DOMINIC KNIGHT Man vs Child. Reviewed by Suzanne Rath
Dominic Knight’s third novel is a return to the snappy observational humour and romance of his debut Disco Boy. In today’s celebrity-obsessed world, we can imagine the pumped-up egos and diva behaviours encountered by those working in the entertainment...ANDREA GOLDSMITH The Memory Trap. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
An evocative novel of memory, music, family and betrayal from the author of Reunion. Australian-born Nina Jameson has made a satisfying life for herself in London: she has a successful job as a consultant on memorial projects; a city house and a country cottage; and a...HANNAH RICHELL The Shadow Year. Reviewed by Jody Lee
The second novel from the author of Secrets of the Tides explores the sinister legacy of an idealistic experiment. It is 1980 and five university students coming to the end of their studies are facing the uncertainty of their future. In the haze of summer they...RICHARD BEASLEY Me and Rory Macbeath. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
No, it’s not OK to hit your wife: this coming of age story has a devastating heart. It’s summer, 1977, when 12-year-old Jake and his best friend Robbie meet Rory Macbeath, whose family have just moved from Glasgow to their suburban Adelaide street. Rory may not be...HANNAH KENT Burial Rites. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
This novel of a condemned woman in nineteenth-century Iceland grips like a northern winter. It is March 1829 and Agnes Magnúsdóttir has been sentenced to be beheaded for murder. Her crime has made her notorious, and she is aware of the impact she now has on those...GRAEME SIMSION The Rosie Project. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
This delightful story revives the screwball comedy in a very 21st-century way. Associate professor of genetics Don Tillman knows the best way to solve a problem is to approach it rationally and systematically. So when he decides it’s time to get married, he applies...KATE FORSYTH The Wild Girl. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Kate Forsyth’s new novel takes us beneath and beyond the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm. This novel offers the reader an enormous surprise. What seems a simple but richly told story of enduring love arising in childhood opens into an imaginative and wrenching...MELISSA LUCASHENKO Mullumbimby. Reviewed by James Tierney
This sure, funny novel of an Indigenous woman and her land is alive with the tensions of new ways of belonging. Meaning is a messy act. Its fusing of memory, testimony and narrative is a selective one that shapes cadence and line out of life’s awkward arrhythmia....JESSE BLACKADDER Chasing the Light. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
Three women battle the elements, men and each other in the quest to be the first to set foot on Antarctica. Ingrid Christensen has lived the last twenty years waiting for her husband, Lars, to make good on his promise to take her to Antarctica. In that time, Ingrid...MICHELLE DE KRETSER Questions of Travel. Reviewed by James Tierney
From colonialism to the internet, Michelle de Kretser explores big themes in this tale of two travellers. Australian literary fiction is sometimes accused of lacking ambition. Michelle de Kretser’s fourth novel attempts to defy this criticism with a palimpsest of...ALEX MILLER Autumn Laing. A comment by Thea Welsh
Alex Miller makes Sunday Reed a lesser woman for the sake of art. In an enthusiastic review of Alex Miller’s novel Autumn Laing in the Australian Book Review, Morag Fraser worried that, as the novel draws ‘freely on the lives of [Sidney] Nolan and the Heide circle’,...
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