Literary Prize gets it right?

I was delighted to see Joan London’s The Good Parents, win the Christina Stead Award for Fiction at last night’s NSW Premier’s Awards. I think like many people I’d been assuming the award would go to Tim Winton for Breath, so to see Joan win was an unexpected delight.

Literary awards in Australia don’t tend to do much for sales, but I do hope this one leads at least a few people to The Good Parents because it’s a wonderful novel. Like her last, Gilgamesh, it’s a deceptively subtle work, which is at once intelligent and immensely compassionate, and which, in its way, reminds me of Marilynne Robinson at her best.

If you’d like to know more the Arts NSW website has links to an extract from the novel and an interview with Joan. And in place of the dead link they provide to the Sydney Morning Herald review you might want to check out the review at The New York Times.

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