AustLit

'The Davisons seemed a golden couple. Sam is a rich, successful doctor, Leonora his glamourous and loving wife. She is a devoted mother and a tireless fundraiser for many charities. But her husband found another woman and demanded a divorce, and Leonora is on trial for shooting him and his new wife. She broke into their bedroom, the darkened room of the title, shot the woman as she lay in bed and killed her husband while he struggled to reach the phone. Was she a cold-blooded murderer? The greedy, vindictive woman the prosecution described? Or was she a woman driven to madness by an abusive marriage and a bitter divorce that left her demoralised and broken, and in a dissociative state, as her defence lawyer argues?' (Publication summary)

'Considering what the impact of climate change will be on generations of Australians and indeed on the whole world, the shortsightedness, deceit and inaction of the Howard government and the Tony Abbott/Malcolm Turnbull/Scott Morrison government is well-nigh incomprehensible. For this party the will to power is all, as personified by Abbott himself, playing the role as he does, of the demi-god/Aryan athlete in Leni Riefenstahl's Olympic documentary, in lieu of formulating any constructive policy on climate change or health or education or, in fact, on anything. But the refusal to act on climate change goes back a long way in the Liberal Party, as Dive Hamilton has described with dispassionate vigour in his 2007 book, Scorcher the Dirty Politics of Climate Change. This book outlines a Monty Pythonesque saga of incompetence, corruption, disinformation and almost surreal denial of reality which is only credible because of the mouthings of people like Greg Hunt, Barnaby Joyce and Abbott himself. However incredible it may all seem we know, based on present Liberal Party policy and the coup staged against Malcolm Turnbull, before he was 'born again' as prime minister, that it is all true.' (Introduction)
 

'These days many individual collections of poetry (and some anthologies as well) are presented in language which all too often, offers the particular experiences of the poets as if they were clues in a cryptic crossword. If we could only put those poetic hints together (we tell ourselves) we'd be in a position to know what they were pointing towards all along. Antonia Hildebrand's collection is a far cry from these puzzle works. Her poems are invariably so skilfully handled that they may seem to the reader to be easily achieved. They are not, of course, although the illusion that such things are easily accomplished is surely one of the reasons so many try their hand at poetry.' - Bruce Dawe

'In these poems the violence of war is not confined to battle fields. There are cities where dead children lie in residential streets covered in the dust of bombed buildings, and, closer to our home, conflict that is fostered by hateful words spoken at suburban barbecues. In War Stories, Antonia Hildebrand will not let us ignore the burning cities on another continent, or accept the hateful words that would justify conflict. In these poems she sees our world as one community, a community that is being destroyed by the violence that affects us all. She writes about the historical brutality of South African apartheid and our own colonial past, the present day atrocities in Syria, and the terror of abuse in a suburban home. These are the real war stories and Hildebrand will not accept monuments that glorify conflict without showing the ugly reality of humans caught in the violence. By forcing us to accept the reality of war, these poems make a powerful plea for peace.' - Robin Hillard'

(Publication Blurb)

'When I was twelve my mother got cancer. It was 1966, the Vietnam Was was on TV every night, and no on really seemed to have much idea why this war was happening, so I accepted on that basis that disasters happen. Not that anyone admitted my mother's situation was a disaster. It was discussed behind closed doors, but I was protected. It didn't matter. I knew everything and especially the things they didn't want me to know...' (Introduction)

'When Stump got elected, there was a collective intake of breath - as if the news of someone's death had been announced. At first everyone thought it was a joke and they went on thinking that for quite some time. but soon he showed that if he was a joke, it was a joke based om the blackest of black humour. Eisenhower, that two faced ninny, had at least retained a grip on reality. When Allan Dulles, director of the CIA, wanted to invaded Vietnam to help the French out in Dien Bien Phu, Eisenhower said, 'If we do so the Vietnamese could be expected to transfer their hatred of the French to us.' even Churchill, that inveterate old war monger, turned Dulles down. 'we have to face the fact that the fortress is lost', he rumbled. Dulles refused to accept it. Ho was a Communist, so he had to go. It was inconceivable to Dulles that Ho could have the last laugh. a sparrow could not defeat an eagle. Churchill knew that... (Introduction)