No, 2015 is not a typo, it’s just that things got seriously out of whack during our 12 months of transition. Here are five more stories that have especially stayed with me. (See the previous list here…)

The Natural Way of Things (Charlotte Wood, 2015)

This Stella Prize winner first caught my eye when someone mentioned ‘dystopia’, yet it turns out to be not speculative fiction, but a visceral fable for our times. At first glance, the concept of women imprisoned in the desert seems like an ironic echo of pacifying franchises like The 100 and The Hunger Games. But any such comparisons soon fade from view in what is an astonishing work of truth-telling, a parable of misogyny, allusive, haunting, revelatory. It got me in the guts and I’m still churned up by it. I can only hope that continues.

True History of the Kelly Gang (Peter Carey, 2001)

‘The past is not dead. It is not even past,’ reads the epigraph by William Faulkner. I love stories that re-imagine our accepted histories and shared tales, and this one dives in deep. It is an amazing, rollicking novel. Everyone knows of Ned Kelly, yet the author observes that ‘we Australians had not even begun to imagine the emotional life of the characters in our great story.’ Carey comes at it by appropriating Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter, inhabiting an extraordinary vernacular with which to flesh out the man and his world. Most poignant for me was the depiction of Kelly’s relationship with his mother.

A Place on Earth (Wendell Berry, revised edition 1983)

In the quietness and mundane goings-on of this ‘farm procedural’, you find not banality but a sustained meditation on the interdependence between land and community. Here the land is more than merely a setting, but neither is it layered up with symbolic or mystical qualities – it is instead an ever-present reality, and a kindness, while human frustrations sort themselves out above. And the story is nothing if not human: ‘The only thing I try to accomplish in fiction is to show how people act when they love each other.’ It also sparked my interest as an expression of agrarian philosophy.

The Mount (Carol Emshwiller, 2002)

Earth has been colonised by aliens, leaving humans in bondage, bred in captivity to be racing steeds for their tiny new overlords. However, as with horses or dogs, there is always a special bond between a master and their mount. Like the novel Feed, this is a quirky and captivating story with broad, read-aloud appeal. It is a beautiful exploration of oppression and liberation, and instead of being regaled with stock angst about authority and revolution, we are drawn to consider both captor and captive as responsible to one another, entangled in each other’s dignity and redemption.

The Haunting of Jessica Raven (Ann Halam, 1994)

Gwyneth Jones is dame of dangerous SF and one of my favourite authors. She also writes for younger readers under the name Ann Halam, and this is the second in her series of ghost stories, each revolving around a young person and their family in a liminal or transitional situation. The Haunting of Jessica Raven might not be the spookiest of them, or the saddest, but it packs on the curiosity by adding both WWII history and genetic disease to the mix. Jones never fails to stimulate and intrigue!

Image credit: Ned Kelly by Sidney Nolan, 1 September 1946

Categories: Written by Arthur

Tagged as: A Place on Earth agrarian Australia Book book review Carol Emshwiller Charlotte Wood earth encounters fable fiction Gwyneth Jones horizons land narrative novel Peter Carey speculative fiction Stella Prize The Haunting of Jessica Raven The Mount The Natural Way of Things top 5 True History of the Kelly Gang Wendell Berry year in review

Arthur Davis

Arthur Davis is an Aussie living in Tanzania, writing at meetjesusatuni.com.