Fiction: Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic, and three other titles – The Age

Author Sandi Scaunich Credit:a

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PICK OF THE WEEKAsylum RoadOlivia Sudjic, Bloomsbury, $29.99

A flensing anatomy of the effects of childhood trauma, Olivia Sudjics Asylum Road takes us into the mind of Anya, a PhD student in London who grew up in Sarajevo in the 1990s, when the city was brutally besieged (for almost four years) by Bosnian Serb forces. Now in her 20s, Anya fights a constant battle not to recall the events; just traces of memory breach her defences. When her partner Luke proposes, Anya travels with him back to the city of her childhood and quickly loses ground. The fight to forget atrocities cannot be won when confronted by the place in which they occurred, and an encounter with her demented mother, who still believes her home to be under siege, provokes a long-delayed disintegration. Sudjic portrays grim subject matter with psychological acuity, and readers will be grateful she has a gift for black humour.

The Boy From The MishGary Loneborough, Allen & Unwin, $19.99

In this big-hearted love story, two Aboriginal boys fall for each other in a rural community. Its the summer holidays and 17-year-old Jackson is doing his thing on the Mish: poking fun at tourists and giving racists a wide berth in town, while avoiding feelings hed rather not admit. When his Aunty and cousins arrive as usual from the city, they bring an unexpected visitor. Tomas is fresh out of juvie and has lost his mob, and through Jackson reconnects with community and culture. As their friendship deepens and develops, they discover first love and find the courage to accept who they are. Gary Loneborough has written a queer Indigenous YA novel that brims with optimism and heartfelt self-belief, without being too rose-coloured about the challenges to be faced.

Friends & Dark ShapesKavita Bedford, Text, $32.99

Kavita Bedfords debut, Friends & Dark Shapes, is less a novel than a suite of vignettes inspired by share house life in inner-suburban Sydney. The stories swirl around an unnamed narrator and her housemates card-carrying members of the precariat in their late 20s whose camaraderie provides a tenuous buffer against social dislocation. This is a book steeped in the hedonism and the angst of youth and it carries an overwhelming flavour of the present age one of self-absorption, emotional disconnection, anxiety about the future. The zeitgeist, of course, is always the last thing anyone needs right now. And the narrator swims against it, with some of the most affecting passages involving the submerged grief of recent bereavement. Bedford is clearly talented, but these anecdotes never feel greater than the sum of their parts: they may need a freer, less manicured writing style, and the discipline of novelistic structure, for that.

Chasing the McCubbinSandi Scaunich, Transit Lounge, $29.99

Chasing the McCubbin takes readers into the intriguing world of Melbournes pickers, or collectors who bargain-hunt at garage sales and the like, hoping to find treasure among trash. The ageing Ron has been doing it for decades, but since his wife died, he has found the going hard. Pity that. With Melbourne in the grip of the early 1990s recession, valuable antiques are often going for a song if you know where to look. Enter Joseph, a troubled and unemployed 19-year-old from a disadvantaged background, and an unlikely mentorship follows. Scaunich illuminates a quirky subculture and creates an intergenerational male friendship of some poignancy. They are an odd couple blighted by loneliness and poverty, respectively and theres a wistful sort of comedy behind the friendship that emerges.

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Fiction: Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic, and three other titles - The Age