Must-read Australian debut fiction from 2023
2023 was a wonderful year for Australian fiction. If you’re looking for a new writer to fall in love with, excellent local fiction to gift, or just want to catch up on some of the most talked-about new Australian fiction of the year, here are just a few highlights. And don’t forget to stay tuned for part two of our debut spotlight, where we focus on international fiction.
Green Dot by Madeleine Gray
Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has so far accrued one ex-girlfriend, several hundred hangovers, and a dog-eared novel collection.
While everyone around her seems to have slipped effortlessly into adulthood, Hera has spent the years since school caught between feeling that she is purposefully rejecting traditional markers of success to forge a life of her own and wondering if she's actually just being left behind. Then she meets Arthur, an older, married colleague. Intoxicated by the promise of ordinary happiness he represents, Hera falls headlong into a workplace romance that everyone, including her, knows is doomed to fail.
Firelight: Stories by John Morrissey
An imprisoned man with strange visions writes letters to his sister. A controversial business tycoon leaves his daughter a mysterious inheritance. A child is haunted by a green man with a message about the origins of their planet.
In this striking collection of stories, the award-winning John Morrissey investigates colonialism and identity without ever losing sight of his characters' humanity. Brilliantly imagined and masterfully observed, Firelight: Stories marks the debut of a writer we will be reading for decades to come.
Funny Ethnics by Shirley Le
Funny Ethnics catapults readers into the sprawling city-within-a-city that is Western Sydney and the world of Sylvia Nguyen: only child of Vietnamese refugee parents, unexceptional student, exceptional self-doubter. It's a place where migrants from across the world converge, and identity is a slippery, ever-shifting beast.
Jumping through snapshots of Sylvia's life – from childhood to something resembling adulthood – this novel is about square pegs and round holes, those who belong and those on the fringes. It's a funhouse mirror held up to modern Australia revealing suburban fortune tellers, train-carriage preachers, crumbling friendships and bad stand-up comedy.
The Modern by Anna Kate Blair
Things seem to be working out for Sophia in New York: having come from Australia to be at the centre of modernity, she’s working at the Museum of Modern Art, living in a great apartment with a boyfriend interviewing for Ivy League teaching positions. They’re smart, serious, dine in the right restaurants and have (a little unexpectedly) become engaged just before he leaves to hike the Appalachian Trail.
Alone in the city, Sophia begins to wonder what it means to be married – to be defined, publicly – in the 21st century. Can you be true to yourself and someone else? In a bridal shop she meets Cara, a young artist struggling to get over her ex-girlfriend, and the two begin a connection that leads Sophia to question the nature of her relationships, her career and the consequences of being modern.
Anam by Andre Dao
A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather imprisoned without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to look after the children? Or is it a love story? A detective tale? As the grandson mines his family and personal stories he turns over ideas that resonate with all of us around place and home, legacy and expectation, ambition and sacrifice.
Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of never-ending wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.
The Opposite of Success by Eleanor Elliott Thomas
Council employee Lorrie Hope has a great partner, two adorable kids and absolutely no idea what to do with her life. This Friday, she's hoping for change – it's launch day for her big work project, and she's applied for a promotion she's not entirely sure she wants. Meanwhile, her best friend, Alex, is stuck in a mess involving Lorrie's rakish ex, Ruben – or, more accurately, his wife. Oh, and Ruben's boss happens to be the mining magnate Sebastian Glup, who is sponsoring Lorrie's project.
As the day spirals from bad to worse to frankly unhinged, Lorrie and Alex must reconsider what they can expect from life, love and middle management. The Opposite of Success is a riotously funny debut novel about work, motherhood, friendship-and the meaning of failure itself.
One Day We're All Going to Die by Elise Esther Hearst
At 27, Naomi is just trying to be a normal person. A normal person who works at a Jewish museum, who cares for lost things, found things, sacred things and her family. A person who finds herself going on bad blind dates, having cringe-worthy sex, a tumultuous, toxic affair, and falling for a man called Moses.
Being a normal person would be easy and fine if she didn't bear the weight of the unspoken grief of Cookie, her Holocaust-survivor grandmother. It would all be fine if she just knew how to be, without feeling the pull of expectation, the fear of disappointing others (men, friends, her parents, humanity), and that pesky problem of being attracted to all the wrong people (according to her parents, anyway).
But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
Girl is spending the spring at an artist's residency in Scotland. Far from her home in Australia and her tight-knit Malaysian family, she is meant to be writing a postcolonial novel and working on a PhD on the poetry of Sylvia Plath. But she can't stop thinking about her upbringing and the stories of her parents and grandmother who raised her. How can she reconcile their dreams for her with her lived reality? Did Sylvia Plath have this problem? What even is a 'postcolonial novel'? And what if the story of becoming yourself is not about carving out a new identity but learning to understand the people who shaped you?
A novel about belonging, alienation, and the exquisite pleasure and pain of girlhood.
So Close to Home by Mick Cummins
Eighteen-year-old Aaron is charismatic, resourceful and addicted to heroin. His mum has kicked him out of home in a last-ditch move to help him get straight, and he wanders the streets of South Melbourne, living on his wits and sleeping rough - all the while chasing drugs, dreams and love.
Desperate to fund his addiction, Aaron climbs into the car of The Man, a distinguished elderly gentleman willing to pay for a certain kind of relationship. This regular cash could be the lifeline Aaron needs to start again, but The Man keeps raising spectres from Aaron's past that he'd rather forget. As Aaron gathers the courage to confront the events that derailed his life, his rage grows – and the consequences could be fatal.
The Visitors by Jane Harrison
On a steamy, hot day in January 1788, seven Aboriginal men, Elder statesmen representing the nearby clans, gather at Warrane. Several newly arrived ships have been sighted in the great bay to the south, Kamay. The men meet to discuss their response to these Visitors. All day, they talk, argue, debate. Where are the Visitors from? What do they want? Might they just warra warra wai back to where they came from? Should they be welcomed? Or should they be made to leave? The decision of the men must be unanimous - and will have far-reaching implications for all.
Throughout the day the weather is strange, with mammatus clouds, unbearable heat, and a pending thunderstorm ... Somewhere, trouble is brewing.
Sad Girl Novel by Pip Finkemeyer
Over the course of a year in Berlin, an aspiring novelist, Kim, and her historian best friend, Bel, confront their twin acts of creation.
Kim is becoming a writer, and is determined to write a bestseller. She's been convinced of this idea by Matthew, an American literary agent who is as emotionally unavailable as he is handsome (very). Kim lives in her own carefully constructed reality, which her imagination is constantly pumping full of hot air. Meanwhile, Bel is becoming a mother, and gives birth, certain it will fulfil her in ways her career does not seem to. Kim and Bel support and deceive each other as only the best of friends can. In the face of probable failure, how do we convince ourselves to try and become something anyway? And how do we live with the choices we make?
Search History by Amy Taylor
After fleeing to Melbourne in the wake of a breakup, all Ana has to show for herself is an unfulfilling job at an overly enthusiastic tech start-up and one particularly questionable dating app experience. Then she meets Evan. Charming, kind and financially responsible, Evan is a complete aberration from her usual type, and Ana feels like she has finally awoken from a long dating nightmare.
As much as she tries to let their burgeoning relationship unfold IRL, Ana can't resist the urge to find Evan online. When she discovers that his previous girlfriend, Emily, died unexpectedly less than a year ago, Ana begins to worry she's living in the shadow of his lost love. Soon she's obsessively comparing herself to Emily, trawling through her dormant social media accounts in the hope of understanding her better. Online, Evan and Emily's life together looked perfect, but just how perfect was it?
The Albatross by Nina Wan
When Primrose makes an unplanned detour into a dilapidated suburban golf course called Whistles, she has no idea that the past will come rushing back at her, bringing every detail of her life into stark focus. At 36, her marriage is teetering on the edge. A visit from her commanding brother-in-law looms ominously on the horizon. And by a twist of fate, Peter, the boy she loved twenty years ago, is now living across the street.
Primrose cannot escape the increasing demands to make a choice, between her first love and her marriage, duty and desire, fear and freedom. Slowly, the grounds of Whistles, and a sport she proves to be terrible at, become her meditation and cure.
Songs for the Dead and the LIving by Sara M Saleh
Jamilah has always believed she knows where her home is: in a house above a paint shop on the outskirts of Beirut, with her large, chaotic, loving family. But she soon learns that as Palestinian refugees, her family's life in Lebanon is precarious, and they must try to blend in even as they fight to retain their identity.
When conflict comes to Beirut, Jamilah's world fractures, and the family is forced to flee to Cairo: another escape, and another slip further away from Palestine, the homeland to which they cannot return. In the end, Jamilah will have to choose between holding on to everything she knows and pursuing a life she can truly call her own.
The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer
In her work as a 'death doula', Clover Brooks ushers people peacefully through their last days, collecting their final words into three notebooks: ADVICE, CONFESSIONS and REGRETS.
But Clover spends so much time with the dying that she's forgotten how to live . . .
Can her clients' hard-won wisdom – and the inspiring love story of a spirited old woman named Claudia – show Clover the way to a happy ending?
After all, what's the point of giving someone a beautiful death if you can't give yourself a beautiful life?
Burn by Melanie Saward
When a tragic bushfire puts two kids in hospital, Indigenous teenager Andrew knows the police will come after him first. But Andrew almost wants to be caught, because at least it might make his dad come and rescue him from suburban Brisbane and his neglectful mother.
Growing up in small-town Tasmania, Andrew struggled at home, at school, at everything. The only thing that distracted or excited him was starting little fires. Flames boosted his morale and purified his thoughts, and they were the only thing in his life he could control. Until one day things got out of hand, and Andrew was forced to leave everything behind. Now as the police close in and Andrew runs out of people to turn to, he must decide whether he can put his faith in himself to find a way forward.
Untethered by Ayesha Inoon
Zia secretly longs to go to university but as a young woman in a traditional Muslim family, she does what is expected of her and agrees to an arranged marriage to Rashid, a man she barely knows. Cocooned by the wealth and customs of her family, Rashid's dark moods create only the smallest of ripples in their early life together. When growing political unrest spurs them to leave Sri Lanka and immigrate to Australia, Zia is torn between fear of leaving her beloved family and the possibility of new freedoms.
Facing isolation, poverty and an increasingly unstable marriage that forms a cage stronger than any she's known before Zia is determined to carve a place for herself in this new country and sets out on uncertain terrain discovering friendship, devastating loss and hope for a different future.
Orphia and Eurydicius by Elyse John
Orphia dreams of something more than the warrior crafts she's been forced to learn. Hidden away on a far-flung island, her blood sings with poetry and her words can move flowers to bloom and forests to grow ... but her father, the sun god Apollo, has forbidden her this art.
A chance meeting with a young shield-maker, Eurydicius, gives her the courage to use her voice. After wielding all her gifts to defeat one final champion, Orphia draws the scrutiny of the gods. Performing her poetry, she wins the protection of the goddesses of the arts: the powerful Muses, who welcome her to their sanctuary on Mount Parnassus. Orphia learns to hone her talents, crafting words of magic infused with history, love and tragedy.