Sleepers Publishing

Eli Glasman’s début novel is aimed at a Young Adult audience, but should also enjoy a long life on adult fiction shelves. Seemingly based on Glasman’s own upbringing as an Orthodox Jew in Caulfield, a Melbourne suburb, the book is fascinating in its candid observations of the rituals, strictures, and arcane customs of Orthodox Judaism, particularly those of the Lubavitch sect, with its emphasis on outreach to non-observant Jews and its belief in the imminence of the Messiah.

Sleepers Publishing are up to Almanac No. 9. Despite the ever-increasing competition from newer literary journals, the high quality of this annual short-fiction anthology remains intact. Eschewing the theme-based model used by many journals and instead offering diversity in subject, style, and tone, the Almanac has never been anything less than an intriguing read, and this is certainly true this time around. While some short story perennials are present (one may find oneself tempted to call for a blanket ban forthwith on stories about pregnancy and divorce), the inventiveness and verve of so many of these stories more than makes up for the tiredness of some approaches and subjects.

Our instinctual reaction to parents who leave their children is one of suspicion. ‘Child abandonment’ elicits such images as a swaddled foundling in the woods, a parent in a train station losing hold of her child’s hand and disappearing into the crowd, or an anonymous baby hatch in a hospital. The presumption is that a mother (fathers are usually spared this judgement) abandons her child because of some shortcoming: poverty, selfishness, capriciousness. Eleanor Limprecht was prompted to write this novel by a newspaper headline at the time of the birth of her first child when a baby was abandoned at Dandenong Hospital. It asked, ‘How Could She?’

Vanessa Russell grew up in a traditionalist Christian fellowship, the Christadelphians. She read the Bible from cover to cover every year, enjoyed a childhood filled with group activities, and only left when their oppressive restrictions caused her too much grief.

Since its establishment in 2003, Sleepers Publishing has made quite a name for itself. Coordinating literary salons and the annual publication of the Sleepers Almanac, which garners contributions from some of the country’s most esteemed practitioners, the small press is now branching out into the domain of full-length fiction, with Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming as the opener.