AustLit
Latest Issues
Contents
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A Serving of Insurgency with Breakfast,
single work
review
— Review of Sneaky Little Revolutions : Selected Essays of Charmain Clift 2022 selected work essay ; -
Ephemeral Social Scene,
single work
review
'Buried Not Dead is a collection of essays from across the career of the brilliant Sydney writer and performance artist Fiona Kelly McGregor. I first read it in 2021 (I think), though recalled that I’d read some of the essays before when they first appeared in places like Overland or the (now defunct) performing arts magazine RealTime.' (Introduction)
- An Intimate History, On Paper, single work review
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A Distant Brightness,
single work
review
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel ;'For Steve Toltz, everything, even death, is a joke. His third novel, Here Goes Nothing,is an afterlife satire for a disenchanted secular world. The protagonist Angus Mooney, an atheist, wakes up after being murdered to find his ‘sneering contempt for the supernatural’ confronted by evidence to the contrary. The title reveals itself as a pun: the ‘nothing’ that ‘goes’ is eternal oblivion.'(Introduction)
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The Many Lives of Elizabeth von Arnim,
single work
review
— Review of The Countess from Kirribilli : The Mysterious and Free-spirited Literary Sensation Who Beguiled the World 2021 single work biography ;'Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) is perhaps Australia’s greatest literary export. Born in Kirribilli, she was extraordinarily successful in her lifetime, and was regularly compared to Jane Austen for her talent and wit. Yet, with the exception of those in on the secret, von Arnim’s novels have been almost entirely forgotten. Despite recent editions by the British Library, Oxford University Press, and Persephone Books (which specialises in neglected literature by and about women), it can still be difficult to track down copies of some of her twenty-one works. Accounts of her life, meanwhile, tend to focus on her marriages and affairs, and those of her circles whose fame proved more durable, including her cousin, Katherine Mansfield, and E.M. Forster, whom she employed to tutor her children.' (Introduction)
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Hope and Steel Cables,
single work
essay
'There’s a thing politicians say when they want to avoid giving you a straight answer: they say ‘I reject the premise of your question.’' (Introduction)