Plenty of readers - and those in the book trade - turn up their noses at self-publishing. And it's often justified: it's not known as vanity publishing for nothing.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
For every The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Swann's Way, the first in Marcel Proust's landmark (and door-stopping) novel In Search of Lost Time, there is a million words of complete dross inflicted upon the world by authors who didn't get the hint from rejection slips.
But there was a time when authors were much more likely to cover the cost of publication themselves. Are we returning to a publishing environment where this is the best path forward for challenging and original literature?
Robyn Ferrell ponders this issue for Australian literature, given the recent shortlisting of Michael Winkler's Grimmish (Puncher & Wattman, $29.95) for the Miles Franklin Prize, the country's most prestigious literary award. The novel was originally self published and only picked up by a (small) press after its renown grew.
"Now perhaps self-publishing can compete using critical reception as an important endorsement of its writing. The squeamishness of tastemakers needs to be overcome, for this to work," Ferrell writes.
"If critics, patrons of literary awards and others like literary editors and reviewers were to follow on from the regard of Grimmish, devising methods to include independently published writing in their purview, there will be a much stronger space for the development of Australian writing."
You can find all the books we've reviewed this week below. And I welcome your thoughts and feedback on what we've been reading. You can reach me by email at jasper.lindell@canberratimes.com.au.
A violent past casts dark, confronting shadows
Frank O'Shea finds James McKenzie Watson's Penguin Prize-winning novel Denizen (Viking, $32.99) to be deeply confronting, and suggests it should come with a warning at the start, like those used on television for distressing content.
"The writing is quite brilliant, drawing the reader deeper and deeper into the minds of the characters. There are frequent changes in time, back and forward, but the story is told in the present tense throughout. Parker, the broken child who thought that stupidity was infectious, mutates into the new father who adores his baby son," O'Shea writes in his review.
The tangled path of complex love
Ian McFarlane is absolutely taken with Alice Nelson's new novel Faithless (Vintage, $32.99), and is prepared to risk extravagance by making a comparison to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
"A big call, I know, but it's difficult to remember another novel in recent times that so powerfully engaged my attention. I read the second half in one uninterrupted afternoon session, dragging myself back to the reality of COVID-encumbered Canberra with surprised reluctance," McFarlane writes in a review.
Nelson, who was born in Australia but now lives in the south of France, and has received prize-winning recognition for her previous novels.
McFarlane again: "[Faithless is] a triumph, using a perfectly paced first-person narrative to unravel an obsessively complex love story with elegiac fluency."
Is there time to save the commons?
Tim Hollo has run as a Greens candidate for Canberra and has been actively involved in community-building projects in the ACT. He sets out a vision for a new, restorative kind of democracy in Living Democracy (NewSouth, $32.99).
"The heart of Hollo's thesis beats with the seductively fascinating rhythm of ancient wisdom blended with natural diversity, evolution, and a colourful cast of scientists, philosophers, and free thinkers," writes our reviewer Ian McFarlane, who is left wondering whether there is enough time to put Hollo's ideas into action to save the planet.
Heroes of the ships past their best
Mike Carlton delivers in The Scrap Iron Flotilla (William Heinemann, $34.99) another love letter to the Australian Navy, writes Michael McKernan.
The scrap iron flotilla, a Nazi propaganda phrase adopted by those who manned the past-its-prime fleet of five ships, was crucial in the Allies efforts in the Mediterranean during the Second World War. The famous Rats of Tobruk were gallantly supplied thanks to the flotilla's success and bravery.
"Perhaps Carlton's accounts of the fearful bombing of the ships may become repetitious for some readers. But it is the certainty of trouble that begins to awe the reader. To suffer such horror once would be awful, but voyage after voyage after voyage. The courage of every sailor and officer on the spud run is simply stupendous," McKernan writes in his review.
A town of secrets dominated by dangerous men
Vikki Petraitis has turned her hand from non-fiction - which she is renowned for, having written about Lawyer X and Melbourne's Russell Street Bombings - to her first crime novel, The Unbelieved (Allen & Unwin, $32.99).
Reviewer Anna Creer writes Petraitis is on a mission to educate her readers about the reality of domestic violence and rape in Australia.
"Antigone tells a young female police officer that in the past year 4300 victims in Victoria alone reported being raped but that only 41 rapists were convicted. Later a male detective admits, 'Consent is the issue. You see it time and time again. He says she consented, she says she didn't. For some reason juries believe the guy'," Creer writes in her review this week.
Vikki Petraitis will be in conversation with Chris Hammer in an ANU/Canberra Times Meet the Author event on August 29 at 6pm in the Cinema, Kambri Cultural Centre, ANU.
Experience and myth mix in a haze of uncertainty
And finally this week, I reviewed Adriane Howell's debut novel, Hydra (Transit Lounge, $29.99).
Anja, forced out of a Melbourne auction house after an unfortunate incident involving a Danish chair, buys a 99-year lease on a cottage carved off a naval base. There she can find space to reimagine herself - but despite it being lonely and desolate, she never really feels by herself. Myth and experience begin to collide.
Hydra lingers after a first reading. Its narrative can be uncertain, revealed in glimpses and poignant moments. The complexity does not take away from its suspense or drive - indeed its flashes of humour. The pages are not so over burdened with technique to bog down the story.