Melissa Lucashenko’s TOO MUCH LIP (UQP) is one of the six finalists for the 2019 Stella Prize for extraordinary books by Australian women!

The judges’ report says:

Too Much Lip is a fearless, searing and unvarnished portrait of generational trauma cut through with acerbic humour. A family drama a hundred years in the making unfolds in the fictional town of Durrongo as a sacred island is under threat from developers, aided by a corrupt council official born to thievery.

The novel’s cast of utterly believable characters is superbly drawn, as is the country in which the novel is set – a magical landscape animated by mocking crows and a vengeful shark.

There is no artifice in Lucashenko’s prose, which is stripped to the bone in a close study of secrecy and its consequences. Too Much Lip moves effortlessly in the telling: dangling from the precipice where ghosts emerge to tell inexorable truths to a serene bend on the river alive with lyrical magic realism.

Ultimately, Too Much Lip reaffirms the power of family and the frayed ties that still bind.