I’ve read a lot of books this year past—more than in previous years—and if I was into ratings, I’d be scoring nearly all of them very highly indeed. I abandoned only one (and I won’t be naming it or its author here).
It was my great pleasure to interview three authors with new releases on the blog this year—three standout novels that I highly recommend. If you missed them, do please take the time to read these interviews, and I’m sure, as a result, you’ll be adding the books to your list:
Simone Lazaroo, Between Water and the Night Sky
Robyn Cadwallader, The Fire and the Rose
I hope to be bringing an interview with a debut WA author in the first months of the new year!
In my last newsletter, I wrote about some of the other fine Australian books I’ve read:
Fiction: Mirandi Riwoe, Sunbirds; Eliza Henry Jones, Salt and Skin; Molly Schmidt, Salt River Road; Jackie Bailey, The Eulogy; Michael Fitzgerald, Late; and Shankari Chadran, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens
Non-fiction: Gemma Nisbet, The Things We Live With (how I loved this beautiful book!); and Laurie Steed, Love, Dad
YA: A.J. Betts, One Song; and Graham Akhurst, Borderland
To which I will add, from my reading earlier in the year, Gail Jones’s award-winning Salonika Burning—one of my favourites for the year and a war novel unlike most others I’ve read.
I took another foray into Irish fiction during the year, with four fabulous novels that gave me much to think about: Louise Kennedy, Trespasses; Jan Carson, The Firestarters; Olivia Fitzsimons, The Quiet Whispers Never Stop; and Nuala O’Connor, Nora.
Other international titles I admired, as a reader and a writer, were Barbara Kingsolver’s epic Demon Copperhead, and the latest from the brilliant Donald Stuart, Young Mungo. Although so culturally and geographically different, I couldn’t help but see parallels between these two grim stories of boyhood/early adolescence and the kind of rough and careless upbringing that is more a matter of surviving than growing up. Something that amazes me about these two novels—testament to the skill of the authors—is that what I remember most about them are the threads of love that wind through the squalor.
I finished the year with two of Australia’s biggest names in fiction—deservedly so—Charlotte Wood and her quiet, contemplative Stone Yard Devotional and Melissa Lucashenko with her broad historical sweep across what is now called Brisbane, Edenglassie. Both are destined for shortlists throughout 2024. Both touched my heart.
∞∞∞
Looking back at my last New Year’s blog, I see I wrote hopefully that 2023 might be a better year than 2022. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be, for me, but I do remain hopeful for 2024.
And wherever you are, I wish you…
looking up/looking down 