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Australian Fiction

There is much to like in this début Young Adult novel: its straightforward storytelling, distinctive central characters, well-tuned adolescent dialogue, and humorous depiction of first love...

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Noah's Law by Randa Abdel-Fattah

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February 2011, no. 328
The teen detective novel is a rare breed in this post-Famous Five era, now that the catch-cry of popular Young Adult fiction is the familiar and the relatable ... ... (read more)

The Ottoman Motel by Christopher Currie

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May 2011, no. 331

One feels greatly conflicted while reading The Ottoman Motel. While Christopher Currie’s début novel certainly shows promise, it would have benefited from further editorial development prior to publication.

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Something happened to the Australian suburban novel while Georgia Blain was trying her hand at memoir in Births Deaths Marriages (2008) and Young Adult fiction in Darkwater (2010). Put it down to The Slap juggernaut. The working family is now angry, high, horny, and mad about tattoos. Gone are the scenes of inarticulate loss at the kitchen ...

Elizabeth Stead’s fifth novel is set in 1948, when newly independent women, who kept the wheels of industry turning during World War II, were resuming full-time household duties. Stead, who married a naval officer in the 1950s, would have seen this domestic dynamic played out around her. The Sparrows of Edward Street tells the story of a family – a widow and her two teenage daughte ...

While the stories in The Kid on the Karaoke Stage vary thematically, they are predominantly realist in style, with plenty of seemingly serendipitous through-lines. Georgia Richter, who has edited the collection superbly, says that she was interested in ‘the way we turn to writing to crystallise moments of realisation’. The authors all have links to West ...

Six by Karen Tayleur

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March 2011, no. 329

Six people. Five seatbelts. Six teenagers involved in a horrific car crash. But who has died?

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Owen Graves, by occupation a house wrecker and by nature a collector, is summoned to the world’s tallest building by the president of Chicago’s First Equitable Insurance Company...

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From Kafka on, we can trace a line of narratives dealing with alienation in the modern workplace, with forces seen and unseen overwhelming individual volition. S.J. Finn’s first novel makes a humorous contribution to this tradition.

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Mary Queen of Scots, widow of the youthful French king, returns from her long exile in France to a country bereft of pageantry... ... (read more)