REVIEWS: Ben Hunter’s top 6 winter reads!

by |June 2, 2021
Ben Hunter's Winter Reads

Our fiction expert Ben Hunter is here to share some reviews of his top winter reads – books by Sarah Winman, Charlotte McConaghy, Alice Pung and more!


Still Life

by Sarah Winman

9780008283360 - Winter Reads

This book restored my faith in the refuge of novels – that a good novel can transport you from the humdrum and horrible in your world to the paradise of another.

It all kicks off when Ulysses Temper, an extraordinarily goodhearted English soldier meets Evelyn Skinner, a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy, as bombs crash down on Florence. It will be decades before they meet again and in those years Ulysses will change the lives of a remarkable jumble of East End unlikelyies as he goes off in search of art, love and la dolce vita.

A whole family of characters will move into your house when you read this book and they’ll stay as long as they bloody like. Winman will transport you to a city where passion, art and love are bound into every cobblestone. Joy is wielded as a weapon against our troubled times in Still Life. It’s a brilliantly cast, big-hearted, laugh-out-loud, soul-nourishing novel.

Buy it here


One Hundred Days

by Alice Pung

9781760641832 - Winter Reads

In her first novel for adults, Alice Pung demonstrates why she’s one of Australia’s most celebrated writers working today. One Hundred Days is a powerful story of mother-daughter friction exploring love, control, poverty, racism and the migrant experience. Pung’s sharp use of humour and irony breaks down the Anglo-centric beauty standards and colourism that pervades the Asian Australian community. There’s a myriad of small touches in this book that come together to break the reader’s heart and leave them thinking.

This novel will appeal to readers of Pung’s YA novel Laurinda as well as anyone who loves Melanie Cheng, Yaa Gyasi or Brit Bennett.

Buy it here


Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams)

by Anita Heiss

9781760850449 - Winter Reads

Anita Heiss is a living legend and having a new novel from her is a real treat. It’s exciting, also, to see major fiction from a commercial publisher with an Indigenous language title – why isn’t there more of that?

Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray is set on Wiradjuri Country in the aftermath of the devastating flooding of Gundagai in 1852, and follows the life of Wagadhaany, who is taken away from her family at Gundagai to serve wealthy pastoralists out at Wagga Wagga. It’s an epic story of tragedy, love and belonging enriched with Wiradjuri language and cultural and historical insights.

Buy it here


We Were Not Men

by Campbell Mattinson

9781460759523 - Winter Reads

This one reduced me to tears. It’s one of the most physically beautiful new novels I’ve seen in a long time and the story itself is an absolute gem. It’s a story of twin brothers growing up fast in the devastating silence of their parents’ deaths in a freak accident. A yearning for their mother calls Eden and Jon to the water where they swim hard against whatever currents they encounter. There’s an intimacy and sparseness in the writing here that shows years of hard writing and concentrated editing. All the humour, and warmth and passion and fury of life are in here, appealing to readers of Sofie Laguna, Tim Winton, Christos Tsiolkas and Trent Dalton. You’ll catch yourself whispering sentences back to yourself.

Buy it here


Nothing But My Body

by Tilly Lawless

9781761065149 - Winter Reads

Startling, brief, urgent and honest, Nothing But My Body demonstrates just why Tilly Lawless is such a highly-celebrated voice in the queer community and beyond. Described as an eight-day journey into the mind of a young woman who is a queer Australian sex worker, the writing here moves seamlessly between narrative and a kind of personal essay. Themes of love and obsession, class and merit, sex and intimacy are explored against a back drop of the Black Summer bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic.

I was blown away by the clarity and thoughtfulness this fluid kind of novel presented – there’s no limit to the compassion that Lawless brings to her writing. This book is the perfect celebration of queer community and rejection of the hegemonic lauding of romantic love. Few other authors could write about sex work in such an authentic and nuanced way. Challenge yourself to read this and you’ll be richly rewarded.

Buy it here


Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

9781761043222 - Winter Reads

Charlotte McConaghy’s first novel for adults, Migrations (also published as The Last Migration) is one of the best books I read in 2020. Once There Were Wolves is equally as moving and well-constructed, but with a great deal more pace delivered from its murder mystery element. A story of our inner wildness, the unique languages forged in shared trauma, love, violence and the desperate work to save the last of our planet’s remaining wilderness, this novel takes readers into the depths of the Scottish Highlands. There, a woman named Inti Flynn leads an international effort to reintroduce wolves to the ailing forests, much to the dismay of the local community. When a body is found, Inti goes to extraordinary lengths to protect her kin. This is heartracing, unputdownable fiction at its very best.

Buy it here


Winter Reads Winter Reads Winter Reads

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About the Contributor

Ben is Booktopia's dedicated fiction and children's book specialist. He spends his days painstakingly piecing together beautiful catalogue pages and gift guides for the website. At any opportunity, he loves to write warmly of the books that inspire him. If you want to talk books, find him tweeting at @itsbenhunter

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