Readings booksellers on our fiction book of the month
You may have seen Woo Woo by Ella Baxter was named our Fiction Book of the Month for August, but if that's not enough to convince you its worth picking up, here are some passionate endorsements from our booksellers!
'Ella Baxter must be one of the most unique voices in Australian publishing at the moment. Woo Woo is a darkly comic satirical take on the contemporary Melbourne art scene. It is much like gleefully belly-sliding down a hallway of very soft fruit: thrilling, shocking and at turns pleasingly repulsive. Baxter digs deep into big themes: the fragility of ego and the need to be loved. It is sharp, hilarious and confronting. I loved it.'
'A ghost story, a thriller, a guttural scream of rage and a domestic dramady, Woo Woo is all these things and more. I don’t think that I have read anything quite as visceral about the creation of art, its process and the act of unleashing it into the world.
Sabine is haunted by her hero, Carolee Schneemann, and stalked by a man she has dubbed 'The Rembrandt Man' as she gradually unravels in the lead up to her exhibition opening. Woo Woo is an often funny and triumphant clarion call and the most powerful and worthwhile work of fiction that I have read this year. '
'I was trying to describe Woo Woo to a friend, and the very best I could do was: All Fours by way of Donnie Darko, but set in Melbourne's peak Hipster-Art scene. This story about a successful conceptual artist who devolves into paranoid psychosis when she discovers she's being stalked is deliciously surreal, excruciatingly funny, and uncomfortably relatable.'
'Woo Woo is [Ella Baxter's] second novel and to my mind confirms Baxter as one of the most exciting Australian novelists to have emerged this decade: I think she’s the real deal . . . this book is so well-written, you can give yourself over to the words, and engage fully with Baxter’s original thinking, and feel the feelings she is exploring. Woo Woo is an outstanding book, one we’ll remember from 2024.'
'Sabine, the artist, is utterly bonkers, and so is this book – in the best possible way! You never quite know what is going to happen next, but it is one hell of an entertaining ride. It's the perfect book to read after All Fours by Miranda July in my opinion, and I devoured it in one delicious weekend.'
