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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Seven novels by female Australian authors

25/1/2019

6 Comments

 
Last summer when I tweeted my post Why aren’t I reading more books by women?, someone commented that she didn’t read as many women as she’d like as her focus was Australian and New Zealand writers. While I must confess to a failure to review New Zealand writers of any gender, I’ve collected a few Australians in the last couple of years. What better prompt to give them another shout than Australia Day?

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Let’s start with extracts from my reviews of novels by two women who made my books of the year list: Charlotte Wood in 2017 and Josephine Wilson last year. (Note that copies of all novels mentioned came to me gratis via the publishers.)

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Sun scorching the delicate skin of their freshly-shaven heads, ten young women dressed in heavy old-fashioned outfits and ill-fitting boots march, tramp and stumble through the scrub and dust of an abandoned Australian sheep farm for two hours, eventually coming to a stop at a six-metre high electric fence. Although still drowsy from the drugged state in which they were brought there, the message is clear: there’s no escape. And just in case they’re in any doubt, their guard jostles a random woman against the fence, severely burning her arm.
 
Described by the publishers, Allen and Unwin, as “an explosively provocative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control by one of Australia’s most acclaimed writers”, The Natural Way of Things is a disturbing, but highly readable, novel.

#
 
Frederick Lothian, former professor of engineering, peruses the obituary notices in the local paper, surrounded by defunct electricals and beautifully designed modernist chairs. His daughter, Caroline, is furious that he hauled these impersonal items to his new home in a retirement village, but threw away her mother’s clothes soon after her death two years before. Although that might be the least of what she is angry about: Fred hasn’t been much of a father, or husband, or human being.
 
With its sympathetic, but deeply flawed and wounded characters, Extinctions brings a refreshing honesty to family tragedy in a manner that’s somehow gloriously uplifting. This is also the story of the tragedy of the Australian nation, built on a white invasion that almost saw the extinction of the Aboriginal blacks.


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Lucy Treloar’s debut, Salt Creek, also addresses Australia’s shameful history. Hester Finch’s father uproots his family from their comfortable life in Adelaide to a ramshackle house in the Coorong, where he tries his hand at dairy and sheep farming. Despite his apparent charitable attitude towards the indigenous people, including taking in a boy to educate, Mr Finch is also unaware how his farming practices are damaging the ecosystem on which they depend.


Another two novels focus on characters with stressful jobs in human services:


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Jennifer Down’s Our Magic Hour is an engaging character study of a young woman more adept at caring for others than herself.
 
The middle child of warring parents – an alcoholic father who beat them all and once broke her nose, and a narcissistic mother with a diagnosis of manic depression – twenty-four-year-old Katy is a social worker specialising in child protection, but her responsibilities don’t end when she leaves the office. In between propping up her mother and younger brother, Bernie, subsidising his rent as well as his drug habit, she tries to live a normal life of parties, drink and drugs, while supporting a grieving friend. Her boyfriend, Nick, tries to support her, but he has his own stressful job as a paramedic and Audrey’s ambivalence about her vulnerability makes them squabble. At work, her manager is sympathetic but, instead of suggesting paid time off to recuperate, grants her leave of absence to look for another job. Her GP, while giving her a thorough physical check-up, doles out a prescription for temazepam instead of referring her for psychotherapeutic support. As life feels progressively harder, Audrey fears she’ll end up as disturbed as her mother.

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Terry is an experienced primary school teacher, popular with pupils, parents and the rest of the staff. But Laurie, the new acting principal, bristles at his intuitive laid-back style. As a much younger woman in a senior position, she’s conscious of the need to assert her authority right from the start; unfortunately, her approach rubs everyone up the wrong way. Alarm bells start to ring when she catches sight of Terry at a student’s house in the evening, contrary to child safeguarding policies.
 
Author Suzanne Leal is a lawyer experienced in child protection, and she deals with a disturbing issue in a sensitive manner. Highlighting the pressures and complexity of the teacher’s role, The Teacher’s Secret would be a good choice for book groups.


I’m sure I could find connections between my two Australian novels if I dug deeper but, as it’s a while since I’ve read them, I think they can bear to stand alone:

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Gorgeous writing, touches of humour, absorbing while you’re reading it yet afterwards a devil to pin down, Michelle de Krester’s The Life to Come is more a novel of theme and character than plot. But which characters? Which themes? Each of the five sections homes in on an individual life in, or in retreat from, Sydney over recent decades, highlighting connection and disconnection – within ourselves, between ourselves and others, and in relation to our geographical and cultural roots – and our inability to see ourselves as others see us. There’s a richness and diversity of characterisation, drawing on the author’s cultural background to bring Sri Lankan Australians to the page, along with a fair few writers and other arty types.

#
 
Since sharing a house in their student days in Canberra, Lotte and Eve have been able to tell each other anything. Both only children, they bonded like sisters, despite their diverging interests: Lotte’s passion for astronomy; Eve’s for mountain biking and constructing soundscapes. They have buttressed each other through the breakup of Eve’s relationship with the charismatic narcissist Nate, Lotte’s marriage to Vin and the death of her mother but now, in their late 30s, they’re estranged.
 
We first meet the women in the near-enough present day (2015), each confronting a devastating situation but unable to call upon the other for support. Lotte is returning to Australia after a five-year research job stargazing in the Atacama desert, her marriage over and facing a diagnosis of the cancer that killed her mother. Wracked with grief and self-recrimination, Eve has abandoned small town life to take her tent to the coast, despite the winter weather’s unsuitability for camping. Melanie Joosten’s Gravity Well is a story of friendship and betrayal.
 
Have you read any recently-published novels by Australian women I could add to my list? If you’d like to know more about any of the seven I’ve featured, click on the title to go to my full review.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
6 Comments
Charli Mills
26/1/2019 06:52:46 pm

A fine collection of Australian authors, Anne. Thanks for linking to Australia Day to explain the holiday. It's similar to Columbus Day in the US and it appears that both holidays share a modern controversy given that they celebrate the the beginning to events of indigenous genocide.

On that note -- I'd also recommend the debut novel of Janet Lee, The Killing of Louisa about an Australia woman tried, convicted and hung for murder under the suspicion that she outlived two husbands. It's received a literary award in Queensland.

Maybe the link to the prompt is how European "discovery" of "new worlds" shattered the lives of those who lived their tens of thousands of years prior. Today, indigenous tribes are shards of their former cultures.

Reply
Anne
27/1/2019 03:48:38 pm

Thanks, Charli, that sounds like a book I’d enjoy but I haven’t been able to hit the UK publisher. And an excellent idea about inspiration for my 99-word story. However, I’ve taken my imagination off in a different direction back to my WIP.

https://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/2019/01/teenagers-in-exile-shadows-on-the-tundra-the-key.html

Reply
Norah Colvin link
27/1/2019 07:36:40 am

Thanks for your recognition of Australia Day through the celebration Australian female authors, Anne. Regretfully, I haven't read any of the novels you review. I do remember reading your review of The Teacher's Secret previously and thinking that I might read it one day.
Of course, I could add a number of Australian female authors to the list. Whether their books would be to your liking is another matter.
Charli beat me to it with her suggestion of Janet Lee's book. But there are other wonderful authors including Jackie French, Di Morrissey, Kristin Williamson, Terry Underwood, and Kate Morton. (They are just a few I spotted on the shelf beside me.) If we wanted to go into children's books, I could list a lot more. :)

Reply
Anne Goodwin
27/1/2019 03:34:50 pm

No worries, Norah, and thanks for sharing those other authors. I might get to meet them on the page one day.
I hope you’re having a pleasant holiday weekend. I hadn’t realised – I guess I hadn’t thought it through enough – how contested the holiday is, especially among the Twitterati, but wouldn’t it be more inclusive if the date were changed as some suggest?
Nevertheless, we’ll be joining you with our own controversial national day soon enough if no-one calls a halt to the current nosedive into chaos.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
29/1/2019 10:29:08 am

Interesting you mention a national day, Anne. I was wondering what it might be. I am aware of America's, Canada's, N. Ireland's, and Ireland's, to name a few off the top of my head, but wasn't aware of any for England, Britain or the U.K. Is there one?

Anne Goodwin
29/1/2019 04:32:01 pm

Sorry for the confusion. I’m mixing fact and fiction.

We do have a St George’s day for England, St Andrew’s – but Burns Night, which I think is the same day as Australia Day, is more celebrated – for Scotland, and St David’s for Wales, but none have bank holiday status. It was mooted at some point that money had been put aside to celebrate leaving the EU, which is a kick in the teeth for those of us who will be in mourning on that day and would rather have the funds spent on dealing with the shameful poverty which will only get worse.

I might have mentioned also my other WIP about the post-Brexit dystopia – they celebrate Independence Day on the anniversary of the vote to leave.




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