Ceridwen Dovey needs no introduction to the Readings faithful, but for completeness, let me remind you that she was the inaugural recipient of The Readings Prize for New Australian Writing in 2014 with Only the Animals, an inventive work of linked short stories that has since found many, many readers. Dovey has published several works since that breakthrough book, including the wonderful novel In the Garden of the Fugitives (2018), but she returns to the short form this year and her trademark audacious approach has produced Only the Astronauts, in which a range of human-made objects sent into space become animated. Leave all your earthly expectations behind, and let Dovey be your space tour leader, in this, our Fiction Book of the Month. Our reviewers also recommend local debuts from Jonathan Seidler and Cameron Stewart, plus Siang Lu’s second novel, Ghost Cities, and the next book from last year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award-winner, Shankari Chandran: it’s called Safe Haven.

International authors are starting to send the northern hemisphere’s summer reading vibes our way. Colm Tóibín’s Long Island is the follow-on to his much-loved novel, Brooklyn: a Q&A between reviewer and author can be found here. Amor Towles is again on everyone’s mind with an adaptation of A Gentleman in Moscow on screens now. Towles’ new book is a work of short stories, Table for Two, and is out mid-month. There’s a lot of buzz and author love for Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, and our reviewer confirms this enthusiasm, admitting, ‘this book absolutely consumed me’. Our reviewers also praise Alan Murrin’s debut, The Coast Road, and Hanna Johansson’s Antiquity, translated from the original Swedish by Kira Josefsson. I’m keen to check out Rachel Khong’s Real Americans: some readers might remember her excellent Goodbye, Vitamin from a few years ago. If I could give an award for my Favourite Book Jacket of the Month, it would be for Birding by Rose Ruane: my mind is ruminating on what its contents might be, but it’s so evocative that I think I know almost precisely. And remember those summer reading vibes I mentioned? Well, throw the new books from Kevin Kwan and David Nicholls into your beach bags, and you’re good to go.

Our Nonfiction Book of the Month is by Cher Tan, a local essayist and critic and the current reviews editor at Meanjin. Peripathetic: Notes on (un)belonging is exciting stuff: our reviewer calls Tan’s style, ‘experimental and fizzing with energy’, and thinks that fans of Maggie Nelson (of which there are many!) will appreciate Tan’s take on our contemporary moment. This is high praise indeed. Our reviewers further recommend a timely book on beauty culture, Pixel Flesh by Ellen Atlanta, a heartbreaking/heartwarming memoir of grief, Did I Ever Tell You? by Genevieve Kingston, the letters shared between Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower (you may remember reading an extract from this in the April Readings Monthly), and a couple of books our dear Mark Rubbo recommends to you: Wanderings by Bruno Leti and Alex Skovron and Give While You Live by Peter Winneke. Anyone who has been to Hope St Radio in Collingwood and has eaten Ellie Bouhadana’s delicious food will be keen to get their hands on a copy of her first book, Ellie’s Table. Also out this month is Tony Birch writing on Kim Scott, local food hero and activist Hana Assafiri’s memoir, Johann Hari’s take on the culture of weight loss drugs in Magic Pill, and new works from Cassandra Pybus, Hugh Mackay, Danny Wallace, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Richard Sennett and the winner of the 2023 International Booker Georgi Gospodinov.

And finally, dear reader, I’m not sure about you, but I’m finding it a bit disturbing that we’re already in May. Didn’t 2024 just start? How are you going with any of those resolutions you might have made on the first of January? Each year, I resolve to declutter and read more. I pretty much fail annually on resolution number one, but I’m more or less on track with resolution two this year. One of the books I rushed to read in advance proof comes out this month, but quite late in the piece, so we’ve opted to run my review in the June Readings Monthly, but I can’t help but mention it right now: Miranda July’s All Fours. This is such an amazing book from a one-of-a-kind talent: please look out for its unique and crazy brilliance on 21 May.