Chloe Wilson’s hotly anticipated debut novel, The Thornbacks, is a beautifully wrought response to the peculiar, often cruel ways bodies accrue social and cultural value. This story of two unrelated “sisters”, brought together by the marriage of their parents, is playful, witty, astute and compelling – but while the sentences sting and delight in equal measure, the plot is stretched a little too thin.
Wilson’s searing collection of extraordinary tales, Hold Your Fire, was a rightful winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing in 2022. She has a string of other well deserved accolades to her name, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlist, and the Iowa Review Fiction Prize.
