Aussie authors take it to the world

It has been said before and I am proud to join the chorus of praise for our Australian authors — they are are a match for any authors anywhere in the world. It is time we turned to Australian authors first whether the genre is memoir, romance, crime, thriller, history, fact or fiction. Recent news in “Book world” shows how much our authors are appreciated and celebrated on foreign shores.

One of the books causing much discussion over on The Book Club – a Starts at 60 Club, is Holly Ringland‘s debut novel The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.

“After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak.”  The general opinion is that this is a very powerful book, although some readers found it too confronting.

Seems, as usual, Starts at 60 readers are well in touch with the rest of the world because it has been announced that Australian producer Bruna Papandrea has bought the screen rights and will adapt it to a TV series. As one of those people who feels many books suffer from being adapted to screen, I have some confidence in this series as Bruna was the co-producer of the TV series of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies.

Kirsten Alexander’s debut novel Half Moon Lake isn’t released until January 2019, but has already been sold into the lucrative US and Canadian markets.

“Inspired by a real case, Half Moon Lake is a captivating historical novel set in America’s Deep South about a lost boy – and the two mothers who both seek to claim him.”

Although born in the US, Kirsten was raised in Brisbane and now lives in Melbourne.

It is a way off yet, but I am really looking forward to the release in late 2019 of a memoir by Archie Roach, singer, songwriter and guitarist. Part of the stolen generation, (he was taken from his family at age four and made a ward of the state) Archie is a tireless campaigner for the rights of Indigenous Australians. He said he hoped his book “would be seen as a testament to overcoming enormous odds and to the enduring strength of the human spirit”.

Have you seen the recent movie The Ladies in Black? This movie is based on one of my favourite books as it perfectly reflects the period in which many of we Baby Boomers grew up. Happily, it did not disappoint and IMHO Bruce Beresford produced a beautiful vignette of Australian society. Seeing the exterior, and I believe some interior, shots of the old Mark Foy’s building in Sydney took me back to a time when my Mother would take one of her former teachers to lunch at Mark Foy’s because they had a section set aside for nuns. Originally published in 1993 as The Women in Black, this is the only one of Madeleine St John’s novels she set in Australia.

As I said, we have an amazing store of writing talent in Australia; let’s support them by buying Australian first.

Who are your favourite Australian authors, either modern or from another age? 

Happy reading everyone,

Karen xx