Madeleine Gray

Sydney

Freelance Writer at Freelance

Author of GREEN DOT, out w @AllenAndUnwin (2023), @wnbooks (2024), @HenryHolt (2024). PhD at @OfficialUoM, book critic.

Articles

Consider Yourself Kissed

2 months ago | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Madeleine Gray

The title of Jessica Stanley’s sophomore novel, Consider Yourself Kissed, initially reads as a bit trite, a bit twee. The cover of the novel, with its cartoon bird and cherries, seems to confirm the “women’s fiction” energy the title gives off. The explanation for the title, however, speaks to the overall tone of Stanley’s novel. It is droll, smart and cheekily literary.
Green Dot - Madeleine Gray (Buch) – lesen.de

Mar 26, 2025 | lesen.de | Madeleine Gray |Barry Lewis |George Eliot |John Steinbeck

A BEST BOOK OF 2024 IN STYLIST, DAILY MAIL, THE I, IRISH TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND REDHera is in her mid-twenties, which seems young to everyone except people in their mid-twenties. Since leaving school, she has been trying to kick and scream into existence a life she cares about, but with little success so far. Until she meets Arthur. He works with her, he is older than her, he is also married.
After the Great Storm

Feb 14, 2025 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Madeleine Gray

People can be snobs about science fiction, and I admit that until a few years back I was one of them. Meanwhile, I had absolutely no problem seeing the literary merit in magical realism, romance fiction – arguably the most implausible genre of all – even fantasy. Science fiction seemed like a negatively masculine genre to me – a place where men could nerd out fantasising about high-tech apocalypses and cyborg women with innumerable breasts.
Didion & Babitz

Dec 6, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Madeleine Gray

Lili Anolik is a journalist who enjoys writerly gossip, and so, dear reader, am I. Didion & Babitz is Anolik’s dual biography of Los Angeles counterculture chroniclers Joan Didion and Eve Babitz and, whatever else it may be, it is indubitably literary gossip of the highest order. I first came across Anolik’s work in 2019 when she published a riveting oral history of the writers who studied at Bennington College in the 1980s.
The Burrow

Oct 18, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Madeleine Gray

If you understand something well, you can explain it simply. Melanie Cheng understands ordinary people – their love, their quiet desperation, their hope – and the restrained, elegant prose of The Burrow is testament to this. The novel is slim and each word is carefully chosen. It feels as if every sentence is a distillation.
Cherrywood

Sep 27, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Madeleine Gray

A Scottish businessman at the beginning of the 20th century. A magical, moving pub in 1990s Melbourne. Ships. Ghosts. A lot of talk about wood – not a metaphor, just wood. Hubris and other human fallibilities. I wanted to love Jock Serong’s Cherrywood – for the ambitiousness and reach of its plot, for its parallels with Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree series, for its consideration of colonialism and gentrification – but it left me cold. Cherrywood works on two timelines.
Brat summer felt like relief, like freedom. Pity it was killed, as many good things are, by a bank

Aug 11, 2024 | msn.com | Madeleine Gray

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Brat summer felt like relief, like freedom. Pity it was killed, as many good things are, by a bank | Madeleine Gray

Aug 11, 2024 | theguardian.com | Madeleine Gray

They say that the dead never really leave us, as long as they live on in our hearts. And so it is for Brat summer. She was the bra strap we refused to obscure, and the bra we didn’t wear at all. She was the cigarette butt that burnt a hole in our sheets. She was the fifth bottle of wine at a dinner for two. And now – she’s gone. She was killed, as many good things are, by a bank. I’ll explain.
A Perfect Day to Be Alone

May 31, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Madeleine Gray

Nanae Aoyama’s second novel, Hitori biyori, was originally published in Japan in 2007 and won one of that country’s most prestigious literary awards, the Akutagawa Prize. Seventeen years after its original publication, it has been translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood and published by an imprint of Hachette as A Perfect Day to Be Alone. Why this novel? Why now? It’s a story that feels extremely “of the moment”. Our disillusioned young female protagonist is Mita Chizu.
Abbey Lay’s Lead Us Not

Mar 29, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Madeleine Gray

Reading Abbey Lay’s debut novel, I was beset by a case of déjà vu. The narrative follows protagonist Millie, a smart but insecure teenager who develops an obsession with her thespian classmate Olive. Their relationship is saturated in unease – there is always a sense that something important is not being said. At sleepovers they philosophise about sex, intimacy and self-knowledge, and at school they ignore each other.