Further to my speculation last week as to a possible longlist for the 2012 Miles Franklin Award comes Stephen Romei in "The Weekend Australian" with a few other suggestions. He adds:
What the Family Needed by Stephen Amsterdam
Spirit House by Mark Dapin
The Life by Malcolm Knox
The Cook by Wayne Macauley
Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett
Animal People by Charlotte Wood
Only three of which I know anything about.
What the Family Needed by Stephen Amsterdam
Spirit House by Mark Dapin
The Life by Malcolm Knox
The Cook by Wayne Macauley
Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett
Animal People by Charlotte Wood
Only three of which I know anything about.
I've read the Amsterdam and the McCauley and they are both really, really good. There's been a huge buzz on Facebook and Twitter and a bit in the press about Animal People, reportedly also really good (and Wood has just been getting better and better with each novel). Favel Parrett is very young and it's her first novel but it got a lot of good press.I understand that The Life is about surfing and people who like novels about surfing say it's superb -- Knox is a really good novelist too but I don't know that his work or rep travel all that far outside of Sydney. The Dapin is the only one I don't know anything about either.
I should really have added Wood's novel to my original list but it clean skipped my mind. First novels are always difficult to gauge from reviews as you can't be really sure how they rate. Some reviewers go a little easy on first novels, which is fair enough, but that only makes it hard for readers to judge them from reviewers' thoughts alone.
I really enjoyed Amsterdam's first book and actually nominated it for a Hugo Award last year, but hadn't heard much about his latest novel. I'll need to check it out.
Added to all that I haven't been as diligent in reading book reviews over the past year as I have been in the past.