anyone much at that...
AS PATRIC The Butcherbird Stories. Reviewed by James McKenzie Watson
AS Patrić won the Miles Franklin Award for his novel Black Rock White City. In this new collection he demonstrates his mastery of the short story. Patrić’s fourth short-story collection, The Butcherbird Stories, reads with a misty and dreamlike intensity, exploring...
MARY-ROSE MACCOLL The True Story of Maddie Bright. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
The True Story of Maddie Bright captures the challenges of the writing life with wit and romance. Intriguing from the opening scenes, which play out in the grim between-wars London of 1921 and a possum-ridden Brisbane house 60 years on, Mary-Rose MacColl’s sixth and...
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