Transnationalism and the Literary Reception of Australian Women Writers’ Fiction in the US, 2010–2020: Three Case Studies

ABSTRACT

The following article examines how Australian literary fiction by women is received in the United States. In particular, it considers how books are positioned by publishers, reviewers and authors as relevant to an American audience as well as to what extent Australian literary fiction’s appeal is borne out in reviews and in an online forum, Goodreads. To address these questions, I examine the US reception of three diverse literary novels by Australian women: Waanyi author Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (Atria Books, 2016), Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend (Riverhead, 2020), and Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel (Little, Brown, 2013). I argue that recent Australian literary fiction by women makes an appeal to US readers through a combination of “transnational orientation”—or ideas, characters and settings that a novel evokes to address a global readership—which are leveraged by publishers in book design and endorsements, and “authorial disambiguation”, in the form of essays and websites written by authors and addressed to local and global readers. Efforts to draw attention to a novel’s currency for a US audience are unevenly evident in reviews in broadsheets and trade publications, as well as on Goodreads.

KEYWORDS:

• US reception of Australian novels
• transnational fiction
• Goodreads
• literary fiction
• women’s fiction

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 David Carter and Roger Osborne, Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s–1940s (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2018), 11.

2 David Carter, “The Dynamics of Material Transnationalism: Australian Indigenous Authors in the US Marketplace,” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 20, no. 2 (2020): 3, https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/JASAL/issue/view/From%20Colony%20to%20Transnation.

3 Paul Crosby et al., Success Story—International Rights Sales of Australian-Authored Books: Main Report (North Ryde, NSW: Macquarie University, October 2021), 11, https://research-management.mq.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/177288594/177088842_Main_report.pdf.

4 For example, see the special issue edited by Jessica Gildersleeve of Journal of Australian Studies. Jessica Gildersleeve, “Introduction: Christos Tsiolkas and Contemporary Australia—The Outsider Artist,” Journal of Australian Studies 46, no. 1 (2022): 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2022.2028368; Lachlan Brown, “Worlds Apart: Nam Le’s The Boat and Ali Alizadeh’s Transactions,” Transnational Literature 7, no. 2 (2015): 1–12, https://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/vol7_issue2.html.

5 Michael Richard Jacklin, “The Transnational Turn in Australian Literary Studies,” Journal of the Society for Australian Literature, special issue: Australian Literature in a Global World (2009): 4.

6 The inclusion of works in the AustLit database does not mean that the writer lives or has lived in Australia, but that they at one point had an Australian connection or have been published by an Australian publisher.

7 “Australian Novels,” AustLit, accessed 20 May 2023, https://www-austlit-edu-au.virtual.anu.edu.au/search.

8 Alexis Wright, “What Happens When You Tell Someone Else’s Story?,” Meanjin (Summer 2016), https://meanjin.com.au/essays/what-happens-when-you-tell-somebody-elses-story/.

9 Sarah Brouillette, UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 7.

10 See Ken Gelder, Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (London: Taylor & Francis, 2004), 13. Gelder is drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu here.

11 Brouillette, UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary, 1–2.

12 Carter and Osborne, Australian Books and Authors, 12.

13 Beth Driscoll, The New Literary Middlebrow: Tastemakers and Reading in the 21st Century (London: Palgrave, 2014), 1.

14 Driscoll, The New Literary Middlebrow, 194.

15 Emmett Stinson and Beth Driscoll, “Difficult Literature on Goodreads: Reading Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book,” Textual Practice 36, no. 1 (2020): 6.

16 Carter and Osborne, Australian Books and Authors, 341.

17 Kim Wilkins, Beth Driscoll, and Lisa Fletcher, Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and Twenty-First-Century Book Culture (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022), 64.

18 “2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award,” Perpetual, accessed 25 July 2023, https://www.perpetual.com.au/milesfranklin#:~:text=The%20Miles%20Franklin%20Literary%20Award,in%20any%20of%20its%20phases.

19 Crosby et al., Success Story, 33.

20 Paul Jay and Paula Rabinowitz, “Transnational,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020), https://doi-org.virtual.anu.edu.au/10 .1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.1134.

21 M. A. T. Olave, “Reading Matters: Towards a Cultural Sociology of Reading,” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 6 (2018): 418.

22 DeNel Rehberg Sedo, “Reading Reception in the Digital Era,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 28 June 2017, https://doi-org.virtual.anu.edu.au/10 .1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.285.

23 Anouk Lang, “Introduction: Transforming Reading,” in From Codex to Hypertext: Reading at the Turn of the 21st Century (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 2.

24 Lang, “Transforming Reading,” 2

25 Lisa Nakamura, “Words with Friends: Socially Networked Reading on Goodreads,” PMLA 128, no. 1 (2013): 240.

26 Nakamura, “Words with Friends,” 241.

27 Stinson and Driscoll, “Difficult Literature on Goodreads,” 11.

28 Stinson and Driscoll, “Difficult Literature on Goodreads,” 11.

29 Per Henningsgaard, “Alexis Wright’s Publication History in three Contexts: Australian Aboriginal, National, and International,” Antipodes 33, no. 1 (2019): 108, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/alexis-wright-s-publishing-history-three-contexts/docview/2475829527/se-2.

30 Linda Daley, “Alexis Wright’s Fiction as World-Making,” Contemporary Women’s Writing 16, no. 1 (March 2016): 8–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpv028.

31 Lynda Ng, “Introduction,” in Indigenous Transnationalism: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (Artamon, NSW: Giramondo, 2018), 1–11.

32 Lucy Neave, “Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013) as Crisis Fiction,” Textual Practice 36, no. 9 (2022): 1563, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1977379.

33 Phillip Mead, “Unresolved Sovereignty and the Anthropocene Novel: Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book,” Journal of Australian Studies 42, no. 4 (2018): 524–38, https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2018.1539759.

34 Susan Sheridan, “Feminist Fables and Alexis Wright’s Art of the Fabulous in The Swan Book,” Hecate 43, no. 1/2 (2017): 203.

35 Maria Kaaren Takolander, “Theorizing Irony and Trauma in Magical Realism: Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book,” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 47, no. 3 (July 2016): 95–122, https://doi.org/10.1353/ari.2016.0026.

36 Jan Zwar and Airlie Lawson, Success Story—International Rights Sales of Australian-Authored Books: Case Studies (North Ryde, NSW: Macquarie University, October 2021), 48.

37 Zwar and Lawson, Case Studies, 48.

38 Zwar and Lawson, Case Studies, 48–50.

39 Zwar and Lawson, Case Studies, 51.

40 Robina Thomas and Jacquie Green, “A Way of Life: Indigenous Perspectives on Anti-Oppressive Living,” First Peoples Child and Family Review 3, no. 1 (2007): 92.

41 Alexis Wright, The Swan Book (New York, NY: Atria, 2016).

42 “The Swan Book,” Publishers Weekly, 20 June 2016, https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-5011-2478-5.

43 The Reading Room, “The Swan Book by Alexis Wright,” Oprah Magazine, 13 June 2016, https://www.oprah.com/book/the-swan-book?editors_pick_id=63887.

44 Courtney Ophoff, “The Swan Book,” Booklist, 15 May 2016, https://www.booklistonline.com/The-Swan-Book-Alexis-Wright/pid=8050584.

45 In a New York Times Book Review interview in 2020, Robert MacFarlane, author of Underland (2019), named Alexis Wright as one of the writers he admired most, mentioning both her fiction and non-fiction: “I’m awed by the range, experiment and political intelligence of her work.” Robert MacFarlane, “The Classic Novel That Robert MacFarlane Couldn’t Finish,” New York Times, 22 November 2020, sec. Book Review, 7, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/books/review/robert-macfarlane-by-the-book-interview.html?searchResultPosition=3.

46 See: “Alexis Wright: Works By,” AustLit, https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A6167?mainTabTemplate=agentWorksBy&restrictToAgent=A6167. It is common practice for Australian publishers to ask authors to write opinion pieces for publication around the date of a novel’s release, in an effort to build an audience.

47 Alexis Wright, “The Politics of Writing,” Southerly 62, no. 2 (2002): 10–20.

48 Alexis Wright, “Want to Stop Australia’s Fires? Listen to Aboriginal People,” New York Times, 15 January 2020, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/opinion/australia-fires-aboriginal-people.html?searchResultPosition=2.

49 “The Swan Book by Alexis Wright,” Goodreads, accessed 25 July 2023, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18247932-the-swan-book.

50 “The Swan Book by Alexis Wright”.

51 See Stinson and Driscoll, “Difficult Literature on Goodreads”. Although this article surveys reviews of the US editions, this is not to say that some American reviewers did not write reviews of the Australian edition or that some reviewers of the American edition may not have been expatriates. It is impossible to delineate a purely American response.

52 Wright, “The Politics of Writing”; Wright, “What Happens When You Tell Someone Else’s Story?”.

53 Zwar and Lawson, Case Studies, 134.

54 Zwar and Lawson, Case Studies, 134.

55 Riverhead Books, “Overview,” accessed 13 May 2023, https://www.penguin.com/riverhead-overview/.

56 “Charles Perkins Centre,” University of Sydney, accessed 29 November 2022, https://www.sydney.edu.au/charles-perkins-centre/about.html.

57 Emily Cook, “Author Charlotte Wood New Charles Perkins Centre Writer in Residence,” University of Sydney, 9 May 2016, https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2016/05/09/author-charlotte-wood-announced-as-charles-perkins-centres-write.html.

58 Zwar and Lawson, Case Studies, 132.

59 Zwar and Lawson, Case Studies, 133.

60 “The Weekend: A Novel,” Amazon, accessed 25 July 2023, https://www.amazon.com/Weekend-Novel-Charlotte-Wood/dp/0593086449/ref=monarch_sidesheet.

61 “The Weekend: A Novel,” Penguin Random House, accessed 25 July 2023, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612452/the-weekend-by-charlotte-wood/#.

62 Penguin Random House, “The Weekend: A Novel”.

63 “The Weekend,” Charlotte Wood, accessed 29 November 2022, https://www.charlottewood.com.au/the-weekend.html.

64 Marian Winik, “Review: The Weekend, by Charlotte Wood,” Star Tribune, 31 July 2020, sec. Books, https://www.startribune.com/review-the-weekend-by-charlotte-wood/571967122/.

65 Winik, “Review: The Weekend”.

66 Elisabeth Egan, “Are They Still Beach Books if You’re Not Reading Them on the Beach?,” New York Times, 13 August 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/books/review/beach-reads-kevin-kwan.html?searchResultPosition=1.

67 “The Weekend by Charlotte Wood,” Goodreads, accessed 18 January 2023, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48848247-the-weekend.

68 Goodreads, “The Weekend by Charlotte Wood”.

69 Goodreads, “The Weekend by Charlotte Wood”.

70 “Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser,” Goodreads, accessed 25 July 2023, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15790884-questions-of-travel#:~:text=A%20mesmerising%20literary%20novel%2C%20Questions,Sri%20Lanka%20by%20devastating%20events.

71 Annee Lawrence, “Australian Writing and the Contemporary: Are We There Yet?,” Cultural Studies Review 22, no. 1 (March 2016): 250. Lawrence is referencing Terry Smith’s ideas of contemporary art here.

72 Lawrence, “Australian Writing and the Contemporary,” 244.

73 Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2012), 53.

74 de Kretser, Questions of Travel, 56.

75 “Randy Boyagoda,” Asian Heritage Toronto Metropolitan University, accessed 24 January 2023, https://library.torontomu.ca/asianheritage/authors/boyagoda/.

76 Randy Boyagoda, “When Two Paths Meet,” New York Times Book Review, 21 June 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/books/review/questions-of-travel-by-michelle-de-kretser.html.

77 “Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser,” Kirkus Reviews, 14 May 2013, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michelle-de-kretser/questions-of-travel/.

78 Nawal Arjini, “Departures: Michelle de Kretser’s Fiction of Migration and Globalization,” The Nation, 16 November 2022, https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/michelle-de-krester-scary-monsters/.

79 “Questions of Travel,” Amazon US, accessed 25 July 2023, https://www.amazon.com/Questions-Travel-Novel-Michelle-Kretser/dp/0316219223/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1683941050&sr=1-2.

80 de Kretser, Questions of Travel.

81 For example, see Michelle de Kretser, “I Don’t Want to Be a Tourist in my own Country: An Interview with Michelle de Kretser,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 58, no. 4 (2022): 568–79.

82 Goodreads, “Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser”.

83 Goodreads, “Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser”.

84 Bernama, “Sri Lankan-Born Novelist Wins Aussie PM Literary Award,” Ada Derana, 17 August 2013, https://www.adaderana.lk/news.php?nid=23770.