I’m going to keep my 2024 Stella Prize reviews brief, otherwise I simply won’t get through them before the shortlist is announced on April 4.

First up is Feast by Emily O’Grady. I ripped through it over my weekend in Adelaide. Thoughts:

• Thoroughly enjoyed the gothic tone. O’Grady embeds it in all sorts of ways from the damp, drafty house and the rabbit hunting to reclusive characters and abandoned zoos – it’s all very dark.
• The slow reveal of themes. I was actually surprised by some of them (“Oh! I didn’t see that coming!”)
• The lush writing – O’Grady engages all the senses.

The small knot of poultry swims in a pillar-box red sauce, vibrant puddles of green oil polka-dotted over the vast white plate, some sort of grey ash sprinkled over everything. It looks like a crime scene, like crass pop art. Alison loads a fork. The meat sits in her mouth, wet and solid as clay.

…Eleanor and the twins, babies still, soft as finger buns.

• Complex (and essentially unlikeable) characters – make for such fun compelling reading.

When Patrick insisted they go out for decadent meals, more often than not – depending on her mood and how unwieldy she was feeling – she would go to the bathroom afterwards to heave it all out of her. She didn’t even feel shame. Didn’t even try to hide it. It felt good at the time, and now she considers it a period of personal growth, purging to rebalance the equilibrium of her humours, like an Elizabethan monk, a stoic.

• I feel a little cranky about the cover – totally misrepresents this book.

Will it win? Maybe. Hope that fussy cover doesn’t distract from the dark guts of this book.

4/5

There is a cooing in the trees. The ice in the oyster dish has slowed its melting: slim, sparkling, pebbles now. Alison takes her glass of champagne, close to full, and swills it around, sets it down without taking a sip… she hasn’t touched the oysters either, though she shucked the lot and passed them around for everyone else to share. The shells are scattered around the table, little rotten ears listening in like spies.