Spies Like Us

I recently watched season five of Slow Horses, the brilliant British spy thriller series based on Mick Herron's novels starring Gary Oldman. Saddened that it will be another year before the next season airs, I wondered how many books there are in the series and how long I may have to enjoy it. Herron has just published his ninth Slow Horses novel, Clown Town (2025), so there are thankfully a few seasons left. When my googling led me to a boxed set of Herron's novels, I ordered without hesitation, and started the first novel in the series, Slow Horses (2010) as soon as it arrived and finished it after a few magical hours of reading.

When you flunk out of the British spy service MI5, whether due to disgrace, dislike or incompetence, you may end up in Slough House - a ramshackle building near the Barbican where MI5 stores its unwanted agents. Here, Jackson Lamb, an intelligent, disheveled, cantankerous Cold War agent oversees this group of misfits. River Cartwright seemed to be a perfect fit for the agency and he is desperate to get back to 'the Park' as HQ is known. His grandfather was once at the helm, and River is a smart, creative agent who failed during his training. 

The plot of this cracking thriller centres on the abduction of a young Pakistani man by three white nationalists calling themselves the Voice of Albion. They have targeted him because of his race and plan to execute him live on the internet. The slow horses are on a different case, which may somehow be connected, and suddenly they need to solve the case or else get blamed for the young man's imminent beheading. But can this group of losers actually seize the day?

I really enjoyed Herron's writing style. The novel starts and ends with an almost cinematic voiceover introducing the reader to the scene. His dialogue was perfect, and I noticed Herron only ever used the word 'said' for dialogue. He paces the story well, with enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. For fans of spy thrillers there are plenty of spycraft tropes to fuel your enjoyment.

I have had the audiobook of this for sometime, so listened along while I read. Sean Barrett does a wonderful job of narrating this story. Of course, being such a fan of the show I was unable to quite form my own interpretation of the characters as in my mind they will forever be linked with the perfect cast of actors who play them: Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, with Jack Lowden as River Cartwright, Saskia Reeves as Standish and Kristin Scott-Thomas as Taverner and so on. If you are unable to read the books, I highly recommend the Apple TV series as it is a fantastic adaptation.

Dublin Literary Award 2026 Nominations

The nominees the 2026 Dublin Literary Award have just been announced. Sixty-nine books have been nominated by 80 libraries from 36 countries. The nominees are:

• 1985: A Novel - Dominic Hoey
• 
  A Thousand Times Before - Asha Thanki 
• Back in the Day - Oliver Loverenski
• Blurred - Iris Wolff
• Brightly Shining - Ingvild Rishoi
• Camarade - Theo Dorgan
• Casualties of Truth - Lauren Francis-Sharma
• Coloured Television - Danzy Senna
• Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner
• Darkenbloom - Eva Menasse
• Dear Dickhead - Virginie Despentes
• Delirious - Damien Wilkins
• Diablo's Boys - Yang Hao
• Dream Count - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Dust in the Gale - Joao Morgado
• Endling - Maria Reva
• First Name Second Name - Steve MinOn
• 
  Gliff - Ali Smith
• Good Girl - Aria Aber
• Great Eastern Hotel - Ruchir Joshi
• Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert - Bob the Drag Queen
• Highway 13 - Fiona McFarlane
• I Will Live - Lale Gul
• In Late Summer - Magdalena Blazevic
• Intermezzo - Sally Rooney
• Katarina - Becky Manawatu
• Leading Ledang - Fadlishah Johanabas
• Live Fast - Brigitte Giraud
• Long Island Compromise - Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• Luminous - Silvia Park
• Model Home - Rivers Solomon
• 
  Murder at the Castle: A Miss Merkel Mystery - David Safier
• My Kingdom is Dying - Evald Flisar
• Napalm in the Heart - Pol Guasch
• Ordinary Saints - Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin
• Our Evenings - Alan Hollinghurst
• Our London Lives - Christine Dwyer Hickey
• Perfection - Vincenzo Latronico
• Perspective(s) - Laurent Binet
• Red Water - Jurica Pavicic
• Small Ceremonies - Kyle Edwards
• The Antidote - Karen Russell
• The Boy From the Sea - Garrett Carr
• The Burrow - Melanie Chung
• 
  The City and Its Uncertain Walls - Haruki Murakami
• The Clues in the Fjord - Satu Ramo
• The Creation of Half-Broken People - Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
• The Dissenters - Youssef Rakha
• The Echoes - Evie Wyld
• The Edges - Angelo Tijssens
• The Emperor of Gladness - Ocean Vuong
• The Empusium - Olga Tokarczuk
• The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin - Alison Goodman
• The Mires - Tina Makereti
• The Names - Florence Knapp
• The Night Guest - Hildur Knutsdottir
• 
  The Original Daughter - Jemimah Wei
• The Tokyo Suite - Giovana Madalosso
• The Voices of Adriana - Elvira Navarro
• The Wager and the Bear - John Ironmonger
• The Weather Diviner - Elizabeth Murphy
• There are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel - Elif Shafak
• Time of the Flies - Claudia Pineiro
• Under the Eye of the Big Bird - Hiromi Kawakami
• Vanishing World - Sayaka Murata
• Voracious - Malgorazata Lebda
• We are Green and Trembling - Gabriela Cabezon Camara
• What I Know About You - Eric Chacour

Of these titles I have read and loved: Fiona McFarlane's Highway 13, Melanie Cheng's The Burrow, along with Evie Wyld's The Echoes. On my 'to be read' list are the novels by Alan Hollinghurst, Sally Rooney, and Ali Smith

Some of these books are familiar to me from awards this year but most I am unfamiliar with. 

In a change from previous years, this list of nominations will be reduced to a longlist of up to 20 titles on 17 February 2026. The shortlist of 6 titles will be announced on 7 April 2026. In the past, the extended nomination list was the longlist.

The winner of the 100,000 Euro prize declared on 21 May 2025. Happy Reading!

National Book Award Winner 2025

The 2025 National Book Awards has been announced. These annual American literary awards have been presented since 1936. The Longlist of ten titles per category, was reduced to a shortlist of five. 

The 2025 Winners, who each received $10,000 and a bronze sculpture, are:

• Fiction - Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
• Non-Fiction - Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
• Poetry - Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems
• Translated Literature - Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling (Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers)
• Young People's Literature -  Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Stor

This is an interesting selection. For the most part, these winners have not even been on my radar. The non-fiction choice of Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is the only one I have had any interest in reading. Nevertheless, it is always good to be introduced to new writers.

The Lodgers

The Paying Guests (2014) by Sarah Waters is set in South London in 1922. Frances Wray lives in a large, crumbling house with her mother. Her brothers were lost in the First World War, and her father died with large debts.  Having let go of their maid, Frances now cooks, cleans and cares for her mother. While Mrs Wray sees their reduced circumstances as a step down for this respectable family, Frances feels her world getting smaller. The women are forced to take on lodgers, the paying guests, to pay their bills.

Lillian and Leonard Barber move into their home. Leonard is loud and brash. While Len is off to work each day, Lillian has little to do but make herself attractive and decorate their rooms with bohemian aplomb. Initially, Frances is wary, seemingly having little in common with Lillian. But over time, the women form a bond, first over Anna Karenina, and then a more intimate relationship develops. Frances wants a life with Lillian, but a terrible event takes place which tests the strengths of their feelings and may pull them apart forever.  

To say more of the plot would spoil the story for readers. Waters has somehow crafted a tale in which the reader thinks it is going one direction and it suddenly turns into another. It begins as a domestic historical fiction and, after a gruesome segue, becomes a crime novel, a tense courtroom drama.  

I really enjoyed The Paying Guests. During the first third of the novel, I wasn't sure whether the domesticity and quaintness would hold my attention. From the plot twist, I was gripped and wanted to see where the novel would go. The emerging love affair, tenderness between the women, and then sharp change as face a moral choice, was beautifully done. Waters has an eye for detail - whether describing someone's attire or the tedious chores needed to maintain the house - which she uses to great effect. 

The Paying Guests was shortlisted for the 2015 Women's Prize, and named Fiction Book of the Year by The Sunday Times. 

This is the first novel I have read by Sarah Waters (although I have seen adaptations of her other books), and I am certain it will not be the last. As I read I listened to the audio version, skilfully narrated by acclaimed British actor Juliette Stevenson. She was brilliant, and gave life to the characters through accents and pacing. Highly recommend.

Booker Prize Winner 2025

The winner of the 2025 Booker Prize for fiction was announced today, with Hungarian British author David Szalay receiving the £50,000 prize for the novel, Flesh. 

Flesh follows Istvan's life from his lonely teenage years to his isolated middle age. Along the way he has an affair with a much older woman. A violent act impacts the course of his life. Istvan goes on to serve in the military, he then moves from Hungary to London where he works in security, interacting with the super wealthy. Istvan struggles with events outside his control. When longlisted, the judges praised Szalay's writing, saying 'using only the sparest of prose, this hypnotically tense and compelling book becomes an astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life.'  

David Szalay was born in Montreal Canada to a Hungarian father and Canadian mother. He has lived in Lebanon, the UK, Hungary and Vienna. Flesh is Szalay's fifth novel. His debut novel, London and the South-East won the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes in 2008. He was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2016 for All That Man Is. 

Chair of the Judging panel, Roddy Doyle, said of Flesh:

The judges discussed the six books on the shortlist for more than five hours. The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was Flesh – because of its singularity. We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read.

‘At the end of the novel, we don’t know what the protagonist, István, looks like but this never feels like a lack; quite the opposite. Somehow, it’s the absence of words – or the absence of István’s words – that allow us to know István. Early in the book, we know that he cries because the person he’s with tells him not to; later in life, we know he’s balding because he envies another man’s hair; we know he grieves because, for several pages, there are no words at all.

‘I don’t think I’ve read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well. It’s as if the author, David Szalay, is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe – almost to create – the character with him. The writing is spare and that is its great strength. Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living and, as we read, as we turn the pages, we’re glad we’re alive and reading – experiencing – this extraordinary, singular novel.’

I am delighted that Szalay was selected as winner. While I have not read Flesh, it is on my list! I had expected the prize to go to Kiran Desai for The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, although she is a previous Booker winner. 

If you missed it, here is the video of the announcement of David Szalay as winner and his acceptance speech.

Shadows of Grief

In the 1990s a series of murders took place along a stretch of highway. The bodies of hitchhikers and backpackers were found in the Barrow State forest. By the end of the decade, Joe Biga, a taxi driver is arrested and charged with the crimes, sentenced to consecutive life terms of imprisonment.  These horrific events reverberate back and forth in history - impacting people all over the world. 

In the short stories collected in Highway 13, Fiona McFarlane uses this crime as a starting point for exploring the ways in which the crimes impacted people directly and indirectly.  

In 'Hunter on the Highway', set in 1996, a young woman wonders if her boyfriend might be the murder as he drives a landscaping truck similar to the vehicle police have reported may be involved in the disappearances of backpackers.

Two decades after these crimes, in 'Abroad', British man Simon is worried about a solo trick-or-treater on Halloween. He remembers his own sister Angie who disappeared in Australia and has never been found. Could she be one of Biga's victims?

In 'Demolition' in 2003 neighbours watch as the house where the killer lived is demolished, fondly remembering the family who resided there before. 'Fat Suit' tells of the 2024 filming of a television miniseries about the crimes from the perspective of the actor hoping to turn his career around. 

None of these stories are graphically violent or really talk about the murderer. In fact, reading some of them you forget that there might be a link to the crimes until there is a passing reference. Some stories have close connections, but others are far removed. While Joe Biga and his crimes are fictional, Australians will immediately be reminded of serial killer Ivan Milat.

I really enjoyed the ways in which McFarlane plays with form. 'Democracy Sausage' is written in a single sentence stream-of-conciousness spanning ten pages, as a politician burns sausages wondering what his chances given he shares the same surname as the killer. 'Podcast' is styled as dialogue between the two hosts of a popular true crime podcast, complete with asides and bits to edit out. 

I usually find short story collections to contain a handful of tales that don't resonate for me. But in Highway 13, each story was brilliant in its own right. This is an incredible collection that deserves a wide readership. I am now keen to seek out Fiona McFarlane's earlier short story collection The High Places (2016) and her novel The Night Guest (2013). 

Fiona McFarlane has been showered with prizes for Highway 13. It won the 2025 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, the 2025 NSW Literary Award Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the 2025 ALS Gold Medal and the 2025 Story Prize. It was also shortlisted for the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, and the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction, among other accolades. 

Baillie Gifford Prize Winner 2025

I am beyond thrilled that Helen Garner has won the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for her collected diaries How to End a Story (2025). Having read this brilliant collection, Garner is so deserving of this award. 

The prestigious prize, worth £50,000, is the UK's top award for works of non-fiction.  The judges said “Garner’s candid, pacey diary chronicles the end of her second marriage and the challenges of being a writer. There is a skilled narrative drive which presents a lot of personal material that keeps you hooked, not necessarily on what is happening in terms of the story, but about Garner's whole life and about what's going on outside her window.” I could not agree more! She is a keen observer and these diaries are an intimate insight into her life, loves and work. 

The collected diaries were published in Australia as three seperate volumes (my reviews are linked):

• The Yellow Notebook (2019) covers the years 1978-1987 when she has just published her debut novel, Monkey Grip, and was on the verge of success but full of self-doubt.  
• One Day I'll Remember This (2020) spans 1987-1995 when Garner has relocated to Sydney after the end of her marriage, has begun an affair with another writer, and is experiencing the early stages of menopause.
• How to End a Story (2021) is about the period 1995-1998 when Garner is married to another author and struggles to find a way to live and work alongside him. 

Each of these diaries showcases Garner's incredible talent as an author. I love her frankness and vulnerability. She is wise and unapologetic. I hope that one day she published further instalments as so much has happened in the past 25 years.

After the Flood

Journalist Martin Scarsden is back as the protagonist in Chris Hammer's latest Aussie-noir crime novel, Legacy (2025).

Scarsden is on the run. There has been a threat on his life, so he has fled his home and is on the run. He is hiding out in the outback border town of Port Paroo, population 12, about as far as you can get from anywhere. The phone lines are down so Martin has no internet, and the floods are coming which will block the roads out of town. Martin hangs out at the town's only pub and tries to be incognito. Here he learns of a local feud over water rights between two long-established families in the area - the Carmichaels of Longchamp Downs and the Stantons of Tavelly Station - and wonders if there might be a story in it.

North of Port Paroo, ghostwriter Ekaterina Boland has arrived at Longchamp Downs. The elderly Claybourne Carmichael wants her to write his family's history and connection to this land so it is recorded for his son and future generations. Clay is planning to sell up and move on from this beautiful but inhospitable landscape. Trudging through old diaries of Clay's forebears, Boland comes across an ancient intrigue which may provide her with a redeeming book. 

Hammer juggles a lot of subplots in Legacy but he is such a gifted writer that he can effortlessly keep many plates spinning at once. He knows how to pace a story, and through his use of compelling cliff-hanging chapters, the reader is immediately immersed in the tale. I also love the way Hammer includes a helpful map of the locale in each book, created by Aleksander J Potocnik. 

The real hero of Legacy is the landscape. Hammer is able to accurately depict the parched earth desperate for rain and the slow arrival of the floodwaters. Even if you have never been to the outback, the reader can understand the dryness and the distance of these far-flung places. You'll be swatting flies and craving shade alongside Scarsden. 

I have read all of Hammer's novels and reviewed them on this blog. Books in the Martin Scarsden series are Scrublands (2018), Silver (2019) and Trust (2020). You do not have to read them in order but you will get more out of Legacy if you are familiar with what happened in earlier novels. Legacy is an excellent addition to this series. 

I was delighted to see Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic make a brief appearance in Legacy. I actually prefer the Lucic/Buchanan series Treasure and Dirt (2021), The Tilt (2022), The Seven (2023) and The Valley (2024). In fact, Hammer's last four novels have been with this pair, so I was suprised when he did another Scarsden book.

He, Cromwell

 I know I am late to the Wolf Hall party, but I am working hard to catch up. Last month I read Wolf Hall (2009), the first book in Hilary Mantel's award winning trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. After a brief interlude to read other things, this month I completed Bring Up the Bodies (2012), the Booker Prize winning sequel.

Picking up where the previous novel finished, Bring Up the Bodies begins in 1535 with King Henry VIII travelling to Wolf Hall, the Seymour family home. Cromwell is now Master Secretary to the King's Privy Council, a trusted adviser to the King. Here they meet Jane Seymour, the attractive young woman who had served in the court of both Queen Catherine and Queen Anne.

The King sees in Jane an innocence that is not apparent in his current wife, Anne Boleyn. While Anne has given him a daughter, Elizabeth, she has not yet given him the heir he desires. In their brief marriage, their hopes of a son had been dashed by miscarriage and stillbirth. The couple frequently argue and he has grown tired of her.  The King now expresses that Anne must have used some witchcraft or wiles to lure him into this marriage and he must free himself from her grasp.

Cromwell is tasked with negotiating a separation, to annul this marriage and free the King to marry Jane. He attempts to send Anne to a nunnery, but her brother, Lord Rochford refuses. Cromwell then hears reports of Anne's alleged indiscretions. Rumours abound that Anne regularly bedded others, including an incestuous relationship with her brother. Whether or not these rumours are true, Cromwell has what he needs to end the marriage. The Queen is charged with adultery, incest and treason and sent to the Tower of London.  

Following the trial and execution of Anne, and her co-accused (brother George Boleyn, and four alleged suitors), Bring Up the Bodies concludes in 1536 with the marriage of Jane and Henry. Thomas Cromwell has been elevated once again, and is now a Baron. 

I often find second novels in trilogies to be a bit weak - sort of a half-baked bridge between the two main books. So I was delighted to find Bring Up The Bodies to be a fully formed novel in its own right, one I actually enjoyed more than Wolf Hall. While I still struggle with Mantel's writing style and the lack of manageable chapter breaks, I appreciated this novel more for its depiction of Cromwell and the razor-sharp dialogue. Now around 50, he grows more self-reflective at the same time he becomes more ruthless. I was also intrigued by the depiction of justice - with show trials, lack of representation, and no way to possibly defend oneself.

As with Wolf Hall, I read along to the audiobook narrated by Ben Miles. I enjoy his interpretation of the various characters and his pacing (although I listen at 1.5x speed!).  

Following the first two novels, I have now watched the first season of the BBC series Wolf Hall (2015), with Cromwell wonderfully portrayed by Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis as Henry VIII, and Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the story of Cromwell who does not have the wherewithal to tackle Mantel's epic novels. 

Having come this far, I commit myself to finishing this trilogy and reading The Mirror and the Light (2020) and watching the second season of Wolf Hall which covers the end of this story.

Australia's Top 100 Books of the 21st Century

Last month I wrote about how the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National Program is naming Australia's Top 100 Books of the 21st Century, naming my top picks. After several weeks of online voting, the results were announced on 18-19 October 2025. 

Here is how Australia voted: 

Note that I have read the titles in Bold, and I have linked to my review where available. The Asterix means it was on my ballot. Double Asterix means it was on my Wishlist. 

1 Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe 

2 Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

3 Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

4 Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See

5 Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

6 *Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

7 Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

8 *Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

9 Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

10 Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

11 Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

12 Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

13 *Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

14 Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

15 Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders

16 **Sarah Winman, Still Life

17 Anna Funder, Wifedom

18 Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu

19 **Cormac McCarthy, The Road

20 Kate Grenville, The Secret River

21 **Ian McEwan, Atonement

22 Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

23 Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

24 Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

25 Craig Silvey, Honeybee

26 Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games 

27 Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

28 Jane Harper, The Dry

29 Trent Dalton, Lola in the Mirror

30 *Anna Funder, Stasiland 

31 **Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

32 Sally Rooney, Normal People

33 Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

34 Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
35 *Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

36 Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club

37 Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap

38 Tim Winton, Breath 

39 **Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet 

40 Tim Winton, Dirt Music

41 Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain
42 Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove
43 Anna Funder, All That I Am
44 Robbie Arnott, Limberlost
45 Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
46 Geraldine Brooks, Horse
47 JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
48 Yann Martell, Life of Pi
49 Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns 

50 Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

51 Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
52 Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
53 Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
54 Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project 

55 Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other
56 Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
57 Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens 
58 *Percival Everett, James
59 Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
60 Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
61 Helen Garner, Joe Cinque's Consolation
62 Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water

63 **Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin 
64 Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
65 Richard Flanagan, Question 7 
66 Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz
67 **Madeline Miller, Circe
68 Tara Westover, Educated
69 Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
70 Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven
71 Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
72 Mary Ann Schaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
73 Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth 
74 Richard Powers, The Overstory
75 Anh Do, The Happiest Refugee 
76 Mem Fox, Judy Horacek, Where is the Green Sheep?
77 Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
78 Kristin Hannah, The Women
79 **Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn
80 Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
81 Melissa Lucashenko, Too Much Lip
82 Alexis Wright, Carpentaria 

83 Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
84 Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional
85 Shankari Chandran, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens
86 David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
87 Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing
88 *Helen Garner, This House of Grief
89 Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book 
90 Adam Kay, This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
91 Pip Williams, The Bookbinder of Jericho
92 Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
93 Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary
94 George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo 

95 **Susanna Clarke, Piranesi 
96 Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
97 Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
98 John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies
99 Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
100 Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

So, what to make of the list?

I am pleased that 7 of my top ten picks, and 9 of my extended picks made it to the list. I have read 46 of the top 100, and at least eight others that I tried and did not finish. And there are a bunch of other titles on the list that I want to read and the countdown was a great reminder to put some of these higher up on my priority list. 

While I picked books that were literary or had an impact on me long after finishing them, I had expected there would be a lot of popular titles on the list - overseas authors, titles popular with celebrity book clubs, and those that had been adapted. While there is a lot of this on the list, I find it odd that Chris Hammer was not included for Scrublands. 

Unsurprisingly, the top 100 list is dominated by Australian authors with Muzak and Dalton taking out the top two spots. I have not read any of the top five - popular novels that have been adapted for TV/film. The list is predominately fiction, but some wonderful non-fiction, like Anna Funder's Wifedom and Stasiland, and Helen Garner's Joe Cinque's Consolation and This House of Grief, along with memoirs by Eddie Jaku and Anh Do, and Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens are included. Great to see Aboriginal authors Alexis Wright, Melissa Lucashenko and Bruce Pascoe on the list, but was surprised Tara June Winch was not included.  

If nothing else, the ABC Radio National Top 100 Books of the 21st century provided me with lots of enjoyment, and there are plenty of titles left for me to explore.

The Searcher

In 2023 Australians had the opportunity to vote in a referendum which would 'alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.' The Voice would allow them Australia's First Nations people to make representations to Parliament on matters relating to them. It was a humble request but, without bipartisan support and clear campaign to dispel misinformation, the Voice referendum failed with only about 40% of Australians voting in favour.  This was devastating for supporters of the Voice, pushing reconciliation back and deepening old wounds. 

In the aftermath of the Voice, some non-Indigenous authors are reflecting on their families' colonial past. Journalist David Marr wrote Killing for Country: A Family Story (2023) about his forebears who served in the Native Police patrolling the colony and brutally dispossessing Aboriginal people. Award winning author Kate Grenville, who has often drawn on her family history for her novels The Secret River (2005), The Lieutenant (2008), Sarah Thornhill (2011) and Restless Dolly Maunder (2023), has undertaken her own reflection in Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place (2025). 

Grenville journeys from her home in Sydney to Wiseman's Ferry, where five generations ago Solomon Wiseman, the convict, merchant and ferryman set up a hotel, the Wiseman's Inn, when he gained his ticket of leave in 1810. She follows the path Wiseman's children would have taken north, as squatters, to settle on the land inhabited by the Dharug and Darkinjung people. During her pilgrimage north to Tamworth, she endeavours to stand on the land and understand what happened here so many years ago. As she says, she wants to see with new eyes. 

Grenville challenges the way we spoke, and continue to speak, of our colonial past. Her forebears 'took up' the land according to the narratives passed down through family stories, as if the land was waiting for them. The 'up' in that phrase is added to avoid the notion that they took, as in stole, the land from those who were already there. Along the way she reads monuments that skirt around past tragedies and questions various terms like 'heritage'. 

In Unsettled, Grenville asks 'what do we do with the fact that we are beneficiaries of a violent past? If we acknowledge that we're on land that was taken from other people, what do we do about that?' (p vii). She knows we cannot undo what happened in the past, but worries that we have closed our minds and sanitised what happened generations ago. She writes:  

'Guilt is appropriate for one part of our legacy though. What we should feel guilt about may not be the stealing itself, but the fact that we keep on refusing to address what the stealing has done. We've resisted listening to First Nations people. We go on rejecting the ideas that they tell us will offer a way forward. We might tell ourselves that we don't need to feel guilty for the past. But we have to accept that we're guilty for what we're doing - or failing to do - in the present.' (p110)

Reading Unsettled is, well, unsettling. There are no answers, only more and more questions. Grenville wants us to lean in to the questions and not just take our ancestors' stories at face value. She wants us to love our country - its natural beauty, flora and fauna - and to understand our history. This is a book which calls for deep reflection. 

Having read much of Grenville's previous works, like One Life: My Mother's Story (2015) and her recent novel Restless Dolly Maunder (2023), I am familiar with Grenville's family history and the places she travels to in Unsettled. As a descendent of convicts myself, my mother has pieced together our family's past from scraps of handed-down tales and documents detailing their transport, release, births, deaths and marriages. Like Grenville, she too has visited places our ancestors lived and dug deep to uncover our past and to fill in the gaps. Unsettled is a fascinating book for those of us who are open to shining a light in the darker parts of our own stories and to reevaluate what we have been told or not told, by those who came before us.

Nobel Prize for Literature 2025

The Nobel Prize for Literature was announced this week, recognising Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai. The novelist is best known for writing postmodern dystopian themes. His writing style often features long, run-on, stream of consciousness sentences.  

Born in Gyula, Hungary, Krasznahorkai studied law in Budapest and then studied Hungarian language and literature art Eötvös Loránd University. During his studies he worked at a publishing house and after graduation he was a freelance writer. 

At age 31, his first novel, Satantango (1985) was published, catapulting him to fame in his homeland. In 1987 he left Communist Hungary and traveled to Mongolia, China, Japan, living reclusively abroad. These travels influenced his work. Some of his novels have been adapted into films. In 2015 he won the Man Booker International Prize. In addition to novels he is also known for his short stories, essays, and screenplays. 

I am not familiar with his work so let's take a quick look at some of his best known novels.

Satantango (1985) - This postmodernist tale is narrated from multiple perspectives. The structure of the book is designed to resemble a tango - six steps forward and one then back. Each chapter is a long paragraph without line breaks (which would drive me crazy!).  Set in an isolated run-down Hungarian village, a con man arrives posing as a saviour. The inhabitants are tricked into giving him all their money. It is an allegory for the decline of communism and the onset of capitalism.

The Melancholy of Resistance (1989) - Set in a small, restless town, a mysterious circus arrives promising to display the taxidermied body of the largest whale in the world. The town's inhabitants are fearful of the circus folk and cling to order. Mrs Eszter plots to takeover the town. The pure, noble Valuska, a young idealist escapes to cosmology. Kraznahorkai adapted this dark, allegorical novel into a screenplay for the film Werckmeister Harmonies (2000).

War and War (1999) - This novel is about a Hungarian man, Korim, who travels to New York to transcribe a mysterious manuscript and publish it on the intranet before he kills himself. The manuscript tells of brothers-in-arms returning home after war. Korin has lost his faith in the world and wants to die.  

Seiobo There Below (2008) - The goddess Seiobo returns to mortal realms in search of perfection. In a linked series of tales, we see the restoration of an ancient Buddha, an Italian renaissance painter, a baroque music fan, tourists visiting a Japanese shrine. Krasznahorkai uses these moments of beauty to ask what is sacred and how does great art endure?

Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2016) - Krasznahorkai again plays with structure, using unbroken paragraphs and sentences that run over many pages.  Baron Wenchheim is an eccentric aristocrat who returns home after living in exile in Argentina. He hopes to be reunited with Marika, his childhood sweetheart. The townsfolk believe he is wealthy and will bring prosperity to the town. 

Herscht 07769 (2021) - Orphan Florian Herscht is adopted by a neo-Nazi who mentors him as he learns to be a graffiti cleaner. His Boss is obsessed with Bach and is determined to find out who is defacing statues of the composer. Florian is forced to join his Boss' gang and assist in the capture. This satire about neo-Nazis and rising fascism is written in one sentence which begins 'hope is a mistake'. 

Krasznahorkai sounds like an interesting writer who continually challenges the form and structure of the novel through his original style. The Nobel Academy praised him for "his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art." While I have no doubt he is a gifted writer, I fear the depressing subject matter and lack of punctuation would make my head explode! 

In recent years, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to:

• South Korean author Han Kang (2024)
• Norwegian author Jon Fosse (2023)
• French writer Annie Ernaux (2022)
• East African/British author Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021)
• American poet and essayist Louise Gluck (2000)

I would love to have Margaret Atwood, Gerald Murnane or Alexis Wright recognised with the Noble one day. Will have to see what happens next year.

National Book Award Shortlist 2025

The shortlist for the 2025 National Book Awards has been announced. These annual American literary awards have been presented since 1936. Each finalist received $1000, a medal and a citation, while the winners get $10,000 and a bronze sculpture. 

The Longlist of ten titles per category has been reduced to a shortlist of five. 

The 2025 Shortlist is as follows:

Fiction

• Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
  
• Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief
• Karen Russell, The Antidote
• Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther
• Bryan Washington, Palaver

My pick for winner was Susan Choi for Flashlight,  but this was not shortlisted. Of the shortlisted titles, the one I am most interested in is Palaver, about a gay man estranged from his family living in Tokyo who receives an unexpected visit from his mother. 

Non-Fiction

• Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
• Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
• Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow 
• Claudia Rowe, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care
• Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

This is an interesting shortlist with intriguing titles. I predicted Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow would be here and may win. The other titles explore the West's hypocrisy about Gaza, the Russian retreat from feminism, the American foster care system, and fire fighting in California.  

Poetry

• Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The New Economy
• Cathy Linh Che, Becoming Ghost
• Tiana Clark, Scorched Earth
• Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things
• Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems

Regrettably I am not familiar with any of these poets, so I spent some time exploring their work on the Poetry Foundation website which has a small selection of verse from each poet. 

Translated Literature 

• Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) - Translated from Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell
• Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling -Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
• Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier - Translated from Dutch by David McKay
• Hamid Ismailov, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel - Translated from Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
• Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger - Translated from French by Natasha Lehrer

I was a bit surprised to see that Nobel Laureate Han Kang was not included on the shortlist for We Do Not Part.  Of these titles the one I am most interested in is Solvej Balle's novel, but as it is the third volume of a trilogy, I don't expect I will get to it anytime soon. 

Young People's Literature

• Kyle Lukoff, A World Worth Saving
• Amber McBride, The Leaving Room
• Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story
• Hannah V Sawyerr, Truth Is
• Ibi Zoboi, (S)Kin

The ceremony when the winners will be announced is on 19 November 2025.

Final Frontier

Ever since she was a child, Joan Godwin wanted to be among the stars. She dreams of being an astronaut and studies astrophysics, eventually becoming a university professor. In 1980, when NASA was recruiting for women to join the space program, Joan jumps at the chance and begins her training at Houston's Johnson Space Center. Here she meets Vanessa Ford, an aeronautical engineer, Hank Redmond, a charismatic Top Gun pilot, and mission specialists John 'Griff' Griffin, Donna Fitzgerald and the highly competitive Lydia Danes. These six people will become deeply entwined as they undertake the challenging training needed to become astronauts. 

Author Taylor Jenkins Reid's Atmosphere (2025) begins Joan's story a few years later, in December 1984. The astronauts have completed their training and some members of this group are in space on mission STS-LR9. But there is a problem aboard space shuttle Discovery, and from Mission Control back on Earth, Joan has to support her colleagues in space to safely get home. Time is not on their side and it is not certain that they will all make it.

While Atmosphere is a gripping novel about astronauts and the space program, it is subtitled 'A Love Story'. This is likely referring to the blossoming relationship between Joan and Vanessa, but there is also the deep affection Joan has for her niece Frances, the commitment each of the astronauts has for their work, and the love Joan has for the cosmos. 

Joan is a wonderful protagonist - intelligent, calm, kind, loyal, and continually seeing the best in everyone around her. She has a fraught relationship with her only sibling, Barbara, and is utterly devoted to Frances. As Joan comes to understand her sexuality and falls in love with Vanessa, she is acutely aware of the pressure on them both. While they want to be everything to each other, this is the 1980s and they must keep their relationship secret or they risk losing their jobs. It is already hard enough for the female astronauts, as they all know that if anything goes wrong they will be blamed and it will be another decade before the next woman is allowed into space. 

I read the book alongside listening to the audiobook narrated by Julia Whelan who perfectly captured Joan's voice and brilliantly embodied all the other characters. Her narration built the tension and left me sobbing as the story reached its gripping conclusion. 

It is hard to imagine another author being able to combine a tender queer love story and a gripping space thriller in one page-turning novel. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a wonderful storyteller who understands pacing - speeding up and slowing down to create dramatic tension. She is also gifted with writing dialogue that is realistic for each character.  

Jenkins Reid is best known for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017), Malibu Rising (2021), Carrie Soto is Back (2022), and Daisy Jones and the Six (2019). I previously read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and loved it. Like that novel, I will be recommending Atmosphere to anyone who wants to touch the stars! 

Sunday Times 25 Best Novels of 21st Century

As we come to closer to the end of 2025, there are many 'best of' lists being published, documenting the best books of the first 25 years of the 21st Century. I love a good list and have explored many of those on this blog, including:

• The New York Times '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'
• Readings '30 Best Australian Books of the 21st Century'
• ABC Radio National's 'Top 100 Books of the 21st Century' 

The Sunday Times (UK) recently released their '25 Best Novels of the 21st Century'.  This is another interesting list, which includes many books on the NYT list and some of my favourites. It also includes a number of novels I have not read or even heard of. 

Here is their list*:

• 25. Zadie Smith - White Teeth (2000)
• 24. Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass (2000)
• 23. Matthew Kneale - English Passengers (2000)
• 22. William Boyd - Any Human Heart (2002)
• 21. Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (2003)
• 20. Zoe Heller - Notes on a Scandal (2003)
• 19. David Peace - Nineteen Eighty-Three (2008)
• 18. Edward St Aubyn - Mother’s Milk (2006)
• 17. Colm Toibin - Brooklyn (2009)
• 16. Eimer McBride - A Girl is a Half Formed Thing (2013)
• 15. Rachel Cusk - Outline (2014)
• 14. Anne Enright - The Green Road (2015)
• 13. Sebastian Barry - Days Without End (2016)
• 12. Francis Spufford - Golden Hill (2016)
• 11. Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends (2017)
• 10. Pat Barker - The Silence of the Girls (2018)
• 9. Andrew Miller - Now We Shall Be Entirely Free (2018)
• 8. Anna Burns - Milkman (2018)
• 7. Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain (2020)
• 6. Paul Murray - The Bee Sting (2023)
• 5. Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go (2005)
• 4. Ian McEwan - Atonement (2001)
• 3. Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These (2021)
• 2. Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty (2004)
• 1. Hilary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies (2012)

* Bold = Read, Link is to my review

I have only read 11 of the 25 novels, and there are only about three or four left on the list which I have on my To Be Read pile. There are others that haven't been on my radar so it is good to add a few more to the pile. 

Having said that, I am so pleased they put Philip Pullman on the list. While The Amber Spyglass is not my favourite in the His Dark Materials trilogy, its inclusion is warranted as the series is brilliant. I also happy to see Toibin, McEwan, Barker, Enright and Keegan on the list - although I admit I preferred Enright's The Wren The Wren (2023) to  The Green Road. There are also few here that did not work for me - like Haddon and Ishiguro - which always pop up on 'best of' lists but I could not warm to. 

I am sure there will be more of these lists published as we come to the end of the year. Looking forward to seeing what other lists there are.