Emma Smith-Stevens

Emma Smith-Stevens presents the restless, agonizing quest for identity and connection in The Australian in prose sparkling with superb analogies, densely packed and yet airy and flowing. The book is heart wrenching and a fine work of the imagination. Forget about strict realism and relax into the bizarre rushing world of its exposition and then its alternating waves and its buildup to a striking climax.

These are my favorite sentences in the novel:

“Through one half-opened eye, the Australian beholds the stillness of her form as she nurses Maximus, awash in the oceanic light of an early morning. In this moment, Fiona seems ancient and unknowable” (29-30).

“The warm breeze is a drug of mercy” (96).

“He sits down, letting his feet dangle over the lip of the volcano’s crater, and drops a pebble—a pockmarked fragment of black volcanic rock—into the blue lake below. Indigo storm clouds hang low in the sky” (223-24).

And I won’t quote it here, but the final paragraph of the book is pure nectar.
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