Alice Cottrell, Publisher
My new, shorter commute means I’ve found it difficult to sink into a novel recently, but I’ve realised the journey is a perfect length for short stories. I loved Josephine Rowe’s Here Until August (Black Inc.), a powerful and intimate collection with beautifully drawn characters. Rowe’s writing is incredibly understated and restrained — she says so much with the smallest details.
Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behaviour made me laugh and wince. Gaitskill writes about sex and power with devastating precision. The first story, Daisy’s Valentine, begins with what is now one of my favourite opening lines ever: ‘Joey felt that his romance with Daisy might ruin his life, but that didn’t stop him.’
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Alan Vaarwerk, Editor
This year was one of my more fruitful expeditions to the Melbourne International Film Festival, and I saw some terrific movies – in particular Sophie Hyde’s gorgeously shot Animals, which broke my heart with its ability to capture the feeling of hitting 30 and not recognising how you got here. Alia Shawkat’s performance in particular is stunning. (Listen to our interview with the director). I also really enjoyed Xavier Dolan’s Matthias & Maxime, a simmering portrait of two young Quebecois men and their complicated, sexually-charged friendship. This was my first experience with Dolan’s work but I’ll definitely be seeking out more.
I recently picked up Duanwad Pimwana’s novel Bright (Brow Books, tr. Mui Poopoksakul), not really knowing what to expect, but I found myself quickly charmed. The first novel by a Thai woman to be published in English, Pimwana’s series of short vignettes set in and around a small neighbourhood are seen largely through the eyes of plucky five-year-old Kampol, who is effectively abandoned by his parents and taken in by the community. For such subject matter, the book is surprisingly (and delightfully) funny and heartwarming, capturing a five-year-old’s chaotic and scattershot energy – which makes the sad moments, when they come, hit particularly hard.
Lauren Carroll Harris, contributing editor
Each bewildered morning I wake up and roll over and swing my phone toward my face and start scrolling…toward Jia Tolentino. The New Yorker staffer’s collection of essays, Trick Mirror – on delusion, life on the internet and the impossibility of knowing yourself – feels like the biggest millenial book since My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Cue the millenial jokes – mainly what I think about all day and all night is casual footwear et cetera et cera. In a mode of ruthless self-interrogation, Tolentino drives to the sludgy, disturbing core of what it means to be a young woman, online, fighting the crushing, coopted wave of yass-kween consumer-careerist empowerment that feminism (formerly a political movement) has slid into. If only we were all as suspicious of our own self-narratives as Tolentino.
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Cher Tan, KYD New Critic
I was delighted when I came across Gerii Pleitez’s On The Sunday, She Created God (Kara Sevda Press) recently. A coming-of-age story set in Sydney, it centres Wren, a feminist punk from the Central American diaspora who is deeply dissatisfied with her life in the city yet remains very tethered to its trappings. Together with her best friend and fellow outcast Babe, they devise a plan to skip town, but a drug-fuelled New Year’s Eve run-in with an old flame puts a stop to their dreams. It’s a fast-paced tale packed in a 94-page novella that explores transgression, intimacy and trauma, in a way that’s reminiscent of Kathy Acker’s lucid, Dadaist work.
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