Clarion South Australian Book Recommendations, Part III: The Yet to Be Discovered (in this hemisphere)

This third and final post about Australian writers, as seen through the lens of recommendations from Clarion South students, acknowledges that even writers in English published in another country don't always find an easy path to North American publication. For every Peter Carey, Tim Winton, or Markus Zusak (thanks Aidan Doyle and Steve Mitchell), there're six or seven worthy Australian authors who you'll have to seek out in foreign editions. Here's a look at a few interesting books and authors that fall into this category. Thanks again to the Clarion South students for sharing their picks.

Lisa Bennett:

The Daughters of Moab by Kim Westwood. The Australian landscape boils with lava; it shudders with quakes; devastating acid rains pockmark its parched surfaces. Adapt or die, the story commands--even though enforced adaptations (personified by the transfected Daughters of Moab) are considered the source of the apocalypse. Westwood entices readers with her utterly unique treatment of the themes of loneliness, stolen generations, climate change, misplaced religious fervour, and searching for identity. The Daughters of Moab is a beautiful, unsettling, difficult novel, which asks many questions but provides few answers. Life is uncertain in this literary speculation: it’s poetic apocalyptic (and heavy on both). [I've read Westwood's short fiction, which I really enjoy, and I hope a U.S. publisher will pick up her novel. She's a brilliant writer. - Jeff]

MacLaren North:

Terry Dowling is an Australian short story writer and has two great story cycles: the Tom Rynosseros cycle (Rynosseros, Blue Tyson, Twilight Beach and Rhynomon) and the Wormwood cycle (Wormwood), as well as a range of other short fiction. The Rynosseros cycle is set a thousand years in Australia's future, where sandships prowl the interior of the continent, which is under the control of semi-mystical Aboriginal tribes. The Wormwood cycle is set a couple of hundred years after an alien invasion of Earth, where the 'master race' has departed, leaving their client races to get on with running a reshaped Earth. Wormwood is particularly good in the way it portrays the inter-species politics on a world where no one really knows what's going on any more. [Note: Although Dowling has been published in the U.S., he's largely unknown here and his books are hard to get. - Jeff]

Angela Slatter:

The Opposite of Life by Narelle M Harris (Pulp Fiction Press) is 21st century geekgirl meets vampire geekboy. The setting is Melbourne and the sense of place is so strong; the characters are beautifully drawn and a wonderful sense of humour keeps the book "up" even in the darkest of moments. The pacing is great and all in all it's one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in a long time.   Scatterheart by Lili Wilkinson (Black Dog Books) is a kind of colonial fairytale. It's the story of a young woman fallen from her comfortable life to being transported to Australia in the days when it was a penal colony. Wilkinson weaves a lovely tale and has a wonderful style.     Tessa Kum, a former Clarion South student:   Shadow Queen by Deborah Kalin - I haven't read a book with such relentless drive for ages. Matilde is ruler in waiting, but due to hostile intervention (that's such a polite way of saying it) has her home, position and family ripped out from beneath her, and must go about winning them back using wits alone. Kalin has perfected the knack of writing her protagonist out of an impossible situation only by writing her into a different impossible situation, over and over. It's OARSUM. Allen & Unwin are pushing it largely as straight fantasy, which I think is misleading. This is political, Machiavellian, more than fantastic. [This novel keeps coming up in conversation with various friends. I also keep seeing mentions of it online. My gut tells me it won't be long before this one has a U.S. publisher. - Jeff]

Comments

[Blue Tyson on April 27, 2009 at 12:46 AM]

Blue Tyson is a good pick, for sure.

:)