fabulous fiction

“The world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore..”

Things are falling apart. Ireland is in the grip of a government that is taking a turn towards tyranny. And as the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society - assailed by unpredictable forces beyond her control and forced to do whatever it takes to keep her family together.

Our Book of the Month for June 2020 is The Spill by Imbi Neeme

We asked debut novelist, and winner of the 2019 Penguin Literary Prize, Imbi Neeme some of our burning questions about her new novel The Spill. Check it out below:

More About The Spill

From debut novelist, and winner of the 2019 Penguin Literary Prize, Imbi Neeme comes The Spill, an exploration of the moments - small and large - upon which our lives can pivot.

In 1982, a car overturns on a remote West Australian road. Nobody is hurt, but the impact is felt for decades. For sisters Nicole and Samantha this moment will echo through their lives and continually affect their responses to individual experiences and to each other.

Inspired by a similar event in Neeme’s childhood, The Spill examines how all our memories are fictionalised to some degree. By interweaving pieces from the sisters’ past with their present day Neeme reveals the spaces that exist between events, experiences and memory.

It is through this fickleness of memory that Neeme also delves into the complex relationship between sisters. Through seemingly unconnected episodes, from significant events as well as small moments in time, scattered throughout the novel, the relationship between them is slowly revealed in all its forms; envious, joyful, protective, regretful but most of all loving.

The Spill is a captivating depiction of the bond between sisters and a family that find its way back to one another.

“Brilliantly comic and tender, this is a sharp and intimate portrayal of that most mystifying of things: family. Neeme gives us a real world; of chaotic fragments drawn with charm and compassion. These are people, like us, making lives of their messes.” - Robert Lukins

About Imbi Neeme

Imbi Neeme is a recovering blogger, impending novelist and compulsive short story writer. Her manuscript The Spill was awarded the 2019 Penguin Literary Prize.

She was the recipient of the 2019 Henry Handel Richardson Fellowship at Varuna for excellence in Short Story Writing. Her short fiction has won prizes in the 2019 Newcastle Short Story Awards, the 2018 Boroondara Literary Awards, and has been shortlisted for the 2018 Peter Carey Short Story Award.

Her first manuscript, The Hidden Drawer, made the judges’ commended list in the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Awards and was selected for the 2015 Hachette/ Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program.

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The Miles Franklin Literary Award was established by prolific author and feminist Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, now best known for her first novel My Brilliant Career. First presented in 1957, the Award celebrates novels of the highest literary merit that tell stories about Australian life. Winning authors also receive a prize of $60,000. The Award remains Australia’s most prestigious and valued literary award.

The 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist is:

The shortlist will be announced on Wednesday 17 June, with the winner announcement to follow on Thursday 16 July.

“This year’s Miles Franklin longlist is a mix of established and newer Australian authors,” said State Library of NSW Mitchell Librarian Richard Neville on behalf of the judges. “Their novels give voice to a diversity of Australian characters whose common feature is their location on the margins, whether geographical, familial or societal. They explore the ripples and repercussions of childhood trauma, the healing power of friendship, and the unshakeable presence of the past.”

Alongside Neville, the 2020 judging panel also includes journalist for the Australian Murray Waldren, book critic Melinda Harvey, Abbey’s Bookshop senior book buyer Lindy Jones, and author and literary critic Bernadette Brennan.

Melissa Lucashenko won the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel Too Much Lip (UQP). For more information about this year’s longlist, see the Perpetual website.