RaveReadings (AUS)Each scene unfolds with a spare elegance, but underneath simmers a sense of unease. Is there something strange with the picture we’re seeing? ... Au wields her words like watercolour, layering depth and dimension to small scenes, her precise details feathering out and blooming with larger intent and meaning. The mother- daughter relationship is still but deep. Intimacy is shown in the small allowances the two make for one another’s personal quirks ... At just under 100 pages, this powerful exploration of family, creation and regret also plays with elements of time and perspective. I finished this book in one sitting, but immediately wanted to read it again, to savour its exquisite prose and tease out its slippery construction ... it deserves to be read by fans of literary fiction everywhere.
Douglas Stuart
RaveReadings (AUS)With tenderness and honesty, Young Mungo explores the reality of coming of age as a young gay man against the backdrop of a violently sectarian Glasgow in the 1990s. It’s also a necessary reminder of the all-too-recent prejudice and open violence LGBTIQA+ people endured. Stuart is gifted in his ability to capture both visceral dread and the sweet ‘guid-and-true’ glimmers of first love. Some particularly harrowing moments, which surpass Shuggie in their devastation, may have readers needing to put down the book, but just when you think the darkness is too much, Stuart switches to a golden moment of succour ... With its wonderful Glaswegian colloquialisms, lively characters and compelling, addictive pacing, Young Mungo is classic storytelling at its best. Read it if you love fiction that’s unafraid of big feelings, but prepare to have your heart broken too.
Robert Jones Jr
RaveReadings (AUS)Readers should be aware that Jones’s writing, while rich with feeling and metaphor, is unflinching at cataloguing the dehumanising effects of slavery. Jones has described the writing of his novel as an act of witnessing, and no matter what your knowledge of this era is, witnessing the reality of slavery through fiction – an empathetic medium – is by necessity hard ... However, Jones also finds power in the small details. Every act of tenderness and care, every decision people choose for themselves is magnified. And there are moments of beauty and defiance in the novel where I felt fiercely elated. The Prophets feels like Jones’s attempt to reach across history, to create a link in a narrative of love and resistance led by Black queer people and Black women. This is an ever-shifting, polyphonic epic that leaves you shaking with rage, love and a desire for justice and freedom. It is an astonishing achievement that lives up to the enormity of its subject matter.
