Bodies of Light

I guess lockdown has made me miss my own city or something because this year I read a lot of fiction set in Melbourne, which I never usually do. To add to the list (One Hundred Days, Small Joys of Real Life, Wild Abandon) is Jennifer Down's Bodies of Light. The story begins with a …

Wild Abandon

I enjoyed reading Emily Bitto's The Strays at the beginning of the year, and went into her new novel Wild Abandon near the end of the year without knowing much about it, which is probably a good thing or I might have skipped it. It begins with a young Australian man named Will who runs …

Love & Virtue

Diana Reid's Love & Virtue is an Australian debut that is making the rounds, and it was honestly delicious fun to read because the prose feels like how I, as a newly graduated university student, speak to my friends. This is a campus novel, featuring Michaela and Eve, two young, bold women who meet in …

Small Joys of Real Life

I came across Small Joys of Real Life, by Allee Richards, because of the Melbourne City Reads initiative. I for some reason have not read much fiction set in my hometown of Melbourne, and now I'm reading all about Melbourne. The premise comes about when Eva sleeps with Pat, she finds out he dies by …

One Hundred Days

Now this is a book I could talk about for days. Alice Pung is a favourite writer of mine, although I haven't read all of her books. Still, I was drawn to One Hundred Days as a coming-of-age story set in my hometown in an ethnic Asian family, so I finally got around to reading …