ROBERT MANNE
In his perfectly poised,autumnal masterpiece,Max (Allen&Unwin),Alex Miller tells us the story of the search in Europe and Israel for an understanding of the mysterious silences of his dearest friend and mentor,Max Blatt,concerning the loss of his family in the Holocaust and his work in the anti-Nazi underground.
The unexpectedly gripping tale is told with all we have come to expect from Miller – charm,whimsical humour and,above all,great warmth of heart. Lowitja O’Donoghue is one of the most esteemed members of the stolen generations and most successful indigenous leaders. On a foundation of meticulous but unostentatious research,inLowitja (Allen&Unwin),Stuart Rintoul traces her fascinating life story with a quiet and unsentimental compassion.
Robert Manne’s most recent book isOn Borrowed Time (Black Inc.).
KILEY REID
My favourite book this year wasLeave the World Behind (Bloomsbury) by Rumaan Alam. I was so impressed by the way it builds suspense;it’s a novel that gives you just enough information,but refrains from playing games with a reader. Another I enjoyed,again,wasJillian (Hachette) by Halle Butler. Jillian was rereleased this year,it’s so biting and funny,and it’s such a lovely thing to reread something and feel just as strongly for it the second time around. And lastly,I enjoyedThe Factory (New Directions) by Hiroko Oyamada. I’m quite obsessed with novels that can depict the minutiae of work and office life. BothJillian andThe Factory do this brilliantly.
Kiley Reid’sSuch a Fun Age (Bloomsbury) was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
ROBBIE ARNOTT
I hope Australians catch wind ofPew (Granta) by Catherine Lacey and its sparse,beautiful contemplations on community and identity.The Living Sea of Waking Dreams (Knopf) by Richard Flanagan is one of his finest:a heady swirl of rage,sorrow and hope.Fathoms (Scribe) by Rebecca Giggs was glorious and astounding. I spent years waiting forPiranesi (Bloomsbury) by Susanna Clarke – it was worth it. I also enjoyed the wonderfully wateryThe Octopus&I by Erin Hortle (Allen&Unwin),and the richly drawnStone Sky Gold Mountain (UQP) by Mirandi Riwoe. Finally,I adored Laura Jean McKay’sThe Animals In That Country (Scribe). It contains a scene involving whales that I still think about most days.
Robbie Arnott’s second novel,The Rain Heron,is published by Text.
SOFIE LAGUNA
Samantha Irby’s collection of essays,Wow,No Thank You (Faber),felt like a guilty pleasure. Because I laughed so much. But I didn’t need to feel guilty;there is a powerful undercurrent to Irby’s work,that speaks of generational poverty,of being black in a racist America,of being unwell,and struggling to find love. These essays about marriage,about step-parenting,about settling into a small white town to raise kids,are self-deprecating,honest and hilarious. Irby helped me better accept my own humanity. I was drawn to the danger and the sadness in the title,Memorial Drive (Bloomsbury) by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey. In 1985,when Trethewey was 19,her mother was murdered by her former partner in the driveway of their home. Written with such elegance,such care and intimacy,this memoir moved me deeply. It also filled me with outrage in the face of institutional indifference. What has changed? How many times and how many lives? And more importantly how many black lives?
Sofie Laguna’s most recent novel isInfinite Splendours (Allen&Unwin).
ALEX MILLER
The greatness of Isabel Wilkerson’sCaste:The Lies That Divide Us (Allen Lane) andDeep Time Dreaming:Uncovering Ancient Australia (Black Inc.) by Billy Griffiths lies in their unmasking of the inherent racist evils of hierarchical thinking about humanity. Griffiths undermines and collapses the hierarchical assumption that has informed works of history for generations when he challenges the claim that ‘‘‘progress’ – articulated as the move from foragers to farmers’’ represents a step up from a lower rung on the ‘‘ladder climbing upwards towards the ultimate destination of agriculture and industry’’,and reminds us,‘‘that there is no inherent value to a farming or a foraging way of life’’. Griffiths’ argument lays bare the ‘‘colonial assumptions about evolutionary hierarchies’’ and claims respect for our common humanity as the basis of civilised thinking. After Griffiths,human history can never again be written as if it represents some kind of ladder of perfection.
Isabel Wilkerson’s powerful unmasking of the American lie that it is the land of the free is essential reading. She illustrates the black/white basis of the lie when she tells of the young woman from Africa who told her,‘‘You know,in Africa there are no black people ... They have to go to England or America to find out that they are black. In Africa there are just people.’’ The enabling of racism through hierarchy is the underlying enemy for Wilkerson too.
Alex Miller’s most recent book is Max (Allen&Unwin).
MICK HERRON
In a crowded year,one of the highlights was Rosamund Lupton’sThree Hours (Penguin),a gripping depiction of a school shooting. No cheap thrills:this is a responsible,ultimately moving account of a distressing modern phenomenon. As far as mainstream fiction goes,I was late to the party with Taffy Brodesser-Akner’sFleishman Is In Trouble (Headline),but boy,what a party – intellectual fireworks,verbal gymnastics. I might still be drunk. And the book that has made me saddest is Derek Mahon’s final collection,Washing Up (Gallery Press). Mahon was a magnificent contradiction of a poet,embodying both rare genius and common sense,and was a restless reviser of his oeuvre. That work is finished now. The poems will last.
Mick Herron’s most recent novel isJoe Country (John Murray).
JAMES BRADLEY
Many of the most exciting books I read this year grappled with the environmental crisis and its origins and manifestations. Jenny Offill’s delightfully wittyWeather (Granta) perfectly captures the textures of a normality increasingly shadowed by catastrophe. Meanwhile inPostcolonial Love Poem (Faber) Mojave poet Natalie Diaz exposes the degree to which that normality is and always was a fantasy,making manifest the connections between continuing colonial violence and the desecration of bodies and the land. Questions of colonialism and deep time also animate Chris Flynn’s slyly hilariousMammoth (UQP). But perhaps the most unforgettable book I read this year was Kim Stanley Robinson’s astonishingThe Ministry for the Future (Orbit). At once a work of speculative future history,a cry of despair and a manifesto for surviving the next 50 years,it is terrifying,wrenching and – almost unexpectedly – oddly hopeful.
James Bradley’s recent novel isGhost Species (Hamish Hamilton).
ALICE BISHOP
I raced through Mieko Kawakami’sBreasts and Eggs (Picador) during Melbourne’s second lockdown. Kawakami’s fresh prose expands the idea of what it means to have a happy family – especially through the book’s exploration of IVF pregnancy and many of its characters as they embrace single motherhood by choice. Overall,Breasts and Eggs combats the restrictive biological and social pressures faced by women everywhere;I loved it. Another 2020 reading highlight was Helen Garner’sOne Day I’ll Remember This:Diaries 1987-1995 (Text). The book is typically Garneresque in its ability to cut straight through the bullshit,while also being poetic,gentle and life affirming. Garner continues to explore what it is to be human – in all its endless loss,beauty,connection and grit.
Alice Bishop is the author ofA Constant Hum (Text). She was aSydney Morning Herald best young novelist this year.
HANNAH KENT
I read in fits and starts this year. I read at strange hours,mainly at night,looking for consolation and sleep which are not things I usually read for. A pandemic and a baby meant I mostly half-read books;they are still waiting next to chairs,on tables,in piles on the floor. I have run out of bookmarks.
But Throat by Ellen van Neerven (UQP) did not let me put it down. This exceptional collection of poetry burned into me:it is necessary reading. Van Neerven’s work speaks to deep reflection – on language,on Blak queer identity,on pain,on resilience – and is,in and of itself,profoundly,powerfully beautiful. I read it and I could not sleep;I could not stop thinking about it and I am grateful for that.
Hannah Kent’s most recent novel is The Good People (Picador).
CRAIG SILVEY
This has been a fantastic year for fiction. Recently I adored Andrew O’Hagan’s generous and heartfeltMayflies (Faber),and devoured Elena Ferrante’sThe Lying Life of Adults (Europa).The Death of Vivek Oji (Faber) by Akwaeke Emezi was powerful and profound and extraordinary,and I was charmed byPeople From My Neighbourhood (Granta) by Hiromi Kawakami. Sofie Laguna’sInfinite Spendours (Allen&Unwin) was infinitely brilliant. My book of the year,however,won’t be released until 2021 – I was fortunate enough to read a galley proof of Willy Vlautin’s next book,The Night Always Comes (Faber). It’s propulsive,moving,dark and full of hope and heart. He’s a genius.
Craig Silvey’s most recent novel isHoneybee (Allen&Unwin). It is Dymocks’ book of the year.
CURTIS SITTENFELD
I was captivated by three novels this year,but I didn’t realise until well after reading them how thematically linked they are.Writers&Lovers (Picador) by Lily King is about a young woman trying to become a writer.Perfect Tunes (Simon&Schuster) by Emily Gould is about a young woman trying to become a musician. AndLuster (Picador) by Raven Leilani is about a young woman trying to become a painter. All three protagonists enter romantic entanglements,have complex relationships with children,and grieve for people close to them who have died,but it’s the way they grapple with their respective artistic pursuits that I found most moving and recognisable. I loved how the authors made the protagonists’ ambition central to their stories.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s most recent novel is Rodham (Transworld).
ADRIAN MCKINTY
The best non-fiction book I read this year wasThe Splendid and the Vile (HarperCollins) by Erik Larson. Winston Churchill has taken a literary bashing in the past half decade but Larson rejects all the tedious revisionism and instead portrays Churchill in the first year of his premiership as a compromised,complicated but kind of cool old geezer who somehow managed to save the world. This is historical reportage at its finest as Larson breathlessly takes us through those tumultuous months from the fall of France to Hitler’s doomed invasion of Russia when Britain ceased to be alone. The best fiction I read this year wasThis Is How You Lose The Time War (Quercus) by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone,an epistolatory novel about two time travellers battling one another for control of the future who fall in love. This won the 2020 Nebula Award.
Adrian McKinty’s most recent novel isThe Chain (Hachette).
CLARE WRIGHT
On reflection,my three standout books of the year all tap into the same themes,despite their temporal disparities. Kate Grenville’sA Room Made of Leaves (Text) gives us an unforgettable flesh-and-blood re-imagining of 18th-century mother of the Australian wool industry,Elizabeth Macarthur. Mirandi Riwoe vividly transports us to the 19th-century goldfields of North Queensland in her masterful Stone Sky Gold Mountain (UQP),where a Chinese girl and a prostitute’s servant form an unlikely alliance.
And withOne Day I’ll Remember This,Diaries 1987-1995 (Text),Helen Garner proves once more why anything and everything she writes is a life lesson in courage,acuity and the eviscerating quest for self-knowledge. What unites these three books,apart from sublime writing,is the revelation of the lengths to which women must go to hide their lights – protect yet nourish their secret selves – and the cost of such radical concealment.
Shout out too to Caitlin Moran,who lets it all hang out inMore Than a Woman (Penguin). I was initially a bit underwhelmed by Moran’s itinerary of the pitfalls of modern middle-aged womanhood – hilarious and whipsmart as she is – but she won me over with her deeply moving observations of the terror of mothering a self-harming teenage daughter. Not laughing,drowning.
Clare Wright is Professor of History at La Trobe University. Her latest book isYou Daughters of Freedom (Text).
MIN JIN LEE
I read James Baldwin’sThe Fire Next Time (Penguin) in college,and it changed my view of America’s proclaimed innocence and exceptionalism. InBegin Again (Crown),Eddie S. Glaude jnr,a formidable thinker,engages with the virtuosic Baldwin with passion and insight,making the case not just for Baldwin’s work but for how we can understand better today’s America and its chronic disease of racism. Glaude’s book is a beautifully written biography,memoir,literary criticism and history. Above all,Begin Again is a deeply engaging personal story of one brilliant reader,reflecting the painful paradox of America’s progress and regression.
Min Jin Lee’s most recent book isPachinko (Head of Zeus),which was a National Book Award finalist in the US.
TRENT DALTON
Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan (Faber) is the rattling story of two boys coming of age in Thatcher’s Britain and it felt to me like all my favourite Smiths songs wrapped up in one funny,dark book. Mirandi Riwoe moved me greatly withStone Sky Gold Mountain (UQP) when she spirited me away to the world of Chinese settlers in late-1800s Queensland. Dervla McTiernan’sThe Good Turn (HarperCollins) and Kate Mildenhall’sThe Mother Fault (Simon&Schuster) thrilled me equally for wildly different reasons. My go-to cure for the coronavirus blues was Craig Brown’sOne,Two,Three,Four:The Beatles in Time (Fourth Estate),a collection of remarkable non-linear vignettes – the postman who killed John’s mum;the sad ballad of brief Ringo sub Jimmie Nicol – that forms one great matrix of magnificence in tribute to Liverpool’s fabulous miracle.
Trent Dalton’s most recent novel is All Our Shimmering Skies (Fourth Estate).
ROBERT ADAMSON
In a year of fires,flood and pestilence,these books offered comfort and more,a quality unusual in contemporary poetry,hope. I loved reading each of these volumes in splendid isolation. Jaya Savige with Change Machine (UQP) has transferred his visions to the page with a virtuoso’s skill:‘‘For nothing/ on Earth is distracting,not even the spurned cry of the lapwing;no nothing/ we hear is off-putting.’’ Such a bright fierceness is also evident in Felicity Plunkett’sA Kinder Sea (UQP);in a linguistic tide of music veined with ideas the ‘‘Night sea/ shucks its quivering foil’’ and ‘‘Trauma is a battered craft/ that circles back towards its own arrest’’ – with lines like these and many others,Plunkett proves she is a major poet. Jennifer Maiden keeps adding to her growing international reputation,her new book cheered me up during a rather bleak winter –The Espionage Act (Quemar Press) is a mix of glowing lyrics and narratives honed razor-sharp,where indignation thrums against political deceptions with surreal edges.
Robert Adamson’s most recent book is Reaching Light:Selected Poems (Flood Editions).
JOEY BUI
Wow,reading Raven Leilani’s novelLuster (Picador) is brutal and I recommend it. The protagonist is a young black woman,who has one of those coveted and underpaid jobs in publishing,barely making rent and swiping for dates. It’s very millennial and relatable,until she brushes with abject poverty and spirals into a twisted relationship,in uglier ways than I could imagine.
How Much of These Hills is Gold (Little,Brown) by C. Pam Zhang is one of the best books I’ve read. It’s the story of two Chinese-American siblings carrying their dead father’s body through the West Coast during the Gold Rush. Zhang’s prose is heady and exquisite. The realities of poverty and racism blend with a child’s imaginative world,where anything is possible and monsters loom.
Joey Bui’s most recent book isLucky Ticket. She was aHerald best young Australian novelist this year.
VAL MCDERMID
Doug Johnstone delighted me with not one but two new books this year,the opening shots in a trilogy with the USP of three generations of women who are both undertakers and private eyes.A Dark Matter andThe Big Chill (Orenda) introduce the Skelf women and I fell in love with them. Intricate plotting,engaging characters and a splendid sense of the city of Edinburgh conspire to produce an irresistible pair of reads.Summerwater by Sarah Moss (Picador) is a seductive multi-voiced novel. Some holiday cabins surrounded by pine forest beside a remote Scottish loch grow more claustrophobic and ominous as the days pass and the relentless rain falls on the inhabitants. And then the catastrophe happens …
Val McDermid’s most recent novel isStill Life (Little,Brown).
FAVEL PARRETT
My favourite read of 2020 wasThe Yield (Hamish Hamilton),Tara June Winch’s moving and beautiful book,starring the Wiradjuri language. I learned so much and didn’t want to put this one down.Animals Make Us Human (Penguin) edited by Leah Kaminsky and Meg Keneally is a response to the devastating 2019-2020 bushfires. This stunning collection features many of Australia’s finest writers and photographers (full disclosure:I am in it). Essays of hope and love for nature,this is the perfect Christmas gift. Proceeds will help wildlife conservation.When We Say Black Lives Matter (Lothian) is an essential picture book for children of all ages and adults of all ages,from the incredibly talented Maxine Beneba Clarke. Incredible and very moving.
Favel Parrett’s most recent novel is There Was Still Love (Hachette).
EMMA VISKIC
I can plot the course of this year through my reading. Jenny Offill’s Weather (Granta) helped me through the smoke-hazed summer. A novel about solastalgia and the election of Donald Trump sounds grim,butWeather is immersive and witty. Slender books were a balm in the brain-fogged days of early lockdown,including Catherine Lacey’s exquisitely disturbingPew (Allen&Unwin) and Mirandi Riwoe’s heartbreakingStone Sky Gold Mountain (UQP). Ellen van Neerven’s poetry collection, Throat (UQP),drew me into a world of love,loss and the joys of Chermside Shopping Centre. As Melbourne’s lockdown dragged on,I turned to crime. Craig Sisterson’s Southern Cross Crime (Oldcastle) is a comprehensive guide to Australian and New Zealand crime writing,and a great resource for next year’s reading.
Emma Viskic is author of the award-winningCaleb Zelic series (Echo).
TONI JORDAN
The good news:in 2020 I finally achieved a New Year’s resolution (‘‘read more books’’). I began with Pip Williams’ glorious historical novel,The Dictionary of Lost Words (Affirm),which teases open the power of words to shape our experiences and understanding. Jim McIntyre’s complex,thought-provokingNikolai the Perfect (Journey To Words) travels from Russia to Australia and shows both countries with fresh,keen eyes.The Drop-Off by Fiona Harris and Mike McLeish (Bonnier Echo) made me laugh out loud/snort embarrassingly. And – disclaimer,I’m in it –Animals Make Us Human (Penguin) edited by Leah Kaminsky and Meg Keneally is a collection of moving essays and photographs that celebrates our stunning wildlife and raises money for its conservation.
Toni Jordan’s most recent novel isThe Fragments (Text).
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IAN MCGUIRE
Before late-March,when lockdown hit us here in Britain,two of the writers I admire most published impressive new work. Hilary Mantel’sThe Mirror&the Light (Fourth Estate) is a fitting conclusion to her career-defining trilogy on the life of Thomas Cromwell,while Richard Ford’s short-story collectionSorry for Your Trouble (Bloomsbury) must be his best book sinceThe Lay of the Land. After lockdown,much of my reading became rereading (the intellectual equivalent to comfort-eating) but I made an happy exception for Luke Brown’sTheft (And Other Stories),a novel about a young man making his way in Brexit Britain which manages to be tremendously entertaining while avoiding the ever-present dangers of platitude and piety.
Ian McGuire’s most recent novel isThe Abstainer (Simon&Schuster).
MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE
Two of my standout Australian novels this year wereStone Sky Gold Mountain (UQP),a novel of historical fiction by Mirandi Riwoe set in the Australian goldfields,which tells the story of Ying and Lai Yi,sibling settler-migrants from China,andThe Animals In That Country (Black Inc.) by Laura Jean McKay – a timely dystopian novel in which a dangerous flu sweeps across Australia,giving those infected the power to speak with animals,with dark,disturbing results. African-American author Brit Bennett’s second novel,The Vanishing Half (Hachette),is a powerful and beautifully woven tale,and Guyanese-Australian writer Cath Moore’s debut novel,Metal Fish,Falling Snow (Text),is a lyrical and moving road trip across regional Australia with a fascinating young protagonist. In poetry,Ellen van Neerven’sThroat (UQP),and Thuy On’sTurbulence (UWAP) won my heart.
Maxine Beneba Clarke’s latest book isWhen We Say Black Lives Matter (Lothian).
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