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Kathy Lette on getting even in the ‘The Revenge Club’

From the editor’s desk april 2024, humpback highway by vanessa pirotta – first chapter & podcast.

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Sanctuary by Garry Disher

Wired for Music by Adriana Barton

Your Utopia by Bora Chung

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

Good reading podcast.

Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion on The Glass House

Kathy Lette on heroines in The Revenge Club

Dr Vanessa Pirotta on a whale’s world in Humpback Highway

Sydel Sierra on investing the right way in All Time High

Book Briefs

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Shortlist released for The Women’s Prize 2024

Tim Minchin set to release You Don’t Have to Have a Dream

BookPeople Book of the Year Award 2024 shortlists

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy film in the works

John Farnham to release his memoir in late 2024

Coming soon, you don’t have to have a dream: advice for the incrementally ambitious.

Simply Jamie: Celebrate the Joy of Food

Here One Moment

17 Years Later

The Voice Inside

To Sing of War

Shadows of Winter Robins

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club

Just One Taste

The Wrong Hands

Burma Sahib

Things I Need You to Know

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Bullet, Paper, Rock: A Memoir of Words and Wars

Read an edited extract from Abbas El-Zein's memoir Bullet, Paper, Rock: A Memoir of Words and Wars out now. Published with permission from the author and Upswell Publishing.

Read essay →

Pick Your Pattern

From recycled textiles to photosynthetic sweaters, fashion has ostensibly committed itself to sustainability. But is it more than a passing trend? Reviewing Clare Press’ Wear Next, Carody Culver considers the complexities of both defining fashion and imagining the industry’s future.

• Wear Next: Fashioning the Future by Clare Press Thames & Hudson Australia September 2023 320pp ISBN 9781760763152

A Lotus with a Long Stalk

Luke Carman reviews Sanya Rushdi’s Hospital, a translated novel depicting a linguist’s experience of psychosis and institutionalisation. As Carman argues, the novel’s distinctively ‘minimalist’ style underlines ‘a contingent relationship to sanity’ to which we are all vulnerable.

• Hospital by Sanya Rushdi, Translated by Arunava Sinha Giramondo Publishing June 2023 128pp ISBN 9781922725455

Selling Tales, Telling Sales

Since the 1980s, fiction has become big business. In her review of Dan Sinykin’s wide-ranging study of American publishing, Alice Grundy argues for the importance of the demythologising effects of Sinykin’s institutionalist approach for both literary scholarship and industrial relations.

• Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature by Dan Sinykin Columbia University Press December 2023 328pp ISBN 9780231192958

Walking as a Jittery Mortal

Andy Jackson casts his eye over Jill Jones’ oeuvre as represented in a new volume of selected poems, finding in them ‘a voice [that] is perennially thrown and askew, yet determined and questioning, always moving along desire-lines of resistance and curiosity’.

• Acrobat Music: New & Selected Poems by Jill Jones Puncher and Wattmann November 2022 220pp ISBN 9781922571571

The Art of De-Composition

In her review of Jennifer Croft’s new novel, Alice Whitmore unearths the hidden correspondences between the fungal kingdom and the world of translation.

• The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft Scribe Publications February 2024 320pp ISBN 9781761380211

New on the SRB:

Abbas El-Zein Carody Culver on Clare Press Luke Carman on Sanya Rushdi Andy Jackson on Jill Jones Alice Grundy on Dan Sinykin Alice Whitmore on Jennifer Croft Abbas El-Zein Carody Culver on Clare Press Luke Carman on Sanya Rushdi Andy Jackson on Jill Jones Alice Grundy on Dan Sinykin Alice Whitmore on Jennifer Croft

Read an edited extract from Abbas El-Zein’s memoir Bullet, Paper, Rock: A Memoir of Words and Wars out now. Published with permission from the author and Upswell Publishing.

About three-quarters through Acrobat Music: New & Selected Poems, Jill Jones nudges the reader knowingly in the ribs. ‘Difficult Poem’…

Recent Works

Nicholas Heron on Lorraine Daston Jessica White on Jane Carey Mindy Gill on Zadie Smith Joshua Barnes on Anna Kornbluh and Timothy Bewes Sneja Gunew on transit between languages Lucy Van on π.O. Micaela Sahhar on Nick Riemer and Antony Loewenstein Yumna Kassab on the potency of symbols Nicholas Heron on Lorraine Daston Jessica White on Jane Carey Mindy Gill on Zadie Smith Joshua Barnes on Anna Kornbluh and Timothy Bewes Sneja Gunew on transit between languages Lucy Van on π.O. Micaela Sahhar on Nick Riemer and Antony Loewenstein Yumna Kassab on the potency of symbols

• Rules: A Short History of What We Live By by Lorraine Daston Princeton University Press December 2023 384pp ISBN 9780691254081

Critique of Pure Mindlessness

What makes sentient machines tick? In a review of Lorraine Daston’s ‘Rules’, Nicholas Heron traces the history of the algorithm, showing that at stake in the age of AI is our very understanding of rationality.

• Talking to the Field: A History of Australian Women in Science by Jane Carey Monash University Publishing February 2023 336pp ISBN 9781925835410

Prevailing Passions

Through a reading of Jane Carey’s historical study, Jessica White tracks the paths made by Australian women through the settler academy in the ardent pursuit of science.

• The Fraud by Zadie Smith Hamish Hamilton September 2023 464pp ISBN 9780241337004

Riotous Subjects 

Mindy Gill parses the influence of George Eliot on Zadie Smith’s most recent novel, The Fraud – a capacious and non-linear work, the pluralistic ambition of which has put critics ‘off-balance’

• Immediacy, or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism by Anna Kornbluh Verso Books January 2024 240pp ISBN 9781804291344
• Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age by Timothy Bewes Columbia University Press July 2022 336pp ISBN 9780231192972

Maximally Close Contact

Drawing on the insights of two new books of literary criticism, Joshua Barnes argues that recent developments, such as the rise of autofiction, should serve to remind us that the novel, fiction, and realism are distinct categories despite their historical convergence.

Multilingual Affect 

In her final essay, literary scholar Sneja Gunew (1946–2024) explores the affective dimensions of migrant writers’ transit between languages, capping a lifetime’s advocacy for those whose participation in the national culture ‘is grounded in their differences’. We present a lightly edited version of this essay with reflections on Gunew’s life and work by Ivor Indyk and Eda Gunaydin.

• The Tour by π.O. Giramondo Publishing Published August 2023 192 pp ISBN 9781922725769

Getting Shirty

Lucy Van reviews π.O.’s The Tour, a pugnacious verse chronicle of a poetic caper around the United States. From his dirty t-shirt to his dissatisfactions with American food, π.O.’s emblematic gestures of refusal characterise a volume that, for Van, exposes ‘the orders and disorders of our national poetry’.

• Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine by Nick Riemer Rowman & Littlefield January 2023 224pp ISBN 9781538175873
• The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein Scribe Publications May 2023 272pp ISBN 9781922310408

Death of the Bystander

In her review of two recent books on Palestine, Micaela Sahhar draws on her family history and experience as a scholar to examine the case for academic boycott and the limitations of the Western liberal mindset for Palestinian allyship.

The Rooster and the Watermelon

Reading Palestine through South American literary and political history, Yumna Kassab reflects on the potency of symbols during times of repression.

From the SRB archives:

Alice Whitmore on translators Jeanine Leane on the diversity and inclusion mythscape Ivor Indyk on David Malouf Mindy Gill on Mirandi Riwoe Jessica White on Vanessa Berry Alice Whitmore on translators Jeanine Leane on the diversity and inclusion mythscape Ivor Indyk on David Malouf Mindy Gill on Mirandi Riwoe Jessica White on Vanessa Berry

While few literary translators are truly ‘anonymous’ these days, many still move like ghosts through the world of publishing, their names omitted not only from the covers of their books but also the reviews and promotional materials that sprout around them.

Close Encounters

Jeanine Leane gets under the skin of the diversity and inclusion mythscape in creative writing programs.

David Malouf: A Life in Letters

Malouf’s commitment to possibility and multiplicity is well known. It is part of a larger belief in transformation, in metamorphosis, as the founding power of the imagination, its ability to create or divine worlds within or beyond the one we live in, and through language, to populate those worlds and make them familiar. The ability to move between forms of writing is, in a sense, an expression of this commitment to a multiple view of things, though that is not the only explanation.

• Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe UQP 264pp Published March 2020 ISBN 9780702262739

Long After You Have Left This World

History runs in parallel tracks: there is the way things have been told, and the way things were. As in: not colonised, but civilised. And to be made civil, to be made ‘adequate in courtesy and politeness’, as Merriam-Webster defines it, makes it sound like a favour. Language obfuscates. It’s a way of controlling the narrative, forcing the eye into a narrow aperture. A single perspective becomes the singular perspective, which is how colonial literature came to skew mainstream cultural understandings of that period. Mirandi Riwoe seems determined to widen that aperture and, then, to shift the perspective entirely.

• Gentle and Fierce by Vanessa Berry Giramondo 192 pp Published July 2021 ISBN: 9781925818710

Snail Trails

The longer I spent with these essays, the more I enjoyed the connections Berry creates between humans and nonhuman animals in real life, their diffusion into products for human consumption, and their symbolism.

Australian literature: Book reviews

Online lists.

Bookshop websites often have a section devoted to book reviews, which may be written by staff or customers.

• Readings , Melbourne
• Abbey's , Sydney

Aussie Reviews  has online reviews of fiction, non-fiction, children's and young adult books.

The National Library of Australia is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites

READER'S REVIEWS

You can find many reader's blogs with reviews of classic and contemporary Australian literature. These will often have links to other Australian book blogs. Some of these include:

• ANZ LitLovers
• Whispering Gums

These and other book review blogs have been archived by the National Library. You can search for more at  Trove

How do you find book reviews?

• Australian Book Review - The official journal of the National Book Council (Australia), and the Australian Book Review index . 
• Two books by Ken Gelder & Paul Salzman: The New Diversity : Australian Fiction 1970-88 and After the Celebration : Australian Fiction 1989-2007

Where can you find online book reviews?

You can find the following databases online by visiting our eResources portal and searching for the database under the Browse eResources tab.

AustLit provides authoritative information on creative and critical works of Australian literature and on more than 700,000 Australian authors and literary organisations. In the AustLit database, see the Anthology of Criticism, under the 'Reading' tab, for full-text articles about selected authors and their works.

Australian Book Review Online has a national scope and is committed to highlighting the full range of critical and creative writing from around Australia.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Williamson, Geordie,  The burning library : our great novelists lost and found . Melbourne : Text Publishing, 2012

The Burning Library  explores the lives and work of some of our greatest novelists. Alarmed by the increasingly marginal status of Australian literature in the academy, Williamson has set out to reintroduce us to those key writers whose works we may have forgotten or missed altogether. His focus is on fiction that gives pleasure, and he is ardent in defence of books that for whatever reason sit uneasily in the present moment.

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Novels: finding literary reviews and criticism  - guide from the State Library of Victoria

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• Editor: Peter Rose
• Editor: Helen Daniel
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• Editor: Louise Adler
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• Editors: Max Harris , Rosemary Wighton .
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Abstract history archive description.

The Australian Book Review ( ABR ) was established in 1961 to provide a forum for the review of new Australian books. Editors, Max Harris and Geoffrey Dutton, planned to 'notice' or review every new Australian book, but this desire proved difficult to realise due to a rising number of books and the difficulty of defining what an Australian book was. Nevertheless, ABR employed a range of reviewers to provide general readers with authoritative assessments of important books. These reviewers included Frank Kellaway , Olaf Ruhen , Vale Lindsay, Tom Shapcott , Brian Dibble , Bruce Beaver and Don Watson .

Rosemary Wighton became co-editor in 1962 after acting as associate editor for a short time. She and Harris remained co-editors of ABR until 1973 when the magazine ceased operation after finding it increasingly difficult to meet production costs. An attempt was made by the newly formed National Book Council (NBC) to buy ABR , but, due to legal technicalities, this was not possible at that time. In 1978, John McLaren convinced the NBC to revive ABR and the magazine was adopted as the official organ of the NBC.

John McLaren was appointed editor, proceeding in a manner similar to the first series by attempting to review all Australian books; but he also faced problems of space and definition. In 1986 Kerryn Goldsworthy replaced McLaren as editor, and introduced a stronger concentration on women's issues. Louise Adler followed Goldsworthy as editor in 1988 and attempted to provoke debate by commissioning controversial reviews, but her term concluded within twelve months. Rosemary Sorenson was appointed editor in 1989, bringing a lighter tone and a desire to attract a new readership with younger writers. Sorenson was assisted by major sponsorship from Telecom, allowing her to fund a series of essays. While ABR had always published features on various topics, the sponsorship gave the essays a more significant place. The essay feature has continued with similar sponsorship from the National Library of Australia and La Trobe University.

Helen Daniel edited ABR from 1994 until her death in 2000. She lifted the profile of the magazine by organising several series of public forums and encouraged new writers with competitions for fiction and reviewing. During this time, the NBC wound down its operations after a significant proportion of its government funding was withdrawn. This had an immediate effect on the stability of ABR , forcing the magazine to separate from its parent body and publish independently.

Peter Rose was appointed editor in January 2001 and has since expanded the scope of ABR by actively commissioning poetry and fiction. Rose also developed a sponsorship scheme to support the work of ABR . In 2002 La Trobe University became the Chief Sponsor of ABR , with the National Library of Australia as its National Sponsor. Three years later Flinders University became another key sponsor and in 2007 the wealth management group Ord Minnett took on the role of exclusive corporate sponsor.

• RANGE: 1961-1974; 1978-
• FREQUENCY: Monthly, (1961-Apr. 1971); Quarterly (June 1971-Nov. 1973); Monthly (June 1978- 1993); 10 issues per annum (1994- )
• SIZE: 36cm (1961-1971); 32cm (1972-1973); 27cm (1978-1985); 26cm (1986- ); between 20-64 pages
• PRICE: one shilling and ninepence (1961-1963); two shillings and sixpence (1963-1964); three shillings (1965); thirty-five cents (1966-1967); forty-five cents (1967-1969); fifty cents (1969-1971); $1.50 (1971-1974); $2 (1978-1982) $2.50 (1983); $3 (1984-1987); $3.50 (1987- 1988); $3.95 (1988-1989); $4.95 (1989-1997); $5.95 (1997- 2000); $6.55 (2000- )

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• Publisher: Australian Book Review, Inc.
• Publisher: ABR Publications

Works about this Work

'When I began work on  A Maker of Books , I had no idea that Alec Bolton had succeeded ‘Peter Pica’ (the publisher and bookseller Andrew Fabinyi) as a pseudonymous critic of Australian book design and production for  Australian Book Review . He called himself ‘Martin Em’. I had set out to explore in detail Alec’s achievement as a letterpress printer of distinction at his private Brindabella Press, and also his long career in Australian publishing, but this was an unexpected discovery. The clue was a letter from Alec to John McLaren, the then editor of  ABR , which I found in a completely unrelated file in the Alec Bolton papers at the National Library of Australia. When I looked at Martin Em’s ‘BookShapes’ columns, published between 1978 and 1982, Alec’s distinctive voice was quite apparent.' (Introduction) 

'After a summer of bushfires across the nation and phenomenal loss and destruction, Australia – like the rest of world – now faces a health crisis of fearsome scope. As we go to press (earlier than planned because of present uncertainties), the scale of the threat, unprecedented in our times, is becoming stark.' (Introduction)

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What Snail Knows, by Kathryn Apel, illustrated by Mandy Foot

I usually try to find a place

away from other

It’s better by

                               myself.

Lucy can’t take her house with her wherever she goes, like her friend Snail – but she does take Snail with her. And she moves a lot, with her dad not keen to stay anywhere for very long. Always being the new girl makes school a challenge for Lucy but at her latest school she has a nice teacher and even a new friend. If only  she could convince Dad to stay here for longer.

What Snail Knows is a delightful verse novel for younger readers about friendship, family and community – and, of course, snails. From the perspective of Lucy, an outsider, there is much for readers to learn about empathy, but the messages of the book don’t overwhelm the story, which is important.

Told using free verse, with occasional shape poems, this a poetic delight, well supported by the gentle illustrations by Mandy Foot.

What Snail Knows , by Kathryn Apel, illustrated by Mandy Foot

Guest Post: From aged care to publishing contract in 10 months

This time two years ago, I was an aged care executive. I didn’t know that soon I would be made redundant and spend the winter writing two novels that would be accepted for publication the following year. Today, as the federal government releases the report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, I’ve been reflecting on the last two years and wondering what I can learn from them.

Aged care is rewarding, exhausting and all-consuming. There is never enough money, staff or hours in the day. There are always changes that need to be made to a resident’s care as they age and their health declines. Leaving work issues at work is not an option. Like nurses with patients and school teachers with students, aged care workers go home each night and worry about their residents, about the amount of food they left on their plate, about their last fall, about how long it has been since they had a visit from family. About how they themselves didn’t spend enough time just sitting and talking instead of racing through the daily care plan before moving on to the next resident.

I was in charge of retirement villages and home care when my position was made redundant. Losing my job was like losing an arm. As I packed up my desk and remembered all the things I still needed to do, I scribbled notes about resident care plans that had to be updated, requests for changes to cleaning schedules, invoices to be finalised for the previous month. I drove home remembering resident morning teas scheduled for the following week that I would not be attending and family members who had contacted me for help in navigating the maze of the aged care funding system. I walked in the front door and sobbed the news to my husband, drank a glass of wine, and another, and promised him I would take time off before looking for another job. Aged care, he’d observed, had been taking its toll, and maybe I needed a rest.

The next day, I didn’t register my resume on Seek. Instead, I dressed for work, went to my home office and wrote the first two thousand words of my first novel. The next day I wrote another two thousand words, and the next day another two. I was used to working hard. I kept going until I had a completed manuscript 12 weeks later. Then I wondered what to do next, so I applied for a couple of jobs and wrote another one.

It took a stupid amount of courage to give my work to someone to read. Writing, it seemed, was the easy part. The words flowed. They delighted me. I laughed as I wrote, startling the dogs, and when I had ideas in the shower I hurried back to my desk, dripping water on the carpet. Over dinner, I updated my family on my characters’ progress, and they made suggestions for roadblocks and plot twists. But I didn’t let them read any words on a page. That was too hard, too revealing. It was one thing to talk about my fictional friends over dinner, but what if my writing was rubbish? How embarrassing. Sharing my actual written words didn’t come until I joined a writing group. In the first five minutes of the first session, the facilitator announced that we would have time to read aloud from our work . I was horrified. It was all I could do not to crawl under the table.

I got over it. I read to the group that first time, and then again, and again. I learned to receive feedback and to give it with kindness and encouragement in the same way it was given to me. I relearned my high-school lessons about character, plot and setting, practised showing not telling , and sent my manuscript to beta readers. I edited and re-edited, and was astonished by the way typos, clunky sentences and plot inconsistencies persisted in draft after draft. I worked hard. I dreamed about my characters and woke up to realisations about structural errors. In the final week before Christmas, eight months after I was made redundant, I sent my first manuscript to Fremantle Press. Two months later, they called me. ‘We’d like to publish your book,’ they said.

That phone call was a well-timed ego boost. The first thing I learned from my post-redundancy writing effort was that I am not immune to the loss of status that tests people when they lose their jobs. It hurts. I had nowhere to go each day, nothing useful to do. I lost my position on industry committees. I was out of the loop in speculation about the royal commission. When allegations of abuse in nursing homes hit the media, I had no-one to talk with about the horror of the neglect or the fear that the same thing might be happening under our own watch. I felt shame that I wouldn’t be part of any eventual solution. But that phone call was the first sense that maybe I could do something different. Someone wanted to publish my book; maybe I could do this new thing.

The second thing I learned from post-redundancy life was how to stick with something when there is only me to encourage me along. Corporate life had taught me about perseverance – building a new retirement village or introducing new home care services takes time and patience – but at least in a corporate office you have a team that can pick you up when you are gloomy about being short-staffed or going over your budget. When it’s just me and the dogs at 2.30 pm on a Wednesday and the scene I am writing is rubbish, there’s no-one to suggest I stop for a coffee or work on a different chapter. I have to do that for myself.

The third thing I learned is that a writer writes. Even if what I am writing is rubbish, if I want to finish a manuscript, I have to sit down at my desk and … write. It seems obvious, and very unromantic, but the muse only comes when I am working. It’s much the same as any other job; if you want to make a difference you have to put your shoulder to the wheel and work at it.

I will be part of the aged care solution. I have joined the board of Advocare, a wonderful organisation that helps older people and their families negotiate the system and have a voice in their care. Whatever solution government proposes when it responds to the royal commission report in May, that voice will still be needed as the government makes changes to the aged care system. I am fortunate that I will be able to help make it heard.

I can also use my own voice. I can have older characters, who are not just sweet old ladies, but strong women who once managed households and ran corporations. Maybe they will be a force for good. Maybe they will be the villains in my stories. By the time my first book is released in October 2021, changes in aged care will be well underway. I look forward to being part of the change and a force for good.

https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/the-river-mouth

You can connect with Karen Herbert on

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/herbert_whittle/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/herbert_whittle

Or on her website: https://karenwhittleherbert.wordpress.com

Guest Post: Why Comics? by Aśka

It’s been a while since we had a guest post here, but today I am delighted to welcome my friend, and the very talented illustrator  Aśka, here to talk about comics to celebrate the release of an important and wonderful new book, Stars in Their Eyes  . Over to you  Aśka

I’m a visual person. In fact, that’s an understatement. There is always a movie playing in my head visualising how something feels, or scrutinising an image painted by a cliché, or ‘seeing’ music I enjoy. It never stops.

This may be why I was immediately drawn to comics when I started reading as a child. My favourite books had characters who interacted with the panels they were drawn in, played with space and time, and even the creator (whose hand and pen would sometimes feature). At six years old I had already found my medium. I was hooked and there was no going back.

Today it’s a dangerous game to say you love comics and keep your literary cred at the same time. Historically, comics have been associated with low-brow content, misogynous entertainment, propaganda and even teenage delinquency.

As the form developed and matured, it was rebranded as the more acceptable ‘graphic novel’. I personally use ‘comics’ as an umbrella term for both; apart from the format in which they’re printed I don’t believe there really is much of a difference between them.

Comics are a medium, and just like films, books and songs, they contain a universe of genres within them that vary in quality and sophistication. The same basic language of comics can be used for entertaining escapism, as well as for creating confronting, multi-layered emotional experiences.

I believe it’s time comics were taken as seriously as any other branch of literature, and with that, I present five reasons for my undying devotion to them.

Comics offer a personalised experience

A comic is not just pictures in boxes, plastered with speech bubbles. It uses panels (time), representational and symbolic images, words, sounds and layout to create an experience. It’s a vehicle the reader climbs into and then drives though the story. And unlike any other medium, the reader controls the pace and (to an extent) the direction of that journey.

If you’re disturbed by a part of the story, you can glance over it without losing your place. If you’re enjoying a moment, there is enough there to let you linger and revel in it. If there is a large spread, you can wonder around in it and become lost. The comic creator never knows exactly how the reader will traverse their work, except maybe for the minimal requirement of reading from left to right, top to bottom. But through the presence of this unknown parameter, the comic format creates a uniquely personal experience for each reader. Even as a child I felt this and that’s how my fascination started.

Comics require a high level of literacy

Every time someone says ‘comics are great for early and reluctant readers’, I roll my eyes. Yes, it’s true – the visuals offer an alternative reading of the story and this certainly helps with the interpretation of the text, as well as with the reader’s confidence. But there is so much more to it than that.

The comic reader is expected to assemble the visual, emotive, temporal, sound and narration cues in their mind: comic reading is therefore a much more complex and immersive experience. The more acrobatics your brain performs to extract the story, the bigger the reward. So to gain pleasure from reading a well put together comic work is to know one’s way around more than just the written word.

As children, we treat and train all of our literacies equally. However, when we are adults, it is possible to feel that multi-modal literacy is an innate ability and, unlike the written word, does not require attention or scrutiny. But this is not the case, and there is a deficit in our own ability (and the ability of our children) to be aware of and critical of the various non-verbal cues bombarding us. I will come back to the gravity of this point later.

Comics offer a platform for marginalised voices

Being shunned by mainstream literature, comics became an independent medium, growing and developing in the bedrooms of their creators, on the alternative zine-scene and shared at meet-ups and conventions – far from sanitizing power of the mainstream publishing industry. As a result, independent comics have long been a playground for diverse stories created by people whose voices have been silenced on other cultural platforms.

The personalised experience offered by reading a comic means the relationship between the reader and the storyteller is a more intimate one. A comic that offers a window into the life or opinions of an individual who is different from the reader has a chance of being met with less resistance than other mediums because of the powerful emotional connection that forms through the investment required to read it.

This might explain the rise of the biographical-graphic novel and the introduction of own-voice patient graphic novels as recommended reading across various medical sectors. (For more on this, see: www.graphicmedicine.org/resources/liasison-program/)

Comics are not just about amazing art

After years of being quite elitist in my opinions of what constituted ‘good’ and ‘bad’ art, comics have taught me that skilfully executed, realistic artwork is not what makes a great reading experience. After all, leaving gaps in the ‘text’ for the reader to fill in and interpret is how engagement is established.

The essence of comics is creating a space (with parameters decided upon by the maker) where the images and words interact in the reader’s mind, resulting in ‘the story’. An engaging comic could be made with no representational imagery at all – for example, in complete darkness or with ‘dots’ as characters. The success of storytelling through comics does not rest on the ‘quality’ of the words or images alone, but on the pacing, scale and multi-sensory and emotional narrative. This is often considered by the creator way ahead of any drawing taking place, and has little to do with how well the form of the characters has been rendered.

Comics in schools can end our visual illiteracy

As our screens overload with information, and our attention spans shorten, messaging is becoming more visual. Images can say and emote so much in a span of a glance. Each time you look at your phone, tablet or laptop, images are selling you a product, idea, opinion or agenda. Yet visual illiteracy is on the rise, as our ability to recognise and question visual propaganda wanes.

This brings me back to the earlier point that comics require multi-modal literacy of their readers. Treating comics as a valid form of literature, bringing them into the curriculum and studying the mechanisms that govern them is one of the major ways to prepare the next generation for the changing world ahead.

And with these words, I urge the ‘gatekeepers’ of the written word to start recognising and enjoying the rich diversity of what comics have to offer. Publishers of all genres could look into expanding their lists to include comics. Librarians are encouraged to read all the books in the comics-section to ensure appropriate age-classification of their titles. Educators could look to comics to boost their area of the curriculum with visual literacy. And this entire revolution starts with each individual picking up a graphic novel literary fiction and setting off on a journey of their own.

https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/stars-in-their-eyes

Aśka is an energetic illustrator, storyteller and science communicator who is a passionate advocate for visual literacy. She has illustrated ten published books and is a regular contributor to The School Magazine and other children’s publications.

Connect with Aśka on Facebook and Instagram (@askaillustration).

http://www.facebook.com/askaillustration

http://www.instagram.com/askaillustration

Guest Blogger: How an architectural icon became the perfect setting for a thriller with Zoe Deleuil

A landmark of brutalist architecture, The Baribcan estate is an estate of some 2,000 apartments, in the heart of the London’s financial district, with three looming tower blocks and a famed cultural centre at its heart. The landscaping is pared back to symmetrical ponds and vast expanses of brick paving, the balconies have curved balustrades of rain-stained concrete deep enough to sit on, and the apartments are warm and sealed and quiet, and sell for millions to architects and magazine editors and well-heeled London creatives. It was home to Australian writer Clive James and is rumoured to be the inspiration for J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel, High-Rise .

Designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon architects and completed in 1976 on a World War Two bombsite, it’s also famously difficult to navigate. Anyone who has tried to see a movie or performance at the Barbican Centre will know the rising panic of careening down deserted walkways and dead-ending in locked stairwells with Residents Only signs, before bursting into the buzzing foyer of the arts centre, sweaty and bewildered. I’ve even heard of a man stumbling onto the stage of a Shakespeare performance in a failed bid to find his seat. On a grey afternoon in mid-winter the place can feel downright post-apocalyptic. As a setting for a novel about a sleep-deprived and isolated new mother, it was filled with dramatic potential.

I have a clear memory of Rachel appearing at the door, eyes averted, walking into the apartment and simply staying. I didn’t know what she wanted from Simone and her baby, and it took many drafts until I found out.

As Simone fights rising unease and sleep deprivation, the apartment walls start to close in. Far from her Australian family, the bleak winter setting, the lack of community and the isolation of early motherhood  all heighten her isolation.

When writing The Night Village I wanted to explore how architecture can favour the able-bodied and unencumbered, and how landscapes – both interior and exterior – can feel threatening when you have to navigate them with a tiny baby. You get the impression that the architects who designed the Barbican didn’t spend much time looking after small children. It may be a lofty masterpiece of brutalism, but it’s not a place that embraces its inhabitants, least of all its more vulnerable ones. The brick courtyards are unsuited to ball games, the walkways are deserted and spooky, and a toddler could tumble silently into one of those Instagram-able green pools and drown in minutes. Simone doesn’t meet, or even hear, her neighbours through the soundproofed walls, and the men who guard the front desk of her tower block never acknowledge her as she passes them.

If I were writing an architectural history of the Barbican I would be more reverent and detached, but a novel is not about the architectural merits of a place, it’s about how that place makes its characters feel. The beauty of writing a novel is that you can follow your intuition, home in atmosphere and the smallest details to hopefully bring a building or street or city to life for your readers. As I tackled my first draft on sweltering summer afternoons in Perth, Australia, it was wonderful to escape to the northern hemisphere in my imagination – to summon up sealed, overheated rooms, bare winter landscapes and milky London light. With the help of real estate websites, Google Maps and YouTube I retraced my steps, identified street names and bus routes, and even wandered through apartment interiors for inspiration.

Making a building a character is a hallmark of gothic novels – look at Manderley, Hill House, Wuthering Heights and even Foxworth Hall. It’s not a new trick, but by finding the right building it’s one you can make your own. I had a lot of fun wandering around the Barbican when geography and two young kids meant a real-life visit was out of the question – and when you are working on something as long as a novel, it’s worth making it fun however you can.

In a strange way, setting a novel in the Barbican has made me fonder of the place. Sometimes a place captures your imagination not because it’s beautiful, but because it’s intriguing. The Barbican is a unique development, worshipped by design fans worldwide. But it’s also a little sinister and disorienting and weird. It’s easy to imagine people hiding from the world there, or hiding from themselves.

Thanks for visiting, Zoe.  The Night Village (Fremantle Press) is available in all good bookstores and online https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/the-night-village

Guest Blog: Meg McKinlay says The delight is in the detail

What’s the story about? Where did you get the idea? Can you give a plot summary? What are the main themes?

When a new book comes out, authors answer these questions over and over again. And for good reason – they’re excellent, important questions. It’s important to have an excellent answer to hand. With the release of my new chapter book, Bella and the Voyaging House , I’ve been working hard lately to do exactly that.

But as much as I enjoy talking about these things, they never quite get to the heart of why I wrote the story. Yes, I can tell you where I got the idea, but I have hundreds of ideas and most of them will remain as fragments in notebooks, lacking that essential something that demands my creative attention, that makes me sit up and say, Oh. Yes. This is something I absolutely must write.

For me, that special something is always a tiny detail, a little grain that works its way under my skin and refuses to be ignored. In Bella and the Wandering House , the first ‘Bella’ book, it was the ‘perfectly round window’ in Bella’s bedroom. Though it has been some seven years since I wrote them, the lines that are used to describe it are lodged deep in my brain:

The moment I came up with this window was the moment when the story became inevitable. Something in it connected deeply to my childhood self, to a longing I had never articulated – for a reading nook, perhaps, or just a special space that was all my own. Whatever it was, I could feel it in my body, curving my own back against the imaginary wood, and there was no way I couldn’t write it into being.

Once I had done that, I was happy. I left Bella in her window and I moved onto other things, other stories. I had no plans for a sequel, until one day, several years later, long past the point at which it made sense to even consider another Bella story, a new little detail started gleaming in the corner of my eye.

I had just come back from the beach, where I had sat and watched the boats, and found myself thinking about Bella’s house, which has a nautical connection and likes to go out for a little swim every now and then. And just in the way that a creative brain does, I was idly wondering what it would feel like out there, what it would do, where it would go. What sorts of adventures that it might have, and what sorts of calamities might befall it and …

… just in the way a creative brain does, all day long. Sometimes all night long. Not in a way like an idea I’m going to pursue or a story I’m going to write. Until I tell my husband about these musings, spinning a little more and a little more, saying: You know, and they get stuck out there and someone has to rescue them and oh, I guess it would be Grandad and maybe he comes sailing in or … even flying in! On one of his contraptions!

And I look at my husband and he’s grinning like an excited kid, like one of the kids who sit in the front row at school visits and just.won’t.ever.put.their.hand.down, and he says, ‘Yeah! And he could be wearing some of those old-timey aviator goggles!’

And in that moment, I know I’m sunk. Because I can see Grandad, all of a sudden – braving the vast ocean, zooming in to the rescue. He’s grinning from ear to ear with the thrill of it, and even though I have no idea what this story is going to be about – why the house is on the ocean or why it gets stuck or what happens next or before or after … or indeed much of anything – I know I have to write it now because Grandad is having the time of his life and there’s no way I can let him down.

I’m calling these small details, because they are. But they’re also not. They’re the seeds from which everything grows, not just in terms of inspiration, but structurally, technically. Bella’s round window tells me something about Bella, about who she is. It starts to form her as a character. It suggests her relationship with Grandad, which is at the heart of both books. This in turn starts to build the characters of Mum and Dad, and their own, different relationships with Bella, which becomes important to both the plot and emotional narrative of both stories. Grandad’s goggles and improbable flight tell me that I’m writing about things like ingenuity and adventure, about freedom and courage, and a sort of resilient, childlike optimism. They give me an image and a feeling to head towards, and for a writer like me, that’s plenty.

Follow the details, I say – take that funny little grain that grabs you and write out of that. You can build a whole story that way, a whole delightful, detailed world.

Meg McKinlay’s Bella and the Voyaging House and Bella and the Wandering House are both available in all good bookstores and online.

Guest Blog – Katie Stewart author and illustrator of Where Do the Stars Go?

I always wanted to live on a farm. I’d lived in the country most of my life, but not on a farm. So when my fiancé, who works in the Department of Agriculture, said he wanted to go back to the family farm, I thought a dream had come true. I headed into married life with a head full of idyllic pictures of my future.

As a writer, there is huge inspiration to be found on a farm. Wandering over the top of the hill in midwinter, taking in the vast green landscape around me, I’ve often had to stop myself from twirling Maria-like over the paddock, arms raised, singing at the top of my voice. Okay, I’ll be honest, sometimes I don’t stop myself. Not a pretty sight, I’m sure, but who sees me but the birds?

For my picture book Where Do the Stars Go? (Fremantle Press, May 2021) living on the farm was a great advantage. Like Possum in the story, I wandered along the creek until I found enough examples of ‘stars’ to make the story. The environment and inspiration for the book was there on hand. I lived what I wrote.

Then there’s the peace and quiet afforded to the writer/illustrator at her computer. A twittering bird, a bleating lamb, even the short-lived roar of a tractor heading for the shed has to be preferable to the constant street noise in some city houses.

Sad to say, though, there’s a downside. Living on a farm is wonderful until something goes wrong with the services city folk take for granted. Our house on the farm is in a ‘dead spot’ as far as mobile signals go, so to use our mobile phones means a walk to the top of the hill. Believe me, I don’t feel like singing when I’ve had to trudge up there to receive a confirmation code, or to report the fact that our power has gone off, thus rendering the landline useless as well. Power cuts are so frequent that we’ve had a generator plugged into the house wiring so that we can just flick a switch to use it, rather than having to search for extension cords.

The distance from Perth can be a hassle too. There are so many things I’d love to be able to attend, at the Literature Centre or a SCBWI function, for example, without having to arrange accommodation to save a long trip home in the dark. I’m slowly learning to combine things to make a daytime trip more worthwhile, like coffee with a fellow author and shopping for things I can’t get here, on the same day as a meeting at Fremantle Press, as I did recently. I belong to a lovely writers’ group here in Northam, but I still wish I could get together with fellow children’s authors more often. There’s so much to learn from them.

That said, I couldn’t live in the city. I’m a country girl. I’m here to stay.

Guest blogger: David Allan-Petale and the harvest that inspired the writing of Locust Summer

‘A sandgroper, eh? You can teach us all how to grow wheat then!’

That’s the greeting I was given on my first day of working with the harvest crew on my mate’s farm in New South Wales.

Lucky they didn’t look too closely. They’d have seen the creases still ironed in to my brand-new KingGee shorts and shirt. The lack of callouses on my office hands. And the look in my eyes that said I had no idea what I was doing.

‘Righto, boys,’ the boss cocky said. ‘Let’s get stuck in.’

Like the best of adventures, this one began over a drink. I was working as a journalist for the ABC’s Kalgoorlie office in the WA Goldfields, and after a tough day of gathering news from around the region, I’d host a gathering on the verandah of my place on Dugan Street to have a yarn with a few other journos.

One night my mate started talking about the harvest at his family farm. How he would return there every year and bring in an enormous crop of wheat. It sounded like an adventure to me, and he said I should come. The next day I booked time off work and a ticket east.

I’d worked as a journo in the Mid West region of WA where wheat farming dominates, and had covered harvests with the spare remove of an observer. But actually doing it? It was so far beyond my ken as a city boy from the suburbs. Then again, I loved to travel and give new things a go, and wasn’t afraid of hard work. Or so I thought …

The weeks I spent working on the farm were backbreaking, hot and fast. We worked from sun-up to sun-down and often deep into the night with a full moon haloed by wheat dust. I carted fuel, fetched lunches, fixed broken header harvester teeth, drove chaser bins to catch the grain and helped keep the grain bunker organised. I even got to drive a harvester for a few spells.

It was busy. It was tough. But it was glorious. There were lightning storms and crop fires, wild dogs to chase off and stranded sheep to rescue. Sunrises and sunsets that were like Hans Heysen paintings come to life. And the good humour of the workers chatting on the CB, drinking cold pints after a hard day while reciting bush poems. It was a bumper harvest my mate often says was the best he’s ever seen, as if a highlights package of everything that could go right or wrong had been prepared just for him to share with me.

The experience stayed with me long after I left to catch a train and a plane back to the big smoke. After that, no job was too hard, no conditions too rough. I knew I could back myself and stand up to a big task. And it gave me a far deeper appreciation of rural life and country people than I had ever grasped as a dispassionate observer. Over many of the following years I spent as a regional journalist, I found I could relate far better to the people whose lives I was seeking to reflect and explore.

And damn, if it didn’t give me some good stories to draw upon as a writer. The first book I attempted was set in the forests of South West WA, and was infused with my experiences on the land – the language, feeling and nuance that can’t be found solely through research.

Back to the farm, back to the harvest, back to a place where ‘the earth spins steady, the moon rises, and all crops grow: wheat, sheep, dementia.’

Thanks for visiting, David.  Locust Summer is available in all good bookstores and online.

https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/locust-summer

Guest blogger: Mel Hall on making up a religion to deal with pain

The Little Boat on Trusting Lane by Mel Hall is a feel-good novel about a small spiritual community that hangs out on a boat in a scrapyard in Fremantle. An affectionate satire, the novel provides a funny yet critical commentary on belief, self-help, magical thinking and the mind/body connection. In this guest post, Mel describes how the novel, which was longlisted for the Fogarty Literary Award, came into being out of extreme adversity and the need give form and shape to her chronic pain.

Making up religions in the night

Back in 2016, I was awake at four a.m., reading the Conscious Living Expo guide. I couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t any mention of aliens or Jesus. This got me thinking: aliens and Jesus have a lot in common. People believe they are real, or don’t believe in them at all. People build their lives around them, or don’t pay them a second thought. But how often do we hear about aliens and Jesus together?

So, on that early morning in 2016, I decided to make up a religion that would feature aliens and Jesus. Perhaps it might one day be mentioned in the Conscious Living Expo guide.

I began writing ideas for this religion before work each day. The results were … weird and boring. (Some people don’t realise it’s possible to be weird and boring, but these are the two best words to describe me.) It seemed like this religion might not get off the ground. But in the process of writing, three characters began wandering around in my mind. I started to write a book.

Is this true?

Is anything I just wrote true? Maybe there is something that’s more true. Maybe I’ve spent many sleepless nights in pain. Maybe, in my tiredness, on that particular morning, I was reading whatever I could get my hands on. And maybe I wasn’t making up a religion, but wanting to create some kind of mythology: a place to plant this pain, in hope that some kind of meaning or sense might grow.

Mystery illness

I began experiencing mystery pain when I was eighteen years old. Abdominal pain, back pain, pain that shot down my legs. When I was twenty-two, I was diagnosed with sciatica. Then I ended up with RSI in both my arms: I had been studying jazz music and practising bass quite obsessively, for sometimes ten hours a day. The RSI forced me to quit my degree.

Soon, pain and tension were across my whole body. For a couple of years, I didn’t have full use of my hands. A physio told me I had huge muscle wastage across my back, and that many problems I experienced were those of an old woman. This was when I was twenty-four.

I was looking into getting a cane, going on disability payments, and sleeping a lot of the time. I was sent to a rheumatologist, and in some notes I received afterwards, I was described as a high-achieving young woman, and other words used were anxiety and fibromyalgia.

Getting better

But then, I read some books that helped me. I saw a psychotherapist. My pain got a lot better, and even nearly went away. I began to think it was all psychological after all. By 2010, when I was twenty-eight, I was pretty healthy, and even lived my dream of backpacking around Europe.

Getting sick again

Then, in 2016, the pain came back with a vengeance. I was almost blacking out at work, leaving the room to vomit, then coming back in to pretend nothing had happened. Sometimes if I told a person about the pain, they’d ask if I was pregnant. My lowest point was when I vomited on myself while driving, and had to stop in at a friend’s to shower, change and admit my desperation.

So, as well as the intellectual pursuit of wishing to marry aliens and Jesus, one of the first things that got me writing this book was an imagined therapy. In this therapy, a character tries to find the right image to give shape to their pain. I needed this for myself too.

Towards the end of 2016, I was sent back to a rheumatologist and diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a form of inflammatory spinal arthritis that affects many parts of the body. Getting a diagnosis and medication really changed my life, as my rheumie said the last time I saw her, in November 2020. But writing changed my life too.

Writing a book to cope with chronic pain

Writing this book gave the pain somewhere to go. I think of the book as a creation story, where I can let the pain unfold amongst other things, beings, events, places.

Creation stories are about beginnings rather than endings. Part of me would like to focus on endings, as I would like to know that this pain, or this disease, will never return. (I can never be sure of that.) But being able to place this pain in a big creaking boat on Trusting Lane was something like a transformation for me. I found new life in the daily act of writing – writing which became a book.

The Little Boat on Trusting Lane is available in all good bookstores and online.

Guest Blog – Michael Burrows author of Where the Line Breaks

The idea to write Where the Line Breaks came to me at 4 or 5 am, Anzac Day 2013, sitting in Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli coast in Turkey after a long night of readings, stories, music, remembrance and moving testimony.

The moment came when someone approached the microphone and recited a few lines of war poetry. I can’t remember which poem exactly, but it was one I was familiar with – Owen or Brooke, maybe? There’s something special about war poetry; the juxtaposition between beauty and barbarity. So it was that night in Gallipoli – the poetry cut through the chill air and you could almost feel the crowd glowing with appreciation. I loved it. My only question was, why weren’t they reading Aussie or Kiwi poetry?

And then I thought, but who would they read?

Leon Gellert was born in Adelaide in 1892. He landed on Gallipoli on that first Anzac Day, was injured three months later and though he attempted to re-join the fight, he was repatriated as ‘medically unfit’ in June 1916. Maybe that’s why he isn’t better known – he didn’t have the tragic death of a Brooke or an Owen to push his poetry into the national consciousness. Unlike Graves or Sassoon, he stopped writing poetry after a few years and turned to journalism. He died in 1977 at 85 years old. But his poetry is wonderful, and in Gallipoli to Gaza , Jill Hamilton recognises him as ‘the only Australian poet whose work can be compared with that of the leading soldier-poets of the World War’. My personal favourite Gellert poem is ‘Anzac Cove’, with its devastating closing:

There are lines of buried bones: There’s an unpaid waiting debt: There’s a sound of gentle sobbing in the South.

Reading this poem for the first time, I really felt the gut punch of the Australian war experience, different to anything I’d experienced reading Brookes’ ‘The Soldier’ or Owen’s Latin homework.

Likewise, with the works of Clarence Michael James Dennis – or C. J. Dennis as he became known. Born in 1876, unlike Gellert, he never fought for his country, but his works, particularly The Moods of Ginger Mick, capture the sound of Australia like no-one else. Dennis was known as Australia’s version of Robbie Burns and the ‘laureate of the larrikin’. After his death in 1938, then Prime Minister Joseph Lyons said, ‘he captured the true Australian spirit.’ Read these lines out-loud in your finest Steve-Irwin-esque voice and tell me you don’t love it:

On the day we ‘it the transport there wus cheerin’ on the pier,

An’ the girls wus wavin’ hankies as they dropped a partin’ tear,

An’ we felt like little ‘eroes as we watched the crowd recede,

Fer we sailed to prove Australia, an’ our boastin’ uv the breed.

I love the dropped endings of words, the slurred ‘uv’ and ‘wus’. That’s why I opened my novel with an excerpt from The Moods of Ginger Mick.

Those two poets are my personal favourites, but there are plenty of Australians who deserve to be better known, like Private William M. McDonald (read ‘Camps in the Sand’), Archibald Nigel Guy Irving (read ‘The Dead’) or Oliver ‘Trooper Bluegum’ Hogue (read ‘The Horses Stay Behind’).

The Unknown Digger is a fictional creation, but he is inspired by the works of countless Australian soldier poets. I hope Where the Line Breaks encourages us to take a closer look at our own homegrown poets. Who knows, maybe this Anzac Day we can read a few lines of Gellert or Trooper Bluegum – something written by the original Anzacs themselves.

Where the Line Breaks is available in all good bookstores and online.

https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/where-the-line-breaks

You can visit Michael online at:

Twitter: @mperegrineb

Facebook: facebook.com/mperegrineburrows

Instagram: @mperegrineburrows_artist

Website/blog: www.mperegrineburrows.com

Guest blogger: Brigid Lowry on using reading and journaling to create a meaningful life

If you’re struggling to maintain grace and good humour amidst daily potholes and pitfalls, Brigid  may be just the warm, wise and witty companion you need. Her new book is called A Year of Loving Kindness to Myself and other essays .

Greetings. My name is Brigid Lowry.

I didn’t start out wanting to be a writer. I tried being a librarian, a schoolteacher, a waitress, a cook and a laboratory assistant, and had various other unmentionable jobs, then lived in a Buddhist community for many years, helping to raise children, run retreats and build adobe buildings. When I was 35, married with one son, I went back to university and realised that writing was the thing I loved to do.

My first title was a mushy teenage love story in the Dolly Fiction series. Various twists and turns led me to a rather lovely career writing for teenagers and teaching creative writing to people of all ages, though I still published poetry and short fiction here and there. My MA in Creative Writing involved writing a semi-autobiographical adult novel and an academic thesis on the topic of memoir. Most of my YA titles were fiction, but one was non-fiction – Juicy Writing: Inspiration and Techniques for Young Writers. Although it was marketed this way, many adult writers have told me they love this book and use it often for inspiration. More recently, I have returned to writing for adults and, in 2016, my first adult title, Still Life with Teapot: On Zen, Writing and Creativity , was published by Fremantle Press.

A Year of Loving Kindness to Myself and Other Essays is my latest book and it’s about to hit the shops. I’ve been practising meditation in the Zen and Vipassana traditions for 40 years, and during those years I have also explored personal growth and therapy to process the events of a challenging childhood.  My work and themes have evolved from these sources. In my new book I offer insights and suggestions for anyone wishing to live a sane, nourishing and creative life in these difficult times, using humour to lighten the mood.

I am very much in favour of humour as good medicine. My favorite cartoonist is Roz Chast, who uses her own life and the lives of fellow New Yorkers in her wise, warm and excellent cartoons. I also love Anne Lamott, who is a recovered alcoholic, a Christian and one of the funniest writers I have encountered. She writes about her own neurosis and struggles, inspiring the reader by sharing her joys and triumphs. Life is good, but also weird and hard, she writes.

So, how do we navigate life’s challenges? Are our survival mechanisms healthy? Buddhist teacher and psychologist Josh Korda calls drinking a failed attempt at happiness, yet wine o’clock is common for many until health or financial issues become problematic, or one realises that the thrill is short-lived, that hangovers suck and that the problems you were trying to avoid did not magically vanish. Similarly, working too hard, emotional eating, recreational shopping or too much screen time are temporary fixes. A little may be good, too much proves hollow. In my own life, I have found creativity, meditation, exercise, the outdoors and human connection of benefit.

Reading and journalling are precious tools for creating a meaningful life. Savour books, keep a pile beside your bed, use them as islands of wonder. Read widely, read deeply, but skim if you need to. Give yourself permission to abandon a boring book. When feeling stale, make haste to the library or a bookshop, feasting on what you find there. Books provide an unlimited source of escape, fascination, knowledge and solace.

Journalling is a satisfying way of staying in touch with yourself and your feelings, a safe place to be yourself when the world seems murky. It can bring clarity in the midst of mayhem, comfort when one is world-weary. Choose a cheap exercise book or a fancy journal. Grab an old pencil or some rainbow pens. Collect ideas, memories, wise thoughts. Record your dreams. This life is so precious, so fleeting and so ready to be explored on paper in your own sweet way.

Try some lists. The five worst people to invite to dinner. The 10 things that bring merriment. The three best places to yell out loud. The six uses for a banana that are not eating it. The eight things you would like for your birthday that don’t cost any money.

Wishing you creativity and wonder, ease and delight.

https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/a-year-of-loving-kindness-to-myself

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The 25 best Australian books of 2023: Richard Flanagan, Alexis Wright, Robyn Davidson and others

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Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

It’s a big call to make for a Booker winner, but Question 7 could be Richard Flanagan’s greatest yet. This elegiac, chaptered essay touches on ideas that have haunted his fiction for years: his father was a PoW in Japan for three years during the second world war and was freed after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands died – but because of that event, 16 years later Flanagan would be born in Tasmania.

Question 7 is Flanagan’s painful and powerful examination of the psychic implications of what it means to be alive directly because so many people died – a deeply existential conundrum that is so very personal and so very universal, that it’s hard to shake. – Sian Cain

Read more: Question 7 by Richard Flanagan review – this deeply moving book is his finest work

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Wifedom by Anna Funder

Hamish Hamilton

Anna Funder has added a brilliant, eye-opening perspective to the literature about George Orwell. Courage was needed for the Australian author to put her own human-rights hero under feminist scrutiny, and Funder charged ahead with scholarship, imagination and outrage. Eileen O’Shaughnessy, Orwell’s first wife, emerges as an educated, adventurous woman who subsumed her talents into supporting his career and boosting his creativity, while Orwell was a neglectful, unfaithful and even cruel husband.

Wifedom has been highly acclaimed, controversial and divisive , stimulating the liveliest literary conversations of the year. – Susan Wyndham

Read more: Wifedom by Anna Funder review – a brilliant reckoning with George Orwell to change the way you read ; Sadistic and misogynistic? Row erupts over sex claims in book about George Orwell’s marriage

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright

Sometimes a novel adopts a unique language you can only learn to speak as you read it. Exhibit A: Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy. Wright’s furiously conceived portrait of the death and life of a fictional Aboriginal community in the 21st century roils with the immiseration wrought by the Howard-era Northern Territory intervention, and an all-encompassing metaphysical cataclysm of uncertain origin.

The novel’s cast of players is large, but it is Tommyhawk, the youngest member of the book’s embattled central family, who proves one of the great characters of Australian literature. Like many antiheroes before him, Tommyhawk defies Manichean notions of good and evil: some villains are just lost innocents. – Declan Fry

Read more: Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright review – how can one novel contain so much?

Anam by André Dao

Sometimes a book quiets you from the first page: you’re struck by a calm, silver intelligence and intensity of thought. In this novel – which branches gracefully into memoir, essay and something beyond – Dao, or a young father very like him, riddles over the history of his family.

At the centre is the story of his grandfather, a political prisoner in Vietnam’s Chí Hòa. From there, he can begin to comb through the claims of loss and memory; of duty and of love. This beautiful, difficult book is about waiting and what inheritances you might dare to claim. Dao has poured everything into it and the result is something exceptional. – Imogen Dewey

Read more: Anam by André Dao review – decades-spanning family epic examines the difficulties of memory

The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop

The Anniversary has stayed with me because of its fine balance between taut suspense, dark and complex emotion, and something that would be cheekiness if it weren’t so pointed and profound. The protagonist is a novelist who has lived in the shadow of her film-maker husband for years, and her reflections on the treatment and reception of women writers are devastatingly sharp. They recur across a gripping plot involving the husband’s disappearance at sea, and ever-shifting revelations about the relationship, the work, the past.

It is beautifully crafted, utterly compelling and great fun as well. – Fiona Wright

The In-Between by Christos Tsiolkas

Allen and Unwin

In Christos Tsiolkas’ previous book, 7 1/2 , the autofictional narrator is taken to task for choosing to write not about politics, but beauty. “We have grown old,” his friend says: “And you have grown soft.” It’s a neat way to frame Tsiolkas’ next novel, which is all softness and tenderness: a love story between two men in their 50s, trying to reconcile their personal regrets and heartbreaks as they meet across a “ rough hands/smooth hands ” class divide.

As always with Tsiolkas, the carnal and pungent sex might not be to your tastes – but stick with it for the sweetness of the romance and the most stressful dinner party scene since Edward Albee. – Steph Harmon

Read more: The In-Between by Christos Tsiolkas review – carnal but tender love story ; A walk with Christos Tsiolkas: ‘I don’t understand wanting to live a youthful life forever’

Unfinished Woman by Robyn Davidson

Robyn Davidson – who shot to fame trekking with camels across Australia – had always applied a “scorched-earth policy” to her past. But after a shattering midlife breakdown, the Tracks author felt compelled to sift back through the ruins – from her tumultuous relationship with Salman Rushdie to her mother’s suicide in suburban Queensland when Davidson was 11 – to ask herself: “What is the relationship between my mother’s despair, and my own?”

In a memoir that’s as evocative and restless as its author – flitting from Doris Lessing’s abode in London to the Indian home of her Rajasthani prince “companion” – Davidson interrogates what family, freedom and home mean when you never truly belong anywhere. – Janine Israel

Read more: The woman who walked alone across the desert: what Robyn Davidson learned by risking everything

Shirley by Ronnie Scott

Penguin Random House

Scott’s debut novel, The Adversary, spent a long, febrile summer with a cadre of hunky cads – the kind who wield side-eyes like weapons at the Fitzroy pool. His follow-up, Shirley, feels equally as catty and equally as uncanny.

Set in the first few months of 2020 – catastrophe impending – it follows a thirtysomething narrator and her various exploits with an inept ex-boyfriend, a Gorman-core neighbour and an estranged mother – a former celebrity chef who drops in only to wreak emotional havoc. Looming large is Shirley: the family house abandoned after a vaguely remembered – though gruesome – incident. The mystery streaks through the book like blood. Things get weird. – Michael Sun

Read more: Shirley by Ronnie Scott review – finally, a male author who brilliantly writes women

Gunflower by Laura Jean McKay

McKay’s acclaimed 2020 debut The Animals in That Country saw a pandemic spread the globe that enabled animals and humans to communicate with each other. This fiercely inventive, beguiling short story collection returns to similar ideas, around animal consciousness (one is told from the perspective of chickens in a battery farm), science and the climate crisis.

The titular story, named after its setting – an Icelandic boat where women around the world can get abortions in international waters – is particularly outstanding. For fans of George Saunders, Naomi Alderman and Margaret Atwood. – Sian Cain

Read more: Gunflower by Laura Jean McKay review – exciting speculative tales

Homecoming by Kate Morton

Allen & Unwin

When Jess returns to Sydney from London to be with her dying grandmother, she unwittingly stumbles upon a long-buried secret, and a connection to a well-to-do family whose 1959 Adelaide murder remains unsolved.

Morton is a master storyteller who effortlessly criss-crosses time periods, geographies and protagonists in this sweeping saga of family secrets, illicit love affairs and finding home. A rich, vivid and gripping epic by one of Australia’s biggest exports, Homecoming is an indulgent read at over 600 pages: atmospheric and evocative in its descriptions and its sometimes-protracted, winding storyline, but worth it for escapism alone. – Sarah Ayoub

Crossing the Line by Nick McKenzie

When journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters brought the war crimes of decorated Australian soldier Ben Roberts-Smith to light in 2017, it sowed the seeds for a defamation case that made Australian history. McKenzie’s account of what went on behind the scenes is compelling, fast-paced and accessible storytelling that emphasises the power of investigative journalism and the importance of media integrity.

Entertaining is probably not the right word to use, but this is an unexpected page-turner: the twists and turns are electrifying, and McKenzie’s dogged pursuit of truth and justice admirable. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Hear more: Nick McKenzie was interviewed by Guardian Australia’s Ben Doherty in an episode of our podcast Ben Roberts Smith vs The Media

I’d Rather Not by Robert Skinner

Buy two copies of I’d Rather Not – one for yourself and one to lend – because this is the kind of impish little book that disappears from shelves. Less a memoir than a series of escapades, Robert Skinner’s swashbuckling debut sees him tussle with an ornery camel, the robodebt goons and the ever-fickle literary gods. We know he’s destined to lose, but oh, how glorious failure can be when you put your heart into it.

Skinner has been compared to Oscar Wilde, but his book is as self-effacing as it is quip-witted. I’d planned to include a quote or two – take a joyride on Skinner’s comedy coat-tails – but my (latest) copy is missing. – Beejay Silcox

Search History by Amy Taylor

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This incredibly online novel is for the girlies who simply can’t help but lurk. Protagonist Ana is delighted when she meets a man IRL rather than via the drudgery of the apps, but is quickly sucked into the digital vortex anyway when she goes down the social media rabbit hole and becomes obsessed with his dead ex.

There are plenty of peek-through-your-fingers cringe moments in this pacy and juicy novel, which hits the nail on the head with its depiction of the thrills and dangers of modern dating. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Read more: Search History by Amy Taylor review – sharp and pacy cautionary tale for the extremely online

God Forgets About the Poor by Peter Polites

Ultimo Press

So many autobiographical books on this list play with the genre, and Polites’ latest is no exception. It begins with a stream-of-consciousness chapter, told to the narrator (an apparent stand-in for the author) by his acerbic mother; she wants him to write her story, but: “Try and write something good this time.”

The resulting book is packed with tenderness, love, humour, magic and myth. From her birth in Lefkada to her young adulthood in Athens and her migration to Australia, we are told the story of not just this woman but of migrant Australia and diasporic Greece; and shown how history reaches forward through generations to make us who we become. – Steph Harmon

Read more: God Forgets About the Poor by Peter Polites review – the author’s most striking work yet

Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko

Talking to a friend about this book the other night, I clocked again that it’s taught me more about Australia than anything I’ve ever read, fiction or otherwise. “Educational” carries very particular connotations, but none of them apply to Lucashenko’s vivid, moving historical opus.

With strands of appalling violence, but also of romance, community and the transcendent joy of First Nations culture, she binds together two stories: one from Brisbane/Meanjin now, one from the city’s colonial beginnings. You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll take sides! You’ll see just how many problems could be fixed by affordable housing! A brilliant storyteller on raucously good form, I can’t recommend this enough. – Imogen Dewey

Read more: Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko review – Miles Franklin winner slices open Australia’s past and present

The Bell of the World by Gregory Day

Transit Lounge

Gerald Murnane’s litmus test for a story’s worth was whether it leaves an enduring image upon the mind. By this metric, Gregory Day’s The Bell of the World seared me like a branding iron.

Taking place in the early 20th century in post-federation, colonial Australia, the novel follows Sarah, a young woman living an unsettled existence after her parents’ acrimonious divorce. When she moves to outback Victoria, however, she experiences a great osmosis – like a “long clench releasing” – with nature and its flora and fauna. This is generous, mellifluous eco-fiction that engenders in its readers a similar shift, a great light breaking. – Jack Callil

Read more: The Bell of the World by Gregory Day review – an electric crescendo of Australian nature writing

Paradise Estate by Max Easton

A punk musician, a cam girl, an activist couple and a woman crippled by grief move into a mouldy Sydney share house. So begins the second novel from author Max Easton, a sequel of sorts to 2021’s The Magpie Wing .

Like his debut, Paradise Estate has plenty to say; incisive about class, gentrification and the true motivations behind some of the left’s most vocal “allies”. But what’s most enjoyable is its essential Sydney-ness, including how vividly Easton paints a house full of people you don’t always like but who feel very real and recognisable. And the writing is exceptional – the first and last pages, especially, will stick with you. – Katie Cunningham

Read more: Paradise Estate by Max Easton review – a layered, aching portrait of millennial malaise

Women and Children by Tony Birch

Like many of Birch’s short stories and novels, Women and Children takes place in the mid-1960s and is set in one of the less affluent (now gentrified) suburbs of inner-city Melbourne. Birch’s child protagonist is Joe Cluny, an 11-year-old boy who struggles with the disciplinarian nuns at his school.

Joe’s family are as memorable a cast of characters as you will find – the relationship between Joe and his grandfather Charlie is simply beautiful. When domestic violence threatens Joe’s aunt Oona, the bonds of family are tested. This is another elegant and powerful book from Birch. – Joseph Cummins

Read more: Women & Children by Tony Birch review – a new high for the master craftsman ; A walk with Tony Birch: ‘I got into a lot of fights. I was a very good street boxer’

Dress Rehearsals by Madison Godfrey

Madison Godfrey’s second collection was released during Sydney WorldPride and the two are intertwined for me. These often-funny poems can be read as memoir, as Godfrey takes us through their early life of emo, fandoms and Harry Styles (he gets a poem, as does Halsey; Lara Croft gets two!); to their encounters with the complexities of girlhood; and towards a non-binary identity and a queer community painted with exquisite, breathless joy.

Ode to My Kneecaps is a favourite: “There are so many odes to collarbones / I’m sorry I didn’t look lower sooner. / You unassuming barricade, / A mountain I can curl around / on the train ride home.” – Steph Harmon

Read more: I don’t feel like I was born into the wrong body. There’s not a right or wrong way to be trans

Frank Moorhouse: A Life by Catharine Lumby

Catharine Lumby’s slim life of Frank Moorhouse is the first of two published biographies of the avant-garde author who died in 2022 (the second, by Matthew Lamb, came out this month ). As a friend, she had intimate access to the man and his huge archive. And as an academic journalist, she finds resonant connections in his complex personal life, times and writing within thematic chapters such as Living in the ’70s: Sex, Gender and Politics and The Moorhouse Method: Rules for Living.

With wit, insight and sensitive omissions, Lumby unconsciously echoes the “discontinuous narrative” form that Moorhouse applied to his fiction, sparking questions for future biographers. – Susan Wyndham

Read more: ‘Way too much information, Frank’: I wanted to be Frank Moorhouse. Instead I became his biographer

Ravenous Girls by Rebecca Burton

Finlay Lloyd

This short novel about family dysfunction, the fickleness of teenage friendship, mother-daughter symbiosis, and illness, packs an almighty emotional punch. The family of 14-year-old first-person protagonist Frankie is stressed to breaking point when her older sister Justine becomes an inpatient at an eating disorders unit. But this is a family already shaken by the death of a father and husband, 11 years earlier.

Chroniclers of fictional family life don’t always understand that trauma is most often multilayered, like scar tissue. Just how fully author Rebecca Burton grasps this is evident in her delicate characterisations and sometimes heartbreaking plot. – Paul Daley

Songs for the Dead and the Living by Sara M Saleh

Affirm Press

Amid the deaths of more than 18,000 Palestinians in the current Israel–Gaza war, according to the Gaza health ministry, this lyrical debut novel is as much a story for the present as it is the past. Saleh writes from where much of it began: with a newly widowed and pregnant Palestinian’s initial dispossession of her homeland and then, by extension, her descendants’ ongoing intergenerational trauma and displacement, as refugees in Lebanon, Egypt and Australia.

Delicately and boldly written, this book highlights the layered realities of Arab and Muslim women as wives, daughters and sisters, with a critical tenderness. – Sarah Ayoub

Read more: Sara M Saleh: ‘I want to know the system and its flaws, so I know how to undo it, transcend it’

Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

One of the most anticipated debuts of the year, Madeleine Gray’s razor-sharp novel doesn’t disappoint. Green Dot follows 24-year-old Hera, bored with her life and where it’s headed. When she begins a doomed love affair with older colleague Arthur, she decides this relationship might be the thing to give it all meaning.

Gray manages to make something fresh out of this well-trodden territory: her approximation of millennial life and language is both on-point and very, very funny. But underneath all the sass and sarcasm, there’s real vulnerability – the bind of the modern young woman. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Read more: Green Dot by Madeleine Gray review – a sassy love story with a bleak worldview

Secret Third Thing by Dan Hogan

Cordite Books

Named after the 2022 meme of being neither x nor y (joking or serious, productive or relaxing) but a Secret Third Thing, Dan Hogan’s debut poetry book bashes against the confines of how we articulate ourselves and live.

It’s also very funny, an onslaught of absurdity with lines like, “So drunk at late night shopping right now Sent from my iPhone.” from how_to_be_the_best_worker_in_the_world.ppt. But as Hogan details a world of debasing Centrelink calls, awful landlords and the cruelty of late capitalism, the jokes act as momentary serotonin distractions, questioning what ceaseless scrolling obscures and upholds. – Jared Richards

Eleven Letters to You by Helen Elliott

This lovely memoir by Elliott, a much-admired literary critic, examines periods of her life through letters to the people who shaped her when she was growing up in Australia’s burbs in the 1950s and 1960s. The neighbour who lent her the books that would change her life ; the teacher who taught her about art; the attractive male boss who became “an instruction in both desire and decency”; and all the bold women who revealed to her how to live a life of one’s own.

I keep thinking about this book – it is one to return to. – Sian Cain

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Arts Correspondent

Arts correspondent Matthew Westwood has been writing about the performing and visual arts since he first joined the paper in 1990. As well as concerts, plays and exhibitions, he reports on arts policy and the cultural industries. Matthew enjoys classical music and opera, and loves a great festival.

Matthew Westwood

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For writers

Is abr open to new writers.

Australian Book Review  has a long and proud history of publishing emerging writers and critics with diverse backgrounds and interests. Each year we publish around 300 people from around Australia. Of them, usually 80–100 are completely new to the magazine – a measure of our openness to new voices and talent.

Before you approach  ABR , you should get to know the magazine if you are not already familiar with it. Find out if its style and content suit your work. If you don't subscribe, buy a few issues or think about subscribing. We look for many things in new writers – punctuality, professionalism, cultural engagement – but we also seek people with an understanding of ABR’s style, content, and direction.

Is ABR Arts looking for new contributors?

ABR Arts covers all the arts – film, theatre, music, dance, art exhibitions, festivals, etc. We pay for everything we publish, and we are publicly committed to increasing our rates when we can. All reviews appear promptly online; some later appear in the print edition.

We welcome expressions of interest from arts journalists.

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ABR pays for everything it publishes – print or online. ABR is a proud advocate for young writers and a keen defender of critical standards.

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ABR  is not currently accepting poetry submissions. 

However, you may consider submitting your poem to the  Peter Porter Poetry Prize  (worth a total of $10,000). 

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ABR  is not currently accepting submissions of non-Jolley short stories.

However, you may consider submitting your story to the  ABR  Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize  (worth a total of $12,500).

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