AustLit

'By the final pages of Richard James Allen’s debut novel, More Lies, the reader is no closer to discovering the truth about the unnamed narrator’s wild story, but such ambiguity is exactly the point. ‘The truth is,’ our notoriously unreliable protagonist confesses, ‘I need you to hear me, to see me’ (p. 53) and it is a powerful request. Allen asks his readers to fulfil their basic, most intrinsic role of giving life to a text. If, as German literary scholar Wolfgang Iser contends, ‘it is only through inevitable omissions that a story will gain its dynamism’ (1972, p. 280), then More Lies is as vibrant and as engaging as they come.' (Introduction)

'Luke Johnson’s debut collection, Ferocious Animals, explores Australia and Australian national identity in all of its complexities and contradictions. It comprises thirteen short stories that embroil deeply flawed characters in tragic circumstances of loss and grief, sexual violence, neglect, abuse and infidelity while offering rare glimpses of compassion and tenderness. Through narration that activates the vulnerabilities of childhood, the turbulence of adolescence, and the dysfunction of adulthood, Johnson weaves compelling stories that explore innocence, indecency, and the generative spaces between, in prose that is equal parts delicate and brutal. At its heart, Ferocious Animals is a collection compiled under a framework of collisions, where the bright euphoria of human joy, connection, and intimacy meets and intersects with darker revelations of what horrors humans can inflict on one another.' 

 (Introduction)