Published by Text Publishing in February, 2020.
Edited by David Winter.
Cover design by Imogen Stubbs, cover art by Emma Currie.
Winner, UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, 2021
Shortlisted, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, 2021
Shortlisted, Fiction, Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, 2022
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‘This quiet, precise novel reaches deep into the recesses of female friendship and finds it wanting…Tying everything together is McPhee-Browne’s exacting language, which is clear and clean but also evocatively decadent.’
The Saturday Paper
‘Ness’s voice is melancholy and distinct, and her experiences of sexual explorations are delicately and honestly portrayed. McPhee-Browne immerses the reader in the experience of awkward emotional growth with great tenderness and insight. At its core, Cherry Beach is a compelling examination of love and loss in all their guises.’
Australian Book Review
‘Cherry Beach, an impressive debut from Melbourne author Laura McPhee-Browne, is not afraid to present unadulterated queer womanhood in a manner Australian audiences may not often encounter in their local fiction…Lusciously evocative prose…Another queer woman hero to add to the slim but beloved catalogue scrounged from Australian literature’s meagre offerings.’
Meanjin
‘An exciting addition to this generation of writers.’
Overland
‘The debut of Melbourne-based Laura McPhee-Browne is a poetic, languid, melancholic and sensitive meditation on trying to carve your own path in that liminal period between the freedom of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood.’
The Age
‘Cherry Beach has been called a queer Normal People, but this simplifies its multifaceted and nuanced layering of meaning…Through its exploration of queer actualisation, of the transformative nature of the friendship and love in our lives, of, the inevitably beautiful-scary, Cherry Beach succeeds.’
The Lifted Brow
'Captures beautifully the emotional state of early adulthood…McPhee-Browne outlines Hetty’s unravelling, and Ness’s response to it, with great delicacy.’
Fiona Wright, Sydney Review of Books
Cherry Beach is a tender and bruising coming-of-age novel. McPhee-Browne’s writing is both poetic and economical, finely attuned to the exhilaration and doom of youth, unfamiliar cities and new relationships.’
Jennifer Down
‘Laura McPhee-Browne’s Cherry Beach is an acute and gripping novel about being made and unmade by first love. In prose reminiscent of Elizabeth Jolley’s, McPhee-Browne portrays the helpless entanglement of two friends in their impossible quest for self-determination. Cherry Beach is a breathtaking debut by a gifted new voice in Australian fiction.’
Ellena Savage
‘Like sparkling wine on a sunny afternoon, Cherry Beach goes down easily—and leaves a killer hangover. A vibrant, tender debut from a bright new voice in Australian fiction. I loved every minute of it.’
Laura Elizabeth Woollett
’This beautiful novel is tender: tender like a loving touch, and tender like a bruise. Cherry Beach will seduce you with its lush and gorgeous detail and its unguarded openness, and then it will rip your heart out. In its rawness and its yearning, Cherry Beach exquisitely captures the intensity of youth, love, desire, and loss.’
Emily Bitto
‘If you liked Sally Rooney’s Normal People but were left hankering for something local, queer, and (possibly) darker, Cherry Beach may do the trick…A tender, intimate story that will leave its mark.’
Readings
‘McPhee-Browne’s writing is tender, bruising, sexy and heartbreaking in equal measure…Cherry Beach has the pace of a thriller despite urging the reader to linger over the exquisite details of young desire, capturing the intensity of youth with refined restraint.’
Adelaide Review
‘Cherry Beach is the kind of story that bruises…A beautiful, heartfelt book.’
Kill Your Darlings
‘The book deftly captures the experiences that define youth: love, desire, loss, ambiguity. There is a vulnerability and rawness to McPhee-Browne’s writing that many will compare to Sally Rooney and that is completely warranted. This is a really impressive debut!’
WellRead
‘A melancholy exploration of mental health, female friendship and desire, delicately portraying the deep ache of losing the person you’re closest to…A promising debut.‘
Books+Publishing
‘Its power lies in the intimate moments between lifelong friends Ness and Hetty…Readers feel the full force of the relationship between these two women: an inescapable bond coloured by unrequited desire.’
Broadsheet
‘Cherry Beach is both a coming-of-age story and a tender depiction of what it means to grow apart…Highly engaging as well as skilfully put together…It’s sure to be a favourite among those who enjoy novels centred around complex friendships.’
ArtsHub