No matter how far away distant lands are, they are made more accessible within the pages of a book! Books can show us a very different world, culture and customs, or a different insight to places we may already know well.
Continuing our series of travelling in style and comfort, from our very own reading nook, we are diving back into the Women’s Prize library to bring you the very best books by women set in Australia.
Longlisted for the 2014 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Set between Britain and Australia, All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld follows the story of Jake, a woman who has travelled across the world, essentially to disappear. Jake tends sheep with her dog Dog and lives a remote, quiet life. Her present is interspersed with the story of her childhood in Australia, and Wyld is a master at building pace, until more than one mystery is slowly brought to light.
Longlisted for the 2003 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Set in 1977, Sonya Hartnett’s novel follows the story of Adrian McPhee who having been abandoned by his parents now lives with his Grandmother and Uncle in rural Australia. Unsurprisingly Adrian is a timid, reclusive child, plagued by many fears which aren’t helped by the story of three children who’ve disappeared after going out for ice cream in a nearby neighbourhood. This is a heart-wrenching and affecting novel that will leave you thinking about the characters for weeks afterwards.
Shortlisted for the 2006 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Carrie Tiffany’s first novel set in 1934, begins with the hope and promise of scientific idealism as Jean and Robert fall in love aboard the ‘Better Farming Train’ a government initiative to offer advice and to those living on the land after the Great War. You can’t fail to be swept away in the witty prose covering the challenges of farming, the character of small towns and the stark and terrifying beauty of the Australian landscape.
Longlisted for the 2009 Women’s Prize for Fiction
In The Household Guide to Dying, Debra Adelaide has created an irrepressible heroine in Delia Bennet. Delia is a writer, modelled after her own icon Mrs Beeton and with only a short time left to live. Preoccupied with finalising her affairs, Delia stumbles upon the need for a manual, the exact sort of book she has spent her lifetime writing. At times heartbreaking, hilarious and philosophically challenging you won’t regret reading this darkly funny book.
Longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction
In Kate Grenville’s latest novel we meet Dolly Maunder who is indeed restless. Dolly is a smart, weyward woman unable to sit comfortably in the box society has put her in and in Australia in the 1890’s this proves to be a problem. This is a hope-filled novel about perseverance and our ability to forge a life different to the one we’ve been born into if we’re willing to fight for that right.
