My best books of 2024

Award judging, literary fiction, bestsellers, comfy reads and more

There was a lot of variety in my reading this year. Judging the Nib Literary Award through the middle of the year meant a lot of nonfiction (but fiction, plays and poetry also); and fatigue from work, care duties and health issues meant strong patches of easy, comfy reading and long, slow deep dives into favourite authors’ works old and new (i.e. Kafka). There were academic tomes pored over for work (ecofeminism, posthumanism, phenomenology, publishing studies), while audiobooks and ebooks continued to dominate my pleasure reading, due to ease of access. There were ambitious borrows of stacks from the library I never got more than a few pages into; and absolute piles of picture books read to my daughter on the couch, in bed, and on our commute. What a joy and pleasure that has been.

Here are some of my 2024 reading highlights:

The Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award longlist, obvs. I can’t single any of these out but some I still think about almost daily! The overall winner was Melissa Lucashenko’s extraordinary novel Edenglassie. I first read that last year, and included it in my 2023 best books round-up.

Literary and general fiction

I recently finished Rapture by Emily Maguire and it’s one of my year’s best. A 9th-century girl, spiritual and curious, allowed to listen at her father’s table, is treated ‘like a human’ (read: man) and can’t see a way back. She lives as a monk, scholar and scribe and rises through the ranks. She experiences spiritual connection but also physical, carnal. I loved this book. I never knew what was around the corner and was fully immersed in Agnes’s world and interiority. The audiobook is beautifully narrated by Rose Ackroyd, too. I found some echoes with Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, though they’re very different books in terms of style, story and character. They both deal with the body, spirituality, devotion and being earthbound. Has anyone essayed on these recent considerations in Australian literature – women limited in many senses but unbound in devotion? I’m fascinated by it, especially in this era of climate crisis.

Another book I loved was The Work by Bri Lee. It’s about New York gallerist Lally and young Sydney art dealer Pat, and intersections of passion, ambition and economics. It has great depth of character, strong pacing, and showcases the ways capitalism and gender roles intersect. When we make poor decisions for ourselves, and often when there is conflict between us and others (friends, colleagues, lovers) it is due to this nexus. (I’m reading Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo now too and it also explores this.) Shown through both Pat and Lally’s internal dialogue, emotions (anger, spite, withdrawal, an inability to be vulnerable), and actions (Lally putting on a show by a controversial male artist at her gallery; Pat sleeping with his client). In the end the two characters are quite similar, but distinctly man/woman. The novel also captures the regional/city and regional/arts and education cultural divide in Australia (which also intersects with gender, as seen through Pat’s sister and her limited choices) perfectly. There are some really smart conversations/considerations on art’s role and on consuming art and selling art in the contemporary world. I thought this was an excellent, smart novel and I really enjoyed it!

In If You Go by Alice Robinson a woman awakes, violently, in a strange underground facility, her keeper another woman. Where are her children? What has happened? As the answers slowly come for the reader we spend time in her memories and observations: sharp, deeply emotive and highly sensory scenes of a woman, creative, mother, wife – giving, living, failing (in her eyes). A complex portrait of choices in the West under patriarchy, and in a time of rapid technological change and environmental destruction. It’s also about the inevitability of life going on in ways you cannot control (your children’s, the planet’s). It’s gentle science fiction, strongly literary (strong characterisation, depth of theme and memorable, dog-ear-inducing paragraphs and lines) and philosophical. It’s the first book I’ve read as a parent where I felt so much of the observations of parenting in my gut, likely because Robinson does a great job of embodying you in the character’s experience, and also likely because the observations are honest and thoughtful. In the philosophical sense, it places us as we are, as dots in time, and expresses the mix of wonder and grief that can accompany that realisation whenever it occurs.

Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh follows three women in three generations close together. The middle era is a woman about my age and I found such familiarity through the cultural references but also the gendered, regional Australian experiences. The book is about imperfect mothering but mothering with love, and the desire to do right. Aspects that are inherited (and inevitable?). The book’s structure and style is refreshing: stories and scenes in a non-linear form, so you slowly get a picture of the three women: Mary-Anne, Vivian and Evie. And that vivid specificity in each era (sometimes almost too overwhelming; do we really notice/name every little thing in our environment?) Overall, the characters have depth and are sympathetic and I’d love to read more by Darragh.

I also enjoyed The Sitter by Angela O’Keefe, a novella about a writer holed up in a hotel in the height of Covid, haunted by Hortense Cezanne, with its poignant observations of life, past, stillness and secrets.

I read a few bestsellers and wasn’t disappointed, such as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, a deep character study of game designers Sadie and Sam who meet as kids in a hospital (his foot, her sister). There is a nostalgic element around the games recounted and the book is fascinating on creative process. The final scene is rendered beautifully (like a first-person video game POV) and very moving. It felt like such a big, populated read but it always looped back and nothing introduced was ever wasted. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is a satisfying, character-driven read about time-travel consequences. And Yellowface by Rebecca F. Luang reminded me how much I enjoy satire and black humour. It’s truly biting on both writers and the publishing industry. It raises fascinating questions about the inherent moral ‘good’ of books and the literary calling.

While I’m not sure Day is Michael Cunningham’s best work, reading him is like catching up with an old friend I’m extremely fond of. He always exquisitely renders interiority, people’s inadequacies, the small everyday choices in their big-small lives. It’s his pandemic novel and has some of his common themes: mothers, sibling and sibling partner crushes, hyperreality, flowers, illness, half-met dreams, the children carrying everything.

Finally for this section, some literary speculative fiction: Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, translated by Heather Cleary. Mid-apocalyptic, algae and red fog, a woman pulled between caring for her charge, an ex, her mother. Atmospheric but also a bit claustrophobic. Worth reading.

Nonfic and memoir

Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine is an incredibly moving graphic work by Mohammad Sabaaneh about being detained in an Israeli prison and the hopes and dreams and stories he shares with a small bird. It also has some information in the back about the 1967 Occupation, the West Bank, Gaza, The Oslo Interim Agreement, the Annexation Wall, Kafr Aqab and administrative detention (by Israel of Palestinians). A beautiful and personal work.

Peter Goldsworthy’s memoir The Cancer Finishing School is thoughtful and wry and probing, like much of his writing. Though the cancer does soften his edges (in a meaningful way). I like the part about him buying the painting of himself looking deathly and hanging it as a daily reminder of what he’s surviving. And the ways he writes about love and gratefulness for people while trying to skirt cliché or easy summation. Also the atheistic and philosophical probing that comes with terminal illness for someone with a brain like him.

The philosophical graphic essays – questioning, curious, warm, personal, generous – in Eventually Everything Connects by Sarah Firth are wonderful.

Can’t stop thinking about Nick Cave talking about his son literally inhabiting the songs on Ghostteen in Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan. And here’s a beautiful quote:

Perhaps god is the trauma itself. Perhaps grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state, where the person who is grieving is the closest they will ever be to the fundamental essence of things. Because in grief you become deeply acquainted with the idea of human mortality… We are essentially altered or remade by it.

This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch by Tabitha Carvan is an accessible critical memoir, about the journey to celebrating the joy of loving something for the sake of it, of finding or rekindling passions and getting back in touch with yourself. Acts as a great explainer on why fandoms exist and are so vital in people’s lives. I related in particular to Benedict Cumberbatch being the subject as my own life changed after my intense attraction to him around the time Sherlock came out!

I’ve always been pretty fascinated by raunch culture and female bodily autonomy within the constraints of patriarchal capitalism AND the aesthetic of faded glamour and Crystal Hefner’s autobiography Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself did not disappoint. Learning about what happened in Hef’s baby-oil-soaked bed and how he treated the girls, absolutely ew. And the mansion riddled with black mould. Crystal articulates her motivations as a young woman, having experienced the loss of her father and a lover and surrounded by cultural and close messages that her worth was in her looks, and how she saw the mansion as a place she could be valued, have power, be at the heart of culture. She powerfully deconstructs Hef’s image all throughout this book, as she shares her own reprogramming, or deprogramming. I can imagine how hard it would have been, because as the title says, the message for all those years he gave her was to only say good things about him. The real man: narcissist, controlling, stuck in time, empty shell.

Comfy reads

I’ve read some romance books before but I think it really clicked as a genre for me this year, probably because I read some good egs of the genre, or some that were just right for me. My favourite was the extremely spicy queer romance Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wisner. X-rated but… sweet? I will read Wisner’s other works at some stage. And a fun straighty one was Nevermore Bookstore by Kerrigan Byrne and Cynthia St Aubin. It’s about a bookstore owner – tough, kind, and knows herself – and a damaged big guy who finds her irresistible. It had good banter, but wasn’t flippant like some romances. Good-natured would be a way to put it? And sexy too. Cute and escapist and absorbing.

How about you? What books did you enjoy this year? What got you through?

~

Take care, and warm wishes for 2025,

Angela

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Cosy K, or, the dangers of comfort

Riffing on a sleigh scene in Kafka's The Castle

Long-time readers (of my work in general) would know I’m a big Franz Kafka fan and I find endless depths in his work. Recently when re-reading The Castle (an inspiration for my Meanjin story The Station) I kept coming back to a scene where K, waiting for Klamm (powerful, mysterious official; a possible gateway to the Castle), comes across a horse and sleigh and has ‘such an urge to enter the sleigh that he could not resist’.

He slips in, promising himself he’ll only stay for a moment, and is in immediate comfort, with ‘so many blankets, cushions, and furs; on each side one could turn and stretch in every direction and always sink down soft and warm. With his arms extended, his head supported by the abundant supply of cushions, K. gazed from the sleigh into the dark house.’ He is lulled by the environment; thoughts of Klamm recede though he is aware dimly he’d rather not be caught here by him; he sips and sips the brandy contained in an inside pocket, forgetting he was supposed to hand it to the coachman.

Electric lights come on and rouse him, K jumps from the sleigh and slams the door but it is not Klamm, only an ‘extremely good-looking man’. In K’s exchange with the man he experiences emotions like shame, regret (if only he had stayed hidden in the sleigh) and then a strong reluctance when the man commands him to come with him: K ‘had the feeling that what he had achieved here was a kind of possession’. He wants to stay put and wait even though the man said he’d miss Klamm whether he stayed or not.

The man directs the sleigh away and leaves. The stable doors are locked. The electric lights go out. And,

it seemed to K. as if they had broken off all contact with him, but as if he were freer than ever and could wait as long as he wanted here in this place where he was generally not allowed, and as if he had fought for this freedom for himself in a manner nobody else could have done and as if nobody could touch him or drive him away, or even speak to him, yet – and this conviction was at least equally strong – as if there were nothing more senseless, nothing more desperate, than this freedom, this waiting, this invulnerability.

(All quotes here are from Mark Harman’s 1998 translation, Schocken Books.)

What is ringing with me, here, at the end of 2024? It is something of the temptation and danger of comfort, of giving oneself over to blankets and booze in a small, contained space. That constant vigilance slipping away for just a moment, letting it… But then electrically switched back on. Maybe not for the right reason, but here and undeniable and almost inseparable from a sense of selfhood or identity: the vigilance is yours and you.

What was Kafka channeling and/or intending (honouring him as a writer who wrote feverishly, but reworked pieces over and over to get them right, too)? There are so many possibilities. Ones that spring to mind:

– The comfy coach is the domestic, rhythmic life that absorbs and smothers the writer, who has agency in remaining firmly watchful and alone. (Kafka stans will know.)

– The comfy coach is the sick bed and people caring for you and that is pleasant and womb-like, but death is a freedom that can only be faced alone.

– Invoking the Kafka we see as prescient and political: The comfy coach is our animal body seeking direct sustenance and comfort, ignoring the effortful, energetic parts of the mind that stay alert to injustice. One must stay vigilant and undistracted to be able to perceive power and face it, and resist sinking back into easeful ignorance.

And there are likely many more possibilities. It’s extraordinary how Kafka’s work does and will continue to resonate on multiple levels: psychically, spiritually, politically, and even physically (this last one something I’d love to one day delve into).

All around me I see people stressed, overburdened and fatigued. After caring for and losing my dad during the pandemic and then helping to care for my mum, as well as having a child and only, in that entire period, having three months off work, I completely understand the temptation of K’s horse-driven bliss bed. Some days I’m so tired I feel like my face is melting off. But the danger of sinking into the sleigh and closing the door feels so real. Of bringing our family and/or friends in with us and justifying to ourselves that we are ‘taking care of our own’. I’m not satisfied by that, but how do we generate the energy for ourselves to keep looking outward, to be cold and frowning and resistant to gentlemen (good-looking or otherwise) bossing us around.

But K’s vigilance is not portrayed as healthy, either. It’s stubborn and misdirected, confused. He is shunning others, in this scene, to wait alone. That can be necessary for visionaries, but it’s also the mode of isolation and paranoia. I think maybe he shouldn’t have forgotten about the coachman. Sharing the bottle would have been good.

I’ve said (maybe controversially) before that literature doesn’t change the world; all you have to do is look at the state the world is in. But it can change individuals, and some would argue: is that not changing the world? Kafka endlessly challenges and changes me, as well as comforting me, and so that’s a communion of sorts. K wasn’t really alone, cold and vigilant in the electric light, because the readers of the future were there with him.

~

Take care, and all best,

Angela

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My most-read piece of writing

It might not be the one you expect

Photo by Covene on Unsplash

Every week I get an email from Medium telling me that 25 more people have viewed my short memoir piece from 2018 ‘I took up smoking one cigarette per week’. It’s had over 24,000 views. My novels have sold pretty well (for Australian literary fiction!) and are available in libraries but it fascinates me that more people have likely read this short piece of memoir than the works I put years and so much effort into.

Why this piece?

I know from my time in bookselling and publishing that people love true and personal stories. There’s also a confessional element in this – an admission to doing something ‘bad’ or unexpected (and that’s partly what the piece is about: what drove me to do this, and how it felt to do this), so that invites the reader in, to a confidence. Around this time I was also doing some of my best writing, and much of the same rhythms and sensory descriptions are present in my novella Joan Smokes, published in 2019 and possibly my best piece of fiction (with fewer readers, I’m sure, than any of my other works!).

There’s also the fact that the Medium algorithm keeps throwing it up to people. It seems to be dominating a search term or genre. People email me about it, message me on Instagram. I bet there are people writing Substacks now too that will outlive their novels, their carefully curated poetry collections.

It’s a reminder to me that digital publication and self-publishing (the piece is unedited) are legitimate forms and ways of connecting with readers. Yes, there’s a saturation of content online, and I absolutely love the rigor of working with an editor to shape my words, but you can have many avenues for your work. There’s no one way to write and publish to a readership. I like having a hybrid (print and digital, mainstream published and direct-to-reader) practice, and it’s been this way since I started a literary blog way back in 2007.

I’d love to share the piece with you now (keeping in mind that this is the ‘me’ of six years ago, and there’s been a pandemic, grief, publications, job changes, a new relationship, moving house and having a baby in between – but we always are who we are, right?). And I would now add a couple of content warnings for it: addiction, self-harm.

Do you know what your most-read piece of writing is? Share in the comments/reply.

---

I took up smoking one cigarette per week

I have been smoking for one year. I have smoked exactly 52 cigarettes. I am bad and I am free, in moments.

One year ago: I am 32 years old. I take the packet of cigarettes out of the jacket my friend has left behind. There are still swirls and crumbs of tobacco across the desk in my room, from where my ex had rolled his cigarettes. He didn’t leave much behind and so I haven’t cleaned it up yet — a small memento. I pull out one of my friend’s cigarettes, hold it between my fingers. A deliberate thought: ‘I am going to take up smoking.’

For months, it is a secret. I don’t have many secrets as I value intimacy. My ex had secrets, and so my desire for intimacy was intimidating. I smoke these cigarettes in secret to honour a different way of being. I decide to smoke and I decide to have a secret. These are privileges born of heartbreak, disappointment, and loneliness.

My sister comes home one day and smells it on me. I explain to her that I decided to smoke one cigarette per week, and no more. I am sheepish but she shrugs and thinks it is no big deal. Like many people, she sometimes has a few when drinking.

To me it is a big deal to do something ‘wrong’. I am always early to appointments, parties and flights; I hate to let people down so much that often I do not even pursue friendships because I think I won’t be able to do what’s required; I never call in sick unless I am sick; I don’t miss deadlines; I don’t drink-drive; I apply political and ethical standards to my life and work; I write every week; I exercise at least four times a week; I don’t eat too much; I am a devoted partner.

But in my thirties, I have been doing more things ‘wrong’. Emails — I cannot possibly keep up. I have tried certain substances. I have gone outside the idea of monogamous commitment. I have drank too much and been boisterous and arrogant. And now, quite deliberately, I am smoking.

Of course I am not one thing or another: I am neither good nor bad. But when I was a child I was told I was good, and was paid attention for it. And when I was a teenager and felt bad I punished myself for it. I cut and burned myself. And when I was in my twenties I punished myself further for the parts of myself that made me large and prismed and different. I literally tried to make myself smaller. I controlled my eating and I lost 20 kilos in six months. And then in the mirror I looked like an idea of ‘good’.

So is smoking a cigarette another way of punishing myself? After another lover has gone?

I think it is healthier than that.

~

I am 33 years old. I have a ritual: empty stomach, a beer or a glass of wine, go to the back step (on dusk), and light the cigarette. Cough a little on the first inhale, every time. Now, in winter — mismatched pyjamas, no bra, dressing gown hanging loose over top. Beautifully comfortable, and myself. Alone, except for my greyhound, Mallory. Walk down the three steps into the overgrown courtyard, whistle for Mallory, who is inside on the lounge. Sip, inhale, exhale, sip. It’s a quiet suburb. The moon looks close. The courtyard smells of weeds and dog piss. There are overgrown vines and weeds spilling from cracks in the pavement — all small failures encroaching. And yet I am, now, calm.

Mallory finally joins me, ambles down the steps and looks for the possum that sometimes walks along the high fence. It’s very private. I pace a little in the courtyard, do some squats, feeling absurd and giddy and light. The best part of tipsiness, on the up, with nicotine added. I talk to Mallory. I sip, inhale, exhale. The leaves in the overgrown shrubs become crisp. The smoke is alive in its night-curling. I am alone and strong and whole. I am day become night. My animal and myself, we are blips. The moon. The muscles in my body go slack. Everyone I have loved comes through my head, gently. They stick around inside me. I am so large. I stretch my arms up above my head, smiling. I exhale. I can do anything. I look at the stub of the cigarette, regretfully. I take the last burning inhale. I do not cough. I stub it out in a pot plant. I sit on the step. I have shut down the day, the week. I have inhaled fire and exhaled sharpness.

The idea of fully going over into something, not being balanced and in control, has always fascinated me. In fact, ‘losing it’ seems a luxury, and actually results in such a complex array of emotions (from resentment to envy and even arousal). Some of my favourite scenes in films are when characters go on a hedonistic binge of alcohol, drugs and sex. In the most stressful, anxious and depressed episodes of my life, I desire to give in, while I also fear it terribly. Maybe if I allow a gradual ‘badness’ I will also become gradually healthier, expressing enough parts of my enjoyments, fears, and disappointments, and therefore eliminating the risk of ‘snapping’. Maybe it is to do with the physical self — more embracing of bodily sensations as a way of moving outside the mental bottling, the mental churning. But in a day-to-day, high-responsibility life, you cannot just suddenly become fully physical — a cigarette-smoking, sexed-up yogi. You need money for that.

I exhale.

Writing is like this badness, too. Wherein I depart from the world for a little while and live in the future or the nineteenth century, where I inhabit other bodies and watch thoughts pass through minds. While I am writing I am not walking the dog or tidying the house or writing back to a text message from a friend I haven’t seen for too long. I write once a week, on Saturday mornings. And it is just as bodily as the cigarette — the heart and breath and skin and senses like taste and smell are all involved.

~

During the week, there are cravings. After a high-energy meeting, looking at the impossible inbox, the to-do list, the pile of manuscripts. After hours of steady, efficient work. Around the feelings of striving to give what is required to get books in the world, sometimes quite heavy emotional and psychological labour (a skill I am proud to have developed). Around all that, looking out the window and seeing someone smoking casually on the street. A genuine physical longing, and a simultaneous mental fascination at such a sensation. One reason I do not give in is that I have experienced worse cravings. Yes, smoking is addictive, but what I have realised about myself is that the way that particular craving feels is nowhere near as unbearable as other cravings I have experienced, such as emotional and physical longing for another human being. I have desired so many things in my life, by now, that the craving for a cigarette throughout the week is just another layer, intense but bearable.

~

There is no message of growth or power in this admission, simply an acknowledgement of a sensation, an experience, and with it, a luxury and privilege of choice, within my own relatively healthy capacity. In life, things will get better or worse — more likely in some areas better and in some, worse, and the spirals will be different and the ways of getting out and letting go and giving in will evolve, and one day, maybe, will turn to excess — full badness — and that is a thrilling thought, and terrifying in that it is. For now, one cigarette is enough.

~

Take care, and all best,

Angela

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My best books of 2023

Six stand-out reads

Instead of my usual long list of books that have shaped my year, here are the ones that left the largest impression, that not only kept my attention through the bleary, busy hours of new parenthood and a big workload but that sparked me, moved me, helped me to feel in touch with the world, other lives, and all parts of myself.

The Anniversary is Stephanie Bishop’s best work yet. It’s about a writer and the release of her new novel while she deals with a significant personal tragedy: her husband going overboard on a boat they were travelling on together. This novel has a dark, subtle humour about it. There’s a slippery blurring between reality and memory, and experience and fiction (past, present and also possible and desired futures, desire versus the actual in general). There’s interwoven commentary about being a woman and a woman writer, about the publishing industry, and about being with a man who is also creative. But the literary trope of a younger woman married to her professor is parodic, knowing. And story is represented sometimes almost as an erasure of self. It’s refreshing, intelligent and a page-turner all in one.

Deborah Levy is such a solid writer for me. I’ve never been disappointed with her frank, spare writing and the way she holds doors open for you to keep walking through, keep puzzling and finding unexpected depths. In August Blue a pianist who has gone off-piste post-lockdowns dies her hair blue and sees a woman, her ‘double’, buy some mechanical horses that flare a memory of childhood. Her adoptive father/piano teacher, Arthur, is dying. She travels, makes friends, lovers, all the while communing with the double in her mind, who is possibly her but also possibly some version of her mother. She wears her trilby hat. She desires to possess the horses. She goes through a transformation. Sun-kissed, she plays the Rach for Arthur. I loved the mysteries of the novel. The short sentences punctuated by full stops. The light and dark and colours. The symbols and glimpses of memory. The minimalist main character painted with broad strokes, sort of unreal.

Mirandi Riwoe’s latest Sunbirds is immersive historical fiction with layers of character and story tensions related to power, place, matters of the heart. It’s West Java in 1942 and the Japanese are encroaching. The main character Anna is of Indonesian and Dutch descent. Her family have local servants. She’s obsessed with a local murder case of a young woman who in many ways is just like her, but who grew up under different circumstances. Throughout the novel she becomes more and more aware of the effects of Dutch colonisation. But this book has multiple POVs, and Diah, the housekeeper, often seemed the real main character to me. She’s more content than her brother Sigit, who wants to revolt, or perhaps more accepting of her lot. But she has dreams and desires, and she quietly plans. We are rooting for both these women and their happiness and the possibilities of a different life. Other contrasts are set up: Anna’s mother, driven mad; and a novelette that runs through the novel in first person about the murdered girl, Fjente (Endah). This is gorgeous work from Mirandi Riwoe as usual.

‘The world widows us perpetually.’

Anything I write (in such a brief form) will be inadequate for this extraordinary novel about grief and existence (and possibly aftermath, a word that is turned over and examined within the pages itself). It’s set during the lockdowns in a coastal suburb. The protagonist is a writer who has lost her partner and her father in quick succession. The book jumps around in time. She has a dog, Baby, and they telegraph messages to each other. She has friends, lovers, people she tries to reach, people who try to reach her; she is often alone, and time passes. She trains a dog. She walks on the golf course. She observes, externally and internally. She recalls books, films, experiences layered with the influence or mood of these other texts. The writing never resorts to cliche, to simplification, but it’s crisp, clear, rhythmic. There is light and dark. I listened to the audiobook and felt the book in my body: my chest, my senses. I want to read it in print as well so I can go back and highlight innumerable smart, moving sentences. I’ve enjoyed all Briohny’s writing but this is next-level: it’s a novel with such integrity, and honest searing searching truth. An instant favourite. 

The Hummingbird Effect by Kate Mildenhall is an ambitious and enjoyable novel. I found myself being struck by admiration for the author’s capacity, to write a multi-timeline, multi-character book and for each character and story to compel (and for images and themes, such as women and work and place, to form such neat throughlines). The way Mildenhall captured Melbourne lockdown in one of the interwoven stories is like no other book I’ve read, particularly the found-poem-style gathering of news headlines, events, sayings, etc. from the time. I liked the latter two narratives best—a near-future queer couple, working in a factory, considering parenting, the tensions and love between them; and far-future sisters post societal collapse. A beautifully balanced and memorable novel.

The last book I read for the year was the one I most looked forward to all year! And it did not disappoint. Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip is one of my all-time favourite novels. I started Edenglassie and immediately there was Lucashenko’s exquisite sharp writing and skillful storytelling. In 2024, Queensland’s oldest Aboriginal resident Granny Eddie ends up in hospital alongside a shadowy companion from the past while the younger generation clashes over history, belonging and legacies. Granny Eddie’s niece Winona is a fantastic character—we get to witness her big, political thoughts, quick tongue and deep emotions, often through conversations with Eddie and also Doctor Johnny Newman, who is working on getting in touch with his Gomeroi heritage. This contemporary story is paired with a compelling historical narrative about Mulanyin, who dreams of having his own fishing boat, his woman Nita by his side and of not being beholden to the white colonists, and reading, you so badly want everything for him too, but there’s the haunting, heavy sense of history and the horrors of colonisation (unfolding and to come). It’s heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching stuff. Lucashenko’s characters are fully alive to me while reading and I’m still walking around digesting this exceptional story. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

Have you read any of these? Pop your own 2023 favourites in the comments/reply!

~

Take care, and happy writing and reading for 2024,

Angela

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Thinking about pacing + the writing year

Is the pace at which we read fixed in childhood or does it develop over time?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

As I read to my daughter I notice I’m developing a ‘reading aloud’ voice. The tone varies across different stories and characters but the pace is fairly steady. Sometimes, though, she grabs at the pages, wanting to go ahead or look back at a fun picture. She often starts to flip a couple of pages before the end, as though she is anticipating what’s coming. She bounces and smiles and gets excited by the last page. One book is a Golden Book about the Star Trek character, Spock, and on the last page P delightfully raises her hand in an attempt at a Vulcan salute.

I’ve been thinking about the pace of my reading. Did I learn that from my own parents? Has it changed over time? When I started listening to audiobooks I listened on 1.0 speed and now I listen at 1.2. Should I be reading to her at a slower pace to counter the speed at which she will consume content in just a couple of years? Help lay some of the foundations for a broader attention span?

I also think about pace a lot in my work. A sense of pace is crucial to writing and editing, and it’s one of the most difficult concepts to teach. I often recommend my students read articles like this one by Emma Viskic, which compares writing to music, and that helps them wrap their heads around the concept (as well as rhythm), but working with pace in their own practice can still be challenging.

Am I reasonably attuned to pace in writing because I had the privilege of being read to as a child? I don’t think it’s just that. My early stories were baggy and overwrought. I learnt pace too through cinema studies, reading scripts. I learnt it through reading books in all different genres (particularly deep reading, as for reviews). I learnt it through being edited, including in a journalistic context (when I wrote a lot of the news for Books+Publishing). I learnt it through reading poetry. I learnt it through reading manuscripts with a structural eye when I worked in publishing. And more recently, I think my sense of pace has leveled up further by listening to audiobooks.

So my daughter will find her own sense of pace in which to read, maybe write. She’s also possibly showing innate personal preferences – like jumping to the end because it’s more fun. Early parenting is partly being hyperaware of the effect of everything you do on your little one’s future wellbeing. But there are and will be countless other influences, plus hereditary traits, and I’m excited to witness P find her own pace over time.

Are there kidlets in your life you read to? What have you noticed? And as writers, how have you developed a sense of pace in your work?

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My writing year

I’ve published two pieces of short fiction this year (amid raising a baby and working; I’m quite proud of this achievement!).

‘The Station’ is about a pregnant scientist who arrives in a dusty desert town to take up her position at the mysterious ‘Station’, only to be thwarted by locals and a scheduled lockdown and blackout. It’s inspired by The Castle by Franz Kafka, and is quite possibly part of a longer WIP… It’s out now in Meanjin 82.4 Summer 2023.

‘In line’ is about a person who sells their place in line for a living. It was published in June in Paperback Bookshop’s Salon Series pamphlet alongside Anna MacDonald’s interview with me about my novel Moon Sugar. They may still have some copies in store at 60 Bourke St, Melbourne.

I hope you enjoy these stories!

Goals for 2024

I’ll continue to strive for balance between my teaching and research work (which I love), family and friend time, and writing. It’s been hard to take care of myself physically in the past year and I hope I can find a way to improve on that.

My writing and research interests are aligned and I’ll be continuing and hopefully expanding upon work underway on sustainability in the book industry, and work that features female and queer bodies, climate change, overlap/blurring between the body and page, and the absurd.

More specifically I hope to write a few strong short stories, encouraged by the Meanjin publication and inspired in part by author Grace Chan (who gave an excellent guest lecture to my students this year). If you’re not already following her Substack, do so!

I’ll also see if the long-form work calls me back this year but this one may possibly take a bit more time.

How about you?

My reading year

I usually post about the books I’ve enjoyed throughout the year by early Jan. I’ll do my best!

Learning over the holidays

If you’d like to do some self-paced learning over the hols, my course up on Kill Your Darlings might be for you. This course is the culmination of much of my teaching and mentoring as well as knowledge gained by working in publishing and as an editor over the years. It’s called ‘Preparing your manuscript for publication’. It’s a comprehensive look at the stages you can go through with your work before submitting to an agent or publisher, or self-publishing.

If it’s writing character you’d like some help with, here’s a link to my ‘Creating memorable characters’ course with 50% off for Substack subscribers until the end of the year.

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Take care, and all best wishes to you and yours for the holidays,

Angela

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