I’ve had a truly fantastic couple of reading months, and finding a bunch of great novels has definitely helped inspire me to try to write better. When I looked back at my library borrowing list over the last weeks, I realised that I’ve had a sudden trend towards reading Australian novels – partly in preparation for the Perth Writers Festival but also because Australian writers are producing such good stuff!

When I lived overseas, obviously it wasn’t that easy to keep up with the Australian writing scene but now I’m finally getting back in touch with it – and it’s a real pleasure. I thought I’d share some of these recent great reads with you – both for my Aussie readers who have probably heard about these books and those of you in other far flung corners who might enjoy hearing what Australia has to offer.

• First up, you might remember how excited I was when the library emailed me to say that my reserved copy of Helen Garner’s The Spare Room had arrived – and my excitement was well-founded. This was a surprisingly easy read in that I’d expected it to be a bit more depressing – it is, after all, about a woman’s friend dying pretty much right in front of her, slowly and painfully – but it’s much more than that, because it’s so honest and, without meaning to be cliched, “refreshing”. It’s the kind of book that makes me really admire that a writer can make the writing process seem so effortless – you almost don’t notice the words.
• I was even more excited to finally get a copy of Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap (still unavailable on Amazon – why is the world being denied this book?). I can’t say enough about this book, it was definitely my favourite of 2008. Any writer who wants to write about normal, modern-day life (like I do) has to read this – as does anyone living in the Australia of the early 21st century, or anyone who wants to know what it’s like. It’s brutally honest, the kind of book that tells you all the gory truth of everyday life in a way that makes you cringe about some parts of your own life. Told through the viewpoints of a series of characters, it’s also incredible that Tsiolkas makes each character so clear for the reader, in a story that has the potential to be confusing with quite a large cast of characters who are all equally important. If you’re overseas and can’t get The Slap yet (I’ll update this when you can!) then start with Loaded to get a flavour of his work.
• My next couple of Aussie authors have Western Australian connections, although neither can strictly be called locals – but with a lot of their fiction being set around my home state, I have an extra degree of interest in them. The first is Robert Drewe, and in the last month I read both his semi-fictional The Shark Net: Memories and Murder and his short story collection, The Rip. The Shark Net is set in the Perth that my parents came to when they moved to the city for work as teenagers, so it was great for me to get a picture of life at that time. The short stories in The Rip are also more engaging than any short stories I’ve read in a long time.
• Finally, I just finished Julienne van Loon’s Beneath the Bloodwood Tree, her second novel after her Vogel/Allen & Unwin-winning Road Story. I read Road Story some time ago and hadn’t connected that this was the same writer until I read some of the blurb about it, but I remember really enjoying it. Beneath the Bloodwood Tree is set in the Pilbara region of Western Australia where I’ve spent a bit of time; it reminded me in some ways of my favourite Nikki Gemmell novel Cleave. Great characters, good plot and enough left up to the reader’s imagination to keep it interesting.

Well, I hope that I can inspire some of my non-Aussie readers to try out some Australian literature – we might not be too famous for it, but I promise there’s some great stuff. And a challenge to my Australian readers – please let me know what great Aussie novels I’ve been missing out on – leave me a note in the comments.