FISH-HAIR WOMAN
Merlinda Bobis
How much can the heart accommodate? Death and love, an enemy and a sweetheart, war and an impassioned serenade, and more. Only four chambers, but with infinite space like memory, where there is room even for those whom we do not love.
Fish-Hair Woman is a novel of many rooms running between love and war. In 1987 the Philippine government fights a total war against communist insurgency. The village of Iraya is militarised. The days are violent and the nights heavy with fireflies in the river where the dead are dumped. With her twelve-metre hair, Estrella the Fish-Hair Woman trawls the corpses from the water, which now tastes of lemongrass. She falls in love with the visiting Australian writer Tony McIntyre who disappears in the conflict.
Ten years later, his son Luke is reading this story in a mysterious manuscript sent to Australia with love letters. Tony left Australia when Luke was six. Now at nineteen, he travels to the Philippines because his father is supposedly dying. On arrival he is caught in a web of betrayal that spins into the dark, magical tale of the manuscript. What is fact, what is fiction? Luke meets Stella, who could be Tony's lover—or the Fish-Hair Woman? But where is Tony? Whose story is being told? Who is telling the story?
Poetic and eclectic in style, this epic tale threads a multitude of voices and stories from the Philippines to Australia, to Hawai'i, and to the reader's world. The pool of grief, and of joy, is yours, mine, ours.
Spinifex Press, paperback, 9781876756970
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FLOUNDERING
Romy Ash
Tom and Jordy have been living with their gran since the day their mother, Loretta, left them on her doorstep and disappeared.
Now Loretta's returned, and she wants her boys back. Tom and Jordy hit the road with Loretta in her beat-up car. The family of three journeys across the country, squabbling, bonding, searching and reconnecting. But Loretta isn't mother material. She's broke, unreliable, lost. And there's something else that's not quite right with this reunion. They reach the west coast and take refuge in a beachside caravan park. Their neighbour, a surly old man, warns the kids to stay away. But when Loretta disappears again the boys have no choice but to ask the old man for help, and now they face new threats and new fears.
This beautifully written and gripping debut is as moving as it is frightening, and as heartbreaking as it is tender.
Text Publishing (AUS), paperback, 9781921922084 (March)
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PLAYING HOUSE
Amy Choi
Playing House is a rare pleasure—a warm and humorous memoir in three parts that subtly reveals what it means to create a family. Firstly working and travelling in Europe, then settling in inner city Melbourne and becoming caregivers to Lydia—a troubled teenager who tests the limits of friendship—and lastly parenthood and returning to visit family in Hong Kong. At its heart it is a story of an enduring relationship between an Asian-Australian and an Australian.
Playing House is elegant and insightful, the sort of book that makes you realise love can be uncomplicated and it's the people you surround yourself with and the blessings in disguise that make life sweet.
Amy Choi was born in Melbourne in 1975. She has worked as a counter hand, in customer service, as an usher, foster carer, freelance writer and columnist. She lives in country Victoria with her partner and two children.
Transit Lounge (AUS), paperback, 9781921924170 (April)
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DANCING TO THE FLUTE
Manisha Jolie Amin
Abandoned on the rural streets of India as a young child, ever-optimistic Kalu carves out a life by fetching and carrying for the villagers to earn a few coins. When a foot injury threatens to cripple him, he faces complete destitution until the village Healer overhears him blowing a tune through the rolled leaf of a banyan tree. From that moment, Kalu's life will never be the same again. The colour and movement of India are powerfully evoked through his ongoing journey; from the suffocating nature of its class structure to the energy of its markets, its people, their joys and sorrows, their dances and their dramas. There is so much beauty here but, above all, there is so much music—and its powerful rhythm forms an irresistible beat.
Manisha Jolie Amin has an MA in Professional Writing. Of Indian heritage, she now lives in Sydney.
Allen & Unwin (AUS), paperback, 9781742378572 (April)
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THE INTENTIONS BOOK
Gigi Fenster
Morris Goldberg is a man who can't cry. Semi-retired from his career as a metadata analyst, he lives alone and conducts imaginary conversations with his recently-deceased wife, Sadie. Then news arrives that his daughter Rachel is missing in the bush, with bad weather on the way.
While Morris waits for news, he thinks back over his life, and as memory and dream start to merge, key scenes from his childhood and marriage play out in his imagination and the urgent questions of a lifetime press forward. What happens to us in moments of crisis? Are we capable of change? How can we express our true feelings? How do we survive the endless dance of estrangement and intimacy.
Born in South Africa, Gigi Fenster worked as a law lecturer and construction lawyer before moving to New Zealand. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, and her short stories have been published in various literary journals in New Zealand and abroad. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand. The Intentions Book is her first novel.
Victoria University Press (NZ), paperback, 9780864738233 (March)
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THE HOUSE OF FICTION: A MEMOIR
Susan Leonard and Elizabeth Jolley
Susan Swingler is the step-daughter of one of Australia's most revered writers—Elizabeth Jolley. Abandoned by her father Leonard at the age of four, Susan had no contact with the Jolley family until they found and reclaimed her at the age of twenty-one. Why they were kept apart is the subject of this startling new memoir.
The House of Fiction tells the story of Swingler's quest to find her father. As she painstakingly traces and documents clues to a better understanding of Leonard, she inadvertently unravels an intricate fiction created by Elizabeth Jolley to protect those she loved.
Fremantle Press (AUS), paperback, 9781921888663
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THE MIND OF A THIEF: A MEMOIR
Patti Miller
For 40,000 years the Central NSW area of Wellington was Aboriginal—Wiradjuri—land. Following the arrival of white men, it became a penal settlement, mission station, gold-mining town and farming centre with a history of white comfort and black marginalisation. In the late 20th century, it was also the subject of the first post-Mabo Native Title claim, bringing new hope—and new controversy—to the area and its people.
Wiradjuri land is also where author Patti Miller was born and, mid-life, it begins to exert a compelling emotional pull, demanding her return. Post-children, having lived a dream life in Paris, it is hard for her to understand, or ignore, and so she is drawn into the story at the heart of Australian identity—who are we in relation to our beloved but stolen country?
Wellington and the Wiradjuri people are the main characters—and in revealing their complex narratives, Patti uncovers her own. Are her connections to this place through her convict forefathers, or through another, secret history? She sets out on a journey of exploration and takes us with her. Black and white politics, the processes of colonisation, family mythologies, generational conflict and the power of place are evoked as Patti weaves a story that is very personal and, at the same time, a universal story of country and belonging.
The Mind of a Thief is about identity, history, place and belonging and, perhaps most of all, about how we create ourselves through our stories.
University of Queensland Press (AUS), paperback, 9780702249365 (April)
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TWO STEPS FORWARD: STORIES
Irma Gold
It's easy to get stuck in a rut. What binds the characters in Two Steps Forward is an indomitable desire to climb their way out.Located in familiar Australian settings, this collection of stories brilliantly weaves together authentic characters and adverse scenarios. You'll encounter battlers, underdogs and people who are doing it tough. Folks to applaud and causes to cheer. In this moving, assured debut, Irma Gold celebrates courage and challenges our notions of what it takes to be happy.
Affirm Press (AUS), paperback, 9780980790474
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