AustLit

'If I were a rock or blood sea, I might drill out this heart and flood it with something more spectacular. More capable. A new kind of touch. Perhaps some place for the goldfinches to return. I would pay more attention. Be more aware of beats that slip away through fingertips, plumage and shin. Mouth open to brackish water. I would take more care.' (Introduction)

'At first glance the dropbear might be interpreted as innocent fun: a mythical species dreamt up by settlers said to prey on unsuspecting tourists, it is posited as the cute punchline in a national prank. For many, the dropbear is not a particularly violent figure. That is, not when placed in comparison with the material consequences of colonisation: dispossession and expropriation of Indigenous people and their land, the destruction of sacred sites, the removal of Indigenous children from their families and Country, Indigenous incarceration and deaths in custody (to name just a few).' (Introduction)

'Set in a near future where 50-degree summers bully the horizon, Briohny Doyle’s second novel, Echolalia, sprawls among psychothriller, crime, speculative and literary fiction to make a highly original mark on the publishing landscape as she wrestles with and departs from the tropes of those genres. The Cormac family are the owners of a small property empire in the fictional town of Shorehaven, where a lake is slowly drying up. When Emma, an interior architecture trainee ‘of no social pedigree’ marries into the family, she gives birth to three children whom she struggles to care for next to her aloof husband and antagonistic in-laws. The increasing pressures around her culminate in psychological collapse and she commits infanticide. These schisms build up over 26 chapters, each one sign-posted by ‘Before’ and ‘After’; through this split structure, Doyle creates an unnerving dissonance in showing how past and present actions seal the fate of future generations in a rapidly changing climate.' (Introduction)

'Early in The Speechwriter, I encounter a scenario where Donald Trump instructs Don Jr to ‘hijack Air Force Two and suicidally steer the plane into Disneyland ... Congress is still split on impeachment.’ As I read it for the first time shortly after Joe Biden’s inauguration—by that point just a month after the storming of the US Capitol by right-wing men dressed in fur and horned helmets, with debate over impeachment raging—I realise that the fictional Don Jr situation doesn’t feel shocking. In a time defined by utter shamelessness, satire has become even more difficult: it’s impossible to reveal the powerful as hypocritical when they proudly promote themselves as grotesque. Worse, their audiences either don’t seem to care or actively love it.' 

 (Introduction)