Fiction
The Flurry of Letters: A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones
‘In his 1930s memoir Berlin Childhood around 1900, the philosopher Water Benjamin writes from exile of Berlin on the cusp of modernity. Among the images governing Berlin Childhood are snowflakes. The flurries Benjamin compares to the play of words on the page, his apprehension of snowflakes and stories (and allegory itself), while not describing the narrative of Gail Jones’ A Guide to Berlin, can be pressed to illuminate the book’s figurative gesture: something new and unremittingly dense breaking through the familiar.’
‘Could Not Put It Down’
‘When publishers have a big new novel to promote, one with buzz and the potential for significant sales, they will often market it to women readers. To attract these readers, a novel might be given a cover featuring images of women or children, it might come with a reading group guide, and it might be emblazoned with a sticker from another female-oriented media organisation. What effects might such packaging have on a novel’s critical reception?’ Beth Driscoll on three new novels
Novelist Yells at Cloud: Purity by Jonathan Franzen
‘Purity’s unifying theme, clearly announced in its title, is not ultimately social or cultural or political, but moral and psychological. Its concern with information and technology on a large scale are ultimately subordinated to its interest in the characters’ states of being, which come to be defined by their relationship to Purity (both the character and the ideal). This grounds the novel in the intimate themes of personal guilt and secrecy.’
The Atmosphere We Live In: The World Without Us
‘How do we live through the losses we know are going on all around us, a sense of calamity that is not new to our age but which is newly pervasive of our atmosphere, the earth under our feet? In the face of this, Mireille Juchau’s fiction presents art not as self-realisation but rather as a vital way of paying attention to the world — and the people — around us.’
Listen to the Sirens: The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
‘Charlotte Wood’s fifth novel The Natural Way of Things is a virtuoso performance, plotted deftly through a minefield of potential traps, weighted with allegory yet swift and sure in its narrative advance. In Wood’s fictional imagining, the mechanism of punitive control is simply to remove those whose sexuality has become a provocative inconvenience to powerful men. It’s galling, but is it impossible?’
Shadows of the Shoah: The Waiting Room by Leah Kaminsky
‘The Waiting Room, the debut novel by Leah Kaminsky, and a powerful new addition to the canon of Australian Holocaust literature, takes as its impossible project the redemption of the dead – or at the very least their preservation in the pages of literature.’
Inhabiting Spirits: The Life of Houses by Lisa Gorton
‘Gorton’s way of seeing the world and of naming its parts is the quality that sets her debut novel apart from the mass of fiction currently being published in Australia… Most contemporary novels favour substance a long way over style, which can lead to a lot of commonplace sentences. But as one might expect from a poet, Gorton’s every sentence – and not just every sentence, but every phrase and every word – has been turned this way and that in the light of her attention and fitted to the next with the precision of a mosaicist.’ Kerryn Goldsworthy on Lisa Gorton’s The Life of Houses.
Wild Islands: Archipelago of Souls by Gregory Day
‘Archipelago of Souls is Gregory Day’s fourth novel since his prize-winning debut, The Patron Saint of Eels, first appeared in 2005. But despite this significant output in fiction, various short-listings and awards, and Day’s regular contributions as a reviewer in the mainstream press, his writing seems to have been largely overlooked by contemporary Australian literary criticism.’
Restless Fictions
‘The mantle of emerging author can be a heavy one, particularly for those whose work has already garnered critical acclaim at manuscript stage. While these three share the advantage such attention brings them in what is a busy marketplace for new writers, their work displays a marked diversity of theme and form.’ Sophia Barnes on new books by Miles Allinson, Murray Middleton, and Cass Moriarty.