In fact, writers who teach writing often wish their students would read more attentively, more omnivorously and attach more value to the act of reading. For centuries, of course, there were no creative writing courses, so writers learned their craft primarily by consuming other writers' texts. Reading like an Australian Writer examines the approaches by writers to an experience that can be enchanting or exasperating, but which is almost inevitably instructive.

When I first received this book, a collection of essays edited by Belinda Castles, who is herself the author of four novels, I wondered to what extent the book was inspired by Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, which was a New York Times bestseller. Prose's book discusses "Close Reading" as a method (one with a long and important history in literary studies) and examines "Sentences" and "Paragraphs", before moving onto topics such as "Characterisation". Each chapter contains examples, analysed and discussed by Prose. It's a readable book about the pleasures of reading, which also demonstrates how writers are inspired and - in some cases - given permission to experiment in their writing, as a consequence of reading the work of others.

Reading like an Australian Writer indeed contains a quotation from Prose's book as the epigraph to Belinda Castle's introduction. What distinguishes this book from Prose's book is that it contains diverse voices talking about the particularities of their own reading experiences. It also examines a range of texts that make up Australian literature, rather than focusing on canonical novels which were published in North America and Europe.

One question that arises from the title is: what is particularly Australian about what and how we read? Castles explains this clearly and patiently: "Australian writing speaks in its many accents of the diversity and unique history of this country: its thefts, losses and struggles, its distinctive sensory experiences, its imagined futures". "Our" literature is therefore the particular subject of this book, which highlights the distinctiveness of fiction written by Australians.

The focus on Australian literature is important because of our vexed history and unique environment, as Castles attests, and also because Australian literature in all its diversity has not always been supported at home. Prime Minister's Literary Award Winner Gail Jones, in a submission to the 2020 Parliamentary Inquiry into Creative Industries, notes that "it is embarrassing to discover that some European universities (in my experience Belgium, Germany and Italy, in particular) study more Australian literature than is offered in our own nation".

Reading like an Australian Writer therefore offers a form of remediation by recognising the importance of Australian books to our culture, while also expanding and including a wide range of Australian voices and subject positions. Most importantly, in its essays' discussion of books ranging from David Malouf's Ransom to Michelle de Kretser's The Life to Come, it communicates the experience of how reading can spark a connection between the reader and the text, and how this connection in turn inspires more writing. In its discussion of a range of novels and collections of stories, in essays written by writers who have themselves won literary awards and been recognised as significant, from Debra Adelaide to Roanna Gonsalves to Julienne van Loon, it maps the fabric of Australian literary culture now.

Of particular note in the collection is the weight given to indigenous voices. In a personal and moving essay, Ellen van Neerven discusses reading Tara June Winch's Swallow the Air: it was the first novel by another First Nations person they had read. In the final essay, Mykaela Saunders describes how she interprets Alexis Wright's Carpenteria, and of how she reads books first "with my gut: working out what I love and hate about a story, then figuring out what the writer did to produce this effect" (325).

Other writers in the essay collection also highlight the importance of Australian indigenous writing in their understanding of what it means to be a writer. Julienne van Loon describes how Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance "forces me to consider (over and again) my own relation to Indigenous Australia, and the history we all share as contemporary Australian citizens". For van Loon, as with Saunders, not just reading, but rereading, illuminates the texts she consumes, while also shaping how she approaches the writing of her own fiction.

The voices included in Reading like an Australian Writer come from a range of Australian communities, and include Hoa Pham's discussion of Chi Vu's Anguli Ma, and Beth Yahp's analysis of Julie Koh's satire. Some of these essays, including Yahp's discussion of Portable Curiosities, also serve as a record of the importance of reading during a pandemic. Yahp observes: "Is the challenge of trying to read and write, in this year of disruption of biblical proportions, or is it trying to do so at a time when writers and readers, like artists and universities have been officially designed 'inessential'". The collection admits the precarious position of so many Australian writers, while also asserting the continuing vitality of Australian literature.

The essays included in make acute observations about form and genre, as Ryan O'Neill's careful examination of Steve Amsterdam's The Things We Didn't See Coming. Nigel Featherstone maps the skill and shock of Christos Tsiolkas' Loaded, while Jane Rawson and Rose Michael make a case for the importance of speculative fiction that engages with crises we are becoming more familiar with, in their discussion of texts about pandemics and climate change. Anna Spargo Ryan writes about how animals in some contemporary fiction "are able to offer insight outside the boundaries faced by a human narrator". Ashley Hay's discussion of Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things takes the form of postcards, in which Hay's address to Wood is personal: "There are phrases of yours beyond The Natural Way of Things that help me make sense of my own writing life". The collection is compelling, in that each essay reveals new insights and approaches to Australian fiction.

Tegan Bennett Daylight says of the critical response to Helen Garner's "least loved, least praised novel" Cosmo Cosmolino: "Could we perhaps banish the sneering and critical laughter for long enough to read this book as it deserves to be read?" This is a collection that deserves to be read, and read carefully, read "like a writer". Reading like an Australian Writer contains carefully observed readings of books that are beloved, and those that could be loved more assiduously. Most importantly, it sketches the scope and incredible particularity of Australian literature now, and draws its reader back to the books she has once read, or tugs her towards pages as yet undiscovered.