Author Talk: The season with Helen Garner

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It is a measure of the love and respect readers have for Helen Garner that this event, held in the National Library of Australia’s 300-seat theatre, had a 200-strong waiting list. And, it was well worth booking early for.

The evening was emceed by Luke Hickey, the National Library’s Assistant Director-General Engagement. He started with a welcome, acknowledgement of country and an introduction of the participants, who were:

  • Helen Garner (my posts): multi-award winning author of novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction.
  • Beejay Silcox: writer, literary critic and about-to-retire Artistic Director of Canberra Writers Festival.

The conversation

This was a joyful but engaged conversation that flowed easily, while gently getting to the nub of some great ideas.

Beejay started by reminding us that “Canberra” means “meeting place” and that for millennia people have met here to “talk about things that matter”. She then tried to define what Helen Garner means to us. She is a writer who destablises and discomforts us, who energises us, who provokes us but not for provocation’s sake. She’s a writer who doubts, is uncertain, and who, because of this, brings us along with her.

On writing The season

Beejay called The season a graceful book, a love letter from a grandmother to boys and men. Some see it as very different from her previous work, but Beejay was not so sure. What did Garner think?

Garner said this was the most fun writing she had done. It was an “extraordinary experience” and came at a time when she felt burnt out. Preparing her three diaries had involved many “squirmy 2ams”. She also saw it as her last chance to get close to a grandchild.

Contrary to her normal practice, which is not to ask permission, Garner had asked her grandson and his coach whether it would be ok for her to attend training sessions with a view to writing about the experience.

Beejay commented on Garner’s reference in the book to being an invisible older woman. Was it a superpower or curse. Oh, superpower, said Garner! She didn’t want to interview the players, just observe.

Garner didn’t know anything about teams, so she’d sit back, an invisible figure in her straw hat and overalls, and watch. The boys were, generally, oblivious of her presence, and had no sense of this being rude. She was fascinated by their behaviour versus that of girls, with which she is more familiar. They would dump their stuff any which way – bags, bikes, phones – and keep on walking to wherever they were going. Girls, by comparison, place their bikes, say, neatly against a tree. Women scan the territory, whereas these boys had tunnel vision, a “tremendous ability to concentrate” or focus.

She observed that during training the coach would exhort the boys to widen their field of vision. It was “thrilling to watch”. Garner conveyed such joy about watching the young men. I remember feeling the same about watching my son’s cricket team. Those boys were so enthusiastic, so sure, after getting out for a duck, that they’d hit that six next time. Their confidence was infectious.

On football, and writing about it

Garner admitted to being a Western Bulldogs fan, and talked about her love of footy. She “can’t stand it when it’s not footy season”, which drew some perhaps surprised but warm-hearted laughter from the audience.

Beejay spoke of Garner’s “narrative love of the game”, of her anchoring her writing about it in terms of writers like Blake, and Homeric epics, of her referencing “elemental” ideas like mercy, triumph, vengeance.

Garner talked about her introduction to the sport – her origin story as Beejay framed it – via the 1997 documentary Year of the dogs. It was a time of great change in the sport, and she was moved by the decisions made by some players to not chase the money.

While she knows the rules and understands the play, she will “never” understand the game, but doesn’t care. She didn’t want to take a position on football. Some expected her, for example, to take a feminist position, and explore the brutal aspects, but she wanted to glorify.

Beejay asked how hard it was to not write what people expected. Garner didn’t know how to write a polemical book about football. In fact, she struggled to turn her experience into a book. She started writing it in the past, but that gave it an historical feel. As soon as she changed to present tense, she knew she had her story.

Beejay asked her to read the opening two paragraphs:

I pull up at the kerb. I love this park they train in. I must have walked the figure-of-eight round its ovals hundreds of times, at dawn, in winter and summer, to throw the ball for Dozer, our red heeler-but he’s buried now, in the backyard, under the crepe myrtle near the chook pen.

The boy jumps out with his footy and trots away, bouncing. it. Boy? Look at him. He’s been playing with our suburban club since he was a tubby little eight-year-old; I have never paid more than token attention to his sporting life. But this year he’s in the Under-16s. The shoulders on him! He must be almost six feet tall. He’s the youngest of my three grand-children. The last, and there will be no more.

Beejay described this as a masterclass in writing. Everything is in these two paragraphs – relationships, rhythm of life, her sense of place, death.

Garner said, simply (modestly, some of us would say):

“What I’m good at is saying what happens”.

On Garner, the writer and grandmother

Garner loves being a grandmother, and got more laughs when she admitted that after three marriages she was no good at being married, but had found a place to be in the world. She sees the role of a grandmother as being “a servant”, that is, as serving the family, helping the family grow, being the backstop.

Beejay returned to her introduction of Garner as self-effacing, as a writer who doubts. In this book, she describes herself as “a bore”. Is this questioning of herself a whim, and what is the gap between the book she imagines and the one she creates.

Garner never has an idea of what her book is to be. She writes sentence by sentence. She talked about being “a small piece of shit”. While one husband told her he didn’t feel that way, she thinks most of us feel small, at least sometimes. They are valuable times; they balance “the insane moments of triumph”.

On values, lessons, manners

Garner loves football because the discipline of sport puts boundaries around the urge to fight. (She referenced the Iliad with its sense of enormous power). Garner and Beejay discussed a photo Garner loves of two footballers at a moment of defeat, with its Homeric sense of valour and duty, of intimacy, loss and pain. Garner sees these footballers as young, and perfect. She loves “noble postures of defeat” rather than Achilles-style roaring, bellowing triumph.

Garner thinks football can teach boys manners. There can be moral teaching, to not think of themselves and to trust each other .

Beejay also noted that The season is a love letter to volatile youth but is also about age. What did Garner mean by feeling envy. Was it of youth? Of boys doing things she couldn’t? Or related to the presentism of youth, and being unweighted by the past? A bit of all of this. Garner envies youth, its fearlessness. The discussion then turned to what happens to boys who are tender when young but are forced to harden when they get older. Garner hates “the clamp” that is put on emotion in boys.

For all the talk about youth envy, Garner also accepts her age. At 82, she is bothered that people try to deny her age, as in “you’re not old”!

Q & A

On boys and masculinity: a couple of questions/comments concerned this. One audience member thanked her for her “lovely writing” about boys compared to all the “toxic masculinity” talk that confronts them today. Garner hates that those two words – “toxic” and “masculinity” – are glued together, and that boys have to face it. Another questioner wondered how parents can help boys become the boys we’d like them to be. Garner shared an experience she had of Tim Winton calming his distraught 4-year-old by simply sitting with the child and repeatedly naming his feelings, “you’re so angry, you’re so sad”, rather than telling him to get over it, etc.

On Garner being a great observer of human emotions and whether she has questions in mind when she is observing. Nope! Garner just barges in! She’s no good at planning. People love it if you are interested in their work. She realises she is “completely un-bore-able”. (I can relate to this.) She quoted a French writer who said “ignorance and curiosity” form the basis of their writing.

On whether writing The season cured her feeling of burnout: Garner has signed a contract to deliver another book in December but “has nothing say”!

Conclusion

I loved this conversation, not only because Beejay asked perceptive, interesting questions and because Garner is – well, Garner – but also because Garner confirmed my own feelings about sport. It is life – it’s narrative, character, drama, emotion. It can play out so many of the big things we feel and experience.

Beejay clearly liked this too because she concluded the conversation on the idea that football is bigger than just the game. Was there one lesson we could take away from it. Garner’s response?

”Don’t turn your back on the play”!

And with that the session closed to enthusiastic and appreciative applause.

Author Talk: The season with Helen Garner
With Beejay Silcox
National Library of Australia, presented in partnership with the Canberra Writers Festival
Thursday 20 February 2025

On the comedy of Jane Austen (1905)

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A regular part of my Jane Austen group’s monthly meeting is a show-and-tell which means of course that we share anything new we’ve acquired, seen or heard about relating to Jane Austen. At our February meeting, a member brought along a first edition (I think) of a book a friend had given him as a result of that friend’s downsizing. It pays to have your friends know your enthusiasms!

The book was G.E. Mitton’s Jane Austen and her times, 1775-1817 (1st ed. 1905). We were intrigued as none of us had heard of this book or its author. Who is Mitton? The assumption from some in the group was male, but others of us were not so sure – and we were right to be, because G.E. Mitton is Geraldine Edith Mitton (1868-1955). She was, according to Wikipedia which cites Who’s who from 1907, “an English novelist, biographer, editor, and guide-book writer”.

Wikipedia provides a brief biography for her – drawn primarily from a couple of obituaries – followed by a list of works. It’s not much, but provides some background. She was born in Bishop Auckland, Country Durham, the third daughter of Rev. Henry Arthur Mitton, who was a master of Sherburn Hospital. In her late twenties, Mitton moved to London, where in 1899 she was employed by the publishing company A & C Black, and worked on the editorial staff of Who’s who. In 1920, she became the third wife of colonial administrator Sir George Scott and collaborated with him on several novels set in Burma. (Wikipedia lists four collaborative novels.) Her biography of him, Scott of the Shan Hills (1936), was published the year after his death. Several of her books are available at Project Gutenberg.

I could research her further, and, who knows, I might one day, but she’s not the main point of this post. What I want to share is how she starts her book. Chapter 1 is titled “Preliminary and Discursive”, and it opens with:

Of Jane Austen’s life there is little to tell, and that little has been told more than once by writers whose relationship to her made them competent to do so. It is impossible to make even microscopic additions to the sum-total of the facts already known of that simple biography, and if by chance a few more original letters were discovered they could hardly alter the case, for in truth of her it may be said, “Story there is none to tell, sir.” To the very pertinent question which naturally follows, reply may thus be given.

Deborah Hopkinson, Ordinary, extraordinary Jane Austen

Little did Mitton know! Despite the significant gaps in her biography, Austen is surely up there as a biographer’s subject. There have been many traditional biographies, including, in alphabetical order, those by David Cecil, yasmine Gooneratne, Park Honan, Elizabeth Jenkins, David Nokes, Carol Shield and Claire Tomalin. But, perhaps partly because of the gaps and partly because books about Austen are popular (and presumably sell well), her life has been written about from almost every imaginable angle, such as:

  • through the places she lived (Lucy Worsley’s Jane Austen at home) and the objects she owned (Paula Byrne’s The real Jane Austen: A life in small things);
  • through her beliefs and values (Helen Kelly’s Jane Austen: The secret radical and Paula Hollingworth’s The spirituality of Jane Austen);
  • through her relationships (E.J. Clery’s Jane Austen: The banker’s sister, Irene Collins’ Jane Austen: The parson’s daughter and Jon Spence’s “imagined biography” Becoming Jane Austen);
  • through (or by) her fans (Constance Hill’s Jane Austen: Her homes and her friends); and
  • for children (such as Deborah Hopkinson and Qin Leng’s picture book biography, Ordinary, extraordinary Jane Austen: The story of six novels, three notebooks, a writing box and one clever girl).

Need I continue?

But all that’s an aside. The opening paragraph then continues, and here is the main point of my post:

Jane Austen stands absolutely alone, unapproached, in a quality in which women are usually supposed to be deficient, a humorous and brilliant insight into the foibles of human nature, and a strong sense of the ludicrous. As a writer in The Times (November 25, 1904) neatly puts it, “Of its kind the comedy of Jane Austen is incomparable. It is utterly merciless. Prancing victims of their illusions, her men and women are utterly bare to our understanding, and their gyrations are irresistibly comic.”

Remember, this was written in 1905. Austen may not stand “absolutely alone” – and I would hope that women are no longer seen as “deficient” – in having “a humorous and brilliant insight into the foibles of human nature, and a strong sense of the ludicrous”, but I appreciate Mitton’s recognition of her wit. And that last sentence from The Times is close to perfect.

My Jane Austen group plans to discuss this subject later in the year, so you might see more on this topic, particularly regarding whether we see her comedy as “utterly merciless”. Meanwhile, you are more than welcome to share your thoughts.

Monday Musings on Australian literature: Diverse publishing

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With the idea and practice of diversity under attack in more than one place around this world of ours, it’s encouraging to see publishers continuing to support the need for more diversity in their output.

I’ve written several Monday Musings about diversity in publishing, including these, listed from the most recent to the earliest:

  • Bundyi (2024): on a new First Nations imprint, being curated by Dr Anita Heiss, and under the auspices of Simon & Schuster
  • Canberra Writers Festival 2023: 2, Celebrating the classics (2023): on a panel discussion about UQP’s First Nations Classics initiative
  • First Nations Classics (2022): introducing UQP’s First Nations Classics initiative.
  • Magabala Books (2022): spotlight on this First Nations publisher, which was established in 1984.
  • Diversity and memoir (2021): on the issue that people from diverse backgrounds are expected to write memoirs about their experience rather than free to write on their choice of subject.
  • Multicultural NSW Award (2019): on this award that celebrates the publishing of books dealing with or furthering our understanding of migrant experience, cultural diversity or multiculturalism in Australia
  • Who is publishing the interesting books (2014): looks at what “interesting”means from a number of angles including diverse writers

Of course I’ve written posts on diversity from other angles – such as on festivals, or listing books by diverse writers – and I have reviewed many books by diverse writers.

I was inspired to write this post by another publishing initiative in this space, Allen & Unwin’s Joan Press. It was created, in fact, in 2020, but I only cam across it recently. Curated by Nakkiah Lui, a Gamilaroi and Torres Strait Islander woman, and a writer, actor and director, it describes itself as “Radical, inclusive, rebellious”. Its simple home page says:

Joan publishes books across all genres and forms. Each Joan title creates space for voices that get pushed to the fringes; voices that challenge and interrogate the world around them. Named after Lui’s grandmother, Joan Press recognises that storytelling is both the legacy and the future of any community, and aims to be a home for stories and storytellers who are redefining the mainstream in a way that is radical, inclusive and bold.

As far as I can tell, Joan has so far published three books:

  • Emma Darragh, Thanks for having me (2024), Joan Press’s first fiction title, described as comprising “interwoven stories about three generations of women in one family as they navigate girlhood, motherhood and selfhood, perfect for fans of Jennifer Egan, Meg Mason and Paige Clark”. 
  • Sarah Firth, Eventually everything connects (2023), a work of graphic non-fiction, described as  “a delicious mix of daily life, science, philosophy, pop culture, daydreams and irreverent humour”
  • Madison Godfrey, Dress rehearsals (2023), described as “A memoir made of poetry, Dress Rehearsals documents a decade of performing womanhood in a non-binary body”.

Unlike some of the publisher sites I’ve visited recently, Joan does seem to be currently still accepting submissions.

And a little extra …

Related to the issue of diversity in publishing is that of diversity in the publishing workforce. In March and April of 2022, a survey was conducted of diversity and inclusion in the Australian publishing industry. You can read about it here 9where there are links to further details including the full report, but the summary drawn was that

The publishing industry in Australia is highly educated, driven by women and has strong LGBTQ+ representation, yet struggles to reflect Australia’s cultural and social diversity, according to the first survey examining diversity in Australian publishing.

The summary said that the survey yielded “important insights that will help to push for change in the sector”. Some of you may remember this survey, because it got quite a bit of coverage at the time. But what has happened since? That has been hard to find, as my search on the subject produced a page or more of hits on the 2022 survey, but a page or so in, I found a Books + Publishing article from February 2024, titled “APA [Australian Publishers Assoication] releases diversity and inclusion plan” and stating that APA had released ‘a diversity and inclusion plan “to guide and support industry progress over the next two years”‘. The article lists eight recommendations for publishers to work on, and provides a link to the plan.

I also find an announcement from August 2024 that Hachette Australia and Media Diversity Australia (MDA) “are excited to announce a significant partnership, with Hachette becoming the inaugural book publisher member of MDA. This collaboration also marks the launch of the Hachette x MDA Publishing Traineeship, aimed at championing diversity and inclusivity within the publishing industry”. Besides this traineeship, membership of MDA apparently gives Hachette “access to a suite of valuable services, including the MDA TalentHub to reach a more diverse talent pool; participation in advocacy initiatives and industry roundtables; and customised Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training and guidance”.

Too early to see how all this is playing out, but it’s surely positive.

Any thoughts? Do you seek writing my diverse authors, and if so, how easy is it to find?

Melanie Cheng, The burrow (#BookReview)

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You may have heard the announcement by Sean Manning, of Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint in the US, that he will “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”. Australian media academic Julian Novitz discussed the decision in The Conversation in a piece titled “Brilliant, moving, thought-provoking! Simon & Schuster is dispensing with book blurbs – will it make any difference?” I considered writing a post on this, asking for your thoughts on these blurbs. Do they influence you in any way? But I didn’t. Instead, I am using it to introduce Australian author, Melanie Cheng’s latest novel, The burrow.

As you can see from the cover of my edition, it is beautifully spare, but it does have two blurbs. At the top is Christos Tsiolkas’ “stupendously good” and at the bottom, Helen Garner’s “how rare this delicacy – this calm, sweet, desolated wisdom”. Tsiolkas and Garner are respected, robust writers who don’t flinch from uncomfortable truths, so their commendation carries some weight with me. However, there are readers who don’t like these authors. Will that turn them away from the novel? I’d be interested to know. Meanwhile, I’ll get onto the book, which, at 184 well-spaced pages, is surely a novella.

The back cover tells me that it’s about a family confronting “long-buried secrets”, and that it “tells an unforgettable story about grief and hope”. Oh, and that the family buys a pet rabbit. There’s not a lot to go on here besides the usual cliches about secrets, grief and hope, but I was interested because I have had Melanie Cheng in my sights for some time, and it has just been shortlisted for this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.

It does seem, however, that grief is following me around this year, as the heart of this novel concerns the drowning death of a six-month-old baby girl some four years before the novel starts. The family – parents Amy and Jin Lee, and their remaining daughter, 10-year-old Lucie – is surviving intact, but only just. The novel is set in Melbourne during the pandemic, just as lockdown restrictions are being relaxed, so the family is needing to confront the outside world a little more. Reminding me somewhat of Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard devotional (my review), our threesome is disturbed by two new additions, the pet rabbit bought for Lucie, and Amy’s mother Pauline who has broken her wrist and cannot live alone for a while. These two, along with the relaxing of lockdown, offer potential catalysts for change. Will it be for the good or will the family implode?

Cheng tells her story through the alternating third-person perspectives of the characters. The writing is beautifully spare, but also engaging and moving. Having experienced a devastating death in my own family – my sister, not my child – I am interested in how people traverse such grief, particularly when there is potential for blame and guilt. Every situation is different, but there are, I think, some universals – love, generosity, and communication (or lack thereof). The Lee family has some of each of these, but not enough, and hence the just-surviving-but-not-really-living state they find themselves in. It’s realistic, believable.

I am always impressed by writers who can unfold a story slowly, but in few words, and Cheng is one of these writers. What exactly happened is divulged gradually in such a way as to make us think about how it affected – and is still affecting – the person whose perspective we are reading. It lets us feel the different ways grief can stall us. It also gives us time to get to know the characters, and to understand and relate to them. For these reasons, the story is tricky to talk about because if I explain what happened, I undermine all Cheng’s good work, so I’ll leave the story here and get back to the two additions.

As actors in the story, the rabbit and Pauline are opposite ends of the spectrum. The rabbit is a quiet, largely passive presence which interacts minimally with the family but provides a focal point for their thoughts. He brings a “sparkle” back to Lucie’s eyes that had been missing for some time. However, as a prey animal he also reminds them of the fragility of life. A rabbit is an interesting choice, one that kept me thinking about in terms of his significance. The novel is titled “The burrow”, but it’s not a simple literal reference to the rabbit. A burrow is also referenced in the epigraph from Franz Kafka’s short story “The burrow”:

The most beautiful thing about my burrow is the stillness. Of course, that is deceptive. At any moment it may be shattered and then all will be over.

How are we to read this? The family has already been shattered, and at the opening of the novel it does feel as though all is over, that they are mainly going through the motions of living. But of course it’s not all over. Sure, they are not doing very well. They are isolated from others (and not just because of the lockdown which had given them “a reprieve”, excuses to not engage). But they are still together, and they haven’t completely given up. They buy the rabbit for Lucie when she shows interest in something; they invite Pauline back into their lives when it appears she needs them.

And this brings me to Pauline. She sweeps in, injecting much needed energy, whether they want it or not. She can’t help herself, and for death-focused Lucie it’s energising, “a good thing”. However, it’s also clear that Pauline is involved in Ruby’s death in some way, that it’s not only the pandemic that has separated her from the family for four years. Now, though, she might make the difference.

But, there’s no guarantee. The family suffers several setbacks, literal and metaphorical, on their journey – sickness, an intruder, conflict, and more. Their journey reflects that in Richard Adams’ classic, Watershed Down, which Pauline reads to Lucie and which she characterises as “the epic story of an odd group of rabbits and their quest to establish a thriving warren”.

There is so much to like about this book, and it starts with the characters. With almost as few brushstrokes as artist Phil Day used for the cover rabbit, Cheng has created characters who represent some big ideas and thoughts, who embody the humanity of unspeakable grief, but who are yet so very individual. It’s a great read, with an ending that captures hope and fragility at the same time.

Melanie Cheng
The burrow
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2024
185pp.
ISBN: 9781922790941

Review copy courtesy Text Publishing

Monday musings on Australian literature: Supporting genres, 9: Romance novels

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Back in 2020 I commenced a Monday Musings subseries I called “supporting genres”. Some of the posts have, admittedly, been more form- than genre-based. Today’s however is a genre, and one I have been putting off because it’s not one I am at all familiar with. However, with Valentine’s Day looming this week, I felt it was now or never. The problem is that not only am I not familiar with this genre, but it is a huge field, so this will be basic, and more suited to the generalist like me, not specialist readers of Romance.

jane Austen, Love and Freindship

This is not the only problem. Defining Romance – given the multiple uses of the word through time – is a challenge, so in the interest of keeping this tight, I’m going to keep tightly to the “genre” which Wikipedia describes as follows:

A romance novel or romantic novel is a genre fiction novel that primarily focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, typically with an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Authors who have contributed to the development of this genre include Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë.

As with many genres, Romance fiction encompasses many subgenres – including crossovers with other genres. Sub-genres include fantasy, contemporary, historical romance, paranormal fiction, and science fiction. According to the Wikipedia link above, “women have traditionally been the primary readers of romance novels, but according to the Romance Writers of America, 16% of men read romance novels”. I certainly know some here in Oz.

Modern romance fiction has moved on from what it was in the mid-twentieth century – in variety and diversity of its characters, and in storylines. It is also not averse to grappling with significant issues in relationships, like rape. RWA (see below) is focusing on increasing inclusivity and diversity in its mission, and says its “working definition of diverse encompasses all ages, cultures, ethnicities, social backgrounds, neurodiverse and physical abilities and attributes, all genders, and all sexual identities”.

Perhaps – but don’t quote me as I’m no expert – the grand dame of romance fiction in Australia was Valerie Parv (1951-2021). You can check her out at Wikipedia, but Secrets from the Green Room podcast also did an excellent interview with her. For more writers, the Romance Writers Australia blog is a good source, with their Author Spotlight and New Release posts. The blog seems to go back to 2015, but doesn’t have the usual navigation tools (at least as far as I can see).

Organisations

There seems to be two main organisations supporting romance fiction in Australia.

Romance Writers Australia (RWA)

Describing itself as the “Home and Heart of Romance Writing in Australia”, RWA was established in Sydney around 1991, with its membership now including writers from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom. It has “become internationally recognised and respected by both category and mainstream publishers of romance”. Its aim is:

to promote excellence in romantic fiction, to help aspiring writers become published and published authors to maintain and establish their careers, to foster a safe, equitable, inclusive and diverse community, and to provide continuing support for romance writers – whatever their genre – within the romance publishing industry.

Their big event of the year is the Romance Writers of Australia Annual Conference. The 2025 conference, themed “Writer Wonderland”, will be held in Hobart from 22 to 24 August. As you can see from the program, this is clearly a conference geared more to writers than readers.

RWA also, apparently, organise “write-ins, library panels, workshops, retreats, and social gatherings in capital and regional cities”, plus other “special events and book launches”, but there were none listed on the website at the time of writing this post.

Australian Romance Readers Association Inc (ARRA)

Formed in 2007/2008, ARRA is an association “created by romance readers, for romance readers”. Starting with sixteen members, it now has well over three hundred. They outline their goals and activities on their About page.

They too run events. They held five Australian Romance Readers Conventions, with the last one being 2017. In 2019, they reinvented their convention to what they call A Romantic Rendezvous, which comprised multi-author, multi-city events, held in March 2019 in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. They repeated this in 2020, and then the pandemic hit. Not to be thwarted, they held a Locked Down version. They returned to annual live events in 2023, with the 2025 event now locked in (as against locked down!) You can read all about these on their site. They also have what looks like an active blog.

Awards

Romance writing seems less well-served with major awards than, say, Crime Fiction and Science Fiction, which is interesting. However, some awards are offered by and/or coordinated by the above organisations:

  • Romantic Book of the Year (Ruby) Awards: According to Books+Publishing, which lists the 2024 winners, these are RWA’s awards, but I can’t find them on their site, except through a site search which retrieves random historical hits.
  • RWA Contests: RWA seems to offer a variety of contests which they say offer not only a “wonderful way” for writers to “showcase” their talent but also a “chance to receive valuable feedback from experienced judges and industry experts”. The contests cater for different experience levels as well as a broad range of romance genres. Current contests can be found on this page.
  • ARR (Australian Romance Readers) Awards: ARRA offers awards for the best romance books in several categories, and are voted for by ARRA members. The 2024 awards will be announced at a dinner in Melbourne on 28 March 2025. You can see a list of Previous Winners on their site. How do you like this for an award category, “Best Banter in a Romance”? What fun.

Publishers

As with awards, I found fewer specialist romance publishers in Australia, than for science fiction, but the best known romance publisher of all, Mills and Boon, does have an Australian arm. Last year ABC News wrote that while the company launched in 1908, “it wasn’t until 1974 that it set hearts aflutter among Australian readers in its first venture outside of Britain and North America”. This makes it now 50 years old in Australia. According to the ABC, “there’s a growing appetite for romance novels”, which they support by sharing Books+Publishing’s report in late 2023 that sales of romance fiction were up 37 per cent in Austra last year in Australia.

  • Hot Tree Publishing: Established in 2015 HTPubs seems to specialise in diverse romance. Their Submissions page states that they “are currently seeking M/F+, M/M+, and F/F+ series novels in the following CONTEMPORARY and PARANORMAL subgenres”. This is “not a restrictive list and exceptional stand-alones may be considered” but they are not “open to historical romances” (accessed: 10 February 2025).
  • Mills and Boon Australia: Established in Australia in 1974. Currently, according to their website, there are over 75 Australian and New Zealand authors amongst their 1,300+ authors.

Of course, most of the general publishing houses also publish romance. It is a well-served field.

Romance and me

While I understand the attraction of romance fiction, I don’t seek the genre. However, I do read many books containing romance. After all, love and relationships underpin most of our lives. What did the Beatles say – yes, “all you need is love … love … love is all you need”.

My first romance novels were, of course, Jane Austen’s (see all my Austen posts). When I first read them in my teens, my biggest interest was, as I recollect, the romance component. But since then, it’s not the romance that sets my heart aflutter, but Austen’s wit and her timeless insights into humanity, into how we think and why we behave the way we do.

Anita Heiss Paris Dreaming

However, since blogging, I have read some romance fiction – mostly what the industry calls chick-lit – Anita Heiss’s choc-lit novel, Paris dreaming (my post), Tony Jordan’s Addition (my review) and Fall girl (my review), and Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie project (my review). These books attracted me because they reflected that trend I mentioned above, including more diverse characters – First Nations, neurodiverse, and so on.

Do you like romance fiction and, if so, care to share why?

Previous supporting genre posts: 1. Historical fiction; 2. Short stories; 3. Biography; 4. Literary nonfiction; 5. Crime; 6. Novellas; 7. Poetry; 8. Science Fiction

Frank Dalby Davison, Dusty (#BookReview)

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It’s a strange coincidence that my second review for Bill’s Gen 1-3 Aussie male writers week is for a novel titled Dusty, when my first was for a short story titled “Dust”. One of those funny little readerly synchronicities. The title, however, is about the only synchronicity because, although both stories allude to the dusty Australian landscape, Casey’s short story is about miners’ lung dust disease while Davison’s novel is about a part-kelpie part-dingo named Dusty.

A bit about Frank Dalby Davison

Davison (1893-1970) was best known as a novelist and short story writer, and was a significant figure in Australian literary circles of his time. There are useful articles for him in Wikipedia, and the Australian dictionary of biography, and I plan to devote a Monday Musings to him soon. Meanwhile, as background to this post, it’s relevant to say that he was born and schooled in Melbourne, but left school in his early teens to work on his father’s farm near Kinglake. The family moved to the United States in 1909, when he was 16. After working there in the printing trade, he travelled more, eventually enlisting for World War 1 in England. After the war, he took up a Soldier Settlement selection near Injune, in central western Queensland. 

Davison wrote several novels, but his best known is probably Man-shy (1931), which won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Featuring a red heifer, it was my introduction to Davison in my first year of high school in the 1960s. Dusty (1946) is also about an animal – this time a dog – and has been in my sights for some time. Both novels drew on his experiences in Injune. AustLit reports that the manuscript of Dusty, ‘entered under the title “Stranger”, and the pen-name “Tarboy”, won the Melbourne Argus and Australasian Post 500 pound Novel Competition in 1946′. 

Dusty

At the end of my edition of Dusty is a promotion for Man-shy which quotes from H.M. Green, the literary historian who inspired Bill’s “generations”. Green writes:

Although other novelists have made animals their principal characters and drawn them realistically, Davison is the first to make a serious attempt to get inside their minds. The red heifer and the mob of wild cattle to which she belongs stand for the spirit of freedom and dogged, untameable resistance; their struggle is made extraordinarily real to us … Davison has a genuine and individual talent.

This could equally apply to Dusty, which tells the story of a dog, sired by a kelpie to a dingo mother. Violently wrenched from his lair when he was a few weeks old, he is sold to a decent man, a bushman named Tom. Tom is no fool. He recognises the mixed blood, but also sees potential in the pup, and trains him to become a champion sheep dog. Their bond is strong but is tested when Dusty’s “dingo blood” starts asserting itself, and he turns sheep-killer by night. This will not do, and Tom knows it. The novel, however, does not play out quite the way you’d expect, and we are left guessing until the end about what will, indeed, happen to Dusty.

That’s the plot, but like many plots it doesn’t tell you much about what the book is really about, or what makes it a good read. Told in three parts, Dusty is a realist novel, detailing life on Australian sheep stations and cattle properties, and told mostly through the perspectives of Tom and Dusty. Yes, you heard right, Dusty, the dog. I was completely engaged because not only is there none of the sentimentality common in stories about a man and a dog, but there’s also nothing anthropomorphic in the dog’s point-of-view. He feels pure dog, which I thought quite a feat. Early on, for example, Tom, having previously given Dusty his dinner without ceremony, puts the food down and starts some training:

Then followed a series of mystifying events. A hand appeared just above the dish and twitched, giving forth a series of soft snapping sounds; then there was a little soft whispering, and then a voice that, like the hand, kept repeating a small noise over and over again. He could make nothing of it …

This dog’s-eye view of the world, based on his experiences to date, continues through the novel.

Soon, though, bigger issues are at play involving the two parts of Dusty’s being, “the ancient battle between conflicting heredities, and between early influence and present environment; the mother against the father, nature against art”. Then Davison adds something interesting. The dingo is the product of nature, while the kelpie, the working dog, is “a product of art”. But, Davison adds, “nature, if man fails in toil or vigilance, hastens to reclaim her own”.

In other words, beneath this deeply interesting story about a man, his dog and outback farming, is a wider story about “nature”, or the essence of our beings. Contained within Dusty is the struggle between the two forces – that of freedom, of following his instinct, and that of living by his training, by rules and responsibilities. After Dusty’s dingo side becomes apparent to all, Tom knows what must be done but chooses to change his life rather than kill his dog. He becomes a self-employed possum scalper in cattle country, and finds, “without meaning any ingratitude for past kindnesses”, that he relishes his new situation in which he is invited to share a meal as “a guest and not just the hired man”. In other words, as a possum scalper, Tom is freer to be his own man.

But, while I think Tom’s life is part of this wider theme, the main focus is animals, and the idea that, in them, “is a whole scheme of values outside those familiar” to us.

There is no easy ending for Tom and Dusty, and we are left, three paragraphs from the end, with a dingo howl, “a cry of mournfulness and dark mirth, of drollery and love and hate and longing, of the joy and sorrow of life, of the will to live, of mockery and despair”.

Dusty is not a didactic book. There is no moralising, no subjective pronouncements about choices. Instead, with its objective tone, and plain but expressive prose, it feels more elemental, something that examines the essence of who we are and what we do to live. And that makes it feel timeless.

Frank Dalby Davison
Dusty
Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1983 (Arkon ed., orig. 1946)
244pp.
ISBN: 0207133891


Monday musings on Australian literature: Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List, 2024

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In early December last year, I started looking out for the Grattan Institute’s Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List for 2024. But somehow, although it was published on their website on 9 December, I missed it. I have no idea how, because I went to their website, but maybe I was a day or two too early, and then forgot in my Christmas-busyness-befuddlement. Anyhow, I believe it still has value, even if the PM is back at work, so here goes …

For those of you who haven’t caught up with this initiative, some background. The Grattan Institute is an Australian non-aligned, public policy think tank, which produces readable, reasoned reports on significant issues. They have also published annually, since 2009, their Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List which, as they wrote back in 2009, comprises “books and articles that the Prime Minister, or any Australian interested in public debate, will find both stimulating and cracking good reads”.

Here is the 2024 list in their order (but with the author first), accompanied by an excerpt from their reasoning, which is available in full on their site):

  • Clare Wright, Ṉäku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions: How the people of Yirrkala changed the course of Australian democracy (Australian): “The truths told in Wright’s Näku Dhäruk make it essential reading for the Prime Minister and the Australian people. If studying history helps us learn from our mistakes, Australia’s dismissal of the bark petitions is a chapter worth poring over.”
  • Adam Higginbotham, Challenger: A true story of heroism and disaster on the edge of space (British): “At its heart, Challenger is a human story … The frozen rubber O-rings that ultimately led to the disaster were a known problem. But a flawed decision-making process allowed it to become merely one ‘acceptable risk’ among many. As demands on governments grow even as trust in institutions declines, Higginbotham provides a timely reminder of the role of individual agency in shaping the success or failure of humanity’s greatest endeavours.” 
  • J. Doyne Farmer, Making sense of chaos: A better economics for a better world (American): “Farmer argues that traditional economics fails to grapple with the complexity and uncertainty of real-world economies. He makes the case for complexity economics, a new approach that draws insights from biology, neuroscience, and physics. This framework models the economy from the ground up, simulating the dynamic web of interactions between people, goods, and institutions … With vast data and computational power now available, complexity economics could be the next testbed for evidence-based policy.”
  • Caitlin Dickerson, Seventy miles in hell (American): “In contemporary debates, where migration policies are entwined with political positioning, easy scapegoating, and a way for politicians to signal ‘toughness’, migrants are often treated as numbers, inputs into an economy, or worse, rather than as human beings with their own hopes, strengths, and impossible choices … Dickerson’s message is clear … ‘What I saw in the jungle confirmed the pattern that has played out elsewhere: The harder migration is, the more cartels and other dangerous groups will profit, and the more migrants will die.’”
  • Madhumita Murgia, Code dependent: Living in the shadow of AI (Indian): “as AI is increasingly embedded in our systems and decisions, what does this mean for our society? … Murgia argues that our blindness to AI systems and how they work makes it harder for us to understand when they go wrong or cause harm. And there’s a risk that those harms disproportionately affect marginalised groups … The questions that policymakers must grapple with are almost as numerous as the possible uses of AI: How do we know if AI technologies are safe, or if they are being manipulated or used in discriminatory ways? Which laws need to be amended to take AI into account? More broadly, who is ultimately responsible when AI technologies cause harm?” 
  • Ceridwen Dovey, Only the astronauts (Australian): “Dovey, an Australian science writer as well as novelist, shows us humans as they might appear to the objects we create and use. Like Adam Higginbotham in Challenger, Dovey critiques the masculine bravado of the space race … This inventive collection of stories has moments of beauty, as well as laugh-out-loud fun …”

The selection process, we’re told, was rigorous. The staff book club “read, loved, loathed, and debated an extensive array of novels, non-fiction books, essays, and articles”. They believe their final six are “all cracking good reads”, and summarise their choices as follows:

Ṉäku Dhäruk and Challenger are case studies in how a handful of people can shape the course of history, for better or for worse.

Making Sense of Chaos argues that we can glean new insights into the economy by modelling individuals’ behaviour from the ground up.

Seventy Miles in Hell and Code Dependent remind us of the human consequences of our high-level policy choices on migration and AI.

Our last pick, Only the Astronauts, is a little different: it’s a series of vignettes about inanimate space objects. But it too offers a new perspective on the human experience by looking in from the outside.

It’s interesting – and, I admit, disappointing – that only two are by Australian writers. And again, only one is a work of fiction. Also, while the ongoing challenge of reconciling our colonial past is included, it’s not in a work by a First Nations writer – as excellent as Clare Wright is. However, I do like that, while it may look like some critical issues are not covered, there seems to be some big picture and lateral thinking included here, which is important.

My track record for reading Grattan’s selections is poor. To date, I have read two of 2022’s list, Debra Dank’s We come with this place (my review) and Jessica Au’s Cold enough for snow (my review), and only one of 2023’s list, Anna Funder’s Wifedom (my review), though I had hoped to also read Ellen van Neerven’s Personal score. Let’s see how I go with 2024’s list!

You can see all the lists to date at these links: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.

If you had the opportunity to make one book recommendation to the leader of your country, what would it be?

Six degrees of separation, FROM Dangerous liaisons TO …

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It’s the first Saturday in February so it must be Six Degrees time, and this month, I’m not going to engage in any chatty intro but just get into it … as always, if you don’t know how the #SixDegrees meme works, please check Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month, it’s a book I probably should have read – being a classic – but haven’t. It’s Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons, an epistolary novel published in 1782.

Now, commenting on last month’s Six Degrees, one of my most loyal commenters here, MR, who often ponders on the – let’s say – quality of my links, suggested that I just list the books and let those of you who read the post work out the reasons. So, this is what I’m doing this post. I did think about giving the reasons in a follow-up post, but have decided that’s pushing the friendship a little too far so I am providing the answers at the end (after the image gallery). I’ve tried not to make the links too hard, and for some there are multiple ways the books could be linked.

So, here goes:

Jane Austen, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon
Maria Edgeworth, Leonora
Peter Carey Chemistry of tears bookcover

Now, for the link reasons. Dangerous liaisons is an epistolary novel, as is Jane Austen’s Lady Susan. (Both were also published in the 18th century.) Maria Edgeworth’s Leonora, is about a coquette visiting friends, as is Lady Susan, albeit in this case the coquette is not the titular character but Leonora’s friend. (Leonora is also an epistolary novel, and is written by an English-born woman.) Elizabeth von Arnim’s Vera has a woman’s first name as its title. (It was also written by a woman, who is English, though she wasn’t born in England.) Jane Caro’s The mother is about a coercive control by a husband, which is also the idea behind Vera, though coercive control wasn’t known as that then. (Jane Caro is also a woman, though that’s a very broad link!) Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in chemistry is a debut novel by a 65-year-old-woman, and was The mother. (Like Caro’s novel, it also has a mother-daughter thread, though that’s not the main idea.) And for my last link, I’ve made it super-easy. Peter Carey’s The chemistry of tears has “chemistry” in the title, as does Garmus’ book.

How did you go? Did you find some links I didn’t?

And, have you read Dangerous liaisons and, regardless, what would you link to?

Andrew O’Hagan, Caledonian Road (#BookReview)

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When my reading group started back in 1988, most of us were time-poor mothers so we had a rule-of-thumb that our books could not be longer than 350 pages. Those days, however, are long gone, and some time ago we agreed that our January (aka summer) read could be a BIG book. Last year, for example, it was Demon Copperhead (my review). This year, some were keen to read Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road, so that’s what we scheduled.

My problem is that while it’s summer, January is also tennis season. I don’t watch much sport, but I do love the tennis. Reading a big book while trying to keep up with the tennis is always a challenge. As is the fact that, as most of you know, I love short books. Give me a novella and I’m (usually) happy. However, I also love my reading group, and so I gave myself extra time and got stuck in. I was immediately engaged. The protagonist, fifty-two year old Campbell Flynn, art historian, writer and academic, captured me. There was a certain Jane Austen tone to the opening:

Tall and sharp at fifty-two, Campbell Flynn was a tinderbox in a Savile Row suit, a man who believed his childhood was so far behind him that all its threats had vanished.

Ha! He certainly was a tinderbox, as he was about to slowly implode. Further, as we soon discover, his childhood was not at all behind him, and is implicated in his unravelling. The first paragraph ends with some foreshadowing telling us that the first of his “huge mistakes” was not to “take people half as seriously as they took themselves”, with the second being “the proof copy” he had in his briefcase.

It is Thursday 20 May 2021, so the first wave of the pandemic is over but its long shadow provides a quiet background to the novel which is told over five parts, from Spring 2021 to Winter 2022, concluding around the time of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Now, back to my reading journey. I was interested, but as I read on, following the ups and increasing downs of Campbell’s life, along with those of an ever-growing cast of characters, there was a point where I started to baulk. It felt like a long wallowing in the ills of the modern western world. Did I need 640 pages of it? And then it clicked. I realised I was reading a modern take on the 19th century “condition-of-England” novel. These novels, as the The Victorian Web explains, “sought to engage directly with the contemporary social and political issues with a focus on the representation of class, gender, and labour relations, as well as on social unrest and the growing antagonism between the rich and the poor in England”. We’re talking Dickens’ “big” novels, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and south and Mary Barton, and so on. I loved them.

“a deep dive into the era’s shallows” (Campbell)

These novels have to be big, because a nation’s “condition” does not comprise one issue but a network of them, and this is what O’Hagan pulls apart in Caledonian Road. Through a cast of around 60 characters, O’Hagan explores a grab bag of the various ills we read about every day, with a British spin. All the big issues are here, including toxic masculinity; intergenerational wars; racism; modern technology with its related concerns like security, privacy, hacking, and digital identity; disruption as activist action; financial corruption and malfeasance; foreign interference; and human trafficking. Grab bag these might sound, but they are overlaid and connected by the traditional biggies – class, entitlement and privilege, economic inequality, and now, globalisation.

There’s a lot going on, but O’Hagan’s characters are vividly drawn, the plot is compelling if complicated, it is satirical in tone, and the language is so captivating that I enjoyed reading it after all. It is, necessarily, a disjointed read with the narrative constantly switching between the different storylines that make the whole, but I found I didn’t need the cast of characters helpfully provided at the beginning because the context always made clear who they were.

Before I return to the subject matter, I must share a couple of perfect character descriptions. First is Milo, a person whom Campbell doesn’t take seriously enough, and second is Candy, Campbell’s sister-in-law, the fey do-gooder wife of the egregious Duke of Kendal:

The young man had edges and they often glinted on the blade of his charm. (p. 76)
and
Candy stood like an emaciated meerkat looking out for an opportunity to enthuse. (p. 262)

So now, back to the “condition-of-England” idea. The characters range across the breadth of British society, from twenty-somethings to eighty-somethings, and include MPs, aristocrats, academics, journalists, business people, actors, criminals, activists, do-gooders, hackers, landowners, renters, gang members, migrants, factory workers, and lorry drivers. But, what most of them have in common is an idea of what England is. The most poignant comes from the migrants, like Polish Mrs Krupa and her son’s undocumented employee, also Polish, Jakub. As Jakub’s life, under the control of human-traffickers-cum-drug-lords, starts looking different to what he expected, he begins “to wonder if England was anything like the myth he … had bought into”.

O’Hagan, then, explores with clarity and a healthy sense of irony, today’s England (or Britain). The flawed but self-questioning Campbell – increasingly conflicted by his middle-class success and working-class origins – is our guide through a story in which hope, promise and sincerity are set against hypocrisy, greed and hatred. Desperate to remain relevant to the times, and to be a decent person, Campbell lets his guard down, allowing the driven, idealistic Milo into his life. Both are complex characters, who test our moral compass. Others not so much, like the aristocratic Duke of Kendal and Lord Scullion, the Russian oligarch Aleksandr Bykov, the corrupt billionaire William Byre, and the criminal Bozydar, all of whom, indirectly or directly, slash and burn those around them. In between are the decent, including women like Campbell’s wife Elizabeth and sister Moira, and the powerless, like rapper Travis and undocumented migrant worker Jakub.

Towards the end of the novel, the unravelling Campbell, who has become “lost in the sprawling web of it all”, inverts my favourite EM Forster quote when he reflects to himself, “only disconnect”. It’s a paradox. Campbell’s survival will depend on disconnecting from all that is wrong in his world (technologically and personally), while hanging tight – keeping connected, in other words – to all that is good. Ultimately, while O’Hagan paints a grim picture of what is wrong – the superficial, the hypocritical, the greedy and the cruel – in England, he also leaves us with a glimmer of hope. There are good people and they can prevail – but, will they, is the question we are left with.

PS Caledonian Road, being a big book, invites multiple responses. You can read those by Brona and Jonathan, who approached it from different angles and perspectives.

Andrew O’Hagan
Caledonian Road
London: Faber & Faber, 2024
642pp.
ISBN: 9780571381388 (Kindle edition.)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Historical fiction by First Nations writers

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With this weekend in Australia being a long weekend for Australia Day (or, Invasion Day), I decided that the best thing I could do would be to write a post promoting historical fiction by First Nations Australian writers. While there are First Nations historians writing histories, I figure more people read historical fiction, given I’d like to encourage us all to broaden, fill out, revise our understanding of Australia’s history, then historical fiction seemed a good place to start.

Of course, there’s the obvious proviso. Historical fiction is not history. However, I believe that good historical fiction does provide truths about the past that can inform our understanding of what happened. Historical fiction by First Nations writers ensures that this understanding extends beyond the point of view of the victors to that of those who were displaced and dispossessed. Historical fiction can also provide some facts, but we can’t assume what we read is factual. It is fiction after all. All the books I list here have some basis in fact, but how much, and what sort of fact varies. All, though, offer important truths.

The books – which include some I’ve not read – are listed in rough chronological order by their time setting, and organised under some broad “eras”, because while some issues are overarching or ongoing, there are experiences and ideas particular to different eras. Stories that encompass multiple timeframes are listed under the earliest one. Where possible, and to the best of my ability, I have identified places using both their local and settler names.

Early settlement

The books set in this period explore what happened when white settlers first appeared on land belonging to First Nations peoples. These novels explore the clashes that occurred, the mistakes that were made, the possibilities for doing it differently or the moments where it might have gone differently, and the ultimate dispossession of the traditional owners.

Jane Harrison, The visitors (2021): 1788; Warrane/Sydney Cove: reimagines the arrival of the First Fleet from the perspectives of elders from seven nations (Brona’s review).

Julie Janson, Benevolence: 1816-1842, Dharug Nation/Western Sydney: based on the author’s ancestor, tells the story of Muraging who, when around 12 years old, is handed over by her father to the Parramatta Native Institution, in the hope that she will help their people by learning British language and ways (my review).

Anita Heiss, Dirrayawadha (Rise up): around 1824, Wiradyuri Country/Bathurst: inspired by the 1824 Bathurst War, fought between the Wiradyuri people and the British, tells the story of the Wiradjuri resistance leader Windradyne, through the eyes of his fictional sister Miinaa (my CWF 2024 post).

Kim Scott, That deadman dance (2011): 1826-1844, Noongar Country/Southwest WA: a first contact story set in Western Australia in which the generosity of the local people, and their willingness to engage, is ultimately met by rapaciousness and violence (my review).

Julie Janson, Compassion (2024): 1836 on, Dharug Nation/Western Sydney: sequel to Benevolence, and based on the life of another Janson ancestor, Muraging’s outlaw daughter, a horse thief and resistance fighter who took on colonial authorities (including in the courts). 

Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie (2023): 1850s and 2020s, Magandjin/Brisbane: a “what if” story in which armed resistance to the dispossession, massacres and other brutalities from the colonisers is told alongside attempts from both sides to work together (my review).

Mid to late 19th century

By this period, the settlers had established themselves throughout Australia, with First Nations people surviving as best they could – often in the employ of the settlers and living, of course, under British law. Their lives, health and culture were severely affected by dislocation, and they lived at the mercy of the settlers. Many were separated from their Country, with culture, including language, was being lost.

Anita Heiss, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of dreams) (2021): 1852 on, Wiradjuri Country/Gundagai and Wagga Wagga: inspired by the story of the four First Nations men who, using bark canoes, saved 40-70 people during Gundagai’s 1852 flood; tells the fictionalised story of the daughter of one those men, her ending up working for one of the landowning families, and being forced to leave her country (my review).

Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ruby Moonlight (2012): 1880s, mid-north South Australia: verse novel about a teenage girl, Ruby Moonlight, whose family is massacred by white settlers, and who meets the lonely “colourless man”, Miner Jack (my review).

Leah Purcell, The drover’s wife (2017): 1890s, Ngarigo and Walgalu Country/Snowy Mountains: re-visioning of Henry Lawson’s classic short story, turning the drover’s wife into a First Nations woman left to fend for herself in a hostile world (my review of the film version).

Federation to 1930s

Larissa Behrendt, Home

While the facts of First Nations lives at this time are largely a continuation of the previous era, fiction set in this period starts to address more specifically the impact of the missions, and of government policies, on First Nations’ lives.

Larissa Behrendt, Home (2004): 1918 through to 1980s, Eualeyai Country/North-western New South Wales: based on the story of the author’s grandmother, who was abducted from her camp in 1918, and following her seven children. (Lisa’s review)

Post World War 2

As we move closer to contemporary times, the fiction addresses more contemporary issues, particularly regarding government polity, while still retrieving stories from the past that are little known.

Anita Heiss, Barbed wire and cherry blossoms (2017): 1944, Wiradyuri Country/Cowra: inspired by the 1844 breakout from the Cowra POW Camp, imagines a relationship between escaped Japanese POW Hiroshi and the daughter of a First Nations couple who offer him refuge at Erambie Mission. But, mission rules, and government protection and assimilation policies limit their choices. (Lisa’s review)

Marie Munkara, A most peculiar act (2020): 1940s, Larrakia Nation/Darwin: follows the trials and tribulations of a 16 year-old Aboriginal fringe-camp dweller, in Darwin during the Japanese bombing raids, and her resistance to protectionist policies like the Aboriginal Ordinances Act and the “White Australia” policy (Lisa’s review).

Dylan Coleman, Mazin Grace (2012): 1940s and 50s, Kokatha Mula Country/western South Australia: fictionalised version of the author’s mother’s childhood at the Koonibba Lutheran Mission (Lisa’s review).

Alexis Wright, The plains of promise (1997): 1950s Gulf Country of Queensland: starts at St Dominic’s Mission in the Gulf Country of Far North Queensland, where a young Aboriginal woman is taken away from her mother, and explores the brutality of colonisation at the mission and beyond (Tony’s review).

Book cover

Tony Birch, The white girl (2019): 1960s, fictional rural town: tells the story of Odette who is determined to save her granddaughter from being removed, against the backdrop of the egregious restrictions of the Aboriginal Protection Act are in force (my review).

Karen Wyld, Where the fruit falls (2020): 1960s-70s, multiple locations: spans four generations of women, over several decades, with a focus on the 1960s and 70s, a time of rapid social change and burgeoning Aboriginal rights (Lisa’s review)

There should be something here for everyone!

Any thoughts? Or, do you have any historical fiction titles to add?