What Am I Reading?
The Loudness of Unsaid Things – Hilde Hinton
In The Loudness of Unsaid Things (Hachette 2020), Hilde Hinton has created two unforgettable female characters with distinctive voices who will each clutch at your heart. In this meandering tale of loneliness, isolation and connection, Hinton’s prose is simple,...
Stone Sky Gold Mountain – Mirandi Riwoe
Stone Sky Gold Mountain (UQP 2020) is the latest work by author Mirandi Riwoe, whose stunning novella The Fish Girl (shortlisted for The Stella Prize) subverted a traditional narrative in a retelling from the perspective of a character normally silenced. In her new...
Q&A with Sophie Hardcastle: BELOW DECK
A Q & A with Sophie Hardcastle about her new novel BELOW DECK (Allen and Unwin) In lieu of author launches and book tours due to the current pandemic crisis, we’re focusing on promoting the new work of Australian writers through alternative platforms. Reading is...
The Good Turn – Dervla McTiernan
Irish / Australian author Dervla McTiernan’s third novel The Good Turn (Harper Collins 2019) builds on her crime series featuring Detective Cormac Reilly, after the success of her previous books The Ruin and The Scholar. Once again, she gives readers a solid police...
He is Mine and I Have No Other – Rebecca O’Connor
This tender and poignant novel set in a small town in Ireland in the 1990’s is a slim, literary wonder. He is Mine and I have No Other (Canongate Books 2018) by Rebecca O’Connor is the story of local 15-year-old Lani Devine who falls in love with the enigmatic Leon...
Act of Grace – Anna Krien
Act of Grace (Black Inc Books 2019) demonstrates author Anna Krien’s ability to flex her fiction muscle after years of training in non-fiction and journalism. The result is a literary fiction novel that feels authentically grounded in fact, with characters so real...
I Choose Elena – Lucia Osborne-Crowley
I Choose Elena (Allen and Unwin 2019) is Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s extraordinary memoir of the sexual assault she suffered as a 15-year-old, the subsequent 10 years of chronic pain that followed, her courage – only two years ago – to finally break her silence and speak...
The Trespassers – Meg Mundell
Just finished Meg Mundell’s The Trespassers (UQP 2019), which I read obsessively and breathlessly in almost one sitting. Poignant, timely, compelling and bursting with meaning comparative with our current world, this is a fast-paced and tense crime novel, a...
Growing Pineapples in the Outback – Rebecca Lister and Tony Kelly
Partners Rebecca Lister and Tony Kelly have collaborated to write Growing Pineapples in the Outback (UQP 2020), a memoir depicting the years in which they made the decision to make a major lifestyle change by moving from Melbourne to Mt Isa in north-western Queensland...
Below Deck – Sophie Hardcastle
Author Sophie Hardcastle’s latest novel Below Deck (Allen and Unwin 2020) is a beautifully written meditation on feelings of trauma and love, narrated through a story of the meaning and shape of colours. The book is divided into four distinct sections, each...
Gulliver’s Wife – Lauren Chater
We’ve all heard the story of Gulliver’s Travels and his adventures with the tiny Lilliputian people, but have you ever wondered what happened when Lemuel Gulliver returned home with his extraordinary tales? How did his family and friends react to his fantastical...
No Friend But the Mountains – Behrouz Boochani
I’ve followed Kurdish-Iranian journalist and advocate Behrouz Boochani ever since he first appeared on Twitter, so it is rather shamefacedly that I admit I have only just read his important book No Friend But the Mountains (Picador 2018). As with so many non-fiction...