We’re excited to present a series of online reviews, edited by Cher Tan. You’ll find the first offerings below—watch this space for more excellent writing soon.
Reviewed: So Close To Home, Mick Cummins
by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
“In playwright and social worker Mick Cummins’ debut novel, So Close to Home, we meet eighteen-year-old Aaron Peters in the throes of heroin withdrawal…”
Reviewed: The In-Between, Christos Tsiolkas
by Alex Gerrans
“The In-Between is Christos Tsiolkas consciously yoking himself to Australian literature in a historical sense. It begins with an epigraph from Patrick White’s The Tree of Man, another novel by a gay Australian writer which is about time and change more than it is about the relationship between two people…”
Reviewed: Paradise Estate, Max Easton
by Rosalind Moran
“Paradise Estate, Max Easton’s second novel, is in many ways a book about disintegration. The ironically-named titular location, a Sydney sharehouse that draws together the book’s central characters, is dilapidated to a hazardous degree…”
Reviewed: Green Dot, Madeleine Gray
by Alex Gerrans
“The novel begins as Hera gets a job as a content moderator for a Guardian-esque online newspaper. This could have been interesting: how much hateful commentary can a person be exposed to and remain psychologically sound? …”
Reviewed: Sunbirds, Mirandi Riwoe
by Ruth McHugh-Dillon
“In Mirandi Riwoe’s Sunbirds, her second novel, a Javanese servant called Diah is instructed by her Dutch boss to read a novel called A Java Romance. Indonesia as we know it doesn’t exist yet…”
Reviewed: Prima Facie, Suzie Miller
by Sam Elkin
“Melbourne-born playwright and now novelist Suzie Miller has rightly received extraordinary praise for her one-woman play Prima Facie, which examines how courts routinely fail victims of sexual assault…”
Reviewed: Gunflower, Laura Jean McKay
by Megan Cheong
“If pressed, I would describe Laura Jean McKay’s Gunflower as a collection of stories about bodies. Divided into three sections—‘birth’, ‘life’ and ‘death’—the stories explore the way bodies, with all their needs and desires, are controlled, exploited and disregarded…”
Reviewed: Me, Her, Us, Yen-Rong Wong
by Rosie Ofori Ward
“As a woman of colour, reading about sex, relationships and desire has often made me feel slightly uneasy. Most depictions of sexual awakening come from straight white women, whose experiences of sex so rarely engage with the nuances of racialised identity…”
Reviewed: Frank Moorhouse: A Life, Catharine Lumby
by Vanessa Francesca
“Lumby combines a media historian’s attention to the cultural current of the time with sketches of figures whose profile eclipsed Moorhouse’s in its narrower firmament, from Clive James to Germaine Greer…”
Reviewed: The Modern, Anna Kate Blair
by Claire Cao
” The Museum of Modern Art is the glassy heart of The Modern, Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel, where Australian transplant Sophia spends the last days of her two-year fellowship checking artworks for dust and taking Instagram pictures of different gradations of white…”
Reviewed: Body Friend, Katherine Brabon
by Elena Perse
“After undergoing surgery to alleviate the pain caused by an unnamed chronic autoimmune condition, Brabon’s narrator meets two women: Frida, at her hydrotherapy class, and Sylvia, at a local park…”
Reviewed: God Forgets About the Poor, Peter Polites
by Ruth McHugh-Dillon
“Poverty is defined by material scarcity. But there’s a sensual richness in Polites’ writing that anchors the story in the material world beyond money, through connection with nature, food and other bodies…”
Reviewed: The Palestine Laboratory
by Vanessa Francesca
“Through dedicated reporting and clear analysis, The Palestine Laboratory reveals several unsettling truths about this new and more insidious nationalist ideology. The first is the shadowy relationship between the Israeli government and its defence force, including intelligence agencies…”
Reviewed: But The Girl, Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
by Claire Cao
“In Jessica Zhan Mei Yu’s But the Girl, everything is embarrassing. The Australian narrator— only referred to by her family nickname ‘Girl’—is fulfilling her dream of travelling to Britain for an artist’s residency, a nascent taste of independence after being ‘forested’ by her over-protective Chinese-Malaysian family…”
Reviewed: Audition, Pip Adam
by Megan Cheong
“In the opening pages of Pip Adam’s fourth novel, Audition, three giants talk to each other through the walls of a spacecraft that can no longer accommodate them, each massive body crammed into a different room of the ship…”
Reviewed: The Scope of Permissibility, Zeynab Gamieldien
by Sonia Nair
“Campus novels so often involve a coming-of-age: the formative years of young adulthood are spent within the confines of institutions, with their unspoken political and social structures ripe for exploration, particularly those of morality, ethics, gender and sex…”
Reviewed: The Crying Room, Gretchen Shirm
by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
“Motherhood and female relationships are central to The Crying Room, in particular the fractured relationship between Bernie and her daughters Allison and Susie…”
Reviewed: Why We Are Here, Briohny Doyle
by Dion Kagan
“In Briohny Doyle’s fourth book, a writer called BB has lost both her partner and father in close succession, and, in the aftermath of their deaths, experiences the first wave of pandemic lockdowns…”
Reviewed: Sad Girl Novel, Pip Finkemeyer
by Matilda Dixon-Smith
“It’s a tall order to critique the very thing you are creating as you’re creating it. In the wake of Sally Rooney’s dominance…perhaps it’s now de rigueur for the white millennial author to interrogate why we all write what we write…”
Reviewed: Where I Slept, Libby Angel
Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
“The narrator of Libby Angel’s autofiction novel Where I Slept is an entropic force. A self-described poet, she dances on a razor’s edge between destitution and transcendence: busking and bin-diving, sleeping in filthy toilets on train carriages—a neo-vagabond of sorts.”
Reviewed: Hospital, Sanya Rushdi
by Sonia Nair
“In 2009, 2010 and 2015, Bangladeshi-Australian writer Sanya Rushdi experienced three episodes of psychosis and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Years later, a narrator who shares her first name, background and medical history attempts to disentangle the model of medical care she’s subjected to and the social system that deems her a threat.”
Reviewed: Notes on Her Colour, Jennifer Neal
by Rosie Ofori Ward
“Set in Florida and around the year Gabrielle, a young Black Indigenous woman, spends at home between high school and university, Jennifer Neal’s Notes on Her Colour is a lyrical examination of all we inherit from our families, and how those inheritances shape our lives…”
Reviewed: The Drama Student, Autumn Royal
by Josie/Jocelyn Deane
“This becomes an act of translation: from the register of actor to writer, it’s carried over throughout the book, mirroring a broader concern. What is the gesture that an actor performs? How does it derive its meaning?”
Reviewed: Cruel Care: A History of Children at Our Borders, Jordana Silverstein
by Matilda Dixon-Smith
“Silverstein’s book is an enlightening work of deep critical analysis that radically centres Aboriginal sovereignty in a discussion about Australia’s onerous treatment of refugee children, with a particular focus from the 1970s onwards till today.”
Reviewed: Anam, André Dao
by Claire Cao
“In André Dao’s rigorous and masterful debut novel Anam, a Vietnamese Australian man attempts to write the story of his grandfather and, in turn, the cultural memory of Vietnam’s expansive diaspora.”
Reviewed: Resistance, Jacinta Halloran
by Dion Kagan
“Nina is a family therapist with an ‘unerring ability to listen’. She applies this skill with her clients, although this fourth novel by Jacinta Halloran strongly implies that the burden of the professional listener is to metabolise the thoughts of others even outside of work, including talkative Uber drivers and strangers in doctors’ waiting rooms.”
Reviewed: The Albatross,Nina Wan
by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
“A woman drives to a public golf course. She is not quite sure what compels her to go there, yet there she is, in her non-golf-appropriate clothing, at a golf course. A teenage caddie asks her what she is doing there, if she even knows where she is: ‘We don’t see a lot of people like you around here. They’re usually, I guess, a bit older, and male.’”
Reviewed: Funny Ethnics, Shirley Le
by Rosie Ofori Ward
“Shirley Le’s debut novel, Funny Ethnics, follows Sylvia Nguyen, the only child of Vietnamese refugee parents in an off-beat and comical coming-of-age story that will be all too recognisable for many second-generation immigrants of colour.”
Reviewed: Wall, Jen Craig
by Maks Sipowicz
“Jen Craig’s new novel, Wall, is a powerful exploration of an artist’s need to explain herself and to be understood by herself and others. Written in the form of two long monologues addressed to her partner, we learn that the unnamed narrator is in Sydney from overseas to clear her dead father’s house of the junk he refused to ever throw away…”
Reviewed: A Minor Chorus, Billy-Ray Belcourt
by Hasib Hourani
“After having published two books of poetry and one essay collection, Driftpile Cree academic and poet Billy-Ray Belcourt addresses his trademark preoccupations—precarities of place, Indigeneity and gender—in A Minor Chorus, a self-referential and pensive first novel that examines the form itself. . .”
Reviewed: Shirley, Ronnie Scott
by Maks Sipowicz
“Ronnie Scott’s new novel, Shirley, is a smart melodrama about growing up in your thirties set against the existential dread of living through ecological collapse and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. . .”
Reviewed: Little Plum, Laura McPhee-Browne
by Charle Malycon
“Laura McPhee-Browne’s second novel, Little Plum, explores mothering through the truth of its protagonist, Coral, a woman with a chronic mental health condition and complicated upbringing. Beginning with a series of epigraphs that segue into a dream-diary extract, the novel’s opening firmly establishes the mother–daughter complex as its theme. . .”
Reviewed: Blue Hunger, Viola Di Grado
by Claire Cao
“Artists have a long history of entwining the act of eating with the erotic. Eating and fucking both involve a response to your cravings, to your most primal senses. Stretch the metaphor further and there’s a stew of messy feelings to devour: the care and reciprocity involved in preparing a meal stirred in with feelings of guilt; the transgression of bodily desire overriding mental willpower. . .”
Reviewed: Tell Me Again, Amy Thunig
by Ellen O’Brien
“Within its first few pages, Tell Me Again had me transfixed. Thunig’s voice and vision is, for the most part, commanding. Her commitment to stories that are not only told but lived in circular ways resonated with me, as did her compassionate honesty in recounting her family’s history . . .”
Reviewed: Iris, Fiona Kelly McGregor
by Vanessa Francesca
“A notable figure during the 1930s to 1950s, Iris Webber was a busker, petty thief and ‘sly grog’ seller who was implicated in a number of violent crimes in Sydney’s underworld. Later, she also gained a reputation for her fiery courtroom performances . . .”
Reviewed: The Lovers, Yumna Kassab
by Imogen Dewey
“An analytical fable about one couple, Jamila and Amir, The Lovers is a similar project to Alain de Botton’s Essays In Love (1993). It probes at our myriad varieties of self-sabotage, the corrosive effects of our delusions, and the pitfalls of idealisation . . .”
Reviewed: Moon Sugar, Angela Meyer
by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
“Grief and love are at the heart of Angela Meyer’s second novel, Moon Sugar. Grief—for potential lives that may never come to fruition, for lost loves and futures, for friends who have slipped through and away. Love—the carnal kind, the soft, familial kind, the hopeful kind . . .”
Reviewed: Love and Other Rituals, Monica Macansantos
by Tinashe Jakwa
“At some point during the span of our lives, we wonder about the ways we’ve led it. The lost loves we pine for long after they have faded. Lonely nights spent far away from the people we hold dear . . .”
Reviewed: Googlecholia, Michael Farrell
by Isabella Gullifer-Laurie
“What is so titillating about the inbox, the timeline, the browser? It is not so much the interface(s) in and of itself, but the way it refers precisely to that which exists outside of it . . .”
Reviewed: Limberlost, Robbie Arnott
by Ned Hirst
“Robbie Arnott’s third novel, Limberlost, begins by describing a whale that has gone mad and is destroying fishing boats. Some locals postulate that the whale’s aggression stems from it having been harpooned in the brain, while others suggest that the whale is seeking vengeance for a pod that was harpooned . . .”
Reviewed: People Who Lunch, Sally Olds
by Dion Kagan
“‘I’m not couching this in Marxist terms incidentally’, Sally Olds writes in this collection’s third essay. The ironically-titled ‘For Discussion and Resolution’ is a critical history of experiments with post-work and polyamory—ultimately demonstrating that, rather than evade co-option by capitalist power relations, most contemporary approaches to polyamory tend to accommodate them . . .”
Reviewed: This Devastating Fever, Sophie Cunningham
by Imogen Dewey
“The novel, Cunningham’s third, jumps between timelines. The notoriously entangled Bloomsbury circle is juxtaposed against Alice, a present-day Melbourne writer working on an unfinishable book about them . . .”
Reviewed: Provocations: New and Selected Writing, Jeff Sparrow
by Vanessa Francesca
“Jeff Sparrow’s collection of essays, Provocations, shows every era contains more possibilities that the tropes many lean on to tell its stories. The former editor of Overland shows dexterity across a range of arguments about Australian history, politics and culture, which are thought-provoking without being arbitrarily contrarian . . .”
Reviewed: New Australian Fiction 2022, Kill Your Darlings (ed. Suzy Garcia)
by Maks Sipowicz
“A consistent theme in recent discussions of literary trends—at least on Twitter—is the massive surge in popularity of shorter forms of literary writing . . .”
Reviewed: Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls, Anne Casey-Hardy
by Charle Malycon
“Don’t let the title of this book scare you off. Its tongue-in-cheek tone, persistent throughout the collection, counters its terrifying tales . . .”
Reviewed: Growing in to Autism, Sandra Thom-Jones
by Caitlin McGregor
“Sandra Thom-Jones’ Growing in to Autism is part memoir, part research, and part self-help guide for her fellow autistic people. It’s a very autistic book: powerfully and logically structured, meticulously cross-referenced and indexed, and written with practicality and usefulness in mind.”
Reviewed: Her Fidelity, Katharine Pollock
by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
“When Her Fidelity opens, Kathy has worked at Brisbane indie store Dusty’s Records for half her life, but now, approaching 30, the social and cultural capital that comes with it is wearing off.”
Reviewed: Bon and Lesley, Shaun Prescott
by Scott Limbrick
“Prescott’s prose is deceptively simple, swiftly building intricate worlds and characters. True to his description of Newnes, he has a special talent for capturing collisions of the beautiful and mundane.”
Reviewed: Enclave, Claire G. Coleman
by Ellen O’Brien
“Claire G. Coleman is anything but slow. Having published four books in five years, as well as contributing to short story and poetry anthologies, writing screenplays, and even featuring in a documentary, Coleman is aware of her profuse productivity…”
Reviewed: Everything Feels Like the End of the World, Else Fitzgerald
by Alex Gerrans
“Else Fitzgerald’s debut short story collection, Everything Feels Like the End of the World, is about love in a time of climate grief. The crux of the collection points to how even though we are now experiencing relentless change—climate-related or otherwise—love and loss remain constant…”
Reviewed: Raised by Wolves, Jess Ho
by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
“One of the great ethnic clichés is food as a love language, often used in place of verbal expressions of love. Not to say it doesn’t ring true, but it’s said enough to become almost redundant. It’s particularly the case with those from the Asian diaspora: my parents never say I love you, but they cut me slices of fruit, and so on…”
Reviewed: Exactly As I am, Rae White
by Jocelyn Deane
“To live trans, and non-binary, in a world that legislates against you—at the bleeding edge of language and popular discourse, predicated on colonial gender norms and a constant appropriation of your particular, multiform labour, dealing with transphobic bosses, your passports, Medicare and debit cards failing—is to stand outside one-self, even while fighting to survive…”
Reviewed: Every Version of You, Grace Chan
by Megan Cheong
“In Grace Chan’s debut novel Every Version of You, it’s 2087 and the climate catastrophe is in full swing. The Yarra has dried up, yet even in the oppressive heat, Melburnians must wear full PPE to shield themselves from dust, illness and radiation should they choose to venture outside…”
Reviewed: The Woman in the Library, Sulari Gentill
by Sonia Nair
“The Woman in the Library is a book about a writer writing a book about a writer writing a book. Though much of the solitary act of writing is difficult to externalise let alone dramatise, Sulari Gentill’s thrilling, twisty, meta murder mystery is the glossy sheen through which we access the inner thoughts and motivations of two writers…”
Reviewed: Losing Face, George Haddad
by Dion Kagan
“Nineteen-year-old Joey’s fatal flaw is inertia. He floats around Western Sydney, working at Woolies and feeling ambivalent about the ‘wrong guys’ he hangs out with. His lethargy is apparent from the first page of George Haddad’s Losing Face, when he asks ‘for extra chilli in his bánh mì because it numbed his mouth and he liked numbness’…”
Reviewed: Women I Know, Katerina Gibson
by Matilda Dixon-Smith
“What is ‘woman’? A performance, perhaps. Or a category into which some of us are sorted. Maybe it is a story—or stories—we are told, which through mere regurgitation have come to accept as real…”
Reviewed: big beautiful female theory, Eloise Grills
by Imogen Dewey
“Painting, collage, reflections and poetry coalesce in a hybrid of critical theory guide, comic and zine. Dreamy illustrations burst from sad blue and grey into peach, green, yellow; warnings, jokes and epiphanies are etched in blood red and neat black letters…”
Reviewed: Our Members Be Unlimited, Sam Wallman
by Mag Ngo
“On 1st April 2022, a ground-breaking election victory occurred in the United States: Amazon’s first-ever union was created since its 28-year history in the country, despite the millions spent by the company trying to sway the vote. Fittingly, comics-journalist, cartoonist and union organiser Sam Wallman has also just published Our Members Be Unlimited…”
Reviewed: An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, Paul Dalla Rosa
by Claire Cao
“Gloriously deadpan and effortlessly incisive, Paul Dalla Rosa’s debut short story collection An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life is a pitch-dark look at the alienation of modern life. The characters in the ten stories are predominantly young artists, their hunger for creativity and meaning curtailed by economic precarity: they work at shadowy corporations and dive bars, as dishwashers, cam boys and retail assistants.”
Reviewed: Root and Branch, Eda Gunaydin
by May Ngo
“The first thing that strikes me about Root and Branch, Eda Gunaydin’s debut collection of essays, is her eye: what she sees and how she sees, and the way this is conveyed through exuberant writing that is at turns funny, sarcastic and dark. It’s the details here that matter. . .”
Reviewed: The Burnished Sun, Mirandi Riwoe
by Maks Sipowicz
“Mirandi Riwoe’s latest book, The Burnished Sun, is a forceful collection of stories about alienation, missing home, sacrifice, and striving for acceptance. It consists of twelve stories, including ‘The Fish Girl’, which won the Seizure Viva La Novella prize in 2017. Throughout this book Riwoe takes the reader into the emotional lives of her protagonists…”
Reviewed: Here Goes Nothing, Steve Toltz
by Scott Limbrick
“Angus Mooney is dead. This isn’t a spoiler: this is page one of Steve Toltz’s latest novel, Here Goes Nothing. Angus, a wedding videographer with a checkered history, has been murdered, and is immediately thrust into a strange afterlife that isn’t heaven, hell, or even purgatory, while the man who killed him attempts to seduce his wife. . .”
Reviewed: How to Be Between, Bastian Fox Phelan
by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
“Bastian Fox Phelan’s debut, How to Be Between, is a striking millennial odyssey. Documenting their experience growing up in Wollongong, Newcastle, and Sydney, couch-surfing in Europe and backpacking in the US, Phelan weaves their personal narrative into an exploration of facial hair and its implications for a young genderfluid person. . .”
