Hovering

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 AUREALIS AWARD FOR BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

The city was in the same place. But was it the same city?

Alice stands outside her family's 1950s red brick veneer, unsure if she should approach. It has been sixteen years, but it's clear she is out of options.

Lydia opens the door to a familiar stranger - thirty-nine, tall, bony, pale. She knows her sister immediately. But something isn't right. Meanwhile her son, George, is upstairs, still refusing to speak, and lost in a virtual world of his own design.

Nothing is as it was, and while the sisters' resentments flare, it seems that the city too is agitated. People wake up to streets that have rearranged themselves, in houses that have moved to different parts of town. Tensions rise and the authorities have no answers. The internet becomes alight with conspiracy theories.

As the world lurches around them, Alice's secret will be revealed, and the ground at their feet will no longer be so firm.

A spectacular debut novel from one of Australia's most exciting new writers. Winner of the Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award, Hovering crosses genres, literary styles and conventions to create a powerful and kaleidoscopic story about three people struggling to find connection in a chaotic and impermanent world.

'Every now and then a book comes along that resists a neat definition. Hovering is just such a read . . . this fascinating, compelling novel will challenge readers' Good Reading

'in the mould of Jennifer Egan or AM Homes . . . [a] slick debut' The Guardian

'Original and blackly funny' Toni Jordan, The Age

'transformative' ArtsHub

'immediately striking on both a conceptual and a formal level' Sydney Morning Herald

'This is such an original novel, and Davis's writing is exhilarating, surprising but never heavy-handed . . . one of the most exciting books of this year' Kill Your Darlings

'a compassionate, surreal, clear-eyed exploration of modern Australia and the place of art in the national conversation' PS News

“An ambitious, kaleidoscopic novel that playfully but poignantly explores ideas around permanence, ownership, belonging, artistic integrity, and the sentience of nature. Ingeniously employing a dazzling variety of voices and postmodern narrative devices, or 'interruptions' - internet code, text messages, police reports, comments sections, diagrams - Hovering ultimately tells a gripping story about three people who are struggling to find meaning in their lives. - VPLA judges”

Alice returns to the fictional Australian city of Fraser after 16 years away. The city itself has changed-and continues to change-beyond recognition. Streets, houses and other buildings literally shift and move overnight. Alice, meanwhile, is on the run: the European art collective she was a member of has gone awry, and she and the other artists are being pursued by the federal police of their respective countries. She moves in with her sister Lydia and nephew George, who live in the sisters' childhood home. Alice's arrival-and eventual unmasking as a suspected international fugitive-brings chaos to a family that was already struggling to maintain normalcy, and reawakens dormant tension between the two siblings. As an artist, Alice permitted herself to be a fickle friend and an absent sister, aunt and daughter. Back home, she faces a reckoning with a life spent in pursuit of her career and is made to confront everything from her inspiration for being an artist to her attitude towards Fraser and how to mend her relationship with Lydia. This debut novel by 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Unpublished Manuscript Award winner Rhett Davis is marked by formal experimentation, with some chapters comprising tables, HTML-style code, forum posts and transcripts in what feels like an attempt at representing the chaotic sense of modern communication overload. The ambitious conceit of a city built from moving parts might divide readers. Fraser's foundational uncertainty works to create a sense of dread and tension in the lives of its character; however, I found some of the world-building unconvincing at times. Still, Hovering is an interesting book that takes a particular interest in national identity, the legacy of colonialism and the role of art and artists. It joins the fast-expanding category of Australian literature that takes inspiration from dystopian science fiction to consider the future of this country. Brad Jefferies is the digital editor of Books+Publishing.

Rhett Davis is from the Wadawurrung country of Geelong and its nearby coastal towns. He has published in places like The Big Issue, Meanjin and The Sleepers Almanac. In 2015, he completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Hovering was written as part of a PhD at Deakin University and won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2020. Rhett has lived in several places but always finds his way back to Geelong, where he lives with his partner and two talkative cats.

The city was in the same place. But was it the same city? Alice stands outside her family's 1950s red brick veneer, unsure if she should approach. It has been sixteen years, but it's clear she is out of options. Lydia opens the door to a familiar stranger - thirty-nine, tall, bony, pale. She knows her sister immediately. But something isn't right. Meanwhile her son, George, is upstairs, still refusing to speak, and lost in a virtual world of his own design. Nothing is as it was, and while the sisters' resentments flare, it seems that the city too is agitated. People wake up to streets that have rearranged themselves, in houses that have moved to different parts of town. Tensions rise and the authorities have no answers. The internet becomes alight with conspiracy theories.As the world lurches around them, Alice's secret will be revealed, and the ground at their feet will no longer be so firm. A spectacular debut novel from one of Australia's most exciting new writers. Winner of the Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award, Hovering crosses genres, literary styles and conventions to create a powerful and kaleidoscopic story about three people struggling to find connection in a chaotic and impermanent world. 'Every now and then a book comes along that resists a neat definition. Hovering is just such a read . . . this fascinating, compelling novel will challenge readers' Good Reading 'in the mould of Jennifer Egan or AM Homes . . . [a] slick debut' The Guardian 'transformative' ArtsHub 'immediately striking on both a conceptual and a formal level' Sydney Morning Herald 'This is such an original novel, and Davis's writing is exhilarating, surprising but never heavy-handed . . . one of the most exciting books of this year' Kill Your Darlings

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