"The Telegraph" out of the UK has produced its lists for the annual Best Books event. Some of the category links didn't work for me, so there might be some Australian books missing.
Australian entry on the lists: Deborah Robertson's Careless (Sceptre, £12.99, T £11.99) is a book I am still thinking about. It shows what happens when the bond of care and responsibility between a mother and child is inverted, so that the child becomes her mother's carer. When circumstances demand it, eight year-old Pearl is capable of delivering: "the Madonna of smiles; serene and consoling, a smile so at odds with her own true feelings that only a grown woman should have been capable of it". Set in Australia, paced like a thriller, this is an entrancing novel that deserves to be more widely known.
