I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell It was the first book I declared an absolute must-read of 2017, and it remains as such.
It’s a novel that dares to explore the full spectrum of emotions: at moments it cheered me, at others it broke my heart. I loved it for two reasons: it’s an honest examination of the genesis and cost of living a creative life - of making art - and its elegant portrayal of love and friendship. Kayla Rae Whitaker winds together the moments that define who we are, and weaves an incredible tapestry of life and death. The Animators is such an accomplished and polished debut. It’s character-driven, emotionally-wrenching tour-de-force. Mark Brandi’s debut is a simply extraordinary literary crime novel, delivered with intelligence, power and heart. Wimmera tracks the friendship of two boys from a defining moment in their childhood, when a mysterious newcomer arrives in the small Australian country town of Wimmera, through to the discovery of a body in the river twenty years later. Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow is fiercely unique and one of the best children’s books I’ve ever read. And between all the fantastical moments, and the blockbuster action scenes, is a sweet story about friendship and belonging. It’s charming, magical, mysterious, fun and wildly inventive. There he meets Amanda Pharrell - an accused and convicted murderer now operating as a private detective - and partners with her to investigate the disappearance of local author Jake Scully.įull review > Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend The life he had is over, and so he flees Sydney to Cairns: specifically the steamy, croc-infested wetlands of Crimson Lake. To his wife, his peers, and the general public, a lack of conviction isn’t proof of innocence, just evidence of a lack of proof. If you haven’t jumped on the Candice Fox bandwagon, now’s the time, before the publication of Redemption Point in early 2018.Ĭrimson Lake introduces former Sydney-based police detective Ted Conkaffey, who was accused, but not convicted, of abducting a 13-year-old girl. One of the best Australian crime writers levelled up this year. Full review > Top 5 Books of 2017 Crimson Lake by Candice Fox Even better, Viskic created a brilliant protagonist with the profoundly-deaf and irrepressibly obstinate Caleb Zelic, who returns as the lead in the fantastic noir thriller And Fire Came Down. Resurrection Bay was a tour-de-force excursion into good, evil, and the labyrinth of human motivations. In 2015, Emma Viskic produced one of that year’s best crime novels. Full review > And Fire Came Down by Emma Viskic Fearsome, vivid and raw, her third novel for adults chronicles a young girl’s reckoning with this violent world in early 1970s Australia. Sofie Laguna is a writer who can wrench beauty even from the horror of a child caught up in the toxic world of bastardised masculinity. Already a woman I greatly admire for her writing - particularly for the incredible An Untamed State,which is the one constant on my ever-changing list of favourite books - and her unflinching honesty, and take-no-bullshit attitude, I’d been looking forward to Hunger since its announcement a while back. Roxane Gay’s memoir of body image and sexual trauma is unsparingly honest and confronting.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan, returns after a seven year sabbatical from our bookshelves with her first work of historical fiction, Manhattan Beach, which perhaps lacks the unequivocal uniqueness of its award-winning predecessor, but nonetheless displays her gifts as one of today’s most elegant and versatile storytellers. Full review > Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan The dynamics and anachronisms of this retelling work wonderfully, and the transposition of Othello, Desdemona, Iago and so forth, into adolescents, is superbly effective.
In Tracy Chevalier’s New Boy, Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello is transplanted to a school in 1970s Washington DC. Darkly and extravagantly imagined, full of pulse-pounding action and brutally emotional highs and lows, UNSUB is a tremendous work of suspense fiction. The nerve-shredding never lets up for a minute as Edgar Award-winner Meg Gardiner picks you up by the scruff of the neck and shakes you vigorously, over and over again, until finally shoving you to the ground, standing over you, and with a smile, asks if you’re ready to go again, with a sequel clearly already in the works. Canny plotting, tight prose, swift tempo the only thing readers will be left wanting is more.