Your guide to the New Australian Fiction shortlist
The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize shortlist is the perfect reading list for the year's best new Australian books. But if you're not sure which of the six shortlisted titles to start with, here's a quick guide to help you find the right book for your current mood.
For an insightful and tense examination of police violence in Melbourne's West
Read No Church in the Wild by Murray Middleton
It's been five long years since violence erupted between young migrants and local police in Melbourne's inner west. A police-led trip to hike the Kokoda Trail hopes to rebuild relationships in the community, but as training gets underway, fresh allegations of racial profiling have everyone on a knife-edge.
From the vial-studded stairs of the high-rises to the melting pot classrooms of secondary schools, to the mud-sucking jungle of Kokoda, No Church in the Wild is a deeply researched, richly imagined novel that interrogates the jaggedness of contemporary Australian society and the prejudices that still underpin it.
For a thoughtful but unflinching look at identity and academia
Read 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. 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?
For those who want to be immersed in a truly unique story
Read Ghost Cities by Siang Lu
Ghost Cities – inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China – follows multiple narratives, including one in which a young man named Xiang is fired from his job as a translator at Sydney's Chinese Consulate after it is discovered he doesn't speak a word of Chinese and has been relying entirely on Google Translate for his work.
How is his relocation to one such ghost city connected to a parallel odyssey in which an ancient Emperor creates a thousand doubles of Himself? Or where a horny mountain gains sentience? Allegorical and imaginative, Ghost Cities will appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino.
For a painfully relatable look at what it means to 'have it all'
Read The Opposite of Success by Eleanor Elliott Thomas
All Lorrie wants is to get promoted, accept her body and end global warming. By Friday. Is that really too much to ask?
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. 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.
For a heartfelt meditation on grief and community
Read Salt River Road by Molly Schmidt
In the aftermath of their mother's death, the Tetley siblings' lives are falling apart. Left to fend for themselves as their family farm goes to ruins, Rose sets out to escape the grief and mess of home. When she meets Noongar Elders Patsy and Herbert, she finds herself drawn into a home where she has the chance to discover the strength of community, and to heal a wound her family has carried for a generation.
Salt River Road is a poignant exploration of healing and resilience, small-town racism and the power of human connection.
For a reflection on motherhood that's as bitter as it is tender
Read Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh
Mary Anne is painfully aware that she's not a good wife and not a good mother, and is slowly realising that she no longer wants to play either of those roles. One morning, she walks out of the family home in Wollongong, leaving her husband and teenage daughters behind.
Wounded by her mother's abandonment, adolescent Vivian searches for meaning everywhere: true crime, boys' bedrooms, a six-pack of beer. But when Vivian grows up and finds herself unhappily married and miserable in motherhood, she too sees no choice but to leave. Her daughter Evie is left reeling, and wonders what she could have done to make her mother stay.
