Too Much Lip, by Melissa Lucashenko

Riding into the piss-poor northern New South Wales town of Durrongo on a hot Harley, Kerry Salter plans to pay her respects to her dying pop and get out of Dodge asap. Grieving the break-up from her girlfriend, who is in gaol in Brisbane, Kerry has to navigate her tricky family while dealing with the town’s shonky mayor/real estate developer. Her religious mother Pretty Mary, alcoholic brother Ken and anorexic nephew Donny don’t make it easy, while an encounter with her high school crush Steve makes her question her sexuality. Melissa Lucashenko brings to life a family on the fringe of society and the law, making them real and comprehensible, funny and tragic. Culture and history informs the narrative but never bogs it down, rather illuminating the very real impact of generational trauma on the practical reality of modern life. The writing is very visual and it would be easy to see it made into a three or four-part TV series. Equally entertaining and informative, with a flawed heroine who is totally relatable, it is no wonder this novel has reaped awards.

The Year of the Farmer, by Rosalie Ham

Drought has put everyone under pressure in country New South Wales, not least struggling sheep farmer Mitch. His crops are failing, his debt is crippling, his old Dad’s health is failing and he is married to a complete bitch. Life offers hope and complication when his lost love Neralie returns to town to run the pub, but then there are the latest machinations of the Water Authority to deal with. They want to cut allocations, raise rates, impose the use of expensive and possibly useless technology and generally make life even harder. A blackly comic take on the state of water usage and abusage in regional Australia, recent events in the Murray-Darling Basin almost make this novel read more like an academic text. Ham has clearly done her research and there are sections where she overdoes the didacticism, but on the whole the story is entertaining and rings very true. Everyone gets a say and a serve – farmers, irrigators, water traders, riparians and ferals – but sympathies are well and truly with the farmers while the villains are corrupt bureaucrats and expedient politicians.