Browsing Tag

Stella Prize

A year between pages

15 December 2017

It’s that time of year where writerly types reflect on their 2017 reading highlights, but I have one small problem. A few weeks ago I upgraded my phone and lost the note in which I have been carefully recording every book I’ve read for the past three years. I didn’t lose any other notes, just that one. Random fail.

So I certainly won’t be giving you comprehensive stats like Jane Rawson (seriously, check this out). Instead expect a hazily recollected and likely inaccurate (was that 2016, or 2017?) offering.

One thing I know for sure, this year I read a ton of novels set in other countries. As a travel addict I love to explore new countries on the page, even if it usually increases my wanderlust to explore them on foot. India was a particular focus, probably because it’s high on my bucket list. I started the year with Gregory David Roberts’ epic novel Shantaram and went on to read The Permanent Resident, a short story collection by Perth author Roanna Gonsalves. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness followed, Arundhati Roy’s long-awaited follow-up to The God of Small Things, which blew my mind when I read it as a creative writing student all those years ago. Perhaps because of that, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness didn’t quite measure up. I enjoyed it, and Roy skilfully breaks several key writing ‘rules’ which was interesting, but I didn’t fall madly in love with Ministry. My favourite Indian novel was The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2008. It’s told by a village boy called Balram Halwai and follows his struggle to transcend the ‘Darkness’ of his lowly caste. The novel delves into India’s underbelly and is full of dark humour and suspense. I found it utterly captivating.

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The other country to feature even more heavily in my reading was South Africa. With a trip there in September, I read both fiction and nonfiction before leaving, and I am still following that literary trail. I loved Daman Galgut’s brilliant The Imposter and discovered Sowetan author Niq Mhlongo’s Dog Eat Dog. I pored over photographic books like Peter Magubane’s Soweto: Portrait of a City and Jodi Bieber’s Soweto. (Are you sensing a theme?) I read Doing Life with Mandela by Christo Brand after picking it up at the gift shop on Robben Island, the place Nelson Mandela was notoriously incarcerated for 18 of his 27 years, about the relationship that developed between a prison warden and his most famous prisoner. I won’t bore you with my full South African reading list — it was long, and it’s growing longer by the week — but I’ve had rich and thought-provoking travels of both body and mind through this complex and fascinating country.

I also read books set in Indonesia, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, New Zealand, Nigeria, Kenya, America, England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Greece, Norway, Antarctica, and probably a bunch of others that I am forgetting. However, the majority of my reading tends to be by Australian authors, predominantly female authors. Two standouts this year were The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose and Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar.

The Museum of Modern Love seems to have resonated with artists everywhere because it speaks to the challenges of the creative process, and the transformative ability of art. The book pivots around Marina Abramovic and her performance at New York’s MoMA, but really it is a meditation on art and life. I love this quote from the book: ‘Artists are stubborn. They have to be. Even when nothing is happening, the only way through is to work and work.’ And knowing that Rose wrestled this book into being over 11 long years makes this statement even more potent.

Incidentally The Museum of Modern Love won the Stella Prize which is my favourite Australian prize, of course because of what it stands for (‘to raise the profile of women writers and address their underrepresentation in the literary world’), but also because every winner has been among my favourite books of that year (with the exception of Clare Wright’s 2014-winning book, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, which I haven’t yet read).

Lucy Treloar’s Salt Creek also won a bunch of awards and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Australia’s most prestigious literary award. And rightly so. I came to it a bit late (it was published in 2015) but it’s a stunning debut that takes us into the unforgiving landscape of colonial Australia and the devastation of Indigenous displacement. It’s a beautiful and unflinching book that should be on every high school reading list. But fair warning: it’s a real heartbreaker.

Non-Aussie favourites this year included English (but, incidentally, Johannesburg-born) author Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk and Scottish author Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Interestingly, both these books inhabit the lives of quirky characters, and both have strong and distinctly unique voices. Highly recommended if you need a new read.

Well that’s my somewhat sketchy wrap for the year. Let’s hope technology doesn’t fail me again in 2018.

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!

2 November 2016

‘If you’re writing a book in Australia then you need to buy books by Australian authors from Australian bookshops. I’m really hardline on this.’ So said Deb Stevens, Allen & Unwin sales rep and literary dynamo, on a panel about bookselling, ‘The Bookshop Coalface’, at Hardcopy.*

I couldn’t agree more. The majority of readers are completely unaware of the tight margins in publishing and the woeful earnings authors make from book sales. (Read Annabel Smith’s honest account of her income for a good snapshot.) A couple of years ago, Jo Case tweeted a stark example of why buying locally makes a difference. Purchasing a copy of Case’s memoir, Boomer and Me, from an Australian bookshop meant she received $2.50 in royalties, but buying it via Book Depository UK meant only three cents in royalties.

So in the spirit of supporting Australian authors and booksellers, I asked my local booksellers for their pick of the year, giving the final word to Muse’s Nikki Anderson who makes some important observations about how readers can best support the writers they love.

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I didn’t specify any particular genre and, to my delight, these recommendations cover a broad range. So whether your interest lies in literary fiction, commercial fiction, crime, picture books, short stories, or biography there is something on this list for you.

I was also interested to note that the majority of books selected are by female authors. As many of you will no doubt be aware, despite the fact that women make up approximately two-thirds of Australian authors, all publications review more men than women (see the 2015 Stella Count for the stats). Women are also far less likely to win literary awards (hence the establishment of the Stella Prize), or appear on school curriculums, and so on. As a culture, we preference the white, male voice. And yet according to Canberra’s booksellers the majority of 2016’s best books are by women.

So, let’s dive in…

Deb Stevens, sales rep
Goodwood by Holly Throsby
goodwood
I read this debut novel months before publication and have been singing its praises ever since.

In the space of a week two very different people go missing from the township of Goodwood. There is mystery and tension combined with a gentle coming of age story.

I fell in love with the book and the glorious characters living in the township of Goodwood. As a reader I cared for many of them, and long after finishing the book I genuinely missed them. Several other readers have told me they want to meet them again. Soon!

As I read there were times I wanted to grab a highlighter to save phrases that moved or thrilled or delighted me. Holly writes with a deceptively easy style that belies great depth.  I’m sure her life as a singer/songwriter has prepared her well for the writing life. Goodwood is a novel that ‘nails’ Australia. And Goodwood the township will be a real place in the hearts and minds of its readers.

slaughter-parkSue Champion (Book Passion)
Slaughter Park by Barry Maitland
Barry Maitland’s conclusion to his Belltree Trilogy, Slaughter Park, has been the best book I’ve read this year by an Australian author. I was hoping so badly that it would be brilliant, that I was almost scared to open it. Silly me, I should have had more faith — Barry ties up all the loose ends satisfyingly, in a book of vicious intelligence.  He writes with quiet power and a visual descriptiveness that has the scenes running through your head, complete with casting. Aaron Pedersen what are you doing now?

If the ABC don’t film this trilogy…

the-snow-wombatJames Redden (Harry Hartog, Woden)
Snow Wombat by Sussanah Chambers
This gorgeously illustrated picture book captures the fun and playful experiences of a wombat that calls the Australian Snowy Mountains home. The rhymes are cute and fun and compliment the illustrations perfectly. It’s always great as a bookseller to have a book such as this on the shelf, as there are always parents looking for picture books with illustrations of the local area, and especially ones with native animals in a feature role.

Debbie Hackett (Dymocks Tuggeranong)
Beyond the Orchard by Anna Romer
beyond-the-orchard
Lucy Briar returns to her life in Australia after being overseas for several years. Her father begs her to go to the family guesthouse ‘Bitterwood’ to find a photo album for him. Not only does Lucy have to deal with her own haunting memories, but she must also piece together the family secrets and puzzles of a time long gone and finally put the ghosts to rest .

This is an absolutely beautiful read by one of my favourite Australian authors. I cannot recommend it highly enough.  It’s my number one read for 2016 — 11 out of 10!

Alison Kay (Dymocks, Canberra)
I couldn’t decide on one book, there has been so much excellent Australian writing this year.

the-dry1) The Dry by Jane Harper. A brilliant debut thriller set in country Victoria. Her writing creates an atmosphere of heat, dust and tension that grips you from page one. I love reading crime and this book with its Australian setting made it so much more relevant and real for local readers.

2) Stiletto by Daniel O’Malley. Our wonderful Canberra author in a follow-up to The Rook has written an even better novel. His world of supernatural spies and espionage is brilliantly written, very imaginative and funny. This book is totally absorbing — we all loved it.

3) Sisters Saint-Claire by Carlie Gibson. A charming rhyming tale of five French mice. Again by a Canberra author, this book is beautifully presented and a perfect gift for little girls.

There are plenty of other books I have really enjoyed this year, including Goodwood by Holly Throsby, The Good People by Hannah Kent, Working Class Boy by Jimmy Barnes, Where the Trees Were by Inge Simpson, and Celeste by Roland Perry. As I said we are so lucky with our Australian authors and their excellent writing.

Nikki Anderson (Muse, Kingston)
Portable Curiosities by Julie Koh
A top pick of the year is a near impossibility which I think says good things about the local industry. It’s funny talking about the local industry, as I think non-publishing folk don’t necessarily take all that much notice of which authors are Australian or not, and then certainly not the importance of buying local from local. That is, buying Australian books from Australian stores. And fair enough in some ways — it’s ultimately about the quality of the read, and often the price. However (big intake of breath) it does matter. Supporting local booksellers in turn supports local authors, allowing them a bit of a wage (more of a wage if you buy books at full price!) and the ability to keep writing. And often what they write reflects our culture. Not in a ‘kangaroos and koalas’ kind of way (although that’s fine too of course!) but stories that have at their core our experience, place, culture and land.

Charlotte Wood put the relationships between bookseller and author really well in a speech at the Indie Book Awards in March this year, detailing the sustained, personal and geportable-curiositiesnerous support of local booksellers for her and other Australian writers’ works. She went on to compare independent, local booksellers with a Norwegian seed vault, collecting seed samples from across the world for posterity. ‘A few years ago, the outlook for our independent bookselling scene looked gloomy. But like those seeds packed into the cold mountain in Norway, you have survived, you are thriving and because of your noticing and care, your love of words and determination to flourish, you have kept Australian literature and our culture alive and thriving too.’

Anyway, onto my pick, if I have to narrow it down! A book I raced through with delight was Portable Curiosities by Julie Koh (UQP). I love a good short story — that capacity to create a world and deliver a punchy narrative in a short space. Julie Koh’s stories are deceptive, shadowy, like some of her characters — they set up worlds we feel we know, but startling differences creep in — ghosts and third eyes and murderous food culture, life and parenting as competitive sport. All to poke fun at and make us question our contemporary world. They are arch, satirical and very funny. It’s a slim volume to devour, and then read again slowly.

So now all you need to do is head into your local bookshop and pick up one or all of these books (or indeed any book by an Australian author).

* Having assessed manuscripts for the Hardcopy program — with Robyn Cadwallader, Craig Cormick and Mark Henshaw — I was invited to sit in on panel sessions. This one was a beauty, and showcased voices not usually heard at these kind of events. Understanding bookselling is so important for authors. Excellent programming from Nigel Featherstone.