Thanks to the wonders of the world wide web there are at least three great ways you can keep in touch with what's being published Down Under. All you need is a computer and an internet connection!

1. You can listen to wonderful interviews with writers on ABC Radio National's The Book Show.

2. You can watch ABC TV's The First Tuesday Book Club.

3. And you can subscribe to Writers Radio Podcast.

Please let me know if I've missed any other radio or video podcasts that focus on Australian literature.

January 26 is Australia Day, a national day that commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788. Some see it as a celebration of what it is to be Australian; others, particularly those of indigenous heritage, see it as the day that white Europeans invaded the continent.

It seems kind of fitting, therefore, to be hosting a giveaway in which the controversial history of Australia's settlement is explored in a trio of novels by Kate Grenville.

The Secret River, The Lieutenant and Sarah Thornhill form a loose trilogy about colonial Australia — and I'm delighted to report that the very nice people at Canongate have supplied three sets of this trilogy to give away.

I've read all three books and they are wonderfully perceptive, eloquent and thought-provoking. (My review of The Secret River is here; The Lieutenant is here; and Sarah Thornhill will go up in the next couple of days.)

To be in with a chance of winning this trilogy simply leave a comment below telling me three things that come to mind when someone mentions 'Australia' — for instance, kangaroos, sunshine and meat pies — and I will determine the winners based on the most interesting and imaginative replies!

Entries closed at 16.00 GMT Sunday January 29, 2012.

The competition is open to anyone, regardless of where you live, but you can only enter once. And do note, I cannot accept email entries. Good luck.

I used a random integer generator to choose two lucky winners out of the 15 who put their name in the hat.

Here are your random numbers:

15	10

Timestamp: 2012-01-26 15:49:45 UTC

That means the winners are JanetD and Glynis Elliot. Congratulations to you both! I'll be in touch shortly to arrange delivery of your book.

Commiserations to those who missed out, but do pop back — there's a special Australia Day giveaway planned for later today.

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 309 pages; 2009.

It seems fitting to review Kate Grenville's novel The Lieutenant on the eve of Australia Day, because the book focuses on an officer of the First Fleet.

First Fleet astronomer

Lieutenant Daniel Rooke is a young astronomer who sails to Australia, from Portsmouth, England, to set up an observatory — "a small room surmounted by a cone of wood and canvas, something like an Indian teepee" — to chart the stars, specifically the expected path of a comet once seen in 1532 and 1661 and due to be seen in the Southern Hemisphere in 1788.

In his little hut, on a remote headland away from the main settlement at Sydney Cove, the 26-year-old relishes the solitude and dark night sky. But as a red coat, he continually gets dragged back into the colony's ongoing struggles with food supplies, convict labour and the need to find pasture land further afield. He also finds himself part of the new settlement's attempts to communicate with the native inhabitants — dark, naked and armed with spears — which are not always successful.

But away from the prying eyes of his superiors, Rooke soon befriends the aboriginal people near his isolated observatory and makes a study of their language. He is particularly drawn to a young girl, Tagaran, who reminds him of his younger sister, and together they begin to teach each other words and phrases, which Rooke records in a book.

He got down an unused notebook from the shelf, felt the girl watching as he sat at the table, dipped the pen in the ink and opened the book. On the first page, in his neatest astronomer's hand, he wrote: Tagaran, the name of a girl. Marray, wet. Paye wallan ill la be — he hesitated — concerning heavy rain.

But when tensions between the colony and the natives begin to rise, Rooke's friendship with Tagaran puts him in a difficult position — where, exactly, does his loyalty lay? With Tagaran and her people, or the British crown?

A deeply reflective novel

I found The Lieutenant a rather lovely and deeply reflective novel. It gripped me for several days and plunged me right into the world of Rooke, a highly intelligent man, whose grasp of mathematics, navigation and astronomy are only matched by his perception of the world around him and his hankering for new and meaningful experiences. When he finds himself caught up in a moral quandary, you really feel for his dilemma — the wrong decision could cost him his life.

And, as ever, Grenville's prose is poetic and I love the way she is able to touch on the complexity of history in just a handful of thoughtfully composed sentences. There's a real truth to her writing and an uncanny ability to evoke atmosphere so that you almost feel as if you, too, are standing on that headland with Rooke, watching the waves roll in, with the vast heavens overhead and the untamed wilderness at your back.

Finally, in an afterward to this novel, Grenville explains that Rooke's story is based on William Dawes, a young lieutenant and scholar who sailed with the First Fleet and made a study of the language of the indigenous people of the Sydney area. But she is also quick to point out that The Lieutenant is a novel and "should not be mistaken for history".

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout January 2012. The idea is to simply read as many novels as I can by writers from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

In honour of Australian Literature Month, the lovely people at Picador have supplied two copies of the book to give away to two lucky readers.

To be in with a chance of winning simply leave a comment below telling me why you want to read it. But hurry — entries will close at 13.00 GMT tomorrow, Thursday January 26, 2012.

I'll then choose the winner using an online random number generator (or some such).

The giveaway is open to anyone, regardless of where you live, but you can only enter once. And do note, I cannot accept email entries. Good luck.

Fiction - paperback; Allen & Unwin; 319 pages; 2008.

I read Charlotte Wood's The Submerged Cathedral about this time last year and enjoyed it enough to want to explore more of her work. The Children, her third novel, is set over six days in February 2006.

Taken to hospital

Geoff Connolly, a retiree, falls off the roof of his home in rural New South Wales and is taken to hospital with severe head injuries. As he lays like "a mechanically breathing corpse" in the newly opened intensive care unit, his wife and three adult children — war correspondent Mandy, civil servant Stephen and artist Cathy — gather around his bedside to keep vigil.

But this is not a happy family. The siblings nurse decades-long petty grievances and bitter rivalries. Stephen has kept himself apart from the family for years and only keeps in intermittent touch with Cathy. Mandy, shell-shocked and hardened from too much time reporting from the world's war zones, is unable to keep a civil tongue in her head — at the expense of her now crumbling marriage to Chris. While Sydney-based Cathy, the youngest, plays the role of dutiful daughter, failing to understand why her older brother and sister are always at loggerheads.

But while Geoff is oblivious to the tension and strain around him, so, too, is his wife Margaret, who is bewildered by events and the behaviour of her adult children. Her family is coming apart at the seams, but is it still her role, after all these years, to keep it together?

You bring your children up to escape sorrow. You spend your best years trying to stop them witnessing it — on television, in you, in your neighbours' faces. Then you realise, slowly, that there is no escape, that they must steer their own way through life's cruelties.

Dual storyline

If that's not enough, there's a separate drama unfolding around them: Tony, a warden at the hospital, has developed an unhealthy obsession with Mandy that threatens her safety — perhaps more so than at any other time in her life, including her stints in the Balkans and war-torn Iraq, she just doesn't know it yet.

Wood maintains this narrative tension throughout the novel by interspersing short chapters, from Tony's point-of-view, that demonstrate his childlike, creepy tendencies. But even without this subsidiary storyline, the main thrust of The Children — a family collapsing in on itself at a time of great distress — is a page-turning read.

The characters are so well drawn that you feel as if you've known them all your life. Mandy is particularly believable as the embittered, contrary and "superior" war correspondent and I like the way Wood fleshes out her back story in order to contrast Mandy's inability to readjust to ordinary civilian life.

Authentic dialogue

The dialogue, too, is absolutely spot-on. There's one stand-out scene in an RSL restaurant — a quintessential element of life in small town Australia, I must say — where the siblings have a spat over the menu. This deteoriates into a ding-dong battle in which Stephen delivers some hard (and painful) truths to his older sister while Margaret frets about keeping up appearances:

But Stephen is aflame. 'You just hate ordinary people, Mandy. You hate ordinariness. But the poor bloody people overseas you are always going on about, that you make your famous living out of? You know what they want? Ordinariness. They want exactly what it is about this place that you despise!'
Mandy is silenced. She puts a cigarette to her lips, staring at her brother. She has never hated anyone so much in her life.
'You can't smoke in here!' Margaret cries.

Wonderful family drama

The Children is a wonderful family drama — on an equal to anything that loads of famous white American males churn out and for which they get lauded — that puts "normality" under the microscope. It is closely observed and so beautifully nuanced that I'm sure you could read this book a dozen times and come away with new things you missed earlier.

My only quibble is the too-quick and overly dramatic ending — in which Tony and Mandy finally come head-to-head — because it lets down an otherwise superbly crafted novel.

The Children was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards literary fiction award in 2008. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be available outside of Australia or New Zealand.

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout January 2012. The idea is to simply read as many novels as I can by writers from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

Fiction - paperback; Atlantic Books; 326 pages; 2004.

Richard Flanagan is one of my favourite authors. I've read and enjoyed all his novels — The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997), Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (2001), The Unknown Terrorist (2006) and Wanting (2008) — but had kept his first novel for a special occasion. And what better occasion to read Death of a River Guide (1994) than Australian Literature Month?

A brave and audacious debut

As a debut novel, Death of a River Guide is a brave and audacious one.

It is told from the perspective of Aljaz Cosini — half Tasmanian, half Slovenian — who is drowning in Tasmania's Franklin River during a rather adventurous, dangerous and ultimately tragic river expedition that he is leading. As Aljaz tries to wriggle free from the rock which has ensnared him under the white water, scenes from his life — good, bad and ugly — come rushing back to him like fragments of a dream.

In an unusual twist (I hate to use the term "magic realism" but I guess that's what it is), Aljaz also gets to experience scenes from the lives of his parents, lovers and forebears, helping him to understand his place in the world.

Bite-sized flashbacks

Interspersed with this narrative thread, which is composed largely of bite-sized flashbacks, is a second storyline that follows the white-water rafting expedition that Aljaz is leading. The expedition is a commercial tour for stressed-out executives, nurses and other full-time workers, and Aljaz, who is accompanied by a younger, more enthusiastic river guide, is a bit cynical about it all.

The job doesn't pay particularly well, but he's a drifter and will take anything that is going to keep his head above water — pun not intended. He has been a river guide before, but is a bit out of practice, for reasons that are explained during one of his many flashbacks.

The novel is heavy on detail — the descriptions of the river and the rainforests of Tasmania are particularly vivid and beautiful — and peopled with a seemingly endless cast of wonderful characters, including Aljaz's convict ancestors and the tiresome people he leads on the trip.

Fast-paced narrative

But this is not at expense of narrative tension which becomes heightened the further you get into the book. That's because you know from the outset that Aljaz is drowning, but you don't know how this tragic predicament came about — and you have to propel yourself through more than 250 pages before you find out what happens on that fateful fourth day of the trip.

Death of a River Guide is a lovely rich and engrossing novel, brimming with multiple storylines about history, fate, identity and nature. It's also a wonderful tale that contrasts Tasmania's dark past as a penal colony with its new role as a wilderness destination. It's a captivating read — and one I won't forget in a hurry.

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout January 2012. The idea is to simply read as many novels as I can by writers from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

The books read

It's been a rather interesting reading week...

I spent time with a lieutenant of the First Fleet as he set up an astronomical observatory on the coast and made friends with the local native population, courtesy of Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant.

I then shunted off to the early 20th century and spent some time birdwatching on the southern Queensland coast before heading off to the battlefields of France for the Great War, courtesy of David Malouf's Fly Away Peter.

And then I visited a country town in NSW at the beginning of the 21st century to spend some time in the company of three adult siblings keeping a bedside vigil over their dying father, courtesy of Charlotte Wood's The Children.

All three novels were brilliant reads and shows the amazing depth and breadth of Australian literary fiction. I will review them in due course.

The giveaways

I hosted two giveaways this week.

The first, to win a set of Alex Miller novels, was sponsored by the UK arm of Allen & Unwin, and I'm happy to report that a copy of Conditions of Faith and Lovesong are about to wing their way to Switzerland, where Glenda, an expat Australian lives.

The second, to win one of two copies of Tim Winton's Breath, was sponsored by Picador. And now this rather enjoyable novel will be going to Parrish and Claire (Paperback Reader), just in time for Australia Day (January 26).

The books reviewed

This week I reviewed:

• Tim Winton's Breath

• David Malouf's Fly Away Peter

And other bloggers posted the following reviews (in no particular order):

• Carpentaria by Alexis Wright (Tony's Reading List)

• Call Me Cruel by Michael Duffy (Book'd Out)

• The Girl in the Steel-Capped Boots by Loretta Hill (Book'd Out)

• Under the Influence by Jacqueline Lunn (Book'd Out)

• Taller When Prone by Les Murray (Read, Ramble)

• The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman (Sam Still Reading)

• Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett (ANZLitLovers)

• (For the Term of) His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke (ANZLitlovers)

• Kinglake-350 by Adrian Hyland (Petrona)

Writing Charlotte Aimes also has a lovely round-up of Australian books she's read recently which I neglected to include in last week's post.

Did I miss your Australian book review or your post about Australian Literature Month? Let me know and I’ll add it in. (Note, if you use one of Australian Literature Month badges or provide a link back to this site it makes me easier to find you!)

I got a tad excited last night when I read this piece in The Age and realised that Melbourne-based Text Publishing are planning to release a Classics series in May. The books, all written by Australians, will be priced at $12.95, which is about half the price of a normal paperback in Oz.

I just hope the 30 books planned for the series will be available to an international audience.

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 142 pages; 1999.

David Malouf is a critically acclaimed and prize-winning novelist and poet from Australia. Fly Away Peter, his third novel, netted him The Age Book of the Year in 1982 and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1983.

A Great War novel

It is a truly beautiful and devastating story set before and during the Great War. I read it in two sittings and felt stunned by the sheer power and emotion that Malouf wrings from just 144 pages of eloquently written prose.

When Fly Away Peter opens it is 1914. Jim Saddler, a 20-year-old man from southern Queensland, devotes his time to watching birds in the estuary and swampland near the home he shares with the father he does not like very much.

One day he meets the owner of the land, Ashley Crowther, a rich farmer not much older than himself, who employees Jim to record the coming and going of the birds — both native and migratory species — as part of his plan to create a sanctuary.

A little later Jim befriends an older English woman called Imogen Harcourt, whom he sees in the "sanctuary" taking bird photographs which she sends to a London magazine. These photographs also accompany the long list of birds that Jim transcribes into a special book using his "best copybook hand, including all the swirls and hooks and tails on the capital letters that you left off when you were simply jotting things down".

Trio of characters

This trio of characters come from vastly different backgrounds — Miss Harcourt is an English immigrant who lives alone, Australian-born Ashley was educated in England's finest schools, Jim has never left Queensland — and yet they are united by their mutual love of birds and the natural world. 

When he talked to Miss Harcourt, as when he talked to Ashley Crowther, they spoke only of 'the birds'.

But their idyllic existence comes to an end when war erupts in Europe and both men decide to sign up — Jim goes to Salisbury, England, to be trained; Ashley is an officer in a different division. It is here, on the battlefields of the Western Front, that Malouf's extraordinary novel really comes into its own.

The mud and the trenches

His gut-wrenching descriptions of the mud and the trenches and the fear of going over the top are eloquent and moving, as is his depiction of the friendships, and occasional personal hostilities, formed on the front line.

There is one particularly god-awful scene in which Jim loses his best friend in the platoon, a larrikin called Clancy, that is more horrifying and bone-chilling than anything I've ever read about the Great War.

But the great strength of Fly Away Peter is the way in which Malouf not only describes how war is a machine, spitting out more and more young men who will die horrible deaths far from home, but also the way in which he contrasts the fighting in the trenches while the residents of Armentières are getting on with their day-to-day lives:

Often, as Jim later discovered, you entered the war through an ordinary gap in a hedge. One minute you were in a ploughed field, with snowy troughs between ridges that marked old furrows and peasants off at the edge of it digging turnips or winter greens, and the next you were through the hedge and on duckboards, and although you could look back and still see farmers at work, or sullenly watching as the soldiers passed over their land went slowly below ground, there was all the difference in the world between your state and theirs. They were in a field and very nearly at home. You were in the trench system that lead to the war.

Explores Australian myths

It's easy to see why the novel is a set text in many Australian schools. It explores the myth of the Australian soldier and the ANZAC spirit, and contrasts the horror of war with the beauty — and peace — of the natural world. It shows how an appreciation and respect for nature is a great leveller, crossing the boundaries of race, class and experience. And the text is rich with symbols, not least the migratory birds which represent Jim's "flight" to the other side of the world.

But it is the poignancy of the ending, in which Miss Harcourt stands on the beach and reflects that life continues to move on — "Everything changed. The past would not hold and could not be held" — that elevates this novel from excellent to exceptional.

I haven't felt so devastated by a First World War novel since I read Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way. And going by how much I loved and adored those novels, I don't make this statement lightly...

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout January 2012. The idea is to simply read as many novels as I can by writers from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.