Two Books From Down Under

Dear readers,

Maybe it was too many formative basic-cable viewings of “Muriel’s Wedding,” or the fantastical names of their snack foods (Cheezels, Witchetty Grubs, Tim Tams). But as a kid I always imagined Australia to be a sort of sunny, not-quite-real mirror-world; a dusty cosmic boomerang plopped down in the South Pacific, overrun with strange animals and extravagantly diphthonged accents. (Also, Vegemite.)

Their literature, like their toast spreads, has perhaps proved too strong an extract: Aside from a few household-ish names like Peter Carey and Liane Moriarty, Australian novelists never quite seem to crack the American consciousness the way those from closer corners of the Commonwealth regularly do. (Time will tell if Alexis Wright, whom we recently profiled, will prove an exception.)

The books in this week’s newsletter, though, make bracing use of that famed predilection for pungency. They also have a particular feel for the painful unraveling of intimate relationships; a scorched catalog of long-held resentments and alliances shifted in the night. And those themes are universal, even when the signal has to traverse the salty trough of a 9,000-mile-plus culture gap. (What is this charming thing they call a “dunny,” you might pause in your reading to wonder, until Google helpfully explains that it is some sort of diminutive for toilets. And a Hot Milo? Not an unusual sex act, it turns out, just a brand of cocoa.)

The first pick here comes from a grande dame of Australian letters, although she would probably balk at the term. The second I plucked from the three-dollar shelf at a Hudson Valley bookstore one wind-bitten day in late December — or as they know it in Melbourne, peak summer.

—Leah