‘Literary scandal', ‘joke-a-minute', ‘captivating': the best Australian books out in May

The Guardian

03-05-2025

Fiction, Simon & Schuster, $34.99
This debut novel luxuriates in the lies it weaves. Dominic Amerena is a confident storyteller, jumping between the novel's two narrators with ease. One, a down-on-his-luck writer searching for a story. The other, a reclusive Australian novelist who disappeared from the public eye at the height of her career.
When he recognises her at a local pool, he knows that if he can convince her to tell him the story of her brilliant, controversial work, it will be his one-way ticket to success. Literary scandal, feminist fury, love, betrayal – I Want Everything has it all and then some. – Bec Kavanagh
Memoir, Picador, $17.99
Hannah Kent's newest work of memoir charts her Adelaide childhood, her first trip to Iceland as a 17-year-old Rotary exchange student, and her ensuing enchantment with the country, inseparable from her own artistic blossoming. The behind-the-scenes view of the creative processes that led to her award-winning 2013 novel, Burial Rites, is interesting reading in its own right, but especially moving is Kent's palpable tenderness towards the novel's subject – Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland.
As with Agnes' voice in Burial Rites, Kent's narration is immediate, intimate, and never less than captivating. – Adele Dumont
Fiction, UQP, $32.99
It's 1910: Florence Nightingale is 90 years old and on her deathbed, restlessly floating through dreams and memories. A mysterious young man, Silas Bradley, arrives at her bedside, claiming that they have met many times – in Crimea, Turkey and Scutari. But he's too young to have been there half a century ago, and a fearful Nightingale suspects he's hiding his true purpose.
What follows is historical fiction that draws on the details of Nightingale's life both before and after she became the founder of modern nursing. Laura Elvery writes with a lyrical and elegiac voice, lovely and elegant in its restraint; a very atmospheric read. – Sian Cain
Memoir, Allen & Unwin, $34.99
Food journalist Candice Chung's debut begins with a prologue that's more like a poem: 'What can I get you? And is everything OK? … Here – let me take these things away. At the restaurant, we hear all the things we want our lovers to say.' After Chung's 13-year relationship ends, she starts dating again – not just men but also her Cantonese parents, whom she reconnects with after a 'decade-long rupture', bringing them along to the restaurants she critiques.
A thoughtful and compelling pastiche of fragments, lists, and literary reflections, Chung's memoir revolves around her personal history with food, family and culture, but also around writing: Deborah Levy, Nora Ephron, Helen Garner and Craig Claiborne are all name-checked, and their influence is felt throughout. – Steph Harmon
Non-fiction, ABC Books, $34.99
This is not the war book John Lyons and Sophie de Clezio expected to write. On two trips to Ukraine as the ABC's global affairs editor, Lyons – the author of Balcony over Jerusalem – serviced the grind of breaking news. On his third trip – taken during his holidays with his photographer partner, de Clezio – there was time to find the real Ukraine at war, via its citizens.
In this way, A Bunker in Kyiv is a tribute to the millions of Ukrainians who, as Lyons writes, wake each day with the credo: 'What can I do for the war effort today?' While it still maps the geopolitical elements of the three-year-old war – and the introduction of the new X factor, Trump - this story belongs to the extraordinary people of Ukraine, standing strong against an uncertain future. - Lucy Clark
Non-fiction, Penguin, $36.99
Both authors of Broken Brains – who were my colleagues at Mamamia 12 years ago – have lived through incredibly difficult illnesses. This can make for tough reading at times, but Jamila Rizvi and Rosie Waterland's accounts of sickness, physical and mental, serve a purpose beyond gawking.
The book contrasts Rizvi's experience with a rare brain tumour to Waterland's complex mental health issues to argue that the body-mind distinction is neither fair nor accurate. Waterland no more chose her traumatic childhood than Rizvi did her tumour. Mixing memoir with reporting, the book highlights gaps in Australia's healthcare system and offers patients and their carers new possibilities for navigating illness. – Alyx Gorman
Fiction, Ultimo, $34.99
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I just loved Cadance Bell's memoir The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody when it was released back in 2022; a humorous and moving account of growing up trans in rural New South Wales. 'I suspect we'll read a lot more from her,' I wrote then – and here is some more: an impressively ambitious left turn into science fiction.
This heartfelt novel opens as a robot, Arto, wakes to find himself alone in a desolate future Australia, humanity seemingly long gone. He sets out to discover what has happened, his only company a cat and a certain movie star called 'Huge Jacked Man' whose adverts are still playing in the empty streets. Arto eventually stumbles on another robot, Indi, who may be his sister – and the reason Earth has been obliterated. - SC
Fiction, Macmillan, $34.99
A group holiday goes terribly awry when an adult man is accused of groping a teenage girl. While this premise might sound a bit like The Slap, He Would Never is as much a bad man thriller as it is a multi-family drama. Wainwright's fifth novel centres on five women who met at a mother's group 14 years earlier, for whom camping has become an annual tradition.
The book jumps between perspectives and time periods at a page-turning pace, and as the dynamics leading up to the incident unfold, the stakes of its aftermath get higher. That the book scored an endorsement from Liane Moriarty is fitting – it mines similar veins to Moriarty's work, with an echoing dramatic conclusion. – AG
Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $34.99
Better known for his work on TV and main stages, Toby Schmitz's witty and fast-paced debut novel is tricky to summarise. A social satire set in the roaring 20s, a murder mystery on board a luxury ocean liner, and a book partly narrated by a fairly smug boat.
On board is a smorgasbord of upper-class caricatures, which Schmitz absolutely revels in: landed gentry, socialites and social climbers, drowning in cognac, snappy retorts and horrifying racism. They're too caught up in themselves to much mind about the gruesome death of a Bengali deckhand – but the ship's detective is useless, and more bodies are piling up… – SH
Memoir, UNSW, $34.99
In the opening chapters of this lyrical, trans-generational memoir, Micaela Sahhar poses a question: 'How do you tell a story you are reaching to understand?' The dilemma animates the rest of the book about her family, who were displaced by the Nakba in 1948 and resettled in far-flung corners of the world, including Melbourne and Adelaide.
In dense but beautiful prose, Sahhar pulls together a story, full of gaps and questions, about her Palestinian family, their memories and their connection to home. – Celina Ribeiro
Fiction, Pantera, $34.99
We open on a great misfortune. Ellie has just won a major painting prize, which means two things: more eyes than ever are fixed on her career, and she now has to carry a giant novelty check all night. The art world feels increasingly vampiric, her agent is breathing down her neck, and everything feels too much. Can you blame her for embarking on the deranged project that gives this book its title?
In his hilarious debut, occasional Guardian contributor Joseph Earp (who moonlights as a painter himself) probes the pains of love and art. It's a joke-a-minute novel that captures the mannered rituals of any inner-city creative scene with stunning wit – and scathing accuracy. – Michael Sun
Cookbook, Murdoch Books, $55
Chef Thi Le named her first cookbook after a term that refers to the Vietnamese diaspora. For Le, who was born in a Malaysian refugee camp and grew up in western Sydney, she is leaning into the experience of living between worlds by sharing 100-plus recipes that explore Vietnamese flavours and techniques.
She celebrates Australian produce and US and Cajun influences in a spicy seafood boil-up; Cambodian rice noodles in her Phnom Penh egg noodles recipe; and French colonial history in her coconut flan. She wrote the book with her partner, Jia-Yen Lee, who also co-owns Le's celebrated Melbourne venues Anchovy, Ca Com and Jeow. – Emma Joyce