September Book of the Month: New Australian Fiction 2022
New Australian Fiction 2022
Kill Your Darlings’ New Anthology of Short Stories
Edited by Suzy Garcia
Reviewed by Elena
There is something about short fiction that is transporting. Kill Your Darlings’ New Australian Fiction 2022 is indeed a portal to a world that is almost like our own, but more sinister, expansive, maybe brighter, more absurd. Then again, are the authors pointing to the shadowy and shinier corners of our own world? Probably. Thus the genius of well-crafted fiction.
This year’s edition of New Australian Fiction is an assortment of stories written by fourteen exceptional storytellers. As in previous years, well-established authors sit alongside emerging authors who debut in this collection. Thematically the stories tell of thwarted relationships, lapse and recovery, the performance of identity, and pasts that awkwardly wrestle the present. Undoubtedly, there is something for everyone in this collection, but together, these stories are powerfully cohesive. Together, these authors demonstrate an unadulterated mastery of short fiction: the ability to conjure a setting with everything that’s needed to hold you to a narrative, with enough space for interpretation, to think and feel, and to let the stories settle.
The anthology begins with seasoned short story writer Elizabeth Tan. On a hot summer afternoon, missing children trail suburban streets looking for the families that mourn them. Tan’s story “The Smaller of the Two Tomatoes” is about tending to the self while learning to live with loss and longing. It works brilliantly next to Jack Vening’s superb “Goodbye to the Body” where a man nonchalantly turns up to dinner with a dead body, and no one blinks an eye (until they do). Vening’s story is all frenetic energy, playing with social norms. Both stories are unsettling and familiar, reminiscent of Raymond Carver’s spooky realism.
“ the works in this collection are written out of the spiralling effects of the pandemic and the fractious terrain of Australian social and political life. But… these works are everything but languished.”
Viscera connects the Jasmin McGaughey and Kavita Bedford stories. Bedford’s “Berchem Station” is a tight narrative: a couple who enter the house of a hoarder and leave with quiet realisation of the distance between themselves. I too was drawn into the spell-like state of the house and was left nursing a sore heart. In “Oxygen” McGaughey sucks you into an office space slowly poisoned by cloying social norms and casual racism. When relief comes as a breath of sea air, you can feel it in your own lungs.
Other highlights include the two longer stories from Chloe Wilson and Bobuq Sayed. Wilson’s “Lifestyle Creep” features a hapless concierge with a full head of hair but not much else aside from his taste for fine furniture. It is a hilarious exploration of vanity, class and desire. Sayed’s “The Spirit Realm” is enthralling, bringing you along a mystery of lost things. The suspected spiritual meddling is fantastic and asks us to challenge our beliefs and assumptions without finger-pointing. Also noteworthy is Maxine Beneba Clarke’s “Heat” where she brings trademark poetic verse to the complex dynamics of growing up in commission housing from the lens of a fifth grader.
As the 2022 edition of New Australian Fiction, the works in this collection are written out of the spiralling effects of the pandemic and the fractious terrain of Australian social and political life. But, casting aside the particular brand of dour uncertainty of the last few years, these works are everything but languished—as editor Suzy Garcia says, the authors in this issue have used imagination to ‘push against what we think is possible, experiment with ideas, reach for more...’ In doing so, this anthology will be revisited as a benchmark of quality fiction for years to come.