Stephen Romei

2 months ago | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Stephen Romei

Maryrose Cuskelly’s second novel, The Campers, has all the hallmarks of a television miniseries. It’s tense yet humorous and pushes the right buttons, from white middle-class privilege to female sexual desire. The Melbourne-based author’s 2022 debut fiction, The Cane, is outback noir. Her second moves to the inner city and explores how far NIMBYism can go. When your backyard is exclusive, what will you do to keep out interlopers?

2 months ago | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Stephen Romei

Mandy Beaumont’s 2022 debut novel, The Furies, is a powerful account of a young woman, maltreated from childhood, who decides she has had enough. Cynthia becomes a “woman about to start a mighty war”. She works in an abattoir in Queensland and has access to sharp knives. Beaumont’s second novel, The Thrill of It, retells the crimes of English-born Australian serial killer John Wayne Glover, the “Granny Killer”, who murdered six elderly women on Sydney’s north shore between 1989 and 1990.

Oct 11, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Stephen Romei

Alex Miller’s 14th novel, The Deal, is “a true story in four parts”. How much of it is autobiographical is a question only the author can answer, but there are hints for readers who know his life and work. The main character, Andy McPherson, was born in England, immigrated alone to Australia as a teen and worked as a stockman, as did Miller. In the main story, set in 1975, he is a 39-year-old unpublished writer, as was Miller, who now has two Miles Franklin Literary Awards to his name.

Oct 1, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Stephen Romei

Just when you think four-time Miles Franklin Literary Award-winner Tim Winton can’t write a better novel, he does. In Juice, Winton – known and loved for writing about people who could live next door, as in Cloudstreet (1991) – shifts to a new genre: near-future fiction. The result can be read as a warning to a world on the brink of self-annihilation or a lament that, to borrow from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, it’s “too late, too late!”Warning, lament or both, Winton’s 11th novel is by far his darkest.

Aug 31, 2024 | themonthly.com.au | Stephen Romei |Stan Grant |James Bradley |Katherine Wilson

A courageous and honest examination of memory, loss and grief from the esteemed Australian writer, whose teenage brother died in a car accident “It is the simplest of crossroads, this crossroads of my family’s life.” So Gideon Haigh describes the intersection in Geelong, Victoria, where his 17-year-old brother Jasper had a fatal car accident in the early hours of August 13, 1987. Jaz was driving fast and ran a red light, according to one of the two passengers in the car.