AustLit

'Trysten Black is a 14-year-old rural Huck Finn type with an overbearing best friend, a crush on new girl Jessica at school, and a brother, Shaun, who is off fighting the Taliban. His mother, Kirsten, listens for war updates on a portable radio while Trysten catches fish on the property and keeps his father in the loop, Dad having moved into a caravan after a blue with Shaun before he shipped out. When Shaun comes back from the combat zone, he has post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that challenges the notions of heroism harboured by family and locals.'  (Introduction)

'Rural misery is a mainstay of Australian fiction, and a genre beloved of (usually city-based) prize committees. It’s unsurprising, then, to find this year’s Vogel winner landing squarely in the category. But when a promising 26-year-old writer chooses to present the country in such a nihilistic fashion, the result is dispiriting. Why are urbane Australian writers so focused on unhappiness? Is it born of guilt at growing up in a kind of paradise?'  (Introduction)

'Twenty-one years have passed since John Stephenson’s first novel, The Optimist. His long-overdue sophomore book comes in the unusual form of a Polish fable, The Baker’s Alchemy. Those expecting anything similar to his well-received chronicle of poet Christopher Brennan might at first be scratching their heads in puzzlement, but Stephenson possesses style and humour in spades, qualities that have fallen out of fashion in Oz lit.' (Introduction)

'Women who cast spells and brew potions to dispel illness and fuel desire have historically been vilified as servants of the devil. Contemporary culture has, to a large degree, drained the menace and repositioned witches as figures of frivolity in TV shows such as Charmed and Bewitched and in countless YA stories. This is a problem the reader faces with Chris Womersley’s fourth novel, a commercially adventurous departure from his earlier Australian literary jaunts – is it still possible to take a story about witches seriously?' (Introduction)

'The Java Ridge is a boat ferrying Australian surf tourists from Bali to the killer breaks found off remote Indonesian islands to the south. Stand-in captain Isi Natoli is at the helm, while her partner, Joel, is in Perth, trying to save the business. As they head for the tiny island of Dana, another boat is en route from Sulawesi. It is the Takalar, and contains dozens of refugees seeking asylum in Australia. They have paid people smugglers, who have taken their coin even though they know the Australian government has just announced a new policy in which all responsibility for assisting boats in distress has been disavowed.' (Introduction)