Almost a decade after her taboo-breaking memoir Fallen (Affirm, 2015), journalist and film critic Rochelle Siemienowicz comes back with a polyamorous love story like no other.  

Written in third person and set in Melbourne from 2014 until the Covid-lockdown era, Double Happiness (MidnightSun Publishing) follows three unique perspectives: Anna, Brendan (Anna’s husband), and Jeremy (Anna’s lover), all of which challenge the taboos surrounding polyamory and ethical non-monogamy (ENM) from extremely different, personality traits and life circumstances.  

From the first chapter, Anna’s moral battle pulls the reader in as she tries to fight against her own desires in order to remain loyal to her husband, despite knowing that she’s going against her true self. But rather than leaving the reader stuck in a debate of what is right and wrong, Siemienowicz’s expertly places a mirror in front of us, daring us to challenge some of our long-held dogmas and inviting us to reevaluate the truths that most Western societies hold dear. 

Throughout the narrative, a self-driven obligation to nurturing her new and old romantic relationships requires Anna’s brutal frankness regarding her own desires, shames, and fears, even when this causes extreme discomfort to her loved ones. But by doing so, Anna pushes herself and those around her towards forming connections that are, paradoxically, more genuine than most. It’s precisely this remarkable ability to write about emotions, desires, and sex with such rawness and authenticity that makes the author well-positioned to use this book as a tool for self-reflection. 

Siemienowicz’s call for a total deconstruction of our beliefs about love and loyalty places this book in a hard-to-define genre, blending fiction with philosophy. This is a book that offers a fresh perspective on what genuine commitment in relationships truly means. 

// Nadia Heisler Walpole

INTERVIEW WITH ROCHELLE SIEMIENOWICZ

NH: You were a Perth girl once, can you talk a bit about your childhood? 

RS: I was actually I born in Geelong, near Melbourne, but I only lived there till I was about two. Both my parents come from West Australia, Perth, and when I was about two we moved to New Guinea. I spent much of my childhood in New Guinea and Fiji because we were missionaries. I grew up in the tropics and then came back to Perth in my teenage years, did the later years of high school in Perth and then came to Melbourne for university years, and I've been here ever since. 

NH: You mention university and you’re a journalist and film critic, have you always known you’d be a writer? 

RS: Like many writers, I was a big reader as a child. From the moment I learned to read, it was just the greatest pleasure of my life. When I started to write essays or stories as a kid, it came very easily to me. I was always very behind in maths and ahead in English and writing. I started to realise that was my thing - the written word just came easily to me. 

But even growing up, I never really thought that being a writer was something I could do. I always had a story narrating in my head. I'd pretend I was living in a different time and I was always narrating what was happening and putting things into words in my head, but I don't think I really thought that I could be a writer until maybe late high school when I started to get good feedback from my teachers. 

NH: But now you’re very much a writer, and I had the pleasure of reading your debut novel, Double Happiness. Tell us how this project came to life. 

RS: It took me seven years to write Double Happiness. I've always been really interested in the nature of love and long-term relationships, how love changes over time, and what happens to romance when you've been with someone for a very long time. 

NH: And now the question that everyone might ask you when they read your novel. Is it inspired in your real life? 

RS: Well, the book is inspired by my own situation, a difficult transition from monogamy to polyamory. So, the basic kind of structure of that family relationship is emotionally real. After I'd written my first book, which was a memoir about sex and religion and belief, I was honest about the fact I had tried an open relationship in my first marriage, but it had all fallen apart. Then suddenly, I'm like, well, what's happening in my life? Once I embraced polyamory, it was obvious why you've got to write a thing that feels like I wrote a fiction book over a memoir because I couldn't find the right voice for a memoir this time. Then I thought this story deserved to be told through several perspectives, and I wanted the freedom to be able to write what I want to write and not have to be answerable to some absolute truth. 

NH: You’re very open to the fact you’re polyamorous, even on social media, do you get a lot of criticism or judgement for it? 

RS: It's funny because I feel like I might be living in a very accepting bubble, particularly in urban progressive circles. My partner had his 50th birthday recently and we've been together 10 years. I would say about at least a third of the people at the party were people that we've met in the last five years who are in open relationships themselves. Ten years ago, when we started, we didn't know a single other person who was doing this. 

NH: But nowadays do you feel there’s more understanding about what it means to be poly then? 

RS: Definitely. These days if I come out as polyamorous, younger people are like 'oh, cool,' whereas older people ask 'how does that work?' If you own things and you don't take on the shame that other people feel around sexual desire, people tend to take their cue from you. 

NH: How about judgements and prejudices within your own community? This is something we get a glimpse of in your novel, but can you tell us a bit more about this from a realistic perspective? 

RS: Within the polyamorous community itself, we do see people do like to impose rules and orthodoxies on other people. There are quite high ideals – for example an ideal that you must feel pleasure in your partner's pleasure, like this something we should all aspire to. But I think people have become more diverse... it's like the evolution of a subculture. We go from it being one thing to it being able to be many things and not judging each other for our choices. 

NH: I saw a few reviews of your memoir, Fallen, published in 2015, and there were a lot of discussions about female sexuality being a taboo. Do you think this is still the case nowadays, almost 10 years later? 

RS: I still think that pleasure for the sake of pleasure is still a radical idea, at least that’s what the society still thinks. 

I was workshopping potential questions that I may get with Double Happiness, and I was preparing for questions like ‘Why do you want to be polyamorous? What's the rationalization for it? Why isn't one relationship enough?' And suddenly I came down to this realisation of: because I want it and because it feels good. And that is still a radical thing... Is it selfish to want something that feels good, that hurts no one else? 

NH: Now that we’re in the topic of future, what is your biggest hope for the next years? 

RS: After seven years working on Double Happiness, I hope to create with less angst and less insecurity and more confidence. I'm interested in exploring philosophy and spirituality, possibly through memoir or other stories, and dream of taking solitary retreats to focus on my art. 

Ironically, I became polyamorous because I wanted more freedom and more love and sex and I wanted a holiday from my domestic kind of life. But now my perception of it is that I got more people to look after. This is a feminist issue as well - polyamorous women potentially do a lot of extra emotional labour as well as having extra fun. 

Double Happiness is available online and in bookstores.

Rock Flight (2024) by Hasib Hourani is a book of poetry divided into five chapters exploring the displacement and generational consequence of the denial of Palestinian identity. Hourani explores suffocation through rubble, imprisonment, and bird migration patterns – literally and metaphorically. ‘A rock isn’t a rock until it is thrown’ (p. 44) is a small ode to past Palestinian resistance, as well as his own – a rock can be made by scrunching up a paper and used as a weapon, because language is a weapon for oppression and resistance. The poetry style is often broken up and spaced in unconventional ways: the drifting and floating lines makes the reader feel like they’re drifting through the world without a solid sense of belonging or a solid ground to stand on. Hourani also explores ideas of what makes up a box – boxes that are Israeli prisons – seamlessly illustrating the feeling of suffocation. Rock Flight is a meticulous exploration of the suffocation of the right to exist, the failure to eliminate existence, and a reflection of generational colonialism that speaks to the darkest part of our present.

// Kasey Milburn

The Singing Bones (2015) by Shaun Tan is a book composed of sculpture collections and written summaries based on the Brothers Grimms’ Fairy Tales. There are seventy-five stories in total, including Snow White, Little Red Cap, and The Singing Bone, with the latter inspiring the book’s title. Each individual sculpture tells its own story, complemented by an in-depth description which encompasses the inner meaning behind the art. Gripping conflicts and convincing dialogue helps each story follow into the next. These sculptures are haunting in nature, as they feature pieces of exposed bone made from air-drying clay and papier mâché. Tan experiments with visual angles when creating his sculptures and although at times they are disorienting to look at, the sculptures still reflect an essence of beauty. Although the sculptures are photographed and displayed within the book, their written descriptions are essential in stitching together this near-retelling. The narratives, filled with endless passion, adventure and sorrow, breathe life into Tan’s book.

// Aleena Flack

Naag Mountain’s every word and every line is constructed in such a way that leaves no doubt in the reader's mind of Manisha Anjali's gift of writing. The poetry bleeds off the page in a rhythm of culture and history and captures readers as they listen to the tale of a displaced and exploited people. Naag Mountain is a connection of dreams, history, faith and pain reflecting the struggles of a community and depicting the harrowing violence of the indenture system. Through mastery of language and rhythm, Anjali constructs a narrative poem coloured by the surrealism of dreams. Historical figures, folk characters, a mysterious reel of film and the naag, the thousand-mouthed snake, all feature in this work. Naag Mountain is an insightful presentation of cultural recovery and displacement blurring the lines between dreams, messages and realities, the past and the present, the myth and the magic.

//Natalia Casement

Katie Goes To KL by Su-May Tan is an intriguing and culturally enlightening slice of life that carried the reader through the lively streets of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The novel draws the reader into a diverse, interesting, and joyful world through the lens of Katie – a young Australian girl who travels to Kuala Lumpur to attend her grandmother’s funeral. Over time, and with her mother acting as a tour guide, Katie gets to explore the city and makes strong bonds with the inhabitants, who help her understand the beauty of Malaysian culture.

Su-May Tan skillfully conveys the soul of each district, from the vibrant Chinatown to the vibrant Malay quarters, defining the diversity of Kuala Lumpur in the best possible way. The rich descriptions and vignettes of Malaysia’s multicultural landscape ensure this novel stands out from the rest.

Katie’s own journey of self-realisation and growth, while interacting with different characters and sceneries, allows for the reader to embrace the unknown and feel inspired to delve deeper into their own ancestral roots.

//Mansi Mattoo

MINI INTERVIEW WITH SU-MAY TAN

What is your favourite part of being a writer?

The writing itself. I love getting immersed in a story and feeling in the zone. I think that is a true joy – when you’re doing something so intently that you don’t know time has passed.

What has been one of the most surprising things you experienced while creating this book?

When I started writing this book, I kind of knew that it would be about Katie’s search for identity being a second-generation migrant in Australia, exacerbated by being in her ‘home’ country, Malaysia. What I didn’t realise was that it was also very much about her relationship with her father and not just the world around her.

Have you ever experienced a writer’s block?

I think ‘writer’s block’ is normal to a certain degree for all writers. Sometimes, you reach a wall, and you have to just step away and do something else. I take a walk. I get on with all the other things in life and come back to it later. It’s a lot like problem-solving. If you force it, it tends not to come. I think you have to just let it unravel in your head on its own, and sometimes that just takes time.

Women’s care-work, their making of a home, is a theme that unites the bibis with any reader who has ever cooked or cared for others. It is a way to build a bridge between women, between people. The feminist credentials of In Bibi's Kitchen are overt, the authors noting that: ‘Seeing the bibis through Khadija’s (M. Farah, the East African photographer) lens reminds us how important it is not only to highlight women’s stories but also to consider who captures and narrates them.’ An illuminating diversity of perspectives on gender issues is drawn out from the bibis as the book progresses. To read them feels like listening to elders in person, promotes deference and reflection. Sometimes we think of being in the kitchen as being trapped, both historically and as a lived experience across countries and cultures in the present day. This first-world-feminist dissatisfaction is challenged by the straightforward, assertive pride of the bibis in being mothers, grandmothers, homemakers, and generous caterers for their communities. There are also tales of small businesses, with women as both the entrepreneurs and the workers, doing it all. There is a familiarity in this creative competence and common sense which the book celebrates as strengths of women who uphold the structure of their families and communities. Part of the beauty and much of the resilience honoured here comes from an acknowledgement that the effort in preparation and provision of food is a daily one, rhythmic and endless. Who better than grandmothers to proffer the wisdom of just carrying on?

//Karen Lee