We’re rounding up the Best Books of 2020! Fiction Category Manager Ben Hunter is on the blog today to share his favourite Australian novels of the year. Read on!
This year saw new books from some of our favourite Aussie authors, as well exciting debuts from new voices in fiction.
Laura Jean McKay’s The Animals In That Country and Kate Mildenhall’s The Mother Fault presented strange new visions for the nation’s future, while Nardi Simpson’s Song of the Crocodile and Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves encouraged us to look on our past under a new light. Then there were those unforgettable novels like Sofie Laguna’s Infinite Splendours and Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams that examined hope, beauty and the act of living itself. Our book experts were spoilt for choice!
All Our Shimmering Skies
by Trent Dalton
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Trent Dalton here.
Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain overhead, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: a razor-tongued actress named Greta and a fallen Japanese fighter pilot named Yukio.
Buy it here
Infinite Splendours
by Sofie Laguna
Read our review here.
Lawrence Loman is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother, and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is ten, an experience of betrayal takes it all away, and Lawrence is left to deal with the devastating aftermath. As he grows into a man, how will he make sense of what he has suffered? He cannot rewrite history, but must he be condemned to repeat it?
Buy it here
Song of the Crocodile
by Nardi Simpson
Listen to our podcast with Nardi Simpson here.
Darnmoor is the home of the Billymil family, three generations who have lived in this ‘gateway town’. Race relations between Indigenous and settler families are fraught, though the rigid status quo is upheld through threats and soft power rather than the overt violence of yesteryear. When the town’s secrets start to be uncovered the town will be rocked by a violent act that forever shatters a century of silence.
Buy it here
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams
by Richard Flanagan
Read our review here.
In a world of perennial fire and growing extinctions, Anna’s aged mother is dying—if her three children would just allow it. Condemned by their pity to living she increasingly escapes through her hospital window into visions of horror and delight.
Buy it here
The Last Migration
by Charlotte McConaghy
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Charlotte McConaghy here.
How far you would you go for love? Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica. As animal populations plummet and commercial fishing faces prohibition, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny’s life begin to unspool.
Buy it here
The Animals in That Country
by Laura Jean McKay
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Laura Jean McKay here.
Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu – its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals – first mammals, then birds and insects, too.
Buy it here
Kokomo
by Victoria Hannan
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Victoria Hannan here.
When Mina receives an urgent call from her best friend back in Melbourne, her world is turned upside down. Her reclusive mother, Elaine, has left the house for the first time in twelve years. Mina drops everything to fly home, only to discover that Elaine will not talk about her sudden return to the world, nor why she’s spent so much time hiding from it. Their reunion leaves Mina raking through pieces of their painful past in a bid to uncover the truth.
Buy it here
The Mother Fault
by Kate Mildenhall
Read a guest post from Kate Mildenhall here and listen to our podcast with her here.
Mim’s husband is missing. No one knows where Ben is, but everyone wants to find him – especially The Department. And they should know, the all-seeing government body has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip to keep them ‘safe’. But suddenly Ben can’t be tracked. Cornered, Mim risks everything to go on the run to find her husband – and a part of herself, long gone, that is brave enough to tackle the journey ahead.
Buy it here
A Room Made of Leaves
by Kate Grenville
Read our review here and listen to our podcast with Kate Grenville here.
What if Elizabeth Macarthur – wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney – had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That’s the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented.
Buy it here
Sorrow and Bliss
by Meg Mason
Read our review here, read a guest blog from Meg Mason here and listen to our podcast with her here.
This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn’t know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going. By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn’t really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing – if you can find something else to want.
Buy it here
Explore more of The Best Books of 2020!
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
See the 2021 NSW Premier’s Literary Award winners! 
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REVIEW: A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville
Comments
December 11, 2020 at 5:28 pm
Infinite Splendours, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams and All Our Shimmering Skies are my top 3 for 2020. All three well deserved to be on the list.
December 12, 2020 at 8:09 am
Why do you continually ignore the work of Aussie writer Peter Watt? Peter has written 21 great books, which have been translated into other languages, including German, and his Duffy/Macintosh series is in the process of being made into a TV series under the title of Frontier.
Peter writes great Australian “faction”.
July 26, 2021 at 11:34 am
I agree, Peter is a great author!