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So, here it is, that day when we pivot between this year and next. It’s the day when we can look back at the books that made their mark in 2022 and look ahead to what’s lying in wait for us in the bookshops next year.
As usual, thousands of titles were published this year, but here are a few that stood out from the crowd for one reason or another. Some are Australian, some from overseas. All are worth a look.
Cold Enough for Snow
Jessica Au
This quiet gem was published simultaneously in Australia, Britain and the US having won the inaugural international Novel Prize. The narrator is for the first time as an adult travelling with her ageing mother. They meet in Japan, visit galleries and talk about the past. The book is written in precise prose that seems deliberately to contrast with the ambiguities inherent in the narrative. Plenty of readers and writers have enthused about Au’s book, including Anna Funder and Hannah Kent.
Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow was written in precise prose.Credit:Paul Jeffers
The Philosophy of Modern Song
Bob Dylan
Books by musicians did big business towards the end of the year. Nobel laureate Dylan’s about the American songbook is eccentric, informed and idiosyncratic. It has also been slammed for misogyny – he writes about only a few women. But if Dylan isn’t your cup of tea, there were books by Nick Cave, based on a series of wide-ranging conversations with his friend, journalist Sean O’Hagan, a memoir of life, love, religion and music from Bono, and one from Jarvis Cocker based around stuff stored in his loft. Paulie Stewart of Painters and Dockers also chipped in with his story.
Grimmish
Michael Winkler
This utterly original, self-reflective, slightly berserk novella about the Italian American boxer Joe Grimm, renowned for withstanding regular, severe beatings, and his 1908 tour of Australia definitely punched above its weight. Originally self-published in 2021, when it climbed into this year’s Miles Franklin ring as the first self-published book to be shortlisted for Australia’s top literary fiction award, people really took notice. It was snapped up by the aptly named Puncher & Wattmann and republished.
Michael Winkler’s Grimmish is the first self-published book to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin.Credit:Justin McManus
The Passenger/ Stella Maris
Cormac McCarthy
You know the saying about recalcitrant buses, how you wait for ages and along come two? You could say the same about Cormac McCarthy and the 16 long years since The Road: the great American novelist published two novels in the space of a couple of months. The Passenger reveals the mournful story of Bobby Western, grieving for his sister, Alicia, and the damage inflicted on the siblings by their parents’ work on the atomic bomb. Then Stella Maris gives us Alicia’s voice, in conversation with her doctor at the hospital where she is a patient. McCarthy is a must-read for his fans, but acclaim has not been universal for what could prove his final offerings.
Jane Harper’s Exiles.
Exiles
Jane Harper
When Jane Harper created detective Aaron Falk for The Dry, her first, hugely influential, million-plus-selling novel that ushered in the outback noir genre, crime enthusiasts imagined an ongoing series with Falk at its heart. Perhaps not as enduring as Rankin and Rebus or Connelly and Bosch, but certainly one with legs. Which is why Exiles was such a surprise, a “300-page goodbye letter to Falk”, as the author put it as she gave him a third and final mystery to solve. And what happens to Falk? You’ll have to read it to discover that.