Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Three years ago, a colleague came into our office, impatient to share a book she’d just devoured. Swayed by her enthusiasm, I took her up on the offer. And I’m so glad I did. In time, that little book wound its way through our entire department, toppling us all like dominoes as we each fell in love with Mohsin Hamid’s poetic and imaginative novel Exit West.

The story centres two young lovers, Nadia and Saeed, as war descends around them. The world is a familiar but strange place, as our protagonists join legions of desperate refugees migrating via portals. Yet Exit West is neither dark nor dystopic. It is full of humanity: love, empathy and hope.

Labelled ‘instantly canonical’ by The New Yorker, Exit West is still my most readily recommended and re-visited book. Some days I’ll pick it up and flick to my favourite passages, just to briefly savour its keen insights and graceful prose.

I suspect I’ll never get tired of sharing it.

- Bec

The Adversary by Ronnie Scott

In a creaky Brunswick sharehouse, our unnamed protagonist spends his summer reading, showering, loitering on Grindr and, at the behest of his housemate Dan, venturing to local pools. What follows is an incredibly fresh coming-of-age portrait that explores the intense, confusing friendships of young gay men in post-plebiscite Australia.

The strength of Ronnie Scott’s debut novel resides in its memorable and unreliable narrator, whose comic introspection I found funny, moving, and perfectly idiosyncratic. It is strange to recommend to others a book in which you recognise so much of yourself, but early reports suggest that I am not the only one; I think you can expect to see this book floating around for years to come. This is a warm, compelling Australian debut that sets relatable neuroses against a Melbourne summer that you can just smell.

- Jacob

Desire Lines by Felicity Volk

This is a very different love story that stretches over decades. It travels from the Arctic to Australia: Molong, in the Blue Mountains, and Canberra. Paddy and Evie meet accidentally in different places and different times, but always contact each other on a significant date. Their lives and interests are told with an interesting depth of knowledge of their respective fields. This is a fascinating and compelling story, told with a true understanding of human life and nature.

- Barb

The Loudness of Unsaid Things by Hilde Hinton

The Loudness of Unsaid Things is the story of a girl called Susie, struggling to find her place in the world. Susie experiences a turbulent upbringing, defined in part by her mother’s deteriorating mental health, leading to a life of displacement and tumult.

Hinton’s writing style is colloquial and engaging, familiar and inviting. Reading The Loudness of Unsaid Things is like listening to the tales of a friend with a fascinating life story and a special knack for storytelling. Depictions of Melbourne and Sydney in the 80s are authentic and vivid, evoking a real – somehow unromanticised – nostalgia for the counterculture of those times (even for younger readers who may not have experienced them firsthand).

This is a quintessentially Australian coming-of-age tale, with wonderfully complex, funny and heartbreaking female characters. As such, it’s perfect for fans of both Boy Swallows Universe and Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

— Bec

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

I first fell in love with Lily King when I read her award-winning 2014 novel Euphoria. Even today, thinking about the final lines of that book will bring a lump to my throat. So it was with great excitement, and a little trepidation, that I approached Writers & Lovers. From the first page, I knew I’d love this book too.

We meet central character Casey at a low-point in her life: she’s reeling from the death of her mother, living alone in a converted garden shed, working as a waitress and struggling to complete her first novel. On top of this, she’s just squandered a major opportunity in her career: while attending a prestigious writing residency, she fell into a passionate love affair with a fellow resident, and failed to write a single word (of course, he wrote plenty, and experienced swift success).

Following Casey as she drags herself up and out of this rut is richly satisfying. She is so relatable and vulnerable, you can’t help but absorb her heartbreaking lows and revel in her exhilarating highs.

It would be easy to summarise Writers & Lovers as either a modern romance or a self-referential book about writing – but it is so much more. It’s the kind of book that feels like pure fun, but has a real undercurrent of poignancy and emotional resonance. Another delightful, memorable read from Lily King.

— Bec

Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey

Like all the best conversations, Miranda Popkey’s debut novel volleys between a heart-to-heart and thrilling repartee. It’s witty, revealing and scintillating.

Topics of Conversation is a woman’s life portrayed in ten barely linked but independently satisfying parts. Each chapter represents a conversation, often graphic and unflinching, and always illuminating. The unnamed protagonist is flawed, verging on unlikeable, yet completely mesmerising. I couldn’t get enough of her. The central theme of the book is a conflict many of us experience: the desire to be independent and untethered, while also longing to be possessed by others.

The novel’s compartmentalised structure makes it perfect for lovers of short stories (think Alice Munro or Annie Proulx), or for people with limited time to read; you can dip in and out, or simply tear through the whole book like I did in two days.

— Bec

Weather by Jenny Offill

“What’s keeping you here?” he says. Please, I think, but no, I can’t even look at him. All these people. I have so many people, you wouldn’t believe.

Graduate school dropout and librarian Lizzie is increasingly worried about climate change in this book that doesn’t include the term ‘climate change’. Dissociating from her own fear, she psychologises those around her: neighbours, coworkers, academics, her addict brother, her god-fearing mother. Under Offill’s precise hand, the result is a sensitive, ironic, often very funny exploration of contemporary life and climate dread.

Short and sweet, Weather cuts close to home. I want to read it again for the first time.

- Jacob

The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan

This is the third book in McTiernan’s Cormac Reilly series. I confess I haven’t read the first two, but after reading The Good Turn I can’t wait to go back to the beginning. Purely out of curiosity, because this book stands perfectly on its own.

This gripping piece of crime fiction is flawlessly structured. McTiernan spins three seemingly separate threads and finally weaves them together with the most satisfying ending you could possibly ask for.

Anna and her daughter are keeping secrets and seeking refuge. Detective Cormac Reilly is under fire at work, and drawn into a scheme to uncover police corruption. Garda Peter Fisher is facing prosecution and forced out of Galway. In his small hometown Peter must work alongside his estranged father, who has his own crooked way of handling local matters.

The Good Turn is thrilling, transporting and thought provoking. I can’t recommend it enough. 

- Rhiannon

In the Clearing by J. P. Pomare

An absolute page-turner, Pomare’s latest novel takes inspiration from The Family, a cult active in Victoria from the 1960s to the 90s. This amazing Australian crime thriller provides a host of intriguing characters and a town full of secrets — some that will leave you with your jaw on the floor. Amy, a young girl in the cult, has her world shaken when a new girl enters the Clearing, and begins to question her beliefs. Freya, riddled with secrets from her past, tries to go about her daily life as a mum. Hearing of a child that goes missing, her own paranoia to protect her son intensifies.

As decades-old secrets come to light, this town’s dark history will come to a shocking explosion with twists and turns you won’t see coming. Can you ever truly escape a cult, or do you spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder?

— Nik

You think it, I'll say it by Curtis Sittenfeld

This is a collection of often funny, sometimes disturbing, always inciteful, short stories that I could not put down. It’s a seamless read. Sittenfeld slides effortlessly between narratives. Every character emerges fully realised and entirely different to those who came before.

These stories shine a spotlight on imperfection and centre around unresolved tension. They explore power, gender, motherhood, sexuality, mental health, infidelity, loneliness, love … the list goes on.

Highly recommended for fans of Sally Rooney, or anyone who likes to read anything. 

- Rhiannon

Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham

As with writers such as Michael Connelly and Laura Lippman, Michael Robotham served a lengthy apprenticeship as a journalist before branching out into crime fiction. And as with those writers, the world he creates has a distinctively 'lived in' feel. His new book 'Good Girl Bad Girl' in particular boasts the type of atmosphere that only comes from the accumulation of a wealth of technical and observational detail, along with the ability to distil such detail into a clear and direct prose style.

In the intertwining stories of Evie (a troubled girl with a chequered past), and Jodie Whitaker (a promising young athlete turned tragic murder victim) Robotham has fashioned the perfect framework within which to deliver his signature blend of pithy dialogue and procedural smarts. As the lives of these two women are drawn closer together, Robotham ratchets up the tension until the final blistering climax. (Which incidentally sets the scene for what should be a highly anticipated sequel.)

This is no mess, no fuss crime writing at its best.
- Dan

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood

In this riveting novel, Charlotte Wood takes a scalpel to the decades-long friendship of women in their seventies. Jude, Wendy and Adele have gathered for the last time at the weekender of Sylvie, recently deceased, to clear out a tonne of junk ahead of the house being sold. Like them, the house has seen better days, and their task serves as a metaphor for lives cluttered with memories and ancient resentments.

Like the author, I haven’t reached my seventies yet, but I found myself thinking: it’s not the end of the world, but you can sure see it from here. A sense of impending doom suffused my reading; a dread of ageing coupled with the certainty that the friendship is hurtling towards catastrophe. I even found myself turning a jaundiced eye on some of my own friendships. A disturbing and often depressing book, I couldn’t put it down. Wood’s beautiful, deceptively simple prose gallops along, with flashes of humour to make you laugh out loud.

The narrative shifts perspective constantly, showing the women through each other’s eyes and revealing their true feelings towards the others. Each is self-absorbed and self-justifying, skewering the others’ weaknesses until it is their turn to be dissected. How can any of us know another? Alliances form and dissolve, secrets are kept and exposed, relationships teeter on the brink and the feeling builds that this weekend will see their friendship disintegrate now that Sylvie is no longer there to hold it together.

All the women live alone and must fend for themselves. In many ways this friendship is all the love they have. Jude is uptight and repressed, a self-sufficient control freak whose icy demeanour repeatedly threatens to thaw and crack. The anger and disdain she frequently showers on her friends mask her deeper fear of being alone. Adele is vain, amoral and self-centred, nursing delusions about her faded beauty and career prospects; she is oblivious to the resentment she stirs up in her old friends. What drives her is fear of poverty, and her sense of entitlement means she will do whatever it takes, take whatever she wants and use whomever serves, to survive. Wendy’s chaotic behaviour and dishevelled appearance are symptomatic of a life in shreds. Her avowed refusal to wallow in the past is belied by her reminiscences about her beloved, long-dead husband, and fleeting fears about how she may have failed her children; and most of all by her clinging to her ancient dog, keeping him alive long after kindness and common sense would allow.

The dog, Finn, is demented and incontinent, and written so well you can almost smell him. The central character, he serves as a symbol for all their decrepitude, a focus for the disgust around the physical failings of old age, and also as a mirror that reflects different truths back at each of the women. Wendy is in trouble for bringing him along to the house; there is a gleaming white silk sofa that I feared for from its first appearance…

The writing is wonderful and there are some cracking set pieces: Wendy trapped in her decrepit, broken-down car on the freeway, trapped between a rock and a river of hurtling traffic, sweltering in the summer humidity with a large, terrified, incontinent dog pinning her down as she waits for roadside assistance; an excruciatingly cringeworthy dinner party; a vividly violent storm that brings the story to its climax. The characters are beautifully drawn. Mostly obnoxious and occasionally endearing , they reveal enough glimpses of their redeeming features to make the reader want to spend more time with them, and enough glimmers of hope to carry you through to the end.

- Deb

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Perhaps best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Olive Kitteridge, this was my first foray into Elizabeth Strout’s fantastic prose and most certainly won’t be my last. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016, My Name is Lucy Barton tells the story of a female protagonist recovering from complications of surgery in hospital over a five-week period. During this time, her estranged mother visits and Lucy is forced to confront their strained and troubled relationship, which has informed all other aspects of her life.

This quiet, introspective novel creeps up on you with keenly observant and deeply human reflections on the fragile mother-daughter relationship. Not to be deceived by its short length, this book packs an emotional punch that kept thinking about it for days after. A beautiful novel crammed full of keen insights into the human condition.

- Georgia

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

This #1 New York Times bestseller tells the story of Michelle McNamara’s search to uncover California’s ‘Golden State Killer’, a predator who for more than ten years committed fifty sexual assaults and ten murders. He then disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and detectives.

McNamara, a self-made true crime journalist, studied police reports, interviewed victims and collaborated with a dedicated online community to unmask the mysterious criminal. When Michelle passed away unexpectedly in 2016, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark was finished by her husband and fellow true crime aficionados, but not before Michelle’s own work helped lead current investigators and detectives to arrest the man responsible for these crimes.

A surprisingly moving and exhilarating true crime book that demonstrates the power of dedication and collaborative community, and makes you wonder what other mysteries can be solved in this new digital age.

A must read for true crime lovers.

- Georgia

Circe by Madeline Miller

In this divine return to the world of Greek myth, Miller gifts an unforgettable voice to an overlooked character. Circe — a villain, a memory, a footnote — is granted space to tell her story.

An immortal with the heart of a human, Circe proves a perfect guide for the tangled paths of tales long told. Legends are unpicked and resewn. Beloved heroes emerge fresh and flawed as Circe takes your hand, digs in her nails, draws a little blood, and plummets from the brutal brilliance of the sun god’s court to the earthly reality of her island prison.

Hope, love, revenge, monsters, motherhood… Magic and mythology pressed so deeply into the dirt you’ll wonder if it really happened. I loved it!

— Rhiannon

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida, The Nickel Boys follows Elwood Curtis, a Black teenager galvanised by the civil rights movement and wrongly convicted of car theft, during his time at the Nickel Academy for Boys. At just over two hundred pages, this slight but compelling book speaks to racism, whiteness, masculinity, trauma, remembrance and forgetting while interrogating Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for African Americans to love their oppressors. Highly recommended.

- Jacob

The Collaborator by Diane Armstrong

It’s March 1944 and Adolf Eichmann is intent on deporting to Auschwitz the last remaining major group of Jews in Europe – the Hungarian Jews. Eichmann is considering an audacious proposal to save over 1600 of these people in exchange for 10,000 trucks to be supplied by the Allies and for use by the Nazis on the Eastern Front. The intermediary in this negotiation is Miklos Nagy, a fictionalised Reszo Kasztner - a figure who, to this day, evokes polarising views about his purpose, methodology and morality.

The book takes us to three different times zones and places – Sydney and Israel 2005, Tel Aviv 1954 and Budapest 1944. Using well-developed fictional characters, Diane unravels the story of the train and its passengers, the impact on Hungarian Jewry and, later, on the fledgling Israeli government. Using her imaginative skills, Diane is able to realistically evoke scenes and conversations involving the real-life personalities and with finely tuned antennae, she explores the moral ambiguity of the choices people make ‘in extremis’ and the misconceptions that arise.

The Collaborator invites the reader to ponder the dilemmas that war brings to the people affected while simultaneously taking the reader on a thrilling emotional journey leading to a spectacular dénouement.

- Rita

The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

Martin Embry, a uni student has persevered in requesting Claude Ballard for an interview about his famous movie “The Electric Hotel” of which there are no known copies. Claude agrees finally.
In 1985 the Lumiere brothers are demonstrating their forty six second moving film, the first ever to be projected so that groups could watch, a ground breaking improvement on Edison’s Kinetoscope. Claude is transfixed, smitten with the impact of this revelation, his life changed forever.
Dominic Smith’s new novel is an historical and fascinating story of the birth of the movie industry told through the life and love of Claude. It takes us through the tortuous pain of love, creation, business and the war.
I found this book fascinating from both an historical perspective and loved it through its characters. A great story.

- Barb

The Force by Don Winslow

Sergeant Denny Malone can't remember when he crossed the line, but he knows there's no going back. It's a familiar moral conundrum; still the manner in which it is lived (and suffered) through by Malone over the course of this brisk and rivetingly visceral book makes Don Winslow's 'The Force' essential reading for crime fans - or indeed, anyone curious about the genre. Even in a crime fiction landscape already packed with grizzled, taciturn dudes, Malone carves a lonely path. Lacking the cunning of a Bosch or Rebus, Malone aproaches obstacles with the subtlety of a human battering ram. And yet, in contrast to the superhuman capacity for violence and emotional detachment exhibited by a Jack Reacher-type hero, Malone is capable of genuine human relationships. Indeed, it's these relationships (particularly those between Malone and his fellow cops - his second family) that give rise to the moral questions that drive the action. Many reviewers have drawn comparisons between this book and Mario Puzo's classic mafia-themed novels. The comparison is apt, if only because it raises the question of how the members of a particular moral tribe (whether this applies to the crooks or the cops) attempt to justify their actions as a necessary means of 'protecting their own'. As Winslow's book shows, such justifications can only go so far; at some point, the things we do to protect others from the consequences of our mistakes risk alienating us from those same people entirely. Will Denny Malone heed this lesson before it's too late? Pick up a copy and find out!

- Dan

The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Alexander McCall Smith

Ulf Varg is a detective. Smart, revered by his peers, and owner of a lip reading dog and a light grey Saab.
In the Department of Sensitive Crimes, McCall Smith, considers, through Ulf, the idea of bringing ‘…to the surface the things that are below the surface’.
For those unfamiliar with Scandinavian literature, and culture, McCall Smith paints a picture of a way of life that, while existing within the same system about which we whinge, is characterised by values of equality, horizontal social fabrics, and community. Its a place that seems like that of a by-gone era. Against this backdrop, and many philosophical musings, Ulf finds simple pleasures to content him in his post-divorce life. He listens carefully. He respects the values and concerns of others, even when it pains him. And finally, he carefully dissects the uncertainties and perplexities of the world around him, one sensitive crime at a time.

- Ben