T’is the season for reading. Buying books for gifting or for personal downtime, slung in hammocks, lost in the pages, what bliss. Always a reliable guide of what to choose is the December issue of the Australian Book Review.
This year, ABR asked thirty-seven of its contributors to nominate their favourite books of 2024 to get people talking and to get people reading.
Which Russian novel does James Ley describe as ‘hands down the wildest release of the year’? Which author makes ‘managerialism the stuff of high comedy’, according to Yves Rees? Which work of Australian fiction has been squatting in Geordie Williamson’s ‘mental real estate’ for months? And why does Julie Janson nominate only books by Australian female authors this year?
Find the answers and discover these books and other titles that ABR critics, James Bradley, Shannon Burns, Yves Rees, Geordie Williamson, Frank Bongiorno, Peter Rose, Lynette Russell, Scott Stephens, James Ley, Cassandra Atherton, John Kinsella, and other contributors have most enjoyed reading in 2024.
Robbie Arnott’s Dusk receives several mentions as does Picador stablemate, Rodney Hall’s Vortex. Both these books are destined to become Australian literary classics and were among my favourites of the year. The former, a fantastical Western set in the Tasmanian high country, is the product of the new generation of Australian writers while the latter is the long awaited return of an accomplished master and two time winner of the Miles Franklin award.
Other than this fascinating overview of the year in publishing, this edition of the ABR features a lead review of On Xi Jinping by Kevin Rudd, in which Neil Thomas opines our former prime minister has digested thousands of pages of Xi Jinping Thought ‘so that you don’t have to’, identifying a new ‘red thread’ running through Chinese politics.
Frank Bongiorno praises Robert Manne’s memoir, noting that his politics moved from left, to right, then left again: ‘but to express it that way says much less than is needed.’ Jonathan Ricketson reviews Helen Garner’s account of being a football grandmother and Gabriella Coslovich considers Indigenous intellectual property and the strategy to ‘sue everyone’.
Also in this treasured issue, James Ley reviews Sally Rooney’s new novel and leading critics review new works by Haruki Murakami, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Lech Blaine, Michel Houellebecq and Clive Hamilton, examining books on surrealism, urban heritage, the English soul, Simone Weil, our anxious kids, America’s romance with foreign dictators, Shakespearean queer lives, decolonisation, and much more.
