Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright
Giramondo, fiction, $39.95
Wright has already proved herself one of Australia’s deepest and most urgent thinkers. In her new novel Praiseworthy, she synthesises the themes and forms of her past work – including Carpentaria, The Swan Book and Tracker – and arrives at a furious and dense epic satirising white Australia’s ongoing attacks on the colonised.
Over the fictional Aboriginal town of Praiseworthy, an apocalypse is literally looming – and the people have two choices: to assimilate with white Australia (led by the white-obsessed Black mayor), or to survive through sovereignty, led by the town’s self-appointed saviour, Cause Man Steel (who is so obsessed with the notion that his first-born is named Ab.Sov for short). At more than 700 pages – with single scenes that last as long as 80 – Praiseworth is designed to challenge readers, with a repetitive, cyclical narrative that mirrors both the frustrating looping of Australia’s failures and an ancestral presence which itself leaps back and forth across time. But it’s also propulsive, mesmerising, modern and – surprisingly – full of donkeys. – Steph Harmon
Aphrodite’s Breath by Susan Johnson
Allen & Unwin, memoir, $34.99
Aphrodite’s Breath combines vivid travel writing with frank personal revelations in an engaging account of a year the author spent with her mother on the Greek island of Kythera. Johnson brings her talents as novelist and journalist to her second brave memoir about motherhood. This one is told from the uncomfortable position of a 62-year-old daughter trying to recapture the adventures of her youth while crashing into lifelong tensions with her 85-year-old mother. Her nuanced portraits of people and places deepen into a profound study of ageing, family and notions of home. – Susan Wyndham
The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams
Affirm Press, fiction, $32.99
After selling half a million copies of her debut novel, Williams could be forgiven for trying to bottle lightning twice. Fans of The Dictionary of Lost Words will find plenty to savour in its follow-up, which takes us back to wartime Oxford and introduces another plucky young woman quietly sticking it to a patriarchal publishing industry.
But this is more than a retread; The Bookbinder is a confident and considered sequel that complicates Williams’ literary universe while riffing on class, family, trauma and remembrance. Williams fully inhabits the world of the bindery and it shows – there’s hardly a page out of place. – Walter Marsh
The Prize by Kim E Anderson
Pantera Press, fiction, $32.99
In 1943, artist William “Bill” Dobell enters and wins the Archibald prize with a painting of his lover and fellow artist Joshua Smith. Two of Dobell’s unsuccessful competitors claim the modernist portrait is a caricature and therefore ineligible for the prize. To say anything more about the scandal and court case that followed – for Anderson has fictionalised a true story – would be to ruin some of the suspense for those unfamiliar with this. But what I can say is that this is an elegantly written novel that has been packed with research, and that it is excellent to see a commercial novel bringing a bit of Australian queer history back into the public consciousness. – Sian Cain
Non-Essential Work by Omar Sakr
UQP, poetry, $24.99
Sakr won a Prime Minister’s Literary award for his breakout poetry collection The Lost Arabs; then he devoted himself to fiction as an exorcism for the past. His debut novel, Son of Sin, was a semi-autobiographical saga that spanned decades and continents, trailing a young Arab man from western Sydney to Turkey as he reckons with faith, culture and queerness.
Non-Essential Work – his third poetry collection – marks his return to verse, honing in on the themes which have defined his career: legacies of violence; the beauty and bloodshed of family; the way sorrow and ecstasy exist in the same breath. “Everything is a miracle when you are alive,” Sakr writes in the titular poem. “I am learning that against my will.” – Michael Sun
Hard to Bear by Isabelle Oderberg
Ultimo, nonfiction, $36.99
During her sixth miscarriage, Oderberg was told by an obstetrician that if women knew more about pregnancy loss, she “wouldn’t be crying about it”. From this, Oderberg found “the desire to write this book”: its subtitle is “Investigating the Science and Silence of Miscarriage”. Oderberg writes with fury and empathy while never losing her clear journalistic eye. The book covers everything from the language we use to talk about miscarriage to IVF, chapters on how pollution and climate change intersect with pregnancy loss, and even one on First Nations perspectives on miscarriages, written with Arrernte midwife Cherisse Buzzacott. –SC
Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas
Allen & Unwin, fiction, $32.99
Thirst for Salt is dreamy and sensual, drawing readers into the love affair between a young woman and her older lover. In her debut novel, Lucas explores the complex intrusions of love and desire, age, motherhood and bodies. Unfolding as it does against the backdrop of Sailors Beach, a remote coastal town, the novel offers room to drift through these themes, although a well-controlled plot provides shape and momentum. Lucas’ debut offers a fresh and intelligent perspective on the fragile, desperate bonds that we make and break with those we love. – Bec Kavanagh
The Little Box of Veg by Alice Zaslavsky
Murdoch Books, recipe cards, $29.99
Zaslavsky’s In Praise of Veg was one of the best Australian cookbooks of 2021 (even Nigella is a fan). But it is also large, beautiful and not particularly cheap – characteristics that make it a shame to stain its rainbow pages with No Tears Onion Soup. In The Little Box of Veg, more than 100 of Zaslavsky’s plant-tastic recipes have been adapted into cards. Each veggie gets its own card, with a recipe on one side, and helpful storage, prep and flavour tips on the other. Cards are an ideal cook-along format: they don’t get greasy screens, you’re not ruining a fancy book, and it’s easy to pass them from chef to sous and back again when there’s more than one cook in the kitchen. Whether they own a copy of In Praise of Veg or not, this makes a great gift; or a helpful addition to your own pantry. – Alyx Gorman
Girl in a Pink Dress by Kylie Needham
Penguin, fiction, $27.99
Seeking sanctuary from the attentions of Sydney’s art world, artist Frances lives in a remote cottage in NSW’s southern highlands. When acclaimed artist Clem, her former teacher and older lover, invites her to attend his latest exhibition, Frances is forced to reconsider their past together, and unpick the strange relationship between artist and muse, and artist and artist. Delicately poetic and powered with fury, Girl in a Pink Dress is the first novel from Needham, a screenwriter based in the southern highlands (and partner of artist Ben Quilty). I suspect it won’t be the last. - SC
