AustLit

'Miranda Nation’s directorial debut, Undertow, begins with power, promise and tension, but it ends up drowning in its own contradictory styles. By Christos Tsiolkas.' 

'British nature writer Robert Macfarlane describes desire lines as “paths and tracks made over time by the wishes and feet of walkers … contrary to design or planning”. Felicity Volk’s second novel traces such a contrary path in the unconventional love story of Evie Waddell and Paddy O’Connor: theirs is a grand passion that winds its heady course across continents over five turbulent decades.' (Introduction)

'Every so often we’re reminded with a jolt that Australian realism doesn’t – to use Patrick White’s phrase – have to be dun-coloured. In fact it can be kinky, it can be ludic, it can be in the tradition of that shaggiest of shaggy-dog stories, Furphy’s Such Is Life, which begins with that immortal and immemorially appealing Australian sentiment, “Unemployed at last!”' (Introduction)

'Set in 1990s Cabramatta, The Coconut Children opens with charismatic 16-year-old Vince Tran celebrating his release from two years in juvenile detention. His laughter, “thundering through the entire neighbourhood”, drips with stolen homegrown mango as his friends push him in a shopping trolley. The procession passes his childhood friend Sonny Vuong, who dreams of being whisked away from her emotionally unpredictable mother. Instead, the dutiful Sonny finds solace in bodice-rippers, schoolyard gossip with her best friend and conversations with her good-natured father and sassy grandmother.'(Introduction)