You won’t sleep until you finish reading this rare, exotic blend of crime and poetry

Sharon Kernot's new novel Night Swimming interweaves poetry and crime fiction to explore insomnia and the long shadow of a teenage tragedy. The Conversation reviews the verse novel, which follows a sleep-deprived woman haunted by her best friend's drowning in her teens and convinced that a seductive figure from her past was involved. Per the review, Kernot's compressed verse creates a rapid narrative that sustains mounting tension and delivers unexpected plot twists, establishing what the critic calls a rare example of contemporary Australian adult verse fiction that is both literary and urgently compelling.

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