Best Fiction Books

Reviewed by Demelza Jones, Kiran Dass, Maggie Trapp, Ethan Sills and Dionne Christian

THE TESTAMENTS

by Margaret Atwood (Chatto & Windus, $48)

Readers of The Handmaid’s Tale have waited 34 years to discover lead character Offred’s fate in the frighteningly recognisible totalitarian state of Gilead — at least in Atwood’s world and not in the television series based on her wildly popular novel about a religious takeover of the US Government. While Atwood sprinkles tantalising clues throughout this sequel, it’s not the story of Offred (pictured) told here but equally compelling, possibly more chilling ones, by three female narrators. You’ll read it with your heart in your throat as, once again, Atwood, who was joint winner of this year’s Booker Prize with Bernadine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other, conjures up images of a world gone mad. (DC)

OLIVE, AGAIN

by Elizabeth Strout (Viking, $35)

This is the eagerly anticipated follow up to Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2008 “novel in stories”, Olive Kitteridge, which comprised 13 linked pieces told from a variety of perspectives. Readers will be thrilled by the return of the brusque but endearing Olive. She pulls no punches and is a character that found her way into reader’s hearts, helped along by the miniseries adaptation which starred a pitch-perfect Frances Mcdormand as the titular character. When we last left Olive, her husband Henry had just died. Now, she is settling into life with her second husband Jack, a Republican. It’s beautifully observed social realism. With an even hand, Strout tackles class issues and prejudice, and explores themes of regret, acceptance, the parent/child dynamic, and hope in this luminous meditation on loneliness and relationships. Strout is a pro stylist whose crisp and beautiful writing is shot through with black humour and compassion. Here, she writes with warmth, emotional depth and shows she is still terrific at capturing the complexities of character. (KD)

THE ORCHARDIST’S DAUGHTER

by Karen Viggers (Allen & Unwin, $33) et in Tasmania, Miki is being held captive by her brother; Leon is the park ranger in a town that treats him as an outsider and young Max continuously yearns for her dad’s attention. Karen Viggers skilfully covers the personal and the political — domestic violence, conservation, even facial tumour disease in Tasmanian devils — packing it full of emotion to reach a thrilling conclusion that will make it difficult to put the book down. (DJ)

POSTSCRIPT

by Cecelia Ahern (Harper Collins, $33)

This is the sequel to PS I Love You — set seven years after Holly’s beloved husband, Gerry, died. Holly is still coming to terms with being without him. Just as life seems to be moving on, Holly offers to speak about her experience with loss on her sister’s podcast. I loved this book but be prepared for tears. The ending is the absolute best. (DJ)

FOR THE GOOD TIMES

by David Keenan (Faber & Faber $37)

This second novel from Scottish writer David Keenan is a harshly brutal but also romantic and sometimes comic insider’s account of The Troubles in 1970s Belfast. At the heart of this book is a celebration of the shared experience in small towns; it’s about community, family and the meaning of faith. While there is violence, there is much tenderness and nuanced bursts of well-timed humour. Exhilarating and phantasmagorical, this cold-eyed novel with a wild and loyal heart is volatile and vividly realised by Keenan, a thrilling and singular voice in contemporary fiction. (KD)

THE PEARL THIEF

by Fiona Mcintosh (Penguin, $26)

Sad — and by no means for the faint-hearted — the story begins in 1939, where a Jewish family of seven are living through Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Father Samuel Kassowicz is trying all he can to protect his family, even sending his youngest boy, Petr, on a Kindertransport to safety. In 1963, the Kassowicz family pearls are uncovered and we learn the devastating tale of loss and determined revenge spanning decades of the Kassowicz family post-world War II. It’s an intense read, one I’ll always remember. (DJ)

THE EX

by Nicola Moriarty (Harpercollins, $35)

Georgia, Luke and his ex-girlfriend Cadence are at the centre of this captivating and suspenseful love triangle. Georgia thinks she has finally met “the one” but, as her relationship with Luke blooms quickly, she’s forced to deal with threatening notes from his ex, Cadence, a ransacked apartment and threats to the job she loves. Predictable in its first few chapters, twists and turns started coming and kept me captivated. It’s a story of love, betrayal and revenge with a nail-biting climax and my favourite kind of ending. (DJ)

LIFE BEFORE

by Carmel Reilly (Allen & Unwin, $33)

Lori Spyker is met outside her Melbourne home by a police offer, with news that her brother Scott, whom she hasn’t heard from in 20 years, has been injured and she is the next of kin. This brings back what Lori has long tried to forget. The book starts in the past, as told by Lori’s mum, and leaves readers wondering what exactly happened the night Lori made some fateful decisions. Life soon catches up with Lori and two beautifully interwoven storylines come together to paint a picture of survivors’ guilt and the damage it can do to someone years later. (DJ)

BOWLAWAY

by Elizabeth Mccracken (Jonathan Cape, $37)

After waiting years for her next novel, Elizabeth Mccracken fans new and old will rejoice at the droll, inviting story of Bertha Truitt and candlepin bowling, ghost hunting, contortionism, kleptomania, tall tales, spontaneous combustion, melancholia, confidence men, alcoholism, orphans, deep love, and profound loss. This is a story about small-town America, and, in typical Mccracken fashion, it veers into magical realism, time travel, ghost stories, spiritual conversion narratives, and intimate reckonings with love and grief. Mccracken’s trademark fabulism never fails to delight, and the pure pleasure of language threaded through the novel will send you reeling. (MT)

DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT

Lucy Ellman

(Galley Beggar/text Publishing, $40)

Clocking in at around 1040 pages, depending on which edition you have, Lucy Ellman’s eighth novel is comprised of just eight near-endless sentences. But don’t be alarmed or put off; Ducks, Newburyport is immensely readable and is the perfect book for your long, deep-dive summer read. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and won the Goldsmiths Prize — the literary prize that celebrates fiction that opens up new possibilities for the novel form. Our character is a retired Ohio college teacher in recovery from cancer. She bakes pies in her kitchen (the descriptions of food are amazing) and we gain access to her inner world as she muses over what it means to live in Trump’s America. Written in a compelling stream of consciousness narrative style, the title comes from an incident where our narrator’s mother was saved by her sister from drowning in a lake in Newburyport, Massachusetts after chasing some ducks. Sharp, witty and enquiring, Ducks, Newburyport gives Ulysses a run for its money. It is a novel to be celebrated, a novel for our times and people will still be talking about it for decades to come. (KD)

A MISTAKE

by Carl Shuker (Victoria University Press, $30)

“Mistakes may always happen,” it’s true, and how her colleagues judge the way gifted Wellington surgeon Elizabeth Taylor handles the fallout of her own and others’ errors of judgment reveals much about gender roles in the workplace, about national standards in light of international pressures, about readers’ feelings about character likability and about what it might mean to consider versions of the truth. A Mistake is the story of Taylor, who behaves in ways perceived by her superiors to be unorthodox. As the novel progresses it becomes clear that those who can will seek to punish her for the mistakes she is, rightly or wrongly, adjudged to have made. In exposing the minefields in Taylor’s life, Carl Shuker also picks at the encrusted layers of assumption that all New Zealanders in this book operate within. (MT)

SALTWATER

by Jessica Andrews (Sceptre, $38)

If you’re suffering a Sally Rooney hangover and wondering where to turn next, Saltwater is the book for you and my novel of 2019. Jessica Andrews’ writing is intensely beautiful as she examines the intensity and complexities of the mother/daughter dynamic, class, the body, fragility and place. It’s a work of autofiction, it’s working class and is presented as intensely beautiful, clipped lyrical pieces. This novel crackles with raw energy and real feeling. (KD)

I AM SOVEREIGN

by Nicola Barker (William Heinnemann, $38)

Four people walk into a house in coastal Wales for a 20-minute property viewing. It’s hardly the most thrilling premise, but, in her 13th novel, Nicola Barker has found a way to take even the most mundane and unexciting of tasks and mine it for all its psychological glory. This is no simple house-viewing. For all four characters, it is a direct challenge to their personal philosophies and those inner conflicts rise to the surface, causing every minor event that occurs to mutate into an assault on their entire beings. It’s a joyously witty novella that gets more extreme and outlandish with every page, and the more Barker openly loses control of her characters, the more you know this is a writer at the top of their game. (ES)

GHOST WALL

by Sarah Moss (Granta, $23)

At only 149 pages, this mesmerising novel is slim but packs a hefty punch. Silvie, 17, and her mother are coerced by her domineering father to participate in an encampment run by an archaeology professor. It’s the height of a blisteringly hot summer in rural Northumberland, an area known for its dark history of ritual sacrifice. Silvie’s father, a bus driver and an amateur historian, is obsessed with British history and it’s not long before we realise that behind this obsession is an unhinged dark nationalism. He hates any form of modernity; he hates anything that is not British. So, the subtext of this novel is the dangers of Brexit, abuse, family violence, ritual, sacrifice and the natural world. It’s an atmospheric and elemental novel where the natural world is vividly evoked with its arcane, pastoral setting. Ghost Wall is a tremendous mood piece, perfect to be read in one gulp on a summer’s afternoon. (KD)

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

by Sally Hepworth (Macmillan Publishers, $35)

Diana comes across as narcissistic and heartless, with a very distant relationship to her daughter-in-law, Lucy, and an even more complex relationship with her own children. The story jumps back and forth, taking in different perspectives so readers learn about each of the characters in detail, including why Diana is the way she is. When she’s found dead, the family find themselves turning on each other in an attempt to solve what’s best described as their very own Little Big Lies mystery. (DJ)

IMPROVEMENT

by Joan Silber (Allen & Unwin, $33)

With this novel, Joan Silber confirms her place alongside evocative writers of daily life like Alice Munro. Reyna, a single mother in New York, tells the story of her connection with her adventurous Aunt Kiki, who once lived in Turkey. We’re then ushered into the lives of several complex, hopeful, confused, misunderstood characters as the inconsequential choices they make lead to events that profoundly impact the lives of other characters. They make mistakes, they hurt others but we see them each, in their own way, attempting improvement. The wonder of this novel is that though we watch as the characters singly do what they feel they need to do, we come to understand in ways they can’t that their actions are actually not done in isolation. The novel reveals to us the intricate, fragile, provisional web of connections between all these single, yet connected, lives. (MT)