AustLit

(Publication summary)

'1897: Isabella Trent is found murdered in a Fremantle asylum cell. Why did she die? Who is the killer? What is the meaning of the ornate motifs that she has secretly embroidered on a man’s frock coat? And who, really, is Isabella?

'Years earlier, young Lucy Malpass leaves her home in Staffordshire for London, where she is drawn into a community of artists and socialists around William Morris and his family. Before long there is not only a prospect of fulfilling work but also a glimpse of reciprocal passion. Then her high hopes gradually begin to unravel.

'There seems to be a link between Lucy and Isabella, related in some way to an old Icelandic tale. But what exactly is this link, and what can it explain about their closely held secrets?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Ian Reid's fourth historical novel is a gripping story about the twists and turns of conscience, racial and sexual tensions, the limits of historical enquiry, and legacies of guilt and shame.

'Released from Dartmoor Prison in 1889, a black man breaks back into it soon afterwards. Interned in the same gaol during World War 1, a conscientious objector seems to invite trouble and seek harsh punishment. On a modern Australian university campus, a Turkish student is mysteriously killed. The suspenseful action of A Thousand Tongues gradually reveals how these enigmas are interlinked.' (Publication summary)

This poem is in two numbered parts.

'Two women and three men, displaced in different ways by the rapid transformation of Victorian England, travel separately to a small settlement on Australia’s western rim. With them they carry social ambitions and psychological wounds. As their lives intersect in the Swan River Colony, what they encounter is not quite what they expect. Who will struggle, who will thrive, and how will each react when secrets emerge?

'Though fictional, The Mind’s Own Place is partly based on the actual experiences of historical figures: a pair of convicts from respectable backgrounds, talented and enterprising but troubled; two female immigrants, free settlers, not equally fortunate or resilient; and the first detective in Western Australia, who eventually uncovers more than he intends.

'Like Ian Reid’s previous acclaimed novels, this powerful story explores intricate relationships between the shaping of character and the pressure of adversity. It reveals damaged families, mixed motives, and the long shadows thrown by the past.' (Publication summary)

'A national survey of senior secondary English curriculum content has confirmed that contemporary literature predominates among set texts, being seen as an ‘essential’ category for study because of its ‘relevance’ in helping students ‘understand the world in which they live.’ Perhaps uncontentious – depending on the meaning of that phrase ‘contemporary literature’: is it what’s written in our own time, or also set in our own time? Too much of the latter could mean that

students’ reading confines them narrowly to the here and now. Part of our responsibility as educators is to help our students go beyond the familiar, and to reframe their experience of the world in which they live by introducing them to worlds elsewhere. Their understanding needs to move across time as well as across different places. In considering what these principles imply in practice for the selection and interpretation of texts, this article combines the perspectives of teacher, curriculum designer and

fiction writer.' (Author's abstract)