2024 is the year my benign affection for books written by Australian authors became a full-blown love affair.

The spark was ignited while rereading Question 7 by Richard Flanagan at the start of the year and now, ending 2024 with Tim Winton’s Juice , it has become a raging passion.

When I bought Mary Martin Bookshop in November 2016, I was a voracious reader. My bookshelves were laden with an array of international fare; Javier Marias, Alessandro Barrico, Murakami, Anne Tyler, Fred Vargas, Abraham Verghese & Vikram Seth were amongst my beloved writers.

Of course I had read Cloudstreet, Stasiland and The Sound of One Hand Clapping amongst others and so had a very healthy regard for Australian writers. But no, there was no frisson.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, along with the purchase of an indie bookshop was an unwritten undertaking. I had inherited the need to do ‘the right thing’ of supporting home grown. Of course, I embraced the notion and dutifully (you can take the girl out of academia but you cannot take the study out of the girl) read my way through the key local titles. I recommended those I enjoyed, said not very much about those I didn’t but truth be told, my relationship with many of these books was perfunctory at best.

And then just before Covid I read Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko. It blew me away. Utterly original and authentic, nuanced and sophisticated and such a rewarding read in that one had to work to get the vernacular. The rhythm was so different to what I was used to. Too Much Lip might be the very first ‘bookshop-induced reading’ of a book that I actually fell in love with. Like an arranged marriage where after all, the parents were right.

At the start of this year in anticipation of our first round of book clubs, I took Question 7, Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, The In-Between Christos Tsiolkas and Women and Children by Tony Birch on holidays with me. Frisson ++!

Rereading Question 7 had me tingling with excitement. I was even more convinced that Flanagan is a genius. I don’t know about you, but my liaisons always start with my noggin, you’ve got me when my brain is hooked. I remember being thrilled to the core and so very grateful and strangely comforted that in this very difficult world of ours such a superior thinker existed. And not only, but could this man write! It was a quickening.

Question 7 was quickly followed by Tsiolkos’ The In-between. I was completely seduced with the tenderness of THAT relationship arc.

Stone Yard Devotional then hooked me in further with the protagonist’s meditative, spiritual searching in that nunnery. And no, the mice did not put me off. I was by then well underway in my love affair.

2024 then dealt a difficult blow. Mum died. The last book she completed reading was Women and Children. It was the only one able to hold her attention through her invalid days. This Birch novel thus has personal meaning for me like no other.

With mum’s death, my ability to read became severely compromised. Grace Yee’s Chinese Fish was one of the few books that penetrated. Such familiarity in that language. It was heady stuff.

Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow, though, was the book that brought me back to the fold. A book so lovingly and sparsely crafted, it held me gently.

Next Theory and Practice by Michelle De Kretser re-ignited the passion that Flanagan had lit. Here then is a book to intellectually match Question 7 both in content and execution—and by another Australian author! By this stage there was no looking back. I had become a full blown lover of Australian literature. I found myself loudly, proudly, fiercely championing Australian authored books to all and sundry at the Queen Victoria market and Southgate shops. The Port Melbourne community already knew.

Whereas once I may have shrugged off the fact that the famed New York Times ‘Best 100 Books of the 21st Century’ list did not carry a single Australian title, now it felt personal and seriously pissed me.

The love affair bobbed along joyously with J.P. Pomare’s 17 Years Later, Jock Serong’s Cherrywood - a wondrous gift to Melbourne, Robbie Arnott’s Dusk (what is it about Tasmania that produces such talent?) and then it fanned full, hot flame again with Helen Garner’s The Season. The fundamental premise is her observed decency of men - what a courageous take in this day and age! I sincerely love this author

Last night I finished Juice. I devoured it in three days. It is frigging, bloody fantastic! I cannot stop thinking of the ending. Nor of the start. The middle. The sim (wha…at?). The mother. Oh my frigging lawd. And because I haven’t stopped thinking about it, the realisation hit me.

My obsession isn’t only with Juice. This is no one-night stand. My obsession is with the calibre, depth, breadth of our homegrown writers. If we are not amongst the shortlisted best-of lists and walking away with all the prizes, it is only because they have yet to discover us.

I am wholeheartedly consumed and am now hand on heart, a true-blue indie bookseller. Signed. Sealed. Delivered. I’m yours.

Jaye’s Top Books of 2024

Juice by Tim Winton

The In-Between by Christos Tsiolkas

Women & Children by Tony Birch

17 Years Later by J.P.Pomare

The Season by Helen Garner

Chinese Fish by Grace Yee

The Burrow by Melanie Cheng

Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser

Dusk by Robbie Arnott

Cherrywood by Jock Serong

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood