Fiction

Julienne van Loon won the Vogel Literary Award for 2004 with Road Story. Now, with Beneath the Bloodwood Tree, van Loon has passed the hurdle or hoodoo of getting a second novel written and published, although not with ease, and apparently with no resolved sense of the kind of novel she was intending to write.

Sarah Hay’s new novel is set in north-western Australia against a background of intense heat and bone-hard country, a continent away from the grim southern island setting of her previous novel, Skins (2001). Although this second novel by the Vogel-winning author explores a very different place and time, the two novels share some common terrain. Both unfold in remote locations where conditions of survival are harsh; both explore themes of loneliness, will, desire and the impact of colonisation.

Childhood is full of revelatory moments; sometimes shocking instants of understanding that people, events and relationships are not as they seem. They can happen in adulthood too, but those in childhood can have an intensity that makes them deeply formative. They might be subtle eye-openers or life-changing epiphanies, but they all cause a shift in perspective that changes one’s perception of the world. These six new books contain transformative moments for their protagonists, from the realism of family secrets to the fantasy of high-adventure mysteries.

In October 1997 Canberra engineer Joe Cinque died following a lethal administration of heroin and Rohypnol. Two women were charged with his murder: his girlfriend, Anu Singh, and her friend Madhavi Rao. Singh was convicted of manslaughter over the death and sentenced to ten years’ jail (of which she served four); Rao was cleared of all charges.

The story of the children Conaci and Dirimera, who were spirited away to Europe by a Benedictine missionary, Rosendo Salvado, in the mid-nineteenth century to be trained as Australia’s first indigenous monks, is arguably the first, forgotten chapter of Australia’s Stolen Generations. It is the subject of Anouk Ride’s The Grand Experiment, a compelling though problematic book, where a number of the author’s charges can also be levelled at her.

A startling début novel by Melbourne-based author Caroline Hamilton, Consumed is a truly macabre story that will disturb and alienate some of its readers. The (at times patchy) prose revels in its gratuitous descriptions of the preparation of food, especially meat, but this may be a deliberate choice in the face of sanitised offerings available at your local supermarket.

A History of The Great War alludes to an encyclopedic work that appeared in the wake of World War I. Bound in red leather and embossed with gold, it exemplified officially sanctioned history. Peter McConnell’s recommissioning of the title is more than mere irony: it throws down a challenge to our acceptance of conventional history. His central character is a latter-day Penelope, a decent, ordinary woman who nonetheless possesses many of the noble attributes often evinced by the Anzacs: endurance, resourcefulness, patriotism and courage.

One of the intriguing things about Breath, Tim Winton’s first novel in seven years, is that it has a number of affinities with his very first book, An Open Swimmer (1982). Both are coming-of-age novels that attempt to capture some of the confusion and melancholy of youth ...

In the essay ‘Pay Attention to the World’, written shortly before her death in 2004, Susan Sontag argues that fiction is ‘one of the resources we have for helping us to make sense of our lives … [it] educates the heart and the feelings and teaches us how to be in the world’. While Sontag’s insight recognises the power of literature in general, the qualities she identifies are particularly significant in young adult fiction. Genius Squad and At Seventeen are two examples of the ‘rite of passage’ novel, where adolescent characters’ quests for self-discovery illuminate parallel themes in the lives of teenage readers.