Miles Franklin Award Archives - Newtown Review of Books

TARA JUNE WINCH The Yield. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks

by NRB | 10 Sep 2020 | Fiction | 0 comments

Tara June Winch’s multi-award-winning novel is told in three voices, one of which takes the form of a dictionary. Yield, bend the feet, tread, as in walking, also long, tall – baayanha. Yield itself is a funny word – yield in English is the reaping, the things that...

GREGORY DAY A Sand Archive. Reviewed by Paul Anderson

by NRB | 11 Jun 2020 | Fiction | 1 comment

The author of Archipelago of Souls explores a life spent with the sand dunes of the Great Ocean Road in A Sand Archive. Gregory Day’s fifth novel is a confluence of nature and culture set in France and Australia, on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. Day is a writer, poet...

EVIE WYLD The Bass Rock. Reviewed by Linda Funnell

by NRB | 28 Feb 2020 | Fiction | 2 comments

Evie Wyld won the Miles Franklin Award for her last novel, All the Birds, Singing. Her latest, set on the coast of Scotland, contains both beauty and violence. The Bass Rock opens with a small girl, who we will shortly meet as the grown-up Viv, finding the body of a...

MELISSA LUCASHENKO Too Much Lip. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks

by NRB | 21 Jan 2020 | Fiction | 1 comment

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...

ROGER AVERILL Relatively Famous. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir

by NRB | 1 May 2018 | Fiction | 0 comments

A playful real-but-fake fictional world is conjured in Relatively Famous. The title of Roger Averill’s new novel establishes the theme and slightly arch tone that underlie this intriguing metafictional fiction. Narrator Michael Madigan is the son of famous...

ASHLEY HAY A Hundred Small Lessons. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir

by NRB | 9 May 2017 | Fiction | 0 comments

Ashley Hay’s new novel gives us warm, affectionate portraits of people and place in a story that shifts between past and present. Longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Award, Ashley Hay’s previous novel, The Railwayman’s Wife, was a love letter to Thirroul. A...

LUCY TRELOAR Salt Creek. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren

by NRB | 7 Apr 2016 | Fiction | 0 comments

Inspired by family history and written in wonderfully fluid prose, Salt Creek brings to life the harsh beauty and the racially troubled past of the Coorong. In the Author’s Note at the end of this debut novel Lucy Treloar reveals that although the events that...

KAREN LAMB Thea Astley: Inventing her own weather. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks

by NRB | 30 Jun 2015 | Non-fiction | 0 comments

The first full biography of Australian writer Thea Astley is a rollicking read that reveals a complex maverick who pushed against both the limits of her time and her own doubts. ‘There was never a time when multi-award-winning Australian novelist Thea Astley was...

ELIZABETH HARROWER In Certain Circles. Reviewed by Michael Richardson

by NRB | 4 Jun 2015 | Fiction | 0 comments

The post-World War II themes of this novel are refracted into contemporary Australia with startling force. Between 1957 and 1966, Elizabeth Harrower published four critically acclaimed novels. Despite the admiration of Patrick White and Christina Stead, all four were...

New Year’s Day quiz: 2014 in books

by NRB | 1 Jan 2015 | Giveaways | 5 comments

2014 saw an interesting year for Australian literature – an Australian again winning the Man Booker Prize, plenty of controversy over the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and many great new books published. Test your own memory of the past year...

NRB Editors nominate their favourite books of 2014

by NRB | 23 Dec 2014 | Fiction, Non-fiction | 2 comments

From crime to literature, through ASIO and memoir to the bush – our Editors failed to coincide on a single title. Not all of these books were published in 2014, but they were our stand-out reads of the year. Jean’s picks: Elizabeth is Missing Emma Healey....

TRACY FARR The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir

by NRB | 21 Oct 2014 | Fiction | 3 comments

Longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Tracy Farr’s first novel cheekily rewrites history. A Russian scientist developed the world’s first electronic musical instrument, the theremin, during the late 1920s; Farr relocates its invention from the...