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Absolutely Revolting

March 2012, no. 339

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Contents Category: Short Story
Custom Article Title: 'Three sisters', a new story by Maria Takolander
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Let us take a look at this place. Marshlands. All the way to the horizon. The land drained, but nevertheless sinking. Sinking into nothing, nothing but itself. Frogs volleying noise in the grass unseen. The hazy movement of mosquitoes low to the ground. On a blade of swamp grass a sleek cricket. Blacker than night and – look closely – its antennae twitching. Just think: there must be more of those creatures, in their thousands, perhaps millions, hiding in the swamp grass as far as your eye can see.
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Let us take a look at this place. Marshlands. All the way to the horizon. The land drained, but nevertheless sinking. Sinking into nothing, nothing but itself. Frogs volleying noise in the grass unseen. The hazy movement of mosquitoes low to the ground. On a blade of swamp grass a sleek cricket. Blacker than night and – look closely – its antennae twitching. Just think: there must be more of those creatures, in their thousands, perhaps millions, hiding in the swamp grass as far as your eye can see.

Read more: 'Three sisters', a new story by Maria Takolander

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Evelyn Juers reviews Charles Dickens: A life by Claire Tomalin and Becoming Dickens: The invention of a novelist by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
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Article Title: The burdens and genius of Charles Dickens
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This is how Claire Tomalin closes her Dickens biography: ‘He left a trail like a meteor, and everyone finds their own version of Charles Dickens’, followed by a long list of types. I consider Dickens the surrealist, or the sentimentalist, but then I pick Dickens the tireless walker. And I concede, with Tomalin, that regarding his life and work, ‘a great many questions hang in the air, unanswered and mostly unanswerable’.
Book 1 Title: Charles Dickens
Book 1 Subtitle: A life
Book Author: Claire Tomalin
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $39.95 hb, 574 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/charles-dickens-claire-tomalin/book/9780141036939.html
Book 2 Title: Becoming Dickens
Book 2 Subtitle: The invention of a novelist
Book 2 Author: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Book 2 Biblio: Harvard University Press, $39.95 hb, 389 pp
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This is how Claire Tomalin closes her Dickens biography: ‘He left a trail like a meteor, and everyone finds their own version of Charles Dickens’, followed by a long list of types. I consider Dickens the surrealist, or the sentimentalist, but then I pick Dickens the tireless walker. And I concede, with Tomalin, that regarding his life and work, ‘a great many questions hang in the air, unanswered and mostly unanswerable’.

Read more: Evelyn Juers reviews 'Charles Dickens: A life' by Claire Tomalin and 'Becoming Dickens: The...

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Enter the Jolley Prize

Exponents of short fiction will have until 31 May to enter the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. This year’s prize money is divided three ways. The winner will again receive $5000; the two place-getters will receive $2000 and $1000. Last year, the inaugural Jolley Prize attracted almost 1300 entries.

Multiple entries are fine. A separate entry form is needed for each entry, but please note that you can send us a single cheque (we don’t require separate ones). Past winners Gregory Day and Maria Takolander will judge the Prize with Mark Gomes, the Deputy Editor. The winners will be announced, and their short stories published, in our September Fiction issue.

Entry forms are also available online or via the ABR office: (03) 9429 6700.

ABR warmly acknowledges the continuing support of ABR Patron Mr Ian Dickson, who makes the Jolley Prize possible.

 

 

Peter Porter Poetry Prize

A final count revealed that we had received almost 800 entries in this year’s Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Our two judges, Judith Beveridge and David McCooey, have shortlisted five poems, which appear in this issue. The five shortlisted poets are Anne Elvey, Michael Farrell, Toby Finch, Gareth Robinson, and Annamaria Weldon.

Toby Fitch’s beguiling poem ‘Oscillations’ posed some challenges and prompted audacious thoughts of our first centrefold.

The winner of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize – which honours the great Australian poet (1929–2010) – will be named in the April issue.

 

 

Confessions

Don Anderson, in his forthcoming review of American critic Alfred Kazin’s brilliant journals, wonders if Peter Craven and Geordie Williamson are secret diarists. Peter Rose, our Editor, keeps a diary. Rashly perhaps, he has agreed to publish lengthy extracts from his 2011 diary. These extracts all relate to literary happenings: prizes, launches, festivals, travels, reading, commissioning, and a bewildering number of dinners. Far too lengthy (and frivolous) for publication in the print edition, they now appear in ABR Online Edition.

Online subscribers – and the many readers who access ABR Online Edition via universities and public libraries – will begin to see an increasing number of additional features and creative writing. We will post topical articles and reviews in the lead-up to their appearance in print form. Two features from the new issue – Claudia Hyles’s timely letter from the Jaipur Literary Festival, and John Rickards’s elegant review of the MTC production of Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll– appeared online in February.

 

 

Beyond Calibre

Calibre winners – like the ABR Patrons’ Fellows – have a special status at ABR. Some of them have gone on to develop their winning essays in various ways. Elisabeth Holdsworth, our inaugural winner in 2007, chose to fictionalise parts of her family’s remarkable story in Those Who Come After, published by Picador.

Rachel Robertson, who shared the Calibre Prize in 2008, has chosen a more conventional path in her first book, a memoir of her son’s autism. The title is Reaching One Thousand. As in the original essay of the same name, the dialogue between mother and son (‘Ben’) is pitch-perfect and often poignant. Carmel Bird reviews Reaching One Thousand (Black Inc.) here. We have ten copies to give away to new or renewing subscribers.

 

Oz Lit is ‘rested’

Stephanie Guest’s article on the teaching of Australian literature at the University of Melbourne, which appeared last month, has generated much comment on our website and Facebook page – largely admiring and similarly incredulous. Ken Gelder, defending his department’s performance, assured us that Australian literature was merely resting in 2011. This month we publish letters from two senior colleague of his, Barbara Creed and Kevin Brophy, and a response from Stephanie Guest.

 

Peter Conrad

Peter Conrad – critic, memoirist, film and literary historian, famous polymath, one of Tasmania’s most brilliant exports – is our guest on Open Page. We will review Dr Conrad’s new and typically erudite study of Wagner versus Verdi in a coming issue.

Next month, he will review Patrick White’s fascinating, unfinished novella The Hanging Garden, which Random House is publishing in time for the centenary of White’s birth in May.

 

 

Decisions, decisions

This month’s pool of giveaways is unusually rich, even by ABR’s standards. We have ten signed copies of each of the following titles for prompt new subscribers: As I Was Saying, by Robert Dessaix (Random House) which Jane Goodall reviews here; Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, by Ray Lawler (Currency Press, see here), and Crimson Crop, a new poetry collection from Peter Rose (UWA Publishing).

A further twenty renewing subscribers will receive a double pass to the film Coriolanus – adapted from Shakespeare’s tragedy – starring Ralph Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave (thanks to Icon Film). Call us now on (03) 9429 6700 to subscribe and nominate your preferred prize.

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Contents Category: Letters
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 Oz Lit at Melbourne University

Dear Editor,

The English program at the University of Melbourne has offered courses on Australian literature every year since 1982, when it was first introduced as a full seminar subject. Stephanie Guest’s article in last month’s issue of ABR, ‘Oz Lit in the Moot Court Room: Finding Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne’, mistakenly reports that this was not the case. ‘To my chagrin, the handbook reported that it was not available in 2011.’

It is true the English program withdrew ‘The Australian Imaginary’ in 2011, as the lecturer in charge of the subject had unexpectedly moved to another university. This is not an unusual event at universities. The English program has since revised the subject with an additional focus on colonial literature. This subject is currently on offer and will remain so. In 2011 the English program did offer, through cross-listing, ‘Aboriginal Writing’, which features the work of ten Indigenous authors. This subject is part of the Australian Indigenous Studies major, which, along with English and Creative Writing, is housed in the School of Culture and Communication. One cannot argue that Australian Indigenous authors are not Australian or that their writings are not part of what we call ‘Australian literature’. I note that Stephanie did invite an Indigenous author to take part in her seminar on Australian Literature. Additionally, in 2011 the Creative Writing program continued to teach subjects on Australian literature. Obviously these courses feature a large number of Australian writers.

Read more: Letters to the Editor – March 2012

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Contents Category: Features
Custom Article Title: 'Letter from Jaipur: Free speech and sectarian tensions at the Jaipur Festival' by Claudia Hyles
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This year’s Jaipur Literature Festival (20–24 January) more than lived up to the Indian Ministry of Tourism’s slogan – ‘Incredible India’.
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This year’s Jaipur Literature Festival (20–24 January) more than lived up to the Indian Ministry of Tourism’s slogan – ‘Incredible India’.

The festival was established in 2006 as a component of the Jaipur Virasat (Heritage) Festival, an arts event intended to showcase the varied and colourful Rajasthani culture. Performances of classical music and dance were held in the forecourts of old temples, and folk concerts attracted huge crowds in city squares. Craft bazaars, art exhibitions, workshops, and disparate forms of theatre took place in dozens of locations around the city: former royal palaces, forts and gardens, a modern amphitheatre and galleries designed by architect Charles Correa, even an ancient reservoir. It was brilliant, exciting, and surprisingly intimate.

Read more: 'Letter from Jaipur: Free speech and sectarian tensions at the Jaipur Festival' by Claudia Hyles

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Custom Article Title: Joel Deane: David McKnight's depiction of Rupert Murdoch
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 It is a thought-provoking photograph. In 1988, during the bicentenary of The Times, Rupert Murdoch and Queen Elizabeth are pictured sitting at a news conference within the inner sanctum of the London broadsheet. Mogul and monarch are at arm’s length – she, straight-backed, legs crossed, hands gathered together above her lap; he, leaning forward and slightly to his right, towards her, with a piece of paper pinched between thumb and forefinger. Behind and between them, pinned to the wall, is what appears to be a photograph of Prince Charles crossing the road holding the hand of a very young Prince William.
Book 1 Title: Rupert Murdoch
Book 1 Subtitle: An Investigation of Political Power
Book Author: David McKnight
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $32.99 pb, 241 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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 It is a thought-provoking photograph. In 1988, during the bicentenary of The Times, Rupert Murdoch and Queen Elizabeth are pictured sitting at a news conference within the inner sanctum of the London broadsheet. Mogul and monarch are at arm’s length – she, straight-backed, legs crossed, hands gathered together above her lap; he, leaning forward and slightly to his right, towards her, with a piece of paper pinched between thumb and forefinger. Behind and between them, pinned to the wall, is what appears to be a photograph of Prince Charles crossing the road holding the hand of a very young Prince William.

Read more: Joel Deane reviews 'Rupert Murdoch: An investigation of political power' by David McKnight

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Contents Category: Theatre
Custom Article Title: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll
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I first saw Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1957 in London, of all places. I remember feeling some pride in seeing the symbolic kewpie doll presiding over the New Theatre in the heart of the West End. June Jago’s performance as Olive has stayed with me over the years; Philip Hope-Wallace, the Guardian reviewer, described her as ‘all chin and elbows, but as genuine a dramatic actress as you could find’, which suggested an element of surprise that she should be ‘found’ in Australia. Jago had been in the original 1955 Union Rep production and placed her stamp on Olive: she was to be a hard act to follow. When The Doll came to London, it had already won itself a unique place in Australian drama, but there had been some concern about how the Brits would receive a play about rough canecutters and free-and-easy barmaids. But critics like Hope-Wallace – and the influential Kenneth Tynan – hailed ‘this harsh, cawing, strongly felt play’. The imperial imprimatur sealed the success of The Doll. Its later failure on Broadway could be dismissed as a judgement on American audiences rather than on the play.
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I first saw Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1957 in London, of all places. I remember feeling some pride in seeing the symbolic kewpie doll presiding over the New Theatre in the heart of the West End. June Jago’s performance as Olive has stayed with me over the years; Philip Hope-Wallace, the Guardian reviewer, described her as ‘all chin and elbows, but as genuine a dramatic actress as you could find’, which suggested an element of surprise that she should be ‘found’ in Australia. Jago had been in the original 1955 Union Rep production and placed her stamp on Olive: she was to be a hard act to follow. When The Doll came to London, it had already won itself a unique place in Australian drama, but there had been some concern about how the Brits would receive a play about rough canecutters and free-and-easy barmaids. But critics like Hope-Wallace – and the influential Kenneth Tynan – hailed ‘this harsh, cawing, strongly felt play’. The imperial imprimatur sealed the success of The Doll. Its later failure on Broadway could be dismissed as a judgement on American audiences rather than on the play.

Read more: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll | Melbourne Theatre Company

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Sonya Hartnett revisits A Difficult Young Man by Martin Boyd
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Custom Article Title: Sonya Hartnett revisits 'A Difficult Young Man' by Martin Boyd
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Few writers, it could be argued, have ever cannibalised life for their art as ruthlessly and consistently as did Martin Boyd; and few are born into situations which lend themselves so readily to art. Boyd’s working life – indeed, much of his entire existence – was spent trying to unite the past with the present, the old world with the new, himself with the man he might have been; and in committing his efforts to paper. To this end, he never shirked from using friends and relatives as material for his novels, as well as the real-life experiences of himself and of others. If he paid a price for this – which he occasionally did, for people often hanker to be preserved in print, only to resent the style of preservation – the consequences gave him little pause. By the time he wrote A Difficult Young Man, focusing the cool spotlight of his attention on his brother Merric as well as more sharply on himself, Boyd had form as a writer whose true gift lay not in the power of his imagination, but in the brilliance of his ancestral inheritance.
Book 1 Title: A Difficult Young Man
Book Author: Martin Boyd
Book 1 Biblio: Text Classics, $11.75 pb, 240 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/a-difficult-young-man-martin-boyd/book/9781921922121.html
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Few writers, it could be argued, have ever cannibalised life for their art as ruthlessly and consistently as did Martin Boyd; and few are born into situations which lend themselves so readily to art. Boyd’s working life – indeed, much of his entire existence – was spent trying to unite the past with the present, the old world with the new, himself with the man he might have been; and in committing his efforts to paper. To this end, he never shirked from using friends and relatives as material for his novels, as well as the real-life experiences of himself and of others. If he paid a price for this – which he occasionally did, for people often hanker to be preserved in print, only to resent the style of preservation – the consequences gave him little pause. By the time he wrote A Difficult Young Man, focusing the cool spotlight of his attention on his brother Merric as well as more sharply on himself, Boyd had form as a writer whose true gift lay not in the power of his imagination, but in the brilliance of his ancestral inheritance.

Read more: Sonya Hartnett revisits 'A Difficult Young Man' by Martin Boyd

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Philippa Hawker reviews The Age of Movies: Selected writings of Pauline Kael edited by Sanford Schwartz
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Article Title: A sanitised version of a great contrarian
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Pauline Kael did not shy away from big statements. She said that the release date of Last Tango in Paris would be as historically resonant as the night The Rite of Spring had its première, and she described Fiddler On the Roof as a movie of operatic power. As a film reviewer at the New Yorker from 1967 to 1991, she was a significant cultural figure, particularly in the 1970s, when her influence was at its height. It is for her extremes that Kael was celebrated and feared, for her exuberantly adversarial prose, and for the ferocious expression of her cinematic loves and hates.
Book 1 Title: The Age of Movies
Book 1 Subtitle: Selected writings of Pauline Kael
Book Author: Sanford Schwartz
Book 1 Biblio: The Library of America, US$40 hb, 852 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-age-of-movies-selected-writings-of-pauline-kael-pauline-kael/book/9781598535082.html
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Pauline Kael did not shy away from big statements. She said that the release date of Last Tango in Paris would be as historically resonant as the night The Rite of Spring had its première, and she described Fiddler On the Roof as a movie of operatic power. As a film reviewer at the New Yorker from 1967 to 1991, she was a significant cultural figure, particularly in the 1970s, when her influence was at its height. It is for her extremes that Kael was celebrated and feared, for her exuberantly adversarial prose, and for the ferocious expression of her cinematic loves and hates.

Read more: Philippa Hawker reviews 'The Age of Movies: Selected writings of Pauline Kael' edited by Sanford...

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Open Page with Peter Conrad
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Why do you write?

It’s the one thing I know how to do. I could never catch a ball when I was a kid, couldn’t balance on a bike, can’t drive a car – not to mention other inadequacies. It’s a relief to think that I have one area of competence, relatively speaking.

Are you a vivid dreamer?

My specialty is ghastly nightmares. In order to dream, I’d probably need to sleep more hours than I usually manage. I hate the sight of the digital clock announcing three a.m.
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Why do you write?

It’s the one thing I know how to do. I could never catch a ball when I was a kid, couldn’t balance on a bike, can’t drive a car – not to mention other inadequacies. It’s a relief to think that I have one area of competence, relatively speaking.

Are you a vivid dreamer?

My specialty is ghastly nightmares. In order to dream, I’d probably need to sleep more hours than I usually manage. I hate the sight of the digital clock announcing three a.m.

Read more: Open Page with Peter Conrad

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Contents Category: Poem
Custom Article Title: 'Provenance', a new poem by Gareth Robinson
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Taking note might prompt some things:
look! Even a colon finds correlation
with the eyes of Hoji’s frog, and the king’s.
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Provenance

Gareth Robinson

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Custom Article Title: 'Bayside Suburban', a new poem by Anne Elvey
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1.

Port Phillip rucks & tears in the wind
and where the creek joins the bay, the lace
is tattered marl. Wild gulls pick
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Bayside Suburban

Anne Elvey

Read more: 'Bayside Suburban', a new poem by Anne Elvey

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Custom Article Title: 'Beautiful Mother', a new poem by Michael Farrell
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You’ve always associated the two terms together
partly due to your reading of Schiller; partly due
to your watching of Kimba. Kimba sublimates
his mother in the water. You’ve always thought
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You’ve always associated the two terms together
partly due to your reading of Schiller; partly due
to your watching of Kimba. Kimba sublimates
his mother in the water. You’ve always thought
your mother a baroque figure. You go into the
forest. You make something from a tree: a book
a club. Material comes from the mother; also
happiness, and therefore beauty. The mother
expects love and finds it, finds it beautiful. The
son cries white tears, imagines them surf, a cliff
an iceberg with beer beneath its surface. The
book says tree or mediation; the club says tree
or mediation. The Virgin Mary is prompted to
speak by the movement of the baby in her womb
She speaks Hebrew: ‘ממזר כמו בועט הוא’– ‘He
kicks like a bastard’. She defines a kind of
democracy. Her followers meet with her at the
temple. Her son, now twelve, is somewhere
swimming, or sublimating his mother in the
forest. He is a kind of book or club. He starts
drinking wine early; he refuses to go into the
army. He has to go across the border to another
country. He works at a cement factory there
When the men knock off the women dance
with him. He’s homesick and drinks whiskey
Eventually he swims back across the border
The trees hang over the river. He can’t tell
whether he or they are happy or beautiful; he
sees his mother in the sky. The stars are heavy
dramatic. The army still desires him. There
is book and club mediation. His mother prays
for his happiness. He builds a tower out of
beercans and critics say it’s beautiful. So he
builds a whole city and people start to live there
practising a form of democracy. Eventually
the area is annexed by Spain. You tell me all
this, mixing art history together with stories
of your mother. You didn’t want to go into the
army either. But it was in the army that you first
found love. It was a secret you kept from your
mother. Your mother was not a cartoon, nor
was she a political or religious figure, yet you
mapped her, in a sense, in the sky. She spoke
about you quite differently. She said that she
had taken you from a tree; it was dark and she
hadn’t known exactly what you were, whether
text or weapon or musical instrument. That you
were a wooden boy was a complete surprise

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Custom Article Title: 'After Devotion', a new poem by Annamaria Weldon
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1

The far margin of wintering wetlands,
mist before sunrise. Outside my window
a rock parrot is perched on its fence-post.
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After Devotion

Annamaria Weldon

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Paul Kane reviews The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove
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‘To choose the best, among many good,’ says Dr Johnson in his ‘Life of Cowley’, ‘is one of the most hazardous attempts of criticism.’ The truth of this maxim is borne out nicely in the controversy surrounding – or perhaps emanating from – Rita Dove’s new selection of twentieth-century American poetry. That The Weekend Australian should have felt moved to comment on the situation (Frank Furedi, ‘Culture War Highlights the Banal Message of Politically Sanctioned Art’, 7–8 January 2012) is a good indicator of just how hot the issue has become. As a result, it is no longer possible simply to review the book; you have to review the controversy as well. The literary world is always set a-twitter by dust-ups between luminaries, and this one is a doozy: it features the former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, defending herself against the redoubtable literary scholar and critic Helen Vendler. Vendler attacked Dove’s anthology (and Dove herself) in the New York Review of Books of 24 November 2011, and Dove returned the favour in the 22 December issue. Thereafter, the controversy spread like algae bloom in the press and blogosphere.
Book 1 Title: The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry
Book Author: Rita Dove
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $40 hb, 570 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/penguin-anthology-of-twentieth-century-american-poetry-rita-dove/book/9780143121480.html
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‘To choose the best, among many good,’ says Dr Johnson in his ‘Life of Cowley’, ‘is one of the most hazardous attempts of criticism.’ The truth of this maxim is borne out nicely in the controversy surrounding – or perhaps emanating from – Rita Dove’s new selection of twentieth-century American poetry. That The Weekend Australian should have felt moved to comment on the situation (Frank Furedi, ‘Culture War Highlights the Banal Message of Politically Sanctioned Art’, 7–8 January 2012) is a good indicator of just how hot the issue has become. As a result, it is no longer possible simply to review the book; you have to review the controversy as well. The literary world is always set a-twitter by dust-ups between luminaries, and this one is a doozy: it features the former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, defending herself against the redoubtable literary scholar and critic Helen Vendler. Vendler attacked Dove’s anthology (and Dove herself) in the New York Review of Books of 24 November 2011, and Dove returned the favour in the 22 December issue. Thereafter, the controversy spread like algae bloom in the press and blogosphere.

Read more: Paul Kane reviews 'The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry' edited by Rita Dove

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Susan K. Martin reviews The Penguin Book of Australian Bush Writing edited by John Ross
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Twinings has recently introduced a new tea flavour called ‘Australian Afternoon Tea’. On the box is an image of kangaroos silhouetted against a red rocky background, which is a sort of amalgam, or perhaps amalgum, of Uluru and Kata Tjuta. This book is like that tea – more Australian than Australia, in a packaged, labelled form that relies heavily on recognition, stereotype, and sentiment. I have to admit that when I started reading the Introduction I thought it might be a parody, but perhaps that just shows jaded sensibilities. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that as ‘Australians we carry a certain vague longing for the bush’. Perhaps I am not drinking the right tea.
Book 1 Title: The Penguin Book of Australian Bush Writing edited by
Book Author: John Ross
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $32.95 pb, 356 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Twinings has recently introduced a new tea flavour called ‘Australian Afternoon Tea’. On the box is an image of kangaroos silhouetted against a red rocky background, which is a sort of amalgam, or perhaps amalgum, of Uluru and Kata Tjuta. This book is like that tea – more Australian than Australia, in a packaged, labelled form that relies heavily on recognition, stereotype, and sentiment. I have to admit that when I started reading the Introduction I thought it might be a parody, but perhaps that just shows jaded sensibilities. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that as ‘Australians we carry a certain vague longing for the bush’. Perhaps I am not drinking the right tea.

Read more: Susan K. Martin reviews 'The Penguin Book of Australian Bush Writing' edited by John Ross

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Alison Broinowski reviews 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel
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Custom Article Title: Alison Broinowski reviews '1Q84' by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel
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Admirers of Haruki Murakami who waited for two years while successive parts of his twelfth novel sold millions in Japanese, are now rewarded for their patience with a big nugget of a book in English, which is already an international bestseller. The elegant cover shows an enigmatic night sky with two moons, which reappear on the endpapers and between the three parts. Rather than clutter one single page with publication details and Murakami’s numerous other fiction and non-fiction titles, the book’s designers run these in tiny print across the top and bottom margins of the eight endpapers. In the side margins of the text, ‘1Q84’appears halfway down every page, arranged as a cube, above and below which the page numbers move up and down. On the opposite pages, the page numbers also move, but both they and the title are in mirror reverse. What’s more, this idiosyncratic pattern switches over at various, apparently random intervals, from odd to even pages. Q is ku, nine in Japanese, and the letter is said to look like ‘a world that bears a question’, although the answer escapes me. Nothing in 1Q84 will be as it seems.
Book 1 Title: 1Q84
Book Author: Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel
Book 1 Biblio: Harvill Secker, $39.95 hb, 926 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/1q84-haruki-murakami/book/9780307476463.html
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Admirers of Haruki Murakami who waited for two years while successive parts of his twelfth novel sold millions in Japanese, are now rewarded for their patience with a big nugget of a book in English, which is already an international bestseller. The elegant cover shows an enigmatic night sky with two moons, which reappear on the endpapers and between the three parts. Rather than clutter one single page with publication details and Murakami’s numerous other fiction and non-fiction titles, the book’s designers run these in tiny print across the top and bottom margins of the eight endpapers. In the side margins of the text, ‘1Q84’appears halfway down every page, arranged as a cube, above and below which the page numbers move up and down. On the opposite pages, the page numbers also move, but both they and the title are in mirror reverse. What’s more, this idiosyncratic pattern switches over at various, apparently random intervals, from odd to even pages. Q is ku, nine in Japanese, and the letter is said to look like ‘a world that bears a question’, although the answer escapes me. Nothing in 1Q84 will be as it seems.

Read more: Alison Broinowski reviews '1Q84' by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel

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Adam Rivett reviews A Tiger in Eden by Chris Flynn
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For ex-Orangeman Billy, history is a nightmare from which he’s trying to get a good night’s sleep. Haunted by ‘all the bloody faces of Catholic lads I done over and worse’, he’s an exile in Thailand, regularly numbing himself with cheap sex, beer, and the occasional fight. He claims he’s never seen the sunrise sober in his life. Things are about to change.
Book 1 Title: A Tiger In Eden 
Book Author: Chris Flynn
Book 1 Biblio: Text Publishing, $22.95 pb, 224 pp
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For ex-Orangeman Billy, history is a nightmare from which he’s trying to get a good night’s sleep. Haunted by ‘all the bloody faces of Catholic lads I done over and worse’, he’s an exile in Thailand, regularly numbing himself with cheap sex, beer, and the occasional fight. He claims he’s never seen the sunrise sober in his life. Things are about to change.

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Sky Kirkham reviews Floundering by Romy Ash
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Romy Ash’s début novel, Floundering, sits comfortably in the realm of Australian realism. It depicts the travails of a dysfunctional and impoverished family as they make their way across the country during a scorching Australian summer. Tom and Jordy, young brothers, live with their grandparents following their abandonment by their mother, Loretta. Twelve months later Loretta returns, just as peremptorily as she left. She removes the children and heads west to a place where she hopes they will be able to live happily together.
Book 1 Title: Floundering 
Book Author: Romy Ash
Book 1 Biblio: Text Publishing, $27.95 pb, 224 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/floundering-romy-ash/book/9781921922084.html
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Romy Ash’s début novel, Floundering, sits comfortably in the realm of Australian realism. It depicts the travails of a dysfunctional and impoverished family as they make their way across the country during a scorching Australian summer. Tom and Jordy, young brothers, live with their grandparents following their abandonment by their mother, Loretta. Twelve months later Loretta returns, just as peremptorily as she left. She removes the children and heads west to a place where she hopes they will be able to live happily together.

Read more: Sky Kirkham reviews 'Floundering' by Romy Ash

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Francesca Sasnaitis reviews Cooking the Books by Kerry Greenwood
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For many years I have looked forward to the ongoing exploits of Kerry Greenwood’s sassy heroine Phryne Fisher – the marvellous descriptions of period detail and fashion, the historical background of her ripping yarns – and have wilfully ignored occasional anachronisms of language or behaviour.
Book 1 Title: Cooking the Books 
Book Author: Kerry Greenwood
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin $22.99 pb, 312 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/cooking-the-books-kerry-greenwood/book/9781742370217.html
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For many years I have looked forward to the ongoing exploits of Kerry Greenwood’s sassy heroine Phryne Fisher – the marvellous descriptions of period detail and fashion, the historical background of her ripping yarns – and have wilfully ignored occasional anachronisms of language or behaviour.

Read more: Francesca Sasnaitis reviews 'Cooking the Books' by Kerry Greenwood

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Contents Category: Film
Custom Article Title: Carnage
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‘There is such and such a relationship between a man and a woman. They are living in such and such a place. And here come the intruders.’ So Roman Polanski, interviewed in 1969, described the conception of Cul de Sac (1966), his favourite among his films.
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‘There is such and such a relationship between a man and a woman. They are living in such and such a place. And here come the intruders.’ So Roman Polanski, interviewed in 1969, described the conception of Cul de Sac (1966), his favourite among his films.

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Peter Hill reviews Permanent Revolution: Mike Brown and the Australian avant-garde 1953-1997 by Richard Haese
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In August 1999 the Melbourne art collective DAMP staged an argument that turned into a glass-smashing fight at an exhibition opening of its work at 200 Gertrude Street. Peter Timms, writing in The Age, described this event, which in former times might have been called a ‘Happening’ and today would be recognised as a ‘Pop-up project’:
Book 1 Title: Permanent Revolution
Book 1 Subtitle: Mike Brown and the Australian avant-garde1953–97
Book Author: Richard Haese
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah Press, $49.99 hb, 304 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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In August 1999 the Melbourne art collective DAMP staged an argument that turned into a glass-smashing fight at an exhibition opening of its work at 200 Gertrude Street. Peter Timms, writing in The Age, described this event, which in former times might have been called a ‘Happening’ and today would be recognised as a ‘Pop-up project’:

Read more: Peter Hill reviews 'Permanent Revolution: Mike Brown and the Australian avant-garde 1953-1997' by...

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Jillian Graham reviews Women of Note: The rise of Australian women composers by Rosalind Appleby
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Article Title: Documenting Australia’s female creators of music
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According to the summary on the inside of Women of Note’sattractive jacket, being a female composer in the twentieth century was a ‘dangerous game’ – strong words indeed, but not without justification. Rosalind Appleby notes her own initial surprise to discover how many women composers there actually were in Australia. My own experience while writing a PhD about four Australian composing mothers is consistent with this perception. I have lost count of the number of times I described my topic to polite questioners and, on explaining that it was about Australian women composers, was asked, ‘Are there any?’ Well, yes – in 2011 the Australian Music Centre recorded that twenty-five per cent of Australian composers are women.
Book 1 Title: Women of Note
Book 1 Subtitle: The rise of Australian women composers
Book Author: Rosalind Appleby
Book 1 Biblio: Fremantle Press, $35 hb, 184 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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According to the summary on the inside of Women of Note’sattractive jacket, being a female composer in the twentieth century was a ‘dangerous game’ – strong words indeed, but not without justification. Rosalind Appleby notes her own initial surprise to discover how many women composers there actually were in Australia. My own experience while writing a PhD about four Australian composing mothers is consistent with this perception. I have lost count of the number of times I described my topic to polite questioners and, on explaining that it was about Australian women composers, was asked, ‘Are there any?’ Well, yes – in 2011 the Australian Music Centre recorded that twenty-five per cent of Australian composers are women.

Read more: Jillian Graham reviews 'Women of Note: The rise of Australian women composers' by Rosalind Appleby

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Gillian Dooley reviews Not Drowning, Reading by Andrew Relph
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‘Perhaps,’ Andrew Relph muses, ‘some people love reading but don’t require it.’ Relph is a psychotherapist who grew up in a dysfunctional family in South Africa, with an undiagnosed reading disorder – which he hasn’t exactly overcome. Reading, though vital, is still slow and intense: ‘I read nothing I don’t want to read. I’m like a person with a breathing problem, restricting themselves to oxygen.’
Book 1 Title: Not Drowning, Reading
Book Author: Andrew Relph
Book 1 Biblio: Fremantle Press, $24.95 pb, 184 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/not-drowning-reading-andrew-relph/book/9781921696800.html
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‘Perhaps,’ Andrew Relph muses, ‘some people love reading but don’t require it.’ Relph is a psychotherapist who grew up in a dysfunctional family in South Africa, with an undiagnosed reading disorder – which he hasn’t exactly overcome. Reading, though vital, is still slow and intense: ‘I read nothing I don’t want to read. I’m like a person with a breathing problem, restricting themselves to oxygen.’

Read more: Gillian Dooley reviews 'Not Drowning, Reading' by Andrew Relph

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Jane Goodall reviews As I Was Saying: A collection of musings by Robert Dessaix
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‘I’m sitting in my tower, cogitating.’ Well, Dessaix admits, it’s not a real tower, though he likes to think of it that way. Actually, it is an elevated writing room in his house in Hobart, with a view of the mountains to the west. He is cogitating, not meditating – he’s particular about this – and the thoughts he proceeds to capture on the page are those of a mind given to rambling. As he sits there, the train of thought moves off to connect him with other writers in other towers, widely distant in place and time: Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst in Kent, Michel de Montaigne in rural France, W.B. Yeats in County Galway, Rainer Maria Rilke at the Château de Muzot in Switzerland.
Book 1 Title: As I Was Saying
Book 1 Subtitle: A collection of musings
Book Author: Robert Dessaix
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $27.95 pb, 224 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/as-i-was-saying-robert-dessaix/book/9781742753072.html
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‘I’m sitting in my tower, cogitating.’ Well, Dessaix admits, it’s not a real tower, though he likes to think of it that way. Actually, it is an elevated writing room in his house in Hobart, with a view of the mountains to the west. He is cogitating, not meditating – he’s particular about this – and the thoughts he proceeds to capture on the page are those of a mind given to rambling. As he sits there, the train of thought moves off to connect him with other writers in other towers, widely distant in place and time: Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst in Kent, Michel de Montaigne in rural France, W.B. Yeats in County Galway, Rainer Maria Rilke at the Château de Muzot in Switzerland.

Read more: Jane Goodall reviews 'As I Was Saying: A collection of musings' by Robert Dessaix

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Custom Article Title: 'Citizen lexicography: Creating a ‘Word Zoo’ in Canberra' by Sarah Ogilvie
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Every day for the past few months, the Sydney linguist Michael Walsh has been sitting in the Mitchell Library poring over old manuscripts. He is extracting old wordlists of Aboriginal languages from the library’s rich collection of early British settler diaries, missionary field notes, and unpublished historical documents for a project funded by the State Library of New South Wales and Rio Tinto. This week, Michael sent me twelve scanned pages of a leather-bound diary he discovered which belonged to Richard Tester, who had recorded his daily adventures in 1860, travelling overland from Kerkaraboo on the Wakefield River to Melbourne and the goldfields.
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Every day for the past few months, the Sydney linguist Michael Walsh has been sitting in the Mitchell Library poring over old manuscripts. He is extracting old wordlists of Aboriginal languages from the library’s rich collection of early British settler diaries, missionary field notes, and unpublished historical documents for a project funded by the State Library of New South Wales and Rio Tinto. This week, Michael sent me twelve scanned pages of a leather-bound diary he discovered which belonged to Richard Tester, who had recorded his daily adventures in 1860, travelling overland from Kerkaraboo on the Wakefield River to Melbourne and the goldfields.

Read more: 'Citizen lexicography: Creating a "Word Zoo" in Canberra' by Sarah Ogilvie

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Graeme Powell reviews We Talked of Other Things: The life and letters of Arthur Wheen 1897–1971 edited by Tanya Crothers
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Article Title: The remarkable translator of Erich Maria Remarque
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Arthur Wheen, a nineteen-year-old signaller in the Australian Imperial Force, sailed from Egypt to France in June 1916. A month later he wrote to one of his younger sisters in Australia recounting, in highly fanciful language, his first experience of battle. After describing his difficulties with mud and barbed wire, he told her, ‘I got out in the end though and cantered across to the German trenches where I had much better luck with their barbed wire.’ Agnes Wheen would have had no inkling that her brother had just taken part in a disastrous battle in which more than five thousand Australian soldiers were killed or wounded.
Book 1 Title: We Talked of Other Things
Book 1 Subtitle: The life and letters of Arthur Wheen 1897–1971
Book Author: Tanya Crothers
Book 1 Biblio: Longueville Media, $55 hb, 448 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Arthur Wheen, a nineteen-year-old signaller in the Australian Imperial Force, sailed from Egypt to France in June 1916. A month later he wrote to one of his younger sisters in Australia recounting, in highly fanciful language, his first experience of battle. After describing his difficulties with mud and barbed wire, he told her, ‘I got out in the end though and cantered across to the German trenches where I had much better luck with their barbed wire.’ Agnes Wheen would have had no inkling that her brother had just taken part in a disastrous battle in which more than five thousand Australian soldiers were killed or wounded.

Read more: Graeme Powell reviews 'We Talked of Other Things: The life and letters of Arthur Wheen 1897–1971'...

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Colin Nettelbeck reviews The Useless Mouths and Other Literary Writings by Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Margaret A. Simons and Marybeth Timmermann
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Article Title: Gems and oddities from Simone de Beauvoir
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Let the potential reader be warned from the outset: the editorial perspective of this anthology of Simone de Beauvoir’s literary writings is disturbingly unsettled. If the intended audience is the ‘Beauvoir scholars’ alluded to in the jacket blurb, one cannot but imagine their irritation at the scores of quasi-Wikipedic notes covering almost every person mentioned in the text, and providing such information as ‘Brittany is a region in northwestern France with a distinct Celtic heritage’, or ‘The Champs-Elysées (Elysian fields) is a famous boulevard in Paris’. If the target is, rather, a culturally tabula rasa (freshman student?) readership, then the introductory essays for the Beauvoir texts are surely pitched too high, for many of them are scholarly, sophisticated, and thought-provoking. To account for these discrepancies would require an article of its own. Even then it would be hard to explain an editorial position that allows Proust to be presented as a ‘French modernist author best known for his monumental work, À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time) characterised by an exploration of memories through free association reflecting Proust’s interest in Freud’s analytic method’.
Book 1 Title: ‘The Useless Mouths’ and Other Literary Writings
Book Author: Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret A. Simons and Marybeth Timmermann (editors)
Book 1 Biblio: University of Illinois Press, $69 hb, 408 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/-the-useless-mouths-and-other-literary-writings-simone-de-beauvoir/book/9780252085956.html
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Let the potential reader be warned from the outset: the editorial perspective of this anthology of Simone de Beauvoir’s literary writings is disturbingly unsettled. If the intended audience is the ‘Beauvoir scholars’ alluded to in the jacket blurb, one cannot but imagine their irritation at the scores of quasi-Wikipedic notes covering almost every person mentioned in the text, and providing such information as ‘Brittany is a region in northwestern France with a distinct Celtic heritage’, or ‘The Champs-Elysées (Elysian fields) is a famous boulevard in Paris’. If the target is, rather, a culturally tabula rasa (freshman student?) readership, then the introductory essays for the Beauvoir texts are surely pitched too high, for many of them are scholarly, sophisticated, and thought-provoking. To account for these discrepancies would require an article of its own. Even then it would be hard to explain an editorial position that allows Proust to be presented as a ‘French modernist author best known for his monumental work, À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time) characterised by an exploration of memories through free association reflecting Proust’s interest in Freud’s analytic method’.

Read more: Colin Nettelbeck reviews '"The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings' by Simone de Beauvoir,...

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Chris Wallace-Crabbe reviews Who is Ozymandias? And other puzzles in poetry by John Fuller
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Those who write about poetry these days don’t go in much for lightness. More often their solemnity springs from the need to score research points or from their front-line positions in gang wars. If only the verbal art could have a critic who trod as lightly as the epigrams of Laurie Duggan or the juxtapositional poems of Jennifer Maiden. But wishes are not horses, and we must be grateful for what we’ve got. Recently to hand is an agreeably jaunty book of essays from the Oxford poet John Fuller. He certainly likes to keep it light and clear: pedagogical in the gentlest way. As critic he reads hard, but writes soft: a close reader with a free rein, we might say. And he knows that any modern poem is, metaphorically, a hybrid between layered onion and head of broccoli.
Book 1 Title: Who is Ozymandias?
Book 1 Subtitle: And other puzzles in poetry
Book Author: John Fuller
Book 1 Biblio: Random House, $36.95 hb, 256 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/who-is-ozymandias--john-fuller/ebook/9781407075136.html
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Those who write about poetry these days don’t go in much for lightness. More often their solemnity springs from the need to score research points or from their front-line positions in gang wars. If only the verbal art could have a critic who trod as lightly as the epigrams of Laurie Duggan or the juxtapositional poems of Jennifer Maiden. But wishes are not horses, and we must be grateful for what we’ve got. Recently to hand is an agreeably jaunty book of essays from the Oxford poet John Fuller. He certainly likes to keep it light and clear: pedagogical in the gentlest way. As critic he reads hard, but writes soft: a close reader with a free rein, we might say. And he knows that any modern poem is, metaphorically, a hybrid between layered onion and head of broccoli.

Read more: Chris Wallace-Crabbe reviews 'Who is Ozymandias? And other puzzles in poetry' by John Fuller

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Carmel Bird reviews Reaching One Thousand: A story of love, motherhood and autism by Rachel Robertson
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: Dancing on his own
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At some stage in every workshop on the art of memoir somebody raises the question of ethics, of privacy, and of who has the right to tell a version of a story. How far, the author of Reaching One Thousand asks, is she prepared to ‘sacrifice other people’s privacy’? What betrayals will she ‘perpetrate on others’?
Book 1 Title: Reaching One Thousand
Book 1 Subtitle: A Story of love, motherhood and autism
Book Author: Rachel Robertson
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $29.95 pb, 240 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/reaching-one-thousand-rachel-robertson/ebook/9781921870552.html
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At some stage in every workshop on the art of memoir somebody raises the question of ethics, of privacy, and of who has the right to tell a version of a story. How far, the author of Reaching One Thousand asks, is she prepared to ‘sacrifice other people’s privacy’? What betrayals will she ‘perpetrate on others’?

Read more: Carmel Bird reviews 'Reaching One Thousand: A story of love, motherhood and autism' by Rachel...

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Philip Harvey reviews Outside by David McCooey
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Article Title: Fun with flux
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Philip Larkin at thirty-one asked ‘Where can we live but days?’ It shouldn’t take half a lifetime to learn that we have night and day, yet learning how to live with this arrangement, and that this is the arrangement, is something we keep adapting to all our lives. While not a dichotomy, night and day help form the dichotomous nature of our thinking, and inform especially the method of describing and explaining everything that we call poetry. David McCooey has taken this elementary fact as first principle in creating poetry that is by turns accepting and acerbic, buoyant and bothered, carefree and careful. Outside is divided into two studied sections, one coloured by day, the second by night.
Book 1 Title: Outside
Book Author: David McCooey
Book 1 Biblio: Salt Publishing, £9.99 pb, 74 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Philip Larkin at thirty-one asked ‘Where can we live but days?’ It shouldn’t take half a lifetime to learn that we have night and day, yet learning how to live with this arrangement, and that this is the arrangement, is something we keep adapting to all our lives. While not a dichotomy, night and day help form the dichotomous nature of our thinking, and inform especially the method of describing and explaining everything that we call poetry. David McCooey has taken this elementary fact as first principle in creating poetry that is by turns accepting and acerbic, buoyant and bothered, carefree and careful. Outside is divided into two studied sections, one coloured by day, the second by night.

Read more: Philip Harvey reviews 'Outside' by David McCooey

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Stuart Macintyre reviews Australia and Appeasement: Imperial foreign policy and the origins of World War II by Christopher Waters
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For long after World War II, particular opprobrium was reserved for the statesmen who failed to resist the belligerent dictators. Their failure was denounced in the popular tract Guilty Men, which appeared in 1940 soon after Hitler overran Western Europe, leaving Britain to fight on alone ...
Book 1 Title: Australia and Appeasement
Book 1 Subtitle: Imperial foreign policy and the origins of World War II
Book Author: Christopher Waters
Book 1 Biblio: I.B. Tauris, $39.95 hb, 320 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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For long after World War II, particular opprobrium was reserved for the statesmen who failed to resist the belligerent dictators. Their failure was denounced in the popular tract Guilty Men, which appeared in 1940 soon after Hitler overran Western Europe, leaving Britain to fight on alone. These guilty men included the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who was forced to resign, the mandarins of the Foreign Office, and the leaders of public opinion who had supported the Conservative government in its efforts to avert war. They had refused to recognise the clear evidence that Germany, Italy, and Japan were implacably aggressive, repeatedly accepted worthless assurances that each act of aggression was the last, delayed rearmament, undermined arrangements for collective security, and allowed small nations to be dismembered. They were guilty of appeasement.

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Ian Gibbins reviews Survival of the Beautiful: Art, science, and evolution by David Rothenberg
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David Rothenberg’s formal appellation at the New Jersey Institute of Technology is Professor of Philosophy and Music. He refers to himself as a ‘musician, composer, author and philosopher-naturalist’. Others have called him an ‘interspecies musician’. Rothenberg, a highly regarded jazz saxophonist and clarinettist, has published a range of books on science, technology, and music. But an ‘interspecies musician’? Much of Rothenberg’s fame stems from his improvised duets with ‘singing’ animals: whales (Whale Music, 2008), birds (Why Birds Sing, 2005) and even cicadas (see YouTube). With this background, Rothenberg is well credentialled to tackle a problem that lies at the heart of the apparent divide between science and the arts: what is beauty? Why do we find much birdsong beautiful? More critically, what do the birds themselves hear in these products of their evolutionary history? Can mere animals experience some kind of aesthetic sense, a sense of ‘beauty’?
Book 1 Title: Survival of the Beautiful
Book 1 Subtitle: Art, science, and evolution
Book Author: David Rothenberg
Book 1 Biblio: Bloomsbury Press, $32.99 pb, 320 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/survival-of-the-beautiful-david-rothenberg/ebook/9781408828885.html
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David Rothenberg’s formal appellation at the New Jersey Institute of Technology is Professor of Philosophy and Music. He refers to himself as a ‘musician, composer, author and philosopher-naturalist’. Others have called him an ‘interspecies musician’. Rothenberg, a highly regarded jazz saxophonist and clarinettist, has published a range of books on science, technology, and music. But an ‘interspecies musician’? Much of Rothenberg’s fame stems from his improvised duets with ‘singing’ animals: whales (Whale Music, 2008), birds (Why Birds Sing, 2005) and even cicadas (see YouTube). With this background, Rothenberg is well credentialled to tackle a problem that lies at the heart of the apparent divide between science and the arts: what is beauty? Why do we find much birdsong beautiful? More critically, what do the birds themselves hear in these products of their evolutionary history? Can mere animals experience some kind of aesthetic sense, a sense of ‘beauty’?

Read more: Ian Gibbins reviews 'Survival of the Beautiful: Art, science, and evolution' by David Rothenberg

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Mieke Chew reviews Granta 117: Horror edited by John Freeman
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Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, ‘Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.’ The 117th issue of Granta is not short of imagination. Contributions range from a posthumously published zombie tale by Roberto Bolaño, to translated reportage on Peru by Santiago Roncagliolo, to new fiction by Stephen King. In Don DeLillo’s ‘The Starveling’, an elderly cinephile wanders the streets of Manhattan looking for a purpose. His life, which revolves around movie screenings, is a disturbing portrait of idleness. Even the most disconcerting circumstances fail to shake him from his malaise.
Book 1 Title: Granta 117
Book 1 Subtitle: Horror
Book Author: John Freeman
Book 1 Biblio: Granta, $27.99 pb, 256 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/granta-117-john-freeman/ebook/9781905881451.html
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Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, ‘Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.’ The 117th issue of Granta is not short of imagination. Contributions range from a posthumously published zombie tale by Roberto Bolaño, to translated reportage on Peru by Santiago Roncagliolo, to new fiction by Stephen King. In Don DeLillo’s ‘The Starveling’, an elderly cinephile wanders the streets of Manhattan looking for a purpose. His life, which revolves around movie screenings, is a disturbing portrait of idleness. Even the most disconcerting circumstances fail to shake him from his malaise.

Read more: Mieke Chew reviews 'Granta 117: Horror' edited by John Freeman

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Brian McFarlane reviews The Narrative of John Smith by Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Robert Lindsay
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Contents Category: Audio Book
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Article Title: Posthumous Holmes
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A century later, the Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes industry shows no signs of abating. In recent months alone, there have been Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk, a new Holmes adventure, and the big, dumb action movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; a television series, Sherlock, set in the twenty-first century, appeared in 2010; and in 2005 Julian Barnes’s George and Arthur investigated the relationship between an unjustly accused solicitor, George Edalji, and Doyle who took up his cause.
Book 1 Title: The Narrative of John Smith
Book Author: Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Lindsay (reader)
Book 1 Biblio: British Library Board, $39.95 5 CDs, 270 minutes
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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A century later, the Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes industry shows no signs of abating. In recent months alone, there have been Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk, a new Holmes adventure, and the big, dumb action movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; a television series, Sherlock, set in the twenty-first century, appeared in 2010; and in 2005 Julian Barnes’s George and Arthur investigated the relationship between an unjustly accused solicitor, George Edalji, and Doyle who took up his cause.

Read more: Brian McFarlane reviews 'The Narrative of John Smith' by Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Robert Lindsay

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William Heyward reviews Riding the Trains in Japan: Travels in the sacred and supermodern East by Patrick Holland
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Contents Category: Travel
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Article Title: The outsider
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Patrick Holland makes his plans clear in the first sentence of Riding the Trains in Japan (his fourth book and first work of non-fiction): ‘I arrived in Kyoto in the middle of the national holiday called O-Bon, the Japanese All Souls, when Buddhists believe departed spirits may return to earth and when ancestors and the elderly are honoured.’ His subjects and themes have been identified: himself, the people and places of Asia, Eastern spirituality and tradition, and the transient nature of life and all of its cultural accessories. The opening also reveals Holland’s technical approach: a willingness to conflate personal anecdote with documentary observation, the minutiae of daily life with the grandness of tradition, and the material world with a spiritual one. Clearly, he wants to test the conventional form of travel writing.
Book 1 Title: Riding the Trains in Japan
Book 1 Subtitle: Travels in the sacred and supermodern East
Book Author: Patrick Holland
Book 1 Biblio: Transit Lounge, $29.95 pb, 231 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/riding-the-trains-in-japan-patrick-holland/ebook/9781921924378.html
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Patrick Holland makes his plans clear in the first sentence of Riding the Trains in Japan (his fourth book and first work of non-fiction): ‘I arrived in Kyoto in the middle of the national holiday called O-Bon, the Japanese All Souls, when Buddhists believe departed spirits may return to earth and when ancestors and the elderly are honoured.’ His subjects and themes have been identified: himself, the people and places of Asia, Eastern spirituality and tradition, and the transient nature of life and all of its cultural accessories. The opening also reveals Holland’s technical approach: a willingness to conflate personal anecdote with documentary observation, the minutiae of daily life with the grandness of tradition, and the material world with a spiritual one. Clearly, he wants to test the conventional form of travel writing.

Read more: William Heyward reviews 'Riding the Trains in Japan: Travels in the sacred and supermodern East'...

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Contents Category: Picture Books
Custom Article Title: Joy Lawn reviews recent picture books
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Australian picture books are among the best in the world. Some of our most notable authors and illustrators include Bob Graham, Libby Gleeson, Freya Blackwood, Stephen Michael King, and Glenda Millard. The latest books by these creators are valuable additions to Australian children’s literature.
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Australian picture books are among the best in the world. Some of our most notable authors and illustrators include Bob Graham, Libby Gleeson, Freya Blackwood, Stephen Michael King, and Glenda Millard. The latest books by these creators are valuable additions to Australian children’s literature.

Read more: Joy Lawn reviews 'Lightning Jack', 'A Bear and a Tree', 'Lazy Daisy, Busy Lizzie', 'The Perfect...

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Ronnie Scott reviews Sensitive Creatures by Mandy Ord
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Contents Category: Graphic Novel
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It’s a simple proposition: short graphic stories about city life, and one narrator – Mandy Ord – drawn with a single bulging eye. But the slice-of-life stories in Sensitive Creatures are rarely straightforward. Sweeping and brittle, kinetic and lush, this is a consistently surprising volume, at once an autobiography, a collection of vignettes, and a comprehensive catalogue of an artist’s career.
Book 1 Title: Sensitive Creatures 
Book Author: Mandy Ord
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $24.99 pb, 304 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/sensitive-creatures-mandy-ord/ebook/9781742694061.html
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It’s a simple proposition: short graphic stories about city life, and one narrator – Mandy Ord – drawn with a single bulging eye. But the slice-of-life stories in Sensitive Creatures are rarely straightforward. Sweeping and brittle, kinetic and lush, this is a consistently surprising volume, at once an autobiography, a collection of vignettes, and a comprehensive catalogue of an artist’s career.

Read more: Ronnie Scott reviews 'Sensitive Creatures' by Mandy Ord

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