What Am I Reading?
The Lace Weaver – Lauren Chater
The Lace Weaver (Simon & Schuster 2018), the debut novel by Lauren Chater, begins: ‘They say Estonia has five seasons. Bitter winter. Pale spring. Autumn, when the forests are carpeted with mushrooms. Summer, with its blue cloudless skies and rich harvest of fruit....
Sweet Adversity – Sheryl Gwyther
In Sweet Adversity (HarperCollins 2018) by Sheryl Gwyther - Children's Author, we meet 12-year-old Adversity McAllister, a plucky heroine with a melodious voice and a feisty personality. Abandoned at an orphanage during the Depression years after her parents were...
Less – Andrew Sean Greer
Less (Lee Boudreaux Books 2017) by Andrew Sean Greer is a wonderful, light-hearted tale that is laugh-out-loud funny but also very moving and poignant. Arthur Less is a failed novelist. About to turn 50 and attempting to avoid having to attend (as a guest) the wedding...
No Point in Stopping – Samuel Maguire
Samuel Maguire’s debut No Point in Stopping (Tiny Owl Workshop 2018) is a memoir novella, a compact, taut piece of writing that is simple and unpretentious, and probably one of the best insights into mental illness I have read. His words and depictions make sense; I...
Beneath the Mother Tree – DM Cameron
Beneath the Mother Tree (MidnightSun Publishing 2018), the debut novel by DM Cameron, is an absorbing and magical tale of rich Irish mythology braided with Indigenous history and language. The story flies, dream-like, through fantastical possibilities whilst remaining...
Traumata – Meera Atkinson
Traumata (UQP 2018) is an important work of non-fiction that traverses the notion of trauma from every angle – physical, psychological, emotional, historical, intergenerational and inherited. Author Meera Atkinson delves deep into her own personal story and the legacy...
The Hunter (and Other Stories of Men) – David Cohen
The Hunter (and Other Stories of Men) (Transit Lounge 2018) is a quirky and engaging collection of short stories by David Cohen, who gave us the memorable, very funny and rather odd novel Disappearing Off the Face of the Earth. In The Hunter, we are indeed given a...
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart – Holly Ringland
Holly Ringland’s debut novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (HarperCollins 2018) is a complex and many-layered narrative in which the reader can sense the gravitas of the research underpinning the story. The author’s depiction of place – of landscape, environment,...
The Geography of Friendship – Sally Piper
A gripping mystery, a thoughtful portrait of friendship, and a love song to the natural world. Sally Piper describes her new novel The Geography of Friendship (UQP 2018) as a story about female friendships, bushwalking and predatory men, and that is indeed what she...
Reading the Landscape: A Celebration of Australian Writing – various authors (anthology)
This year marks the 70th anniversary of University of Queensland Press, and to celebrate, the publishing house recently launched an anthology of newly commissioned pieces of writing by 25 authors who are currently – or have been in the past – UQP authors. The result...
The Legacy of Beauregarde – Rosa Fedele
This story, set in 1990, begins with a For Sale advertisement for The Seminary, built in 1877 as a Catholic church, but now a dilapidated Sydney landmark, vacant for the last 20 years, an extraordinary structure steeped in history but ‘in need of complete renovation’....
Writers on Writers: Erik Jensen on Kate Jennings
In this series of slim hardback books, an author is asked to write about another author that has inspired and fascinated them. In this edition of Writers on Writers (Black Inc Publishing 2017), Erik Jensen (founding editor of The Saturday Paper) introduces us to the...