Emerging Critics 2021

In an expansive review of Paul Dalla Rosa’s debut short story collection, Ursula Robinson-Shaw rethinks our obsession with ‘craft’ and ‘tenderness’ in the context of alt-lit’s aestheticist revival.

Why was Elizabeth von Arnim so quickly and thoroughly forgotten? I wonder if the answer instead lies in the honesty with which she writes about women, the double standards to which they are habitually subjected, and the men whose unthinking or appalling behaviour so often shapes their life trajectories.

Rees is open about her personal connection to her parents’ papers, which does complicate the book.

This is a book that does not attempt to contain its own reception or anticipate its reader’s reproach. We aren’t asked to pity the protagonist, or to see virtue in her unhappiness. We aren’t asked to find her funny, either, although we do.

Here in Neave’s second novel, the author tackles the essential unknowability of our parents and who they once were. Believe in Me tells the story of Sarah as recounted by her daughter Bet. The narrator, whose name we do not learn until page 104, begins her mother’s story in 1974 and, like the narrator of Neave’s previous novel, must also grapple with impressions and events she cannot fully understand.

Here is my little hypothesis: People love to say that the problem with Australian literature is a lack of critical culture. It’s not. It’s that people don’t read Australian literature, and then they lie about it online. Every day I open Instagram and think, it is so brave of you to post a picture of that book you haven’t read. Someone could ask you a single question about it and the whole house of cards would come down. But nobody will, because they haven’t read it either.

The Game distinguishes itself because Kelly… rejects the notion that personhood is best understood in terms of a surface-depth model. In fact, Kelly is perpetually suspicious of the view that politicians (or people) consist of two divisible parts – a performance and a private self to which the performance obliquely refers.

The cover of The Rabbits, showing a Hills Hoist and overgrown lawn, indicates something hiding in this suburban household, even as an outsized sun bears down, reminding us of the deep shadows it can cast.

One of the pleasures of Mother & I is joining Ware in the gradual discovery of his mother’s multitudinous character.

The precocious teenage girl looms large in pop music, a culture that has always been enamoured by stories of youthful ingenuity.