'Helen Garner’s diaries have always been some kind of overriding preoccupation for this writer who breaks down the barrier between fiction and nonfiction. Forty years ago her detractors declared of Monkey Grip, arguably the most game-changing novel in Australian history, that it was simply her diaries regurgitated and dressed up as art.' (Introduction)

'Gabrielle Carey’s new book about forgotten Australian novelist Elizabeth von Arnim is a much-needed antidote to the seriousness of modernist fiction, writes Beejay Silcox'

'Don Watson is a preacher. The boy has flushed religion out of himself but the Presbyterian genes ensure he remains a fierce believer, and preacher. He does the gamut: eulogies, jeremiads, lamentations, moral expositions.' (Introduction)

'Though it may seem so for many emerging from lockdown, loneliness has not always been a fact of life. Bonds between family, community and broader society were, for better or worse, stronger in the past than they are today.' (Introduction)