Five Bells

Author: Gail Jones

Publisher: New York: Picador, 2012

Annotation: 

Told over the course of a single Saturday in Sydney, Five Bells weaves together the stories of four characters -- country girl Ellie, who is new to the city, her childhood friend, the heavily medicated James, Dublin native Catherine and Pei Xing, whose family fled China's Cultural Revolution -- all of them dealing with personal sorrows and secret guilt.

Library Journal praises the book's "deliberate pacing and introspective style," saying "this is a book for contemplative readers willing to lose themselves in the characters' journeys between present and past".

For more information:

• Picador (publisher)
• The Guardian
• Goodreads

The book of ordinary people

Author: Claire Varley

Publisher:  Pan Macmillan, 2018

Annotation: 

This hopeful and engaging character driven novel focuses on the lives of five strangers living in the suburbs of north Melbourne -- a woman in mourning, a man stuck on the corporate treadmill, a failed journalist, an idealistic lawyer and an asylum-seeker caught in bureaucratic limbo and unable to move forward with her life. 

Reviewer Amanda Mcleod says author Claire Varley's past experience working with migrants and refugee communities lends this book "an authentic voice and genuine gravitas", adding: “The Book Of Ordinary People perfectly captures modern-day multicultural Australia.” (Writing NSW)

For more information:

• Pan MacMillan (publisher)
• Goodreads
• Writing NSW

Invented lives

Author:  Andrea Goldsmith

Publisher: Melbourne : Scribe, 2019

Annotation: 

Invented Lives is a character-driven story about love, exile and family secrets. It is the mid-1980s when Galina Kogan leaves the Soviet Union for a new life in Australia. Once settled in Melbourne, she meets and forms a deep relationship with the elderly Morrows and their son Andrew, who has fallen for her. But her presence in their lives creates a ripple effect that will leave all of them irrevocably changed. 

Goldsmith writes of 1980s Melbourne with detailed nostalgia and produces what the Sydney Morning Herald's Louise Swinn describes as “a unique story that feels universal”.

For more information:

• Scribe (publisher)
• Goodreads
• Sydney Morning Herald