If you’re not already excited about the new books coming in 2020, you should be. Today I’m going to tell you why.
Below, you’ll find my thoughts on five books that will be hitting shelves between now and March that I thought were just spectacular, from the debut of a vital new Australian talent to a novel with the glowing recommendation of Ann Patchett herself.
Read on!
Such a Fun Age
by Kiley Reid
A quick and addictive read, Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age places Emira, a young woman of colour, into the household of Alix Chamberlain, a feminist blogger with a “personal brand” as babysitter to her two-year-old, Briar. After Emira is subjected to public racism and humiliation in the local supermarket of Alix’s well-to-do neighbourhood, Alix becomes obsessed with making things right, putting the two women on a collision course.
This is a page-turner that gently tightens the screws on its readers moment by awkward, crazy and wonderful moment. A sharp and intelligent examination of often overlooked friction points of race, class, privilege and domestic work in the 21st century, I particularly love Reid’s authentic representation of little Briar in this book as a real character with needs and desires of her own. Such a Fun Age is clever, funny, provocative and oh so refreshing.
Buy it here
Below Deck
by Sophie Hardcastle
A new voice has emerged in Australian fiction with one of the most highly anticipated books of the year. Sophie Hardcastle’s Below Deck is a tender, poetic, almost hypnotic coming of age story. Reading Hardcastle’s prose feels like going on a spacewalk – a curious weightlessness combined with acute sensation, filled with distortions of light and sound. It’s unique and exhilarating. Read it and you’ll see I mean.
The novel centres on 21-year-old Olivia, born to privilege and frighteningly smart, but socially isolated and estranged from her parents. She falls into the company of two remarkable strangers, Mac and Maggie, who show her the majesty of the sea and help her to grasp her unsung potential. But the open ocean reflects humanity at its best and its worst. Hardcastle does not hold back in exposing the horrors endured by women and the opaque constructions of consent that serve to appease the very worst of male behaviour.
It’s impossible not to be affected by this book. Set between Sydney and London via the Tropics and the Antarctic ocean, Below Deck is so much more than a fictional account of harrowing experience. It’s about personhood, self-discovery, art, nature, community, the colour of voices and the sound of sailing. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Buy it here
American Dirt
by Jeanine Cummins
When one of your favourite American authors, Ann Patchett, reads one of the most talked about American novels of the year and says “I couldn’t put it down. I’ll never stop thinking about it,” you get a pretty good indication that the novel in question is something special.
American Dirt is about a Mexican woman named Lydia, her son Luca and everything they sacrifice to survive the cartel that murdered their family and make it to the United States. It has the sustained, heart-racing flight of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, the depth of humanity expressed in the immigrant experience in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the profoundly affecting mother-son connection of Emma Donoghue’s Room.
Yes, it’s that good.
Buy it here
The Good Turn
by Dervla McTiernan
With 2018’s The Ruin, Dervla McTiernan minted herself an international bestseller and a reputation as a world-class creator of intelligent police procedurals. In her third Cormac Reilly thriller, The Good Turn, she’s better than ever. McTiernan is completely fluent in the distrust, the layers of corruption and the isolation that pervades the world of law enforcement. And then there’s the inimitable and intoxicating Irishness of her work.
The Good Turn hardens Reilly into an (even more) outstanding investigator and it plays with some fascinating themes, including the intergenerational pressures of law enforcement families, small town gossip and control, austerity, the under-resourcing of emergency services and the difficulty of prosecuting institutional corruption. I’m obsessed. I love it. You will too.
Buy it here
We Were Never Friends
by Margaret Bearman
I’m actually still reading this one right now and I’m hooked! It’s a powerful and fast-paced story of girlhood, art, friendship and cruelty. The cover is stunning, and the prose is just as good.
More to come!
Buy it here
About the Contributor
Ben Hunter
Ben is Booktopia's dedicated fiction and children's book specialist. He spends his days painstakingly piecing together beautiful catalogue pages and gift guides for the website. At any opportunity, he loves to write warmly of the books that inspire him. If you want to talk books, find him tweeting at @itsbenhunter
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