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 2025 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.

Prime Minister's Literary Award Winners 2025

The Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2025 Winners have been announced. These awards have a significant prize pool ($600K) and serve to recognise 'established and emerging Australia writers, illustrators, poets and historians'. 

The Winners are:

Fiction: Michelle de Krester - Theory and Practice 

Continuing her sweep of awards this year, de Krester won the Stella Prize this year and was  shortlisted for the Miles Franklin.  This novel tells the story of a young woman in Melbourne in 1986. There to research the novels of Virginia Woolf, she meets Kit and her ambitions change.  The judges said: "In Theory & Practice Michelle de Krester masterfully tests the limits of the novel as a form to investigate power in all its complexity. Moving between fictional, autofictional and essayistic modes, this novel is elegant, playful and razor sharp. It plays with and tests readers' assumptions about authors and narrators, lived experience and fiction, and how these assumptions are shaped by gender, ethnicity and class." I have a copy of this novel and look forward to reading it. 

Non-Fiction: Rick Morton - Mean Streak

I am thrilled Rick Morton won for this book on Robodebt - an important work on the illegal federal government scheme which traumatised so many poor people. The judges said: "Morton’s writing redefines people demonised as ‘welfare cheats’ to victims of their own government. Morton combed the ample public evidence to develop a narrative to help the reader understand how modern government overreach occurs.... With single-minded determination, Morton successfully distils a government’s disgrace into an enthralling account of what happens when we lose our collective conscience." I loved Morton's memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt (2018) and have been an avid reader of his journalism. 

Australian History: Geraldine Fela - Critical Care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis

Bringing together stories from across the country, historian Geraldine Fela shines the spotlight on the compassionate nurses who cared for people with HIV and AIDS.  The judges said: "Critical Care examines Australia’s response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s from the perspective of health care practitioners and patients. Written with empathy and narrative flair, it takes the reader inside remote Indigenous communities, regional areas, and city hospitals. Built on interviews with over thirty nurses and many of those who survived HIV, Fela maps the human response to a public health emergency with compassion, insight, and an acute eye for telling detail." 

 

The Prime Minister's Literary awards also cover Children's Literature, Young Adult Literature and Poetry. In these categories the following won this year's award:

• Poetry: David Brooks - The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems
• Young Adult: Krystal Sutherland - The Invocations
• Children's Literature: Peter Carnavas - Leo and Ralph

Silver Strike

The Hallmarked Man (2025) is the eighth novel in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott private detective series. The story begins a few months after the events of The Running Grave (2023) which saw Robin undercover at Chapman Farm, exposing the wrongdoings of a cult. She is still recovering from the trauma of that case, supported by her business partner Strike and her police officer boyfriend Ryan Murphy.

A new case comes to the agency. Decima Mullins is convinced a man murdered in the vault of a silver shop is her missing boyfriend, Rupert Fleetwood. Mullins hires the detectives to prove it was him, as she knows Fleetwood would not have left her. The police think they have identified the mutilated body as Jason Knowles, a member of a crime family. If the detective agency were to prove the police got it wrong, Strike would find himself showing up the Met again. To make matters worse, Mullins and Fleetwood have ties to people in Strike's past, and there may be a Masonic element to the murder, so they need to tread carefully. As they start their enquiries, Strike and Ellacott discover that there are a number of candidates for the mutilated body in the silver shop and they need to rule out each one before they can give Mullins the answer she needs.

While they are on the main case, the agency's team of investigators are spread across a number of other matters - tailing a woman to find evidence of infidelity, following a man who may be taking advantage of his elderly mother - and this helps propel the story forward. Back are the familiar faces of Dev, Midge, Wardle, Barclay and Pat, the curmudgeonly office manager who is one of my favourite characters. Joining the team is Kim Cochran, ex-police detective, who has her eyes on Strike. 

But the heart of the series is the relationship between Strike and Ellacott, which has evolved over their seven years working together. They secretly have feelings for one another, but continually second guess whether the other shares their affections. Strike is determined to find just the right time to profess his love for Robin, but this is complicated as she has been getting closer to her boyfriend Murphy. Strike also has to deal with his nemesis, journalist Dominic Culpepper, who is determined to undermine Strike in the press.

The Hallmarked Man is an action-packed pageturner of a novel. Rowling expertly juggles multiple plot lines, bringing them all together in a gripping conclusion.  In addition to familiar London locations - Denmark Street, the Blind Spot secret bar, Freemasons Hall and other stomping grounds - we are taken to Crieff, Yorkshire, Shropshire, Sardinia and Sark in the Channel Islands. 

As I have done with the past few novels in this series, I read my hardcover along with listening to the audiobook expertly performed by Robert Gleinister. He perfectly captures Strike, Ellacott and all the characters, adding drama and excitement to the telling of this tale.

Rowling knows how to leave her readers wanting more. The Hallmarked Man, like the previous novels, ends in a delectable cliffhanger. Let's hope she is already working on number nine and we don't have to wait too long to find out what happens next!

My reviews of previous books in the series are available on this blog:

• The Cuckoo's Calling (2013) 
•  The Silkworm (2014) 
• Career of Evil (2016)
• Lethal White (2018)
• Troubled Blood (2020)
• The Ink Black Heart (2022)
• The Running Grave (2023)