LUKE RUTLEDGE A Man and His Pride. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
Luke Rutledge’s debut novel is both a social comedy and a moving story of coming out. Luke Rutledge has written a delightful comedy of manners set against the backdrop of the 2017 marriage equality plebiscite. It opens at a cracking pace, introducing us to 26-year-old...
MEGAN ROGERS The Heart is a Star. Reviewed by Emma Foster
Debut novelist Megan Rogers has chosen the moody west coast of Tasmania as the backdrop for this dark family drama. Just as the atmosphere on the Apple Isle can often be bleak and unpredictable (characteristics that have lent themselves so well to the rise of the...
KYLIE NEEDHAM Girl in a Pink Dress. Reviewed by Annette Hughes
Kylie Needham’s debut novel contemplates what happens when a muse is also an artist. The ‘girl in a pink dress’ is Frances, a young art student who charms her tutor (twice her age) and becomes his muse. The trope of the older male artist and the younger female...
ALICE RYAN There’s Been A Little Incident. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Alice Ryan’s debut novel puts an extended family on the trail of their missing Molly. Molly Black had disappeared … That’s why the whole Black clan – from Granny all the way to Killan on Zoom from Sydney – is huddled together in the back room of Uncle...
ISOBEL BEECH Sunbathing. Reviewed by Robyne Young
Isobel Beech’s debut novel explores the grief left behind by a father’s suicide. From the opening scene when the unnamed daughter in Sunbathing crawls into the attic to retrieve her father’s dying cat, Donna, Isobel Beech creates an intimacy with the reader, bringing...
MICAIAH JOHNSON The Space Between Worlds. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Micaiah Johnson delivers a fresh take on multiple worlds and explores issues of power, nature and fate in her novel The Space Between Worlds. The idea of multiple worlds or multiple realities is a common one in science fiction. In her debut, The Space Between...
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...
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...
KATHRYN HIND Hitch: extract
This week’s extract is from two-time prize-winner Hitch, the debut novel from Australian author Kathryn Hind. Hitch was the inaugural winner of the Penguin Literary Prize (you can read more about the prize and the 2020 winner, Sophie Overett, here) and published...
HANYA YANAGIHARA The People in the Trees. Reviewed by James McKenzie Watson
Captivating, confronting and challenging, The People in the Trees is the 2013 debut novel by Hanya Yanagihara, who would go on to explode onto the international literary scene with her Man Booker shortlisted epic A Little Life in 2015. Part literary fiction, part dark...FIONA MCFARLANE The Night Guest. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
This mesmerising and suspenseful novel examines isolation, trust and the vagaries of memory. Ruth Field and her cats reside in a house set among the dunes on the New South Wales South Coast. Ruth is a widow who lives a self-contained life, her hours and days filled by...
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