Descriptions, Reviews, etc.
Description:
Winner of the 2026 Ned Kelly Award for Debut Crime Fiction
One of The Observer (London)'s Best Debut Novels of 2026
A story of class and coming-of-age that's "part Virgin Suicides, part Veronica Mars" (Louise Hegarty, author of Fair Play) following a group of best friends investigating the allegations against their teacher. It's the mid-nineties, and in the small, shitty coastal town of Vincent, Australia, four Nirvana-obsessed fourteen-year-old girls form a grunge band. The Bastards are "forgettable girls"--poor, not particularly clever, ridiculed by their better-off classmates, and desperate to escape the fates of their mothers, who seem locked into a life of minimum-wage jobs, surprise pregnancies, and drunk boyfriends. The Battle of the Bands is the girls' one ticket out.
As small-town rumors swirl, however, The Bastards are abandoned by their lead singer Lily Lucid, who accuses their beloved music teacher of assault. The three remaining girls are left with nothing. Nothing, that is, except their amateur detective skills, a conviction that Mr. P is innocent, and a readiness to sacrifice everything to keep their dream alive. Spinning with rage at the confines of their lives, they reach a precipice where there's no turning back.
"Empathetic, addictive, and feverish" (
The Guardian),
In Bloom is a coming-of-age novel about class, girlhood in precarious circumstances, and how to build a sense of self when the foundations of friendship fail.
Brief description:
Liz Allan's fiction has won the Rachel Funari Prize and been shortlisted for the Alan Marshall Short Story Award, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize, and the Overland Writers Residency, and longlisted for the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize. She is the author of the novel In Bloom and her short stories have appeared in Overland, Verge, Yen magazine, Aesthetica, and Best Summer Stories 2018. She teaches at an all-girls school in the United Kingdom.
Review Quotes: "Powerful... Empathetic, addictive and feverish as a Nirvana gig." --The Guardian
"A novel about girlhood, class and the audacity to believe that one is destined for greater things... Nobody can keep the Bastards down after all, and once you start reading, you won't be able to put them down either."
--Pittsburgh Post Gazette
