Award-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks turns to memoir to deliver a masterful portrait of the love of her life whose shocking and unexpected death at just 60 years old brought her world crashing down. It is a wonderful piece of writing, vulnerable and intense with humour and so much love. As she learns about her own grief she looks at how different cultures deal with this drenching universal emotion.

This book reminded me of the privilege of reading. The sheer generosity on display when a writer such as Geraldine Brooks truly lets you in. She lets us in to her darkest hour – the sudden loss of a beautiful husband, author Tony Horwitz – and then gently, deeply, profoundly unfurls the brutal threads of aftermath. I kept thinking about how proud Tony – a brilliant journalist – would be of his wife, using everything she has learned through a lifetime of journalism to craft a stunning portrait of a woman as rocked by grief as she is still moved by love.

From his prison cell Jasper Dean, illegitimate son of Martin Dean, reflects on his complex relationship with his paranoid, misanthropic, philosophical father and his famous Uncle Terry – athlete turned criminal. The narration which takes us from the Australian countryside to Paris, Thai jungles and beyond traces the series of adventures that led to his father’s downfall and Jasper’s situation.

This book made a huge impression on me about a decade ago. Completely destroyed any presumptions I had about what an Australian work of fiction could or should be. Just so bold and so narratively punk-rock and so deeply Australian without being that fake version of Australia that we sometimes package up with a jar of Vegemite and send off to the world. There are twists in this book that remain some of the most unexpected, and utterly right, turns I’ve experienced in any form of storytelling since. A book so entertaining I thought about making myself some popcorn as I read. It all reaches its epic crescendo and you want to stand up and whistle and clap and then sit back down again and turn to page one.

The protagonists of this poignant Australian classic are Storm Boy and Mr Percival, a pelican who becomes his best friend. After Mr Percival’s mother is shot, Storm Boy rescues her three pelican chicks, nursing them back to health and releasing them into the wild. When Mr Percival returns we learn more about the boy’s relationship with his father and with local Indigenous man, Fingerburn.

The boy reminded me of myself. Always running along beachfronts breathing in salt air and looking up at birds and wanting to fly away with them. The dad reminded me of my dad. The relationship Storm Boy had with his pelican – Mr Percival – always reminded me of the friendship I had with my favourite football. Weird, I know, but a kid must find any connection they can to literature. I still remember my Grade 5 teacher at primary school on the northern fringes of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia telling me that the author, Colin Thiele, now lived in a sleepy green hill town called Dayboro, which was only a half-hour drive from my house in Bracken Ridge. I was struck with the most profound and motivating notion: ‘Do you mean people from my neck of the woods are allowed to write books, too?’