Paddy O'Reilly

Other Houses opens with its central character, Lily, cruising a drug-riddled suburb in search of her missing partner, Janks, who has disappeared, leaving her and their daughter, Jewelee, to fend for themselves. From the outset, Other Houses is grounded in Melbourne: from the suburban streets that Lily traverses late at night to escape her trauma to the highways that Janks drives along on a doomed mission as a ‘courier of misery’. Suburbs with names reminiscent of big American cities like Dallas have none of the glitz and glamour of their famous namesakes; they are steeped in substance abuse, poverty, and hopelessness.

Originally published in German, Albrecht Dümling’s The Vanished Musicians: Jewish refugees in Australia (Peter Lang), a fascinating compendium of Jewish musicians who found refuge in Australia in the 1930s and 1940s, is now available in Australian Diana K. Weekes’s excellent translation ...

Jennifer Maiden's The Fox Petition: New Poems (Giramondo) conjures foxes 'whose eyes were ghosts with pity' and foxes of language that transform the world's headlines

Books of the Year is always one our most popular features. Find out what our 41 contributors liked most this year – and why.

In the spirit of our annual ‘Books of the Year’ feature, in which we ask a range of writers and critics to nominate their favourite new fiction and non-fiction titles, we asked ten Australian short story writers to nominate their favourite short story collections and individual stories. As this is the first time we have run a short-story themed feature of this nature, our ten writers were free to nominate older titles if they wished to do so. Our only request was that at least one of their selections should have been published recently and that at least one be by an Australian author.

A while ago, I was walking through Melbourne Central station when I was buffeted on all sides. Muscular minders were pushing back a crowd of jostling fans from a red carpet. Everyone was holding iPhones above their heads. They had come to see two Hollywood stars. But Hollywood is different these days. One star was playing a mutant who could grow adamantium claws from his hands. The other, an ordinary character, happened to be a dwarf.

Paddy O’Reilly’s début novel, The Factory (2005), was widely commended, and her collection of short fiction, The End of the World (2007), garnered recognition in several major literary prizes. Published under the name P.A. O’Reilly, thereby distinguishing it from the author’s more literary works, O’Reilly’s second novel, The Fine Colour of Rust, marks a departure in style for the author; a shift toward more commercial writing. Even so, O’Reilly’s literary skill and startling wit are evident in this feel-good novel, bringing the fictional town of Gunapan alive in all its homely intricacy, and dust.

There was a party when I first came to this country. The table was heavy with plates of pizza and chicken balls and Turkish dips with sticks of celery that no one touched. Balloons clustered on the ceiling, trying to escape the heat of the room. A badly lit fire in the fireplace sent out curls of smoke, and a double-bar radiator sat burning in the opposite corner.

‘This is my Filipino brother-in-law, Enrico,’ Alan said each time he introduced me, grasping my arm or giving me a playful punch. At that point, the person I was meeting would clap my shoulder and say, ‘Welcome to Australia!’ as if they had rehearsed this gesture for my arrival.

In 2005, Lisa Gorton, writing in ABR, named Paddy O’Reilly’s The Factory one of the best books of the year. It was O’Reilly’s first novel, but she was already well established as a prize-winning writer of short stories. The End of the World is a collection of those stories, and should secure her reputation as one of our most interesting, if not best-known, literary talents.