All week we’re publishing reviews by Victorian librarians of titles shortlisted for the Premier’s 21. The reviews will be published by category, and today we publish reviews of titles shortlisted to win the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction.
Read what Ballarat Library’s Tara Hossack wrote about Gail Jones' Five Bells (“I couldn’t put it down”); what Loueen Twyford from Wangaratta Library thought of Roger McDonald’s When Colts Ran (“a challenging yet rewarding read”); and what Box Hill Library’s Katie Norton thought of the central character in Rohan Wilson’s The Roving Party (“fascinatingly conflicted”). Yarra Plenty Library’s Blaise van Hecke dubs Dominic Smith’s Bright and Distant Shores “a yarn of epic proportions”; Williamstown Library’s Amanda Peckham calls Craig Sherborne’s Amateur Science of Love “an honest account of dishonesty”; and Jan Wilson from Mildura writes that Kim Scott, in That Deadman Dance, “captures the essence of the place so poetically and exactly that the reader can visualize with certainty the beauty of the untainted Australian bush”.
Tomorrow, we’ll publish librarians' reviews of titles shortlisted for the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction.