Australian fiction to pick up this month
Big Time by Jordan Prosser
Big Time is set in a not-too-distant future Australia, where the eastern states have become the world's newest autocracy – a place where pop music is propaganda, science is the enemy, nationalism trumps all, and moral indecency is punishable by indefinite detention.
The novel opens as Julian Ferryman, bass player for the Acceptables, returns to Melbourne after a year overseas. He reconnects with his band as they prepare to record and tour their highly anticipated second album, and is given his first taste of a new designer drug, F, a powerful synthetic hallucinogen that gives users a glimpse of their own future. Rumour says, the more you take, the further you see – maybe even to the end of time.
Read our staff review here.
The Norseman’s Song by Joel Deane
An ancient man without a past hails a taxi driven by a petty criminal with no future. Reluctantly, the pair embarks on a journey in search of a legendary whaler and murderer known only as the Norseman. This is a one-way trip – but who’s taking who for a ride?
The Norseman’s Song is a stylish blend of gothic mystery and modern crime noir. Evoking the spirit of Joseph Conrad and Edgar Allan Poe, Joel Deane creates a violent and lyrical vision of contemporary Australia with the pace and energy of a road movie and the haunting atmosphere of a nightmare.
A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle
The first love of a teenage girl is a powerful thing, particularly when the object of that desire is her best friend, also a girl. It's the kind of power that could implode a family, a friendship, a life. On a quiet summer night in Newcastle, 1972, a choice must be made: to act upon these desires, or suppress them? To live an openly queer life, or to try desperately not to?
Over the following three decades, these two lives almost intersect in pivotal moments, the distance between them at times drawing so thin they nearly collide. Against the backdrop of an era including Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, we see these two lives ebb and flow, with joy and grief and loss and desire, until at last they come together in the most beautiful and surprising of fashions.
Read our staff review here.
Oblivion by Patrick Holland
As the influence of the West falls away, an unnamed narrator drifts through the East’s floating world of non-places – chain hotels, airports, mega-cities – finalising often covert operations and deals. When he meets the enigmatic and beautiful Tien, a 21st-century floating world courtesan, he becomes involved with people and events that threaten his plan to escape life via various forms of oblivion.
Evocative and sparely written this is a novel where the journey becomes the story, filled with acute observation, desire and dreams.
Together We Fall Apart by Sophie Matthiesson
For the past seven years, Clare has been living in London. She works for a judge on child protection cases. Her partner, Miriam, is devoted to raising their young son, Rupert – their days are dominated by nap times, laundry and hiding from each other. When Clare returns to Melbourne to visit her ailing father, another crisis looms – her brother Max’s long-term drug addiction. She turns her efforts towards helping Max into rehab, but is this at the expense of her family back in London?
The End and Everything Before It by Finegan Kruckemeyer
Emma watched her mother's kayak disappear among icebergs in the Arctic Sea. Six years later, her brother, who had not spoken since their mother was lost, warns Emma of the curse of death that she brought to anyone who looked on her face – before tragedy befalls him too.
Emma consigns herself to a solitary life at sea, where she can do no more harm. After years alone, she is mysteriously drawn to land. And she docks at an island, afraid of what her arrival might mean for the welcoming man and his daughter waving from the jetty.
But who knows where our stories begin and end or how they are entwined? Who knows whether now, on the island, she begins a new tale?
Read our staff review here.
If You Go by Alice Robinson
When Esther wakes with a breathing tube down her throat, she has no idea where she is or how she got there. In terrible physical condition, Esther is tended to by Grace, the only other person in the building.
In the half-consciousness of her recovery, Esther is desperate to get back to her young kids and grapples with the events of her life as they come flooding back: a childhood spent between warring parents; the demise of her marriage; the struggles she faced when her children were born.
Suspicious of Grace, Esther takes drastic action to escape. But there are certain facts about the reality of her situation – her place in time, her history and her life – that she will need to uncover first.
Read our staff review here.
Jade and Emerald by Michelle See-Tho
Lei Ling Wen is lonely. Bored of her demanding after-school schedule of tuition, study and violin lessons, she struggles to see eye to eye with her strict Chinese-Malaysian mother. When Lei Ling is befriended by elegant, worldly socialite Gigi Nu, she is enchanted by the realm of luxury and freedom that suddenly opens up to her. Gigi encourages Lei Ling to flout her routines and treats her to desiger products and expensive meals, and soon Lei Ling finds herself caught between two lives, and increasingly at odds with her exasperated mother.
Then tragedy strikes, and Lei Ling discovers long-held secrets that lead her to question everything she thought she knew about the two central women in her life, and the friendship she'd held at the heart of it.
Read our staff review here.
Available from 16 July
The Honeyeater by Jessie Tu
Young academic and emerging translator Fay takes her mother on a package tour holiday to France to celebrate her birthday. It's a chance for the two of them to take a break from work and have a little fun, but they both find it hard to relax. Her mother seems reluctant to leave their room in the evening, and Fay is working on a difficult translation. On their last night in France, Fay receives the shattering news that her former lover has suddenly died.
Back in Sydney, Fay seeks solace from her mentor, Professor Samantha Egan-Smith, who offers her a spot at a prestigious translation conference in Taipei. But can she trust her? Does the Professor know more than she is admitting, or is Fay being paranoid? When a shocking allegation is made, Fay chooses to keep it secret. Is she protecting the Professor or exercising power over her?
Read our staff review here.
