A touch of hope after the doom? Your guide to the Miles Franklin 2022 shortlist

This year’s Miles Franklin shortlist is lyrical in voice, complex in form, and perhaps a little more hopeful than usual. The threads of shared concern across the volumes leave me wondering whether there is something in the zeitgeist. Maybe it’s writers, publishers and judges reacting to the doom of the past two years, and the dread of
what the future might bring. These novels seem infused with a sense of play, of measured optimism, of the capacity to tease out – and tease – the old verities and the wildly random “truths” that circulate across our culture.