AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'April won’t quite seem the cruellest month now that the latest issue of ABR has arrived. In our cover feature, Kieran Pender retraces the ignominious history of the case against the whistleblower Bernard Collaery, while in an extended essay review, James Ley assesses the impact of Amazon on contemporary fiction. There’s a rogues’ gallery of political biographies: Patrick Mullins looks at Bob Hawke, Iva Glisic combs through Stalin’s library, David Reeve revisits the young Soeharto, Sheila Fitzpatrick reviews the late Stuart Macintyre’s final book, while Joan Beaumont reflects on the peculiar institution that is Australian Studies at Harvard. In fiction, Robert Dessaix dives into the new Edmund White, Gay Bilson takes another turn with Craig Sherborne, and Patrick Allington bids adieu to Steven Carroll’s T.S. Eliot quartet. There’s also new poetry by Judith Bishop and Anders Villani, plenty of arts reviews and much, much more!' (Publication summary)
Contents
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The Man in the Mirror : Texture and Nuance in the New Biography of Bob Hawke,
single work
review
— Review of Bob Hawke : Demons and Destiny 2022 single work biography ;'Curators at old Parliament House – now known as the Museum for Australian Democracy – have for many years maintained the prime minister’s suite much as it was when Bob Hawke vacated it in 1988. Visitors can gaze at a reproduction of the Arthur Boyd painting that hung opposite Hawke’s desk, gawk at the enormous, faux-timber panelled telephone Hawke used, and cast a wry eye over the prime ministerial bathroom, where curators have laid on the vanity toiletries and accoutrements belonging to the office’s last occupant: a box of contact lenses, a pair of black shoelaces, and a tube of hair dye.' (Introduction) -
Bess and Kathleen : Dominique Wilson’s New Novel,
single work
review
— Review of Orphan Rock 2022 single work novel ;'Dominique Wilson’s new novel is another foray into the field of historical fiction. Her two previous novels deal with the pain of living through periods of civil strife and migration, and cover long periods of time and several cultures: The Yellow Papers (2014) is set in China and Australia from the 1870s to the 1970s, while That Devil’s Madness (2016) moves from Paris to Algiers to Australia and back from the 1890s to 1970s.' (Introduction)
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Choirs of Reform : Jane Rawson’s Topical Allegory,
single work
review
— Review of A History of Dreams 2022 single work novel ;'Allegories can be divisive. They are inherently deceptive, forever speaking with forked tongues. Animal Farm both is and isn’t a fairy story about talking pigs. Spenser’s Faerie Queene isn’t just an epic poem about the Redcrosse Knight’s chivalric virtues. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn’t merely a fantasy about plucky children conquering a malicious ice queen. Some readers enjoy being literary archaeologists fossicking beneath a narrative’s surface for deeper meaning. There is a thrill in peering through a story’s topsoil, discovering the many-layered substrata beneath it, seeing the author’s politics supporting the words. Others prefer texts without overt messages. To them, as Barthes puts it, the writer should be ‘dead’. Let readers engage with the work on their own terms. Let the book speak for itself.' (Introduction)
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Silence and Screams : The End of Steven Carroll’s T.S. Eliot Quartet,
single work
review
— Review of Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight 2022 single work novel ;'Early in Steven Carroll’s novel Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight, a middle-aged woman contemplates her own existence: ‘Vivienne, Vivie. Viv. Now distant, now near. Who was she? The Vivienne now sitting in the gardens of Northumberland House, Finsbury Park, is contemplating the question.’ This Viv is Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the first wife of T.S. Eliot – or Carroll’s fictional rendition of her. Northumberland House is an asylum where, by 1940, Viv has lived for several years. Her previous actions include not accepting the end of her relationship with Eliot, dabbling in fascism (‘Did you tell him I just liked the uniform?’), and asking a police officer at five one morning if it’s true her husband has been beheaded. Institutionalised, she now lives in quiet defiance of other people’s perceptions and diagnoses of her. And with the help of her friend Louise and a group called the Lunacy Law Reform Society, she is about to do a runner.' (Introduction)
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Sinister Undercurrents : Three New Young Adult Novels,
single work
review
— Review of Fish Out of Water 2022 single work novel ; The Break 2021 single work novel ; If Not Us 2021 single work novel ;'Few traits typify the mythology of the Aussie bloke quite as strongly as a love of water and a laid-back attitude. Increasingly acknowledged is the role violence plays in shaping our laconic beach-lovers. Three Young Adult novels tackle this sinister undercurrent of male identity, but in different ways and to different effects. In Kate Hendrick’s Fish Out of Water, swimmer Finn aspires to be a ‘top bloke’ like his father, but does he really? Philip Gwynne’s Taj just wants to surf, but he must deal with a foreign government intent on executing his father in The Break. In If Not Us, by Mark Smith, surfer Hesse is trying to save the environment but soon discovers that taking a public stand on a controversial issue can have dangerous consequences.' (Publication summary)
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‘Pill Me Harder’ Dementia’s Ventriloquist,
single work
review
— Review of The Grass Hotel 2022 single work novel ;'In How Fiction Works (2008), James Wood examines how novelists write characters and allow us to sympathise with them. He refers to the philosopher Thomas Nagel’s now famous question, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ Nagel reckoned we cannot know, can only imagine what it would be like to behave like a bat. We can’t know ‘what it is like for a bat to be a bat’. (Introduction)
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The Push-pull of the Past : A Hypnotic Trip into Outback Gothic,
single work
review
— Review of Banjawarn 2022 single work novel ;'The latest in a new crop of outback gothic fiction, Josh Kemp’s début has everything readers have come to expect from the genre. There’s a messed-up bloke with a past. There’s a lost girl, ten years old and traumatised. There’s plenty of guilt and shame, damaged landscapes, haunted houses, injecting drug use, altered states, brutal acts of violence, and of course, there is the road.' (Introduction)
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Shadowboxing : The Story of an American Pugilist,
single work
review
— Review of The Sawdust House 2022 single work novel ;'In David Whish-Wilson’s new historical novel, The Sawdust House, it’s 1856 San Francisco, where the citizen-led Committee of Vigilance has convened to purge foreign undesirables from a city populace swollen beyond control by the gold rush. Of course, armed nativists ‘enthralled by their own performance’ are a common feature of U.S. history, from the Virginian lynch mobs of the late 1700s to that guy in the fuzzy Viking hat parading around the Capitol Building just last year. In an intriguing twist, however, the pitchforks are aimed this time at those ‘vermin from some hellish southern continent’, aka Australians, particularly a criminal element who congregate in a lawless quarter nicknamed Sydney-town.' (Introduction)
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‘Too Busy to Have Time for Us’ : Reflections on Australian Studies at Harvard,
single work
criticism
'In 1976, the Australian government signed an agreement with one of the leading universities in the world, Harvard, to fund a visiting professorial position in Australian Studies. Originally conceived by the government of Gough Whitlam, the gift of US$1 million was a token of Australian goodwill to the United States on the bicentennial celebration of the American Revolution. Its purpose was to promote increased awareness and understanding of Australia by supporting teaching, research, and publication.' (Introduction)
- The Foresti"There could be someone, there, walking through a forest – upright or", single work poetry (p. 41)
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Imagination and Virtuosity : New Poetry by Anthony Lawrence and Subhash Jaireth,
single work
review
— Review of Ken 2021 selected work poetry ; Aflame 2021 selected work prose ;'Australia has a stylish new poetry press. The two books reviewed here by Life Before Man, the poetry wing of Gazebo Books, preference book cover art and poem above all the usual paraphernalia: publishing details, barcodes, author notes – even the epigraph – are tucked into a back page, and there are no apparently distracting contents pages or page numbers. Most of the poems sit neatly on the right side of the page with a private blank beige page buffer. There’s orientation in a contents list, and I trust the poets have a choice about whether they want one. That said, there’s a holiday-like liberation in slipping through unmoored. It’s a subtle reading experience, but do these aesthetic somewhat precious innovations justify the use of extra paper?' (Publication summary)
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More Than Holding On : New Poetry by Jelena Dinić and Jane Gibian,
single work
review
— Review of In the Room with the She Wolf 2021 selected work poetry ; Beneath the Tree Line 2021 selected work poetry ;'In an impressive first collection, the South Australian poet Jelena Dinić incorporates her Serbian heritage and memories of war-affected Yugoslavia into an Australian migration narrative of clear-sighted beauty. William Carlos Williams wrote in the introduction to Kora In Hell: Improvisations (1920): ‘Thus a poem is tough … solely from that attenuated power which draws perhaps many broken things into a dance giving them thus a full being.’ Although far from improvisational, Dinić’s poetry compositionally integrates both fragility and strength as it draws together diverse experiences of war trauma, cultural displacement, the petty administrative routines of immigration departments, a Malaysian writing fellowship, Australian icons (such as the rainwater tank), folklore, and bathing in the Adriatic Sea.' (Publication summary) - Deer Knifei"When life hides behind the mulch", single work poetry (p. 49)
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Quiet Achiever : Brenda Niall’s New Memoir,
single work
review
— Review of My Accidental Career 2022 single work autobiography ;'It’s always interesting to see biographers decide to turn the spotlight upon themselves, and to ask why. Will it be another case of ‘now it’s my turn’? The need to confess, even to enter into the Land of Too Much Information?'(Introduction)
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The Snares of Grief : Pathways, Not Closure,
single work
review
— Review of Found, Wanting 2022 single work autobiography ;'We all seem to be thinking about grief lately. As Covid keeps many of us away from loved ones and people who are dying or have just expired, how we process death has received a renewed focus. The number of memoirs and guides and stories about grief and loss that have been published in the past two years – over two hundred – is staggering. It is a challenge to write about grief. Every society on earth has its own forms and rituals around grieving, its own texts on what grieving is like. Trying to find something new or original to say is daunting. What we are left with are our own words, our own terrible experiences to put down upon the page.'(Introduction)
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Open Page with Troy Bramston,
single work
interview
'Troy Bramston has been a senior writer and columnist with The Australian newspaper since 2011. He was previously a columnist with the Sunday Telegraph. He is the author or editor of eleven books, including Robert Menzies: The art of politics (2019) and Paul Keating: The big-picture leader (2016), and he co-authored The Truth of the Palace Letters (2020) and The Dismissal (2015) with Paul Kelly. His most recent book is Bob Hawke: Demons and destiny (2022).' (Introduction)
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[Review] Watershed : The Death of Dr Duncan,
single work
review
— Review of Watershed : The Death of Dr Duncan 2022 single work musical theatre ;'Neil Armfield’s production of Watershed – a new oratorio by composer Joe Twist and co-librettists Alana Valentine and Christos Tsolkias about the murder of Ian Duncan by police in Adelaide in 1972 and the subsequent cover-up and campaign for homosexual law reform – is an angry, brave, beautiful, emotionally shattering, and unexpectedly uplifting work.'(Introduction)