To Sing of War by Catherine McKinnon, Fourth Estate, 2024
This is such an ambitious book, set in Papua New Guinea, Japan and America during the Second World War with five different POV narratives across the locations. The detail is down to a granular level and all rings so true. I can’t imagine the hours of research and travel needed to get it just right. The beauty of this book is that the content is fascinating and the writing is sublime (especially the parts set in PNG).
She mentions in her Acknowledgements that the PNG part is based on her parents’ experiences and of course I’m curious where the fiction begins and the fact ends. Her spread of characters goes from an Australian nurse, an Australia soldier, the wife of a Japanese soldier, a female scientist on the Manhattan Project all the way to Robert Oppenheimer.
Letters to our Robot Son by Cadance Bell, Ultimo Press, 2025
The Theory of Everything by Yumna Kassab, Ultimo Press, 2025
Guardian by Nick Milligan, 2025
Cadance, Yumna and Nick were on the panel of my Pushing the Boundaries session at last weekend’s Newcastle Writers Festival. They’re completely different books but all resisting classic conventions of genre.
Letters to our Robot Son is a beautiful cli-fi sci-fi story of Arto, a robot who is coming into his consciousness and searching for his family after most humans have been wiped out. It’s part of a bigger series of stories Cadance has been working on, where the print and audio versions aren’t even the same and the differences in them are part of the mystery of the bigger story.
The Theory of Everything is indeed that. It’s vast and unpredictable and like nothing I’ve ever read. It switches from satire to stream of consciousness and changes from novella to travel guide to dictionary. One of her characters “has this wish and it is her grandest and most secret wish that she locate a structure to capture the totality of existence.” And that feels like the size and ambition of the book.
Guardian is a quiet a compressed haunting set in the small town of Morpeth in the Hunter Valley. Agnes, a devout single mother, notices her son Sam is changing. He’s drawing lewd pictures and using language he shouldn’t know. When she hears him speaking an ancient language and sees a strange shadow in his room, she starts to wonder if he’s been possessed.
The Hiding Place by Kate Mildenhall, Scribner, 2025
He Would Never by Holly Wainwright, Macmillan, 2025
These two books were part of my Secrets Between Friends session at the Newcastle Writer’s Festival. They’re a great example of the same elements creating completely different books. Both books centre around a group of families going away on a camping trip. They both have insiders and outsiders, alliances and old tensions that surface as annually as their get togethers.
One group are in Victorian wilderness and the other are on the edge of an estuarine rainforest. Setting is used in both to create a sense of discord as everything unravels.
It was great to talk about territory and ideas of ownership, transitional times in life for both the adolescents and their parents, lying to oneself and where our ultimate loyalties lie when the shit hits the fans.
Painting Portraits of Everyone I’ve Ever Dated by Joseph Earp, Pantera Press 2025
I hoped to be finished this one in time for his session at last weekend’s Newcastle Writer’s Festival but alas. No. Not necessary anyway. He was a hoot and I’m a big believer in seeing a session without reading the book.
Ellie is an artist and is about to turn thirty. After winning a major painting prize, she starts to seriously spiral. She needs a new project and decides to paint a portrait of everyone she’s ever dated. It’s partly to get back in touch with an ex she’s still thinking about, partly because she needs something to do next and partly to just blow up her life.
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Nina Cullen 