Sacred Soil

I have just spent a wondrous week in Iceland - hearing the wind howling across the snowy treeless landscape, watching the sunlight glisten on the water of the fjords - all from the comfort of my home in Sydney.  I was transported there by Australian author Hannah Kent's memoir Always Home, Always Homesick (2025) in which she lovingly describes Iceland's people, places and customs, and how it became entwined in her being. I was not surprised to be utterly captivated by Iceland, as I have felt this way before, over a decade ago when I read Hannah Kent's novel Burial Rites (2013). 

When she was a seventeen-year-old high school student in Adelaide, Kent took up an opportunity to do a year-long foreign exchange through Rotary. She was sent to Iceland, to the small northern town of Sauðárkrókur - about as different from life in South Australia as possible. Here she is billeted with a series of families, attends school, gets a job in a local cafe, and learns the Icelandic language and culture. 

During her year in Iceland, Kent hears the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person executed in the country in 1830, and a seed was planted. Over the years, as Kent began her writing career, Agnes' tale would call to her. Kent returned to Iceland as a PhD student researching the circumstances in which Agnes, a servant, was convicted of murdering her abusive master Natan Ketilsson.  Years later she would return again, to attend a writers festival after her novel about Agnes, Burial Rites, was published.

Always Home, Always Homesick is a wonderful, beautifully written memoir. I loved hearing about Kent's writing process, her self-doubt, and the challenges she overcame. It was also an emotional story, as Kent is embraced by families in Sauðárkrókur, and formed lifelong bonds. 

I now want to go back and read Agnes' story again. In September 2013 I reviewed Burial Rites and praised Kent's research and detailed descriptions which brought the story to life. Having read her memoir of writing Burial Rites, I have so much more appreciation for her work and long to experience it again. Indeed, while Always Home, Always Homesick can be read on its own, it will have more meaning for those who have read Burial Rites.

My reviews of other books by Hannah Kent are available on this blog:

• Burial Rites (2013)
• The Good People (2016)
• Devotion (2021) 

Miles Franklin Award Winner 2025

The winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's most prestigious literary award, was announced on 24 July 2025. This year the award and its $60,000 prize went to Siang Lu for his novel, Ghost Cities.

Ghost Cities is set across multiple timelines. In modern Sydney, Xiang Lu is fired from his job as a translator at the Chinese Consulate. He doesn't speak the language and had been relying on Google Translate to do his work. He begins posting online as #BadChinese and is contacted by filmmaker Baby Bao who takes him to a film set in the fictional ghost city of Port Man Tao. Bao has populated the city with actors who inhabit a dystopian world, peppered with ancient Chinese myths. In a parallel narrative, in ancient China, a paranoid Emperor clings to power. 

The judges said "Siang Lu’s Ghost Cities is at once a grand farce and a haunting meditation on diaspora. Sitting within a tradition in Australian writing that explores failed expatriation and cultural fraud, Lu’s novel is also something strikingly new. In Ghost Cities, the Sino-Australian imaginary appears as a labyrinthine film-set, where it is never quite clear who is performing and who is directing. Shimmering with satire and wisdom, and with an absurdist bravura, Ghost Cities is a genuine landmark in Australian literature.”

Brisbane based author Siang Lu actually completed the novel a decade ago but had a hard time getting it published. I bet there are a lot of publishers regretting their decision to reject his manuscript! His previous novel The Whitewash (2023) won the Abia Audiobook of the year. 

I have not read this novel, and am not entirely sure it is for me. But the premise sounds intriguing, especially the part about Xiang's 'translation' work.

Quiet Achiever

I have had Barbara Trapido's novel Brother of the More Famous Jack (1982) on my wish list for years. I first heard about it on the ABC TV program The Book Club in 2015, when Jennifer Byrne, Marieke Hardy and Elizabeth Gilbert raved about this novel. I had never heard of it, or author Barbara Trapido, but was intrigued by a novel that seemed to be a secret book that women put in the hands of others. I have tried to find a copy ever since, in second hand shops and through online vendors. When it recently came back in stock online, I quickly added it to my basket.

Brother of the More Famous Jack is narrated by Katherine Browne, an eighteen year old university student who befriends her philosophy professor Jacob Goldman and his family. Browne grew up in a conservative, traditional household full of manners and cleanliness. The wildly eccentric Goldmans - Jake and Jane and their six children - are the complete opposite. Katherine visits their Sussex home and discovers a family that speak openly of sex, talk back and challenge one another. I loved the depiction of this rambling home, filed with dirt and broken chairs and the basket of wellingtons of various sizes all labelled with the name of the eldest child who got to wear them first. 

Katherine is drawn to Roger Goldman, the handsome, reserved eldest son. They begin a relationship which does not end well. Heartbroken, Katherine takes off to Italy to teach English. Here she is drawn to an unworthy lover and is dumped when she needs him most. After a devastating loss and a decade abroad, Katherine returns home to England and becomes reacquainted with the Goldmans. The intervening years have changed everyone, but her love of this family remains. 

Brother of the More Famous Jack is a coming-of-age novel which explores love, heartbreak, grief, longing and motherhood. The characters are vividly drawn - especially that of Katherine, Jacob and Jane, and the two eldest brothers.  I enjoyed seeing Katherine grow into herself. Trapido has a real gift for language and the novel is filled with some of the most fantastic lines like: "Isn't it wonderful what Oxford does for people? They get to know more and more about less and less.' (p165) 

I wish I had first read this novel in my twenties. I suspect I would have read it quite differently then and been in awe of the Goldmans, wishing that I too could have been adopted into their family. Reading it now I was more aware of the way in which women were portrayed and the narrow choices they had. Housewife Jane's powerful rant, pleading with her daughters-in-law to ensure they do not carry the full burden of domestic duties, was brilliant and changed my perception of Jane completely.

Some have referred to this novel as a 'bohemian Brideshead Revisited'. I can understand that comparison. Indeed, reading this novel reminded me of the writing of Murial Spark, Rachel Cusk, Penelope Lively, Sylvia Plath and Sally Rooney. I also reckon Emerald Fennell drew on this novel for her film Saltburn. Regardless, this novel is uniquely Trapido's voice - a voice which deserves to be more widely known.

Brother of the More Famous Jack won the Whitbread Special Prize for Fiction in 1982.

Into the Woods

One of the most imaginative and inventive novels I have read in the past five years is Susanna Clarke's Piranesi (2021). Winner of the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction, Clarke created a fantastical world in which Piranesi resides alone in a labyrinthine house, writing a journal of his days. Clarke's previous novel, published 17 years earlier, was the acclaimed Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell (2004). 

Clarke suffers from chronic fatigue and often finds it difficult to sustain her writing for periods of time. As such, fans of Clarke's writing have to wait a long time between novels. But sometimes she releases a short story to tide us over. 

Her latest work is The Wood at Midwinter (2024), a gorgeously illustrated short story, published as a slender hardcover. At just sixty pages, Clarke tells the story of Merowdis Scot, a nineteen-year-old mystical young woman. Merowdis is deeply connected to nature and can talk with animals. She is most at home in the woods, where her parents believe young ladies should not wander. Her supportive sister Ysolde drops her off one wintery morning at the wood gate, and leaves her to ramble with her dogs, Pretty and Amandier, and pet pig, Apple. As Merowdis and her pets  walk they chat with the animals they meet along the way - a fox, raven, - and the wood itself. Then they meet a darkly clad figure who makes Merowdis a promise about her future.  

The Wood at Midwinter is a very short story and can be read before your cup of tea goes cold! I was just starting to enjoy the world Clarke created when the story quickly came to an end. Indeed, I felt rather flat once the story finished, as if I had only read a teaser for a larger, more engrossing work. 

While I wanted more from the story, Victoria Sawdon's illustrations make this book truly delightful. Indeed, she should have been listed on the front cover, as her work is integral to the reading pleasure of this tale. 

Overall, I am happy have read The Wood at Midwinter, but wanted more from it. I understand Clarke is working on a new novel, set in the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell. Fingers crossed we don't have to wait too long for it to be finished.

And so it begins

This year I entered the Elizabeth Strout universe by reading her most famous novel, Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge (2008), followed by her most recent novel, Tell Me Everything (2024). I greatly enjoyed both novels and soon discovered that Strout has created a whole world of interlinked stories to explore. So, I have gone back to the start to where it all began, her debut novel.

Amy and Isabelle (1998) tells the story of a relationship between single mother and her teenage daughter over a long, hot summer in New England. Isabelle Goodrow lives in a tiny rental house at the edge of the town of Shirley Falls. She works at the local mill where she does not really know how to engage with her fellow workers, and has a secret longing for her boss. She is a devoted member of her congregation and a good soul. Isabelle longs for a social life of her own, yet has put all her energy into raising her daughter Amy. But there is tension in the house, with Amy and Isabelle unable to communicate and frustrations growing. Fortunately Isabelle has secured a summer job for Amy at the mill, so she can keep an eye on her daughter. 

We flashback to what has happened over the past few months, and how the two have drifted apart. Aged almost sixteen, Amy is thinking about being a teacher when she finishes high school. She spends much of her time hanging out with her best friend Stacy, secretly smoking cigarettes, and talking about Stacy's boyfriend. Amy is shy, hiding behind a mane of wavy blond hair. She has never had a boyfriend and has few friends, other than the rambunctious Stacy. 

The arrival of a substitute math teacher, Mr Robertson, has brought Amy out of her shell. She forms a crush on the married teacher which distracts her from her schoolwork and causes her to act out of character. As her relationship with Mr Robertson becomes closer, she begins lying to her mother about her whereabouts. Things reach a boiling point between Amy and Isabelle, when Amy's sexual secrets are discovered, and it is a hard road back for their relationship to recover.

Strout has an incredible ability to realistically portray the ordinary, mundane business of life - work, family, church, school. She dishes out the backstory of various characters in delicious morsels, building well rounded individuals that the reader cannot help but be intrigued by. I particularly loved the development of Isabelle's character - her attempts at self-development through reading, the befriending of colleagues at the mill, her fear of scandal, and the realisation that the object of her desire is not so desirable. 

I have met Isabelle Goodrow before, in Tell Me Everything, set decades after Amy and Isabelle, she is the bestfriend of Olive Kitteridge. In this later novel we find out more about what happened between the mother-daughter duo after the original story ended. 

Having now read three of Strout's novels, I completely understand her popularity and critical acclaim. I cannot wait to explore the other books in this series.

My reviews of other books by Elizabeth Strout are available on this blog:

• Olive Kitteridge (2008)
• Tell Me Everything (2024)

Booker Prize 2025 Predictions

The Booker Prize Longlist will be announced at the end of July. It has been a wonderful year for books, but always a challenge to predict which novels will be chosen for the longlist as the Booker is known for its surprises. 

To be eligible, the novel has to have been written in English and published in UK/Ireland between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025. While I am not across when novels were published in UK/Ireland, I am going to take a guess at who might appear on the longlist. 

My predictions for the Booker longlist this year are:

1. 
   Michelle de Krester - Theory and Practice 
2. Adbulrakaz Gurnah - Theft
3. Alan Hollinghust - Our Evenings
4. Laila Lalami - The Dream Hotel
5. Melissa Lucashenko - Edenglassie
6. Roisin O'Donnell - Nesting
7. Torrey Peters - Stag Dance
8. Anthony Shapland - A Room Above a Shop
9. David Szalay - Flesh
10. Madeleine Thien - The Book of Records
11. Tim Winton - Juice
12. Nussaibah Younis - Fundamentally

I had to narrow down my list and lost Anne Tyler (Three Days in June) and Ian McEwan (What We Can Know) along the way. I know there is no way there will be three Australian authors on the list, but I am hoping that at least one of these three - de Krester, Lucashenko or Winton - make the cut. I have only read O'Donnell from my list but I am keen to read the Hollinghurst, Winton, Shapland and more. 

The judging panel this year consists of author Roddy Doyle (Booker winner in 1993), longlisted authors Ayobani Adebayo and Kiley Reid, actor Sarah Jessica Parker, and literary critic Chris Power. I can't wait to see what they came up with and how well I guessed.

The longlist will be announced on 29 July, followed by the shortlist on 23 September and the winner announcement in 10 November.