Not long until we're logging off for the year, and can make a substantial dig into our "to read" stacks. Until then, here are a handful of new book releases to add to the pile in November 2023. From Richard Flanagan's memoir to much anticipated fiction from Dolly Alderton.
Question 7, Richard Flanagan
Release date: October 31
Flanagan masterfully bends form to write a memoir that is unlike anything else. Structured to mirror a chain reaction, Flanagan uses H.G Wells prediction about the nuclear bomb as a launching pad to explore his father's internment near Hiroshima as a prisoner of war and all the events that followed until, ultimately, the day Flanagan found himself wedged in a river rapid for hours, on the cusp of death. This is at once a story about how the Booker Prize-winning author came to be, a homage to his parents, and a tribute to Tasmania.
The In Between, Christos Tsiolkas
Release date: October 31
Delicate and tender, Tsiolkas constructs a love story between two men in their middle age. They meet on the internet and are both wounded by previous relationships, but not enough to turn themselves away from lust, romance, and – could it be? – love, once more.
Good Material, Dolly Alderton
Release date: November 7
In Dolly Alderton's latest work of fiction, she tries on the voice of her first male protagonist. When Jen breaks up with Andy, the middling comedian doesn't see it coming. But being single at 30 doesn't hold the same promise it did in your 20s. Unlike his friends who have all settled down with their own families, Andy has no savings, no regular income, and no place of his own. The book follows Andy as he works off his heartache without any leads as to where it all went wrong.
The Vulnerables, Sigrid Nunez
Release date: November 14
Sigrid Nunez makes an appeal to the power of connection, if only we would approach each other with compassion and good will. The Vulnerables places a Gen Z college dropout and a solitary writer together in a New York City apartment. The duo is rounded out with a spirited parrot named Eureka.
Alice Sadie Celine, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
Release date: November 28
It's not yet clear whether Alice Sadie Celine will have an Australian launch date, but the book has received glowing praise from Chloe Sevigny and Busy Philipps. It follows two best friends Alice and Sadie from highschool to college and beyond, where we find them one evening as Alice is set to perform in a local Bay Area production of The Winter’s Tale. But Sadie can't make it, so she sends her mother Celine, a respected professor of women's and gender studies, in her stead. That's when Celine realises her daughter's best friend is all grown up, and the two embark on an affair that will stretch the boundaries of feminism, agency and power.
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