Charlotte Wood did not win the Booker Prize, still gets Booker bump

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Charlotte Wood did not win the Booker Prize, still gets Booker bump

22 November 2024

Sales of Australian author Charlotte Wood’s latest novel Stone Yard Devotional have enjoyed a boost, as a result of being both long and short listed for this year’s Booker Prize. The phenomena is sometimes called the Booker bump:

Her publisher says that since winning the Stella Prize in 2016 for The Natural Way of Things, her blistering feminist critique of the patriarchy, “Charlotte’s books have been bestsellers — and Stone Yard Devotional is no exception. Since being longlisted for the Booker Prize, sales have increased by over 30 per cent. We have to date sold over 40,000 copies of this beautiful book.”

Anyone who makes it to even the longlist of any literary award, but goes no further, is a winner if you ask me.

Juice: the new cli-fi novel by Australian author Tim Winton

2 October 2024

Juice is the latest novel by Australian author Tim Winton, which was published yesterday. From this synopsis, Juice sounds like it blends elements of the Max Mad saga, with Winton’s own environmental and climate change concerns:

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

Problem is, they’re not alone.

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.

I heard Winton speak about six-and-a-half years ago at the Sydney premiere of Breath, a film based on his 2009, Miles Franklin award winning, novel of the same name. The feature was directed by, and starred, Australian actor Simon Baker, also present that evening.

Winton was one of the screenwriters of the Breath film adaptation. That’s a smart move, get the author of the book being adapted, to co-write the screenplay. Where possible of course. Quite a number of Winton’s books have been made into movies, so it seems like there’s a good chance Juice will follow suit.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood on 2024 Booker Prize shortlist

18 September 2024

Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood has gone through to the shortlist of the 2024 Booker Prize, with her novel Stone Yard Devotional, which was announced on Monday 16 September 2024. If Wood were to win the Booker Prize this year, she would become the first Australian author to do so since Richard Flanagan in 2014, with his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

The 2024 winner will be named on Tuesday 12 November 2024.

2024 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards winners

17 September 2024

Anam, by Melbourne based Australian author André Dao, has been named winner in the Fiction category of the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Anam was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin this year, and the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award in 2023.

Winners in other categories were Close to the Subject: Selected Works by Daniel Browning, in Non-Fiction, and We Could Be Something by Will Kostakis, in Young Adult.

Tamarra: A Story of Termites on Gurindji Country, co-authored by Violet Wadrill, Topsy Dodd Ngarnjal, Leah Leaman, Cecelia Edwards, Cassandra Algy, Felicity Meakins, Briony Barr, and Gregory Crocetti, took out Children’s Literature. The Cyprian by Amy Crutchfield, and Donald Horne: A Life in the Lucky Country by Ryan Cropp, won in Poetry and Australian History respectively.

The 2024 winners were announced in the Australian capital, Canberra, last week, on Thursday 12 September, with recipients each being awarded eighty-thousand dollars (Australian).

Dusk, a novel by Robbie Arnott, being published in October 2024

30 August 2024

Dusk, the new novel by Hobart based Australian author Robbie Arnott, is being published on Tuesday 8 October 2024.

In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there’s far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they’re forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.

I’ve read two of Arnott’s previous novels, The Rain Heron — of which Dusk seems slightly reminiscent — and Limberlost. Dusk has duly been added to my TBR list.

Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2024 shortlist

20 August 2024

Do Australian Prime Ministers have time to read books? They may not, but they do have a literary award for Australian publications, created in 2008, of which the 2024 shortlist was announced last week. Five titles, across the six award categories of fiction, non-fiction, Australian history, poetry, children’s, and young adult, were included.

Among books shortlisted are Eventually Everything Connects, by Sarah Firth, in the non-fiction category, and the previously mentioned Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood, in fiction. Welcome to Sex, by Yumi Stynes and Melissa Kang, was included in young adult. The title stirred up controversy last year, after some people objected to certain of the content, claiming some of subject matter was not appropriate for a sex education book.

The backlash was ferocious in some quarters, with staff at some shops selling the title being abused — unacceptable — by would-be customers, while at least one person was convicted of making threats via social media — likewise unacceptable — against co-author Stynes.

The winners of this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards will be unveiled on Thursday 12 September 2024.

Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Nib Award 2024 longlist

12 August 2024

Seventeen books have been included on the recently announced Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Nib Award 2024 longlist. Also known as the “Nib”, the literary award celebrates excellence in Australian literary research, and as such works of any genre, including fiction, non-fiction, and autobiography, are eligible for inclusion.

A Very Secret Trade, by Cassandra Pybus
Alice™ The biggest untold story in the history of money, by Stuart Kells
Because I’m Not Myself, You See, by Ariane Beeston
Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled, by Kate Fullagar
Book of Life, by Deborah Conway
Crimes of the Cross, by Anne Manne
Datsun Angel, by Anna Broinowski
Donald Horne, by Ryan Cropp
Edenglassie, by Melissa Lucashenko
Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths, by Matthew Lamb
Killing for Country, by David Marr
My Brilliant Sister, by Amy Brown
Reaching Through Time, by Shauna Bostock
Transgender Australia – A History since 1910, by Noah Riseman
Wear Next, by Clare Press
What the Trees See: A Wander Through Millennia of Natural History in Australia, by Dave Witty
Wifedom, by Anna Funder

A shortlist of six titles will be published on Tuesday 17 September 2024, with the winner being named on Wednesday 27 November 2024.

Nothing about Kissing by Kathryn Lomer wins 2024 Furphy literary award

12 August 2024

Hobart based Australian poet, and young adult writer, Kathryn Lomer, has been named winner of the 2024 Furphy literary award for short stories, with her work Nothing about Kissing (PDF).

Set in Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), also in Hobart, Nothing about Kissing, is the story of an unnamed museum cleaner, who’s early morning shift gets off to a rather bad start.

I’m not really into short stories, they’re a hard act to master, but Lomer’s work is, literally, a winner. It’s short enough to read during a refreshment break, so do give it a look.

The Ledge, a new thriller/whodunit by Christian White

8 August 2024

The Ledge is the fourth novel by Victoria based Australian writer, and master of twists that will leave you breathless and dumbfounded: Christian White.

When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.

It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.

White’s novels are chock full of the things readers of thrillers and suspense love: red herrings, blind alleys, smoke and mirrors, lies, deception, characters with multiple aliases, the list goes on. So far I’ve read The Nowhere Child, White’s 2019 debut, and The Wife and the Widow, which possibly has of one the most mind-blowing twists in the genre.

Wild Place, meanwhile, published in 2021, remains on my TBR list, where it will be joined by The Ledge, when it is published on Tuesday, 24 September 2024.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood included on Booker Prize longlist

6 August 2024

Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood has been included on the 2024 longlist for the Booker Prize, with her latest novel, Stone Yard Devotional. It is the first time a work by an Australian writer has featured on the Booker longlist since 2016.

I’m reading Stone Yard Devotional right now, and loving it. Some reviewers however have complained it plods, and is too introspective. The story is about a woman, non-religious, who retreats to a convent in outback Australia for a while to sort out her life. Her musing however, are interrupted by a number of unexpected happenings.

Wood’s 2019 novel The Weekend is another great read, in case you’re on the lookout for book recommendations. It was adapted for the stage, and has been optioned for a screen production.

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