Emily Paull

Today I found out that I have been shortlisted for the 2015 John Marsden/ Hachette Australia Prize for Short Fiction in the age category of 18-24 years. It's been hard to keep myself from breaking into bad renditions of the Snoopy Dance all day. I won't say much about the award, but you can read about it here and also see the names of the other young writers who have been shortlisted for their short stories and poetry.  I'm sure they're all as elated as I am. John Marsden is something of a hero of mine, and I remember reading his Tomorrow  series as being a significant moment in my reading history.  Perhaps part of my desire to write even comes from that time in my life.  To be shortlisted in this award is a big deal    and I want to say a heartfelt thanks to all of my friends and family who have been congratulating me and saying nice things about me today.  You all make me feel special.

The Lake House Kate Morton Published October 2015 by Allen and Unwin (I own a copy courtesy of the publisher) It's not a secret that I am a huge Kate Morton fan.  I discovered her many moons ago when I picked up a copy of The Shifting Fog  at my local bookshop based almost solely on how gorgeous its cover was.  The story inside was the perfect mix of mystery and history and magic, and I was soon engrossed in the tale of two sisters and a poet, and the tragedy that linked them all.  I declared myseld an avid fan, and was even lucky enough to get a reply to an email I sent to Kate full of encouraging words for my fledgling writing career.  (Which remains fledgling to this day.)  In 2010 when The Distant Hours was first published, I bought myself a copy of it in hardback because I simply could not wait for the inordinate amount of time it was going to take for the book to come down in format, and later that same month I toddled off to a literary luncheon w...

September was Ferrante month.  I'll try to write a longer post about my love for the writing of Elena Ferrante but I feel that words will probably fail me.  All through this last four weeks, I've been obsessed with her; this enigmatic, reclusive Italian writer who was the greatest novelist I had never heard of.  I read four of her books, out of a total possible seven, and this was no small feat considering that in total I read six books this month. Those books which were not Ferrantes shared things in common with her work, so I guess she was guiding my choices a fair bit; I read a novel set in Russia during the war and a young adult novel in which a young girl has her hands cut off, so they were both fairly bleak.  But it's important to remember that bleak novels can also be some of the most insightful and most life-affirming.  It's through reading about the misfortunes that did and do still take place in the world that we can expand our worldviews, gain persp...

The Natural Way of Things Charlotte Wood Allen and Unwin 2015 Some reviews are incredibly hard to write not because you don't know what to say but because there's too much to say, and the sheer skill of the book itself makes you feel inarticulate by comparison.  This was my experience of The Natural Way of Things , the new novel by Charlotte Wood which will be released at the end of this month.  Don't let the beautiful cover fool you: this is not a happy hop, skip and jump through nature. But more on this cover later!!! The Natural Way of Things  begins when two women wake to find themselves prisoners in an abandoned rural property, guarded by a strange, mismatched trio of guards.  There are a number of other women imprisoned with them, but the points of view from which we enter the story belong to Yolanda and Verla, with Verla's voice in particular being the one that helps the reader make the most sense of what is going on.   Something has made all of...