Essential Contemporary Fiction About Australian Women Starting Over After Divorce

Alice Love wakes up on a gym floor with no memory of the last decade. She thinks she's twenty-nine, madly in love with her husband, and pregnant with their first child. The reality? She's thirty-nine, getting divorced, and has three children she doesn't remember. This amnesia-fuelled crisis at the heart of Liane Moriarty's *What Alice Forgot* captures something profound about starting over—sometimes we need to forget who we've become to remember who we are.

Moriarty has become the undisputed queen of portraying Australian women rebuilding their lives, and this collection showcases her alongside other masters of the form. In *Big Little Lies*, she weaves together the stories of three women in Sydney's Northern Beaches, each harbouring secrets that threaten to upend their carefully constructed new lives. The murder mystery framework becomes secondary to the real suspense: watching these women navigate school politics, new relationships, and the weight of their pasts. *The Husband's Secret* takes a different approach, asking what happens when the very foundation of your marriage—trust—crumbles with the discovery of a letter that was never meant to be opened.

Kate Grenville's Orange Prize-winning *The Idea of Perfection* offers a gentler portrait of reinvention. Set in the fictional town of Karakarook, it follows two middle-aged people who've sworn off love, only to find themselves drawn together despite themselves. There's a wonderful awkwardness to their courtship that feels refreshingly honest—these aren't people who bounce back easily, but rather those who've learned to protect themselves, perhaps too well.

For readers seeking grittier territory, Charlotte Wood's *The Natural Way of Things* presents a dystopian nightmare where young women find themselves imprisoned in the Australian outback. Though not explicitly about divorce, it's very much about women stripped of their identities and forced to rebuild from nothing. Jane Harper's *Force of Nature* similarly uses the Australian landscape as a crucible for transformation, following a corporate retreat that goes horribly wrong when one woman disappears.

The collection also includes several books that might surprise—M.L. Stedman's *The Light Between Oceans*, Chris Hammer's *Scrublands*, and Tim Winton's sprawling *Cloudstreet* all feature women navigating profound losses and new beginnings, though divorce isn't always the catalyst. Even Graeme Simsion's charming *The Rosie Project*, ostensibly about a genetics professor searching for love, becomes a meditation on letting go of rigid expectations and embracing life's beautiful messiness.

Start with *What Alice Forgot* if you want something that balances humour with emotional depth, or dive into *Big Little Lies* if you prefer your domestic drama with a side of mystery. For those who appreciate literary fiction, Grenville's quietly powerful prose in *The Idea of Perfection* rewards patient reading. Each book offers its own vision of what comes after "happily ever after" fails, but together they paint a rich portrait of resilience that's distinctly, authentically Australian.