Here it is, nearly Christmas, and as usual, the list of Books I Have Read is running into the hundreds, and I have that end-of-year mad, fleeting illusion that also afflicts exam-fevered students … that somehow it All Adds Up.

I won’t make the mistake here, though, of trying to make the following selection of books add up in any cosmic way. I’d just like, in quite a pedestrian way, to take another look at some new fiction by Australian women writers to see whether any new ground has been broken in the depiction of women characters.