A wide variety of authors were read during Aussie April. They come from many different times in Australia’s literary history.
Lesley: Candice Fox
Candice Fox is a successful and internationally recognized author from Sydney. She has collaborated with James Patterson, won many awards including a “Ned Kelly” and her 2017 novel Crimson Lake has recently been made into a television series.
The story is set around Cairns with the wetlands, crocodile infested rivers and the heat of the tropics being the perfect place for a couple of misfits to try and hide.
Ted Conkaffey moves there thinking he can escape the past. He meets Amanda Pharrell, recently released from jail. They team up to solve a local crime as well as investigating each other’s ‘crimes’ to prove each innocent.
A gritty story showing the seedier side of life.
Judy A: Elizabeth Harrower
Elizabeth Harrower died in 2020 aged 92. She wrote 4 novels in the fifties and sixties that were critically acclaimed and then one written in the early 70s had a lukewarm reception from her publisher. She decided not to publish that one and gave up writing altogether and her novels languished and went out of print.
Her best-known book The Watch Tower was republished around 2011 and so she’s had a resurgence of popularity.
The Long Prospect is the story of a young girl, Emily who comes to live with her awful grandmother in Newcastle after her parents have abandoned her.
Down in the City is about Esther Prescott, a wealthy but naïve woman living in Double Bay,who suddenly marries Stan Peterson, whom she soon finds to be moody, manipulative, cruel and resentful of her privileged background.
Not happy books, but her writing is amazing.
Prue: Cat Sparks
Cat Sparks is a multi-award-winning author, artist and editor. She is also well known for her photography, graphic design and as a literary speaker!
Her debut novel, Lotus Blue, is set in the far future after a world-wide apocalyptic war. A 13-caravan train of nomadic travellers navigate their way along the Sand Road through the Dead Red Heart, a war ravaged landscape plagued by surviving rogue weaponry and semi sentient machinery of the war that are still ‘alive’.
When a relic-Angel satellite unexpectedly crashes to Earth all their futures are endangered.
The first 100 pages set the scene, the devastation, the characters, human and machine and then the real story begins.
Judy: J Trent Dalton
Trent Dalton has spent most of his working life as a very successful journalist. He published his first novel Boy Swallows Universe in 2018 winning many awards, followed by All Our Shimmering Skies in 2020.
His first non-fiction book, Love Stories, was published in 2021.
In late 2020 he inherited an old Olivetti typewriter from his best friend’s mother. To honour her, he wanted to use it for something special. This book of short stories came from asking people on the streets of Brisbane ‘Can you please tell me a love story?’ The result is a collection of funny, moving, poignant and macabre stories of people falling in love, out of love, reminiscing about lost or missed love and so much more. A beautiful collection of stories.
Rosemary: Adrian Hyland
Adrian Hyland spent many years in the Northern Territory living and working among indigenous people, but he now lives back in Melbourne. He is a writer of non-fiction and crime fiction.
His first 2 novels featured an indigenous woman who is an amateur detective but moves on to become an Aboriginal community police officer.
In 2011 he wrote Kinglake 350, an account of the experiences of a local police officer during the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009.
His next novel, Canticle Creek was not published until 2021!
The genre is the popular rural crime and is shaped by his experiences as a rural firefighter in the NT and from living in a small town.
During the long hot summer in country Victoria, 2 bodies are found. Jesse Redpath, a police officer who previously worked the NT becomes involved. As she investigates, many in the town have secrets to hide.
The soaring temperatures, baked ground and the threat of fire add to the tension and suspense and provide a rather unexpected final twist.
Kris: Julie Janson
Julie Jansen is a Burruberongal woman of the Darug people.
Her book, Benevolent, is historical fiction based on oral histories of the Darug elders and archival snippets of the author’s own great, great grandmother.
Muraging, the protagonist, is abandoned by her father and handed over to the Native Institution. This benevolent institution tries to provide a Christian education to Aboriginal children. Muraging, who becomes known as Mary, was born in the 1800s in the Hawkesbury River area of NSW. She spends her formative years in the Institution and then as a young adult she leaves to search for her father.
Her travels take her from Parramatta to Penrith, to the mountains and all around the Hawkesbury.
It’s a very hard life but she needed to reconnect with her land and culture.
A very interesting read.
Pamela: Elizabeth Jolly
Elizabeth Jolly was an English-born Australian writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels, four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim.
The Newspaper of Claremont Street.
‘The Weekly Newspaper‘ is the nickname of Margot Morris, an uneducated, elderly woman who is the cleaner of most of the houses in the street. After a long day working, the café at the end of the street is the place is where people come to share and swap the gossip. Although she knows things about everyone, she is a very private person herself. She lives frugally and has grand plans to buy a small piece of land. When she achieves this, things don’t work out as she had planned.
Easy to read, a funny, sad and ambiguous black comedy with a very unusual ending.
Sheila: Ethel Turner
Born in England in 1870, Ethel Turner came to Australia with her mother and sisters when she was 10 years old. Her first book, Seven Little Australians was published in 1894. Since then it has sold over 2 million copies in the English language, been translated into ten other languages, made into a stage play, a film and more recently a television production.
The seven children of an Army Captain and their 20-year-old stepmother live in Sydney. The children are mischievous, unruly and wreak havoc where possible with the pranks they play.
Not an in-depth story, but a delight to read.
Judy De la T: David Hunt
David Hunt is an unusually tall and handsome man who likes writing his own bios for all the books he has written.
Girt: The Unauthorised History of Australia and True Girt: The Unauthorised History of Australia, Vol 2
Hilarious history of Australia. A fun way to write about the characters, the colonies and much, much more.
Pat: Sally Morgan
Sally Morgan is an Australian Aboriginal author, dramatist and artist who lives in Perth.
My Place is her autobiography written in 1987. Growing up, her family had denied their aboriginality. Instead, the children were told they were of Indian descent. Her grandmother and mother had been so badly mistreated that they had refused to talk about the past.
Through interviews with members of her family, Sally discovers they were part of the Stolen Generation.
Claurene: Gerald Stone
Gerald Stone was an American-born Australian television and radio journalist and producer. He later returned to his career as an author and in 2003 wrote Singo: The John Singleton Story.
John Singleton has had a successful career in advertising, counts the rich and famous among his close friends, married six times and has a colourful and charismatic personality.
A fascinating read.
Diann: Garry Linnell
Garry Linnell is a well-known and successful journalist, editor of several publications and news networks, radio host and author of four sport’s themed books. He currently lives in Victoria.
Raelene: sometimes beaten, never conquered was written by Raelene Boyle and Garry Linnell and published in 2004.
Raelene was a former Olympic sprinter who although coming from a working-class background, through her determination, she became an elite athlete. She also suffered and survived several bouts of cancer.
The book was her way of thanking those who supported her through difficult times.
Connie: Ruth Park
Born in New Zealand, Ruth Park came to Australia in 1942 to continue her career as a journalist. She married the writer D’Arcy Niland and travelled with him through the north-west of New South Wales before settling in Sydney to become a full-time writer.
Her first novel, The Harp in the South, was published in 1948 and tells the story of Catholic Irish family living in Surry Hills, which in that time was an inner-city slum. It was a hard life; the father drank too much and spent all their money. But despite this, their lives were filled with love.
Julia: Mary Grant Bruce
Linton family on Billabong Station in Victoria and in England and Ireland during World War 1.
Mary Grant Bruce (1878-1958) was an Australian author and journalist. While all her thirty-seven books enjoyed popular success not only in Australia but overseas as well, she was most famous for the Billabong series. These focussed on the adventures of the Linton family on Billabong Station in Victoria.
The Mates at Billabong, published in 1913, was the 2nd of 15 books in the series.
Nora, Jim and Wally are mates and do their best to put up with Cecil, 19, a cousin who stays for the holidays.
Jo: Judy Nunn
Judy Nunn has been an actor and a writer all her life. She has appeared in and written scripts for many television series and published books for children but is best known for her historically based fiction.
Sanctuary, published in 2017 tells the story of a small boat load of refugees from the Middle East who are wrecked on a small island off the coast of Western Australia and struggle to survive. When they are discovered by fishermen from a small town on the coast, they are unsure whether they will help them.
May Book Club ~ Ann Patchett
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