THE STRAYS by Emily Bitto

Wow, what a debut novel! I give it 4.5 stars out of 5. I've always been infatuated with Australia, so I opened this book a little biased. It's mostly set in 1930s Melbourne at a commune for avant-garde artists. SPOILER!: I probably would have given it 5 stars, but the two sisters running off with the one artist seemed a little cliched and predictable. But that's a minor quibble. First, Nancy Tucker's First Day of Spring, and now this novel. Is 2021 the year for debut novels by women? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, a kind of a cheat 'cuz Bitto's book came out in 2017.)