Sorry, Jane Austen, but these Australian novels had us at hello

Thanks to Netflix, yet another Pride and Prejudice adaptation is coming our way . Bonnets and Bennets will again infect the zeitgeist, not that we had a real break. We live in a wretched state of perma-Austen. Breaks are hallucinations – and always short-lived.

But news of the upcoming series has got me thinking about Jane Austen’s famous opening sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

I cringe whenever it’s quoted or parodied. To be fair, this is more about my distaste for the Jane Austen Industrial Complex than for the sentence itself. It’s fine, I guess. But – in the spirit of sweeping statements – it is a fact that many Australian novelists have written better openers than Austen. I’m here to prove it.

“Unemployed at last!” from Such is Life by Joseph Furphy is short, snappy, roguish and an undeniable banger. But I might be biased towards unnerving exclamations because I also love Brian Castro’s opener to Chinese Postman, “How time-honoured custom reverts to ruin!” and Luke Davies’ opener to Candy , “Everything’s f---ing beautiful!” In each case, the reader is plunged straight into a highly questionable perspective. That’s the kind of thing I love in fiction.

The first sentence of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career is also an exclamation: “Boo, hoo!” It’s short and snappy but also annoying. However, since I’m being strict on grammar (counting only one-sentence openers), but loose on what counts as the first sentence (accepting both prologues and first chapters), Franklin’s masterpiece still qualifies for an honourable mention. The prologue begins with bluster: “MY DEAR FELLOW AUSTRALIANS, Just a few lines to tell you that this is a story all about myself – for no other purpose do I write it.”

Bluff, bluster and bravado are big in Australian novels. The opening to Peter Carey’s Bliss goes much further. “Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him, and it is this first death which we shall now witness.” (The opening to Olivia De Zilva’s 2025 novel, Plastic Budgie, continues this tradition: “People accuse you of lying when you say you remember your birth.”)

I love novels that kick off with startling or cryptic images. “The boy is curled up in his bed like a skinny black question mark” from Bitin’ Back by Vivienne Cleven is a great one.