2021 has been an interesting and challenging year for so many of us. The creep of existential threat and time spent in and out of isolation has encouraged us all to take stock of what’s most valuable.
The best Australian fiction we read in 2021 embraces radical authenticity and truth telling, even when it makes you squirm. It was impossible to look past Adam Thompson’s collection Born Into This or Michelle de Kretser’s genius diptych novel Scary Monsters. We also revelled in stories of love and the feats of human connection which came from writers across the continent. Be ready for tears when you read Hannah Kent’s Devotion.
As always, there were more great books than we’re able to list here, but we think you’ll adore these ten selections. They’ve both challenged us and lifted us up by turns.
—Ben Hunter, Fiction Category Manager
Apples Never Fall
by Liane Moriarty
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Liane Moriarty here.
From the outside, the Delaneys appear to be an enviably contented family. Even after all these years, former tennis coaches Joy and Stan are still winning tournaments, and now that they’ve sold the family business they have all the time in the world to learn how to ‘relax’. Their four adult children are busy living their own lives, and while it could be argued they never quite achieved their destinies, no-one ever says that out loud. But now Joy Delaney has disappeared and her children are re-examining their parents’ marriage and their family history with fresh, frightened eyes.
Buy it here
Devotion
by Hannah Kent
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Hannah Kent here.
Prussia, 1836. In her village of Kay, Hanne Nussbaum is friendless and considered an oddity … until she meets Thea. Forced to flee religious persecution the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia. In the face of brutal hardship, the beauty of whale song enters Hanne’s heart, along with the miracle of her love for Thea. Theirs is a bond that nothing can break. South Australia, 1838. A new start in an old land. God, society and nature itself decree Hanne and Thea cannot be together. But within the impossible … is devotion.
Buy it here
Love & Virtue
by Diana Reid
Read our review here, read a guest blog from Diana Reid here, and listen to our podcast with her here.
Michaela and Eve are two bright, bold women who befriend each other their first year at a residential college at university, where they live in adjacent rooms. They could not be more different; one assured and popular – the other uncertain and eager-to-please. But something happens one night in O-week – a drunken encounter, a foggy memory that will force them to confront the realities of consent and wrestle with the dynamics of power.
Buy it here
Wild Abandon
by Emily Bitto
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Emily Bitto here.
In the fall of 2011, a heartbroken young man flees Australia for the USA. Landing in the excessive, uncanny-familiar glamour and plenitude of New York City, Will makes a vow to say yes to everything that comes his way. By fate or random chance, Will’s journey takes him deep into the American heartland where he meets Wayne Gage, a fast-living, troubled Vietnam veteran, would-be spirit guide and collector of exotic animals. These two men in crisis form an unlikely friendship, but Will has no idea just how close to the edge Wayne truly is.
Buy it here
Scary Monsters
by Michelle de Kretser
Read our review here.
Lili’s family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager. Now, in the 1980s, she’s teaching in the south of France. Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation and embraces ‘Australian values’. Three scary monsters – racism, misogyny and ageism – roam through this mesmerising novel. Its reversible format enacts the disorientation that migrants experience when changing countries changes the story of their lives.
Buy it here
Born Into This
by Adam Thompson
Read our review.
The stories in Born Into This throw light on a world of unique cultural practice and perspective, from Indigenous rangers trying to instil some pride in wayward urban teens on the harsh islands off the coast of Tasmania, to those scraping by on the margins of white society railroaded into complex and compromised decisions.
Buy it here
One Hundred Days
by Alice Pung
Read our review here, read a Q&A with Alice Pung here, and listen to our podcast with her here.
In a heady whirlwind of independence, lust and defiance, sixteen-year-old Karuna falls pregnant. Not on purpose, but not entirely by accident, either. Incensed, Karuna’s mother, already over-protective, confines her to their fourteenth-storey housing-commission flat, to keep her safe from the outside world – and make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. Stuck inside for endless hours, Karuna battles her mother and herself for a sense of power in her own life, as a new life forms and grows within her. As the due date draws ever closer, the question of who will get to raise the baby – who it will call Mum – festers between them.
Buy it here
Once There Were Wolves
by Charlotte McConaghy
Read our review here, read a Q&A with Charlotte McConaghy here, and listen to our podcast with her here.
Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team tasked with reintroducing fourteen grey wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape but a broken Aggie, too. However, Inti is not the woman she once was, and may be in need of rewilding herself.
Buy it here
Plum
by Brendan Cowell
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Brendan Cowell here.
Peter ‘The Plum’ Lum is a 48-year-old ex-star NRL player, living with his son and girlfriend in Cronulla. He’s living a pretty cruisey life until one day he suffers an epileptic fit and discovers that he has a brain disorder as a result of the thousand-odd head knocks he took on the footy field in his twenty-year-career. According to his neurologist, Plum has to make some changes – right now – or it’s dementia, or even death. Reluctantly, Plum embarks on a journey of self-care and self-discovery, which is not so easy when all you’ve ever known is to go full tilt at everything. On top of this, he’s being haunted by dead poets, and, unable to stop crying, discovers he has a special gift for the spoken word.
Buy it here
The Truth About Her
by Jacqueline Maley
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Jacqueline Maley here.
Journalist and single mother Suzy Hamilton gets a phone call one summer morning, and finds out that the subject of one of her investigative exposes, 25-year-old wellness blogger Tracey Doran, has killed herself overnight. Suzy is horrified by this news but copes in the only way she knows how – through work, mothering, and carrying on with her ill-advised, tandem affairs. The consequences of her actions catch up with Suzy over the course of a sticky Sydney summer. She starts receiving anonymous vindictive letters and is pursued by Tracey’s mother wanting her, as a kind of rough justice, to tell Tracey’s story, but this time, the right way.
Buy it here
We’re rounding up the Best Books of 2021 — check it out!
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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