You could regard this latest book by Helen Garner as simply a collection of various essays, a miscellany if you wish, but to do so would be to give it less than its due. There is nothing casual or accidental about Everywhere I Look. Its coherence may, of course, have much to do with Garner's voice, which is consistent and compelling, as is her actual writing style: those sentences that either build detail on detail or present themselves as arguments, hinged on the crucial word 'but', plus the feeling she offers of being so completely present in her work.

Compared to the epic narratives of America and Europe, our story can seem rather unglamorous. Australia's 'tyranny of distance' from the seismic events of world history induces a vague sense that Australians labour under a certain tyranny of irrelevance. Perhaps we don't look hard enough to appreciate what is unique about our past. Or is is that our innate sense of inferiority tripwires us to sell our legacy short?

Australia's Second Chance: What our history tells us about our future, by George Megalogenis, is a bold and innovative rewriting of our nation's history. It reminds us that our history is noteworthy and of global significance. But it also serves as a cogent warning about the consequences of Australia's current political malaise and policy inaction. In essence, Megalogenis – former political and economic commentator with The Australian – reprocesses the nation's conventional narratives to amplify poorly understood facts and trends. He also downplays the long-term import of what are conventionally regarded as pivotal moments or themes.

The circumstances around the publication of Dodge Rose, Jack Cox's début novel, have attracted considerable attention in Australian literary circles. A choice publicity tale as to how the novel was rescued from the slush pile by American publisher Dalkey Archive Press has contributed to this. So have claims advanced by Dalkey Archive that Dodge Rose is 'the most astonishing début of the decade', comparable with Samuel Beckett, William Gaddis, and Henry Green. Unusual too is the fact this high modernist 'anti-novel' by a young Australian author found a US publisher before an Australian one. Catriona Menzies-Pike, in the Sydney Review of Books, wrote a fascinating editorial on the pre-release buzz earlier this year.

Two headlines, a day apart, evoke the confusion surrounding the fate of the Titanic in April 1912. New York's Evening Sun reported, 'ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION'. Twenty-four hours later, The Boston Daily Globe added: 'TITANIC SINKS, 1500 DIE.' From there, the sinking of the 'unsinkable' Titanic has been the subject of conflicting accounts. Books, films, and nightmares, survivors' stories, songs, and poems, conspiracy theory fuelled by inconsistencies and by weird and cryptic evidence and the rumblings of rumour are all part of an indefatigable industry.

Peter Porter's posthumous collection of poems, Chorale at the Crossing, is preoccupied, understandably, with death – but death was a central preoccupation of his work from the beginning. How could it not be? He lost his mother at the age of nine.

Porter's two Collected Poems (1983 and 1999) were – are – stupendous, exuberant treasure-houses of riches, but death is the dark stitching. Death and sex – two stitchings. No three: death, sex, and cats. Four: death, sex, cats, and European High Art. And since this list is beginning to sound like Eric Idle in the Spanish Inquisition, I might round it out: death, sex, cats, and Pythonesqe humour. Porter was a very funny writer – as an irreverent satirist and aphorist, certainly, but also as an absurdist. There are jokes curled through even his most cryptic poems.

In her speech as the winner of the 2003 National Book Award, Shirley Hazzard said, 'We should do our best by the language. We mustn't torture it; we mustn't diminish it. We have to love it, nurture it, and enjoy it.'

Reading Hazzard, as she is variously represented in this collection, is to encounter a writer who has done her 'best by the language' and, in these essays, continues marvellously to do so. Two of Hazzard's distinctive literary qualities are a kind of stately seriousness and a capacity to hold a number of perceptions or reflections or memories in tension without losing either momentum or focus. These characteristics are variously evident but perhaps nowhere more clearly, and certainly more typically, than in the 1982 essay 'The Lonely Word' and in the title essay, 'We need silence ...'

When Take Me to Paris, Johnny was first published in 1993, the AIDS crisis seemed to be at its worst. Many of us had friends and acquaintances who were dying. One began to notice men who, thin and haggard, one feared were suffering from AIDS (women victims being relatively few in number). There was no sign of the drug therapies that would, towards the end of the decade, begin to transform the treatment of AIDS. Only the symptoms could be treated, often with difficulty. Yet, as Robert Dessaix puts it, 'AIDS is a disease that excites narration.' Internationally, the AIDS memoir had already emerged as a genre of testimony, sometimes characterised by anger – particularly in America, where President Reagan had been slow to even acknowledge an AIDS crisis. At least in Australia there was a political consensus in the development of policies to deal with AIDS, to which the embattled but increasingly proactive gay community contributed (though, as John Foster records, the thoughtless 1987 Grim Reaper advertising campaign left him feeling, on Juan Céspedes's behalf, 'ambushed, stunned').

This sumptuous volume by Marco Santagata, professor of Italian Literature at the University of Pisa, offers the reader a richly documented and often gripping account of the development, peregrinations, and shifting fortunes of the celebrated poet Durante (Dante) Alighieri. Comprising ten chapters, the volume has an internal division in two parts, with the first covering Dante's life in Florence and the second exploring the remaining period of Dante's political exile (under pain of death if he re-entered Florence) and the poet's activity until his untimely death in Ravenna in 1321. By means of Richard Dixon's fluid and sparkling translation of the original volume (published in 2012 as Dante: Il romanzo della sua vita), English-speaking readers can enjoy Santagata's evocation of the tensions, complex alliances, betrayals, class struggles, and internecine strife taking place not only in a 'divided' Florence (la città partita, Inf. VI, 61) and elsewhere throughout the peninsula, but also in the violent and treacherous landscape of imperial and ecclesiastical allegiances beyond Italian borders, with all parties vying for dominion and bent on the wholesale destruction of their mutual enemies.

Between a Wolf and a Dog is Georgia Blain's eighth book: it follows five previous novels, an acclaimed short-story collection (The Secret Lives of Men, 2013) and Births, Deaths, Marriages (2008), a sublime memoir-in-essays. Blain has an affinity for domestic realism with a dark edge and an unstinting eye: she is fascinated by the faultlines in relationships and the turning points in individual lives that are more visible in retrospect than in the moment. She is also good at social context, weaving the details that reflect our times into the fabric of her characters and stories.

While there was much to admire in Too Close to Home (2011), Blain's most recent adult novel, something about its structure felt unfinished, with its themes perhaps too self-conscious. Between a Wolf and a Dog is notable for its polish: structurally and stylistically this novel proceeds with quiet assurance. Apparently, Blain wrote the novel years ago, put it away, then returned to it. This combination of distance and revision have paid off.

Historian Garry Wotherspoon's history of gay Sydney was first published in 1991 as City of the Plain. Over the years it became a classic text, perhaps the classic text, of Australian gay male history. I have a well-worn copy myself with copious notes in the margins and dog-eared pages. A quarter of a century later, Wotherspoon has revisited the original text and changed its title, lightly rewritten the existing chapters, and added three new ones. Few historians get a reprint of a monograph, let alone a second edition, so Wotherspoon has good cause to feel vindicated. Writing gay history in the 1980s and early 1990s was still an exotic vocation for the academic historian; it was a risk and it took courage. Times change, a key theme Wotherspoon emphasises throughout Gay Sydney: A History. Today, queer-inflected research and teaching litter humanities faculties, from the citadel of cultural studies to the outpost of legal studies and beyond.

This book, however, is unashamedly written for a general audience. City of the Plain, while eminently readable, kept the form of academic writing with an explicit foray into historiography and method. Gay Sydney discards this academic convention and concentrates on conveying a ripping yarn of change and, to a substantially lesser degree, continuity.

When David Attenborough's memoir Life on Air was published in 2002, the magazine I worked for arranged for me to interview him. By then I had been interviewing people for a while and thought myself quite unflusterable. I keyed in the number, listened to the dial tone. And then it was as if the call had been answered by God (interesting, as an atheist). My recording device failed, and I did an awful interview, flummoxed by the sound of That Voice. That Voice had explained so much of my planet and so many of its life forms to me; it was as if it had brought them into being.

I thought of this as I read this new book. A chatty and engaging memoir of another broadcasting life – Robyn Williams's – the sound of his voice, his broadcast voice, also rises from its pages, loud and clear. For forty years, at midday each Saturday, Robyn Williams has delivered The Science Show. His voice has a kind of ecclesiastic ring in my personal audio archives, if we take Attenborough as the deity.

WHY DO YOU WRITE?

At first, I wrote because I could. It was like waking up one morning to find I could play the piano or speak Italian – the action itself was entrancing. Now that I've been at it for a while, I'm full-on addicted.

ARE YOU A VIVID DREAMER?

Nope. I could sleep for England. You could extend the M1 through my bedroom and I'd be none the wiser.

In early 1960s Paris, an eighteen-year-old who is keeping up his student enrolment to delay compulsory military service is questioned by the police because his name has been found in an address book. At the same time, a slightly older young woman is also being interrogated. The boy contrives to meet her afterwards in a café. Thus begins a story which is part romance, part identity quest, part crime intrigue. It is narrated from a perspective of thirty years after the events, which adds to the tale a psychological tension between an always flawed memory and the need to find clarity.

As a stand-alone text, After the Circus is a little masterpiece in the French minimalist and ironic noir tradition, reminiscent of Godard's Breathless (1960) or Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Having planted Chester Himes in a café at the beginning of the novel to conjure the mood of the Paris jazz age, the author proceeds to elaborate a narrative that is anything but hard-boiled, all suggestion and inference, including its erotic dimension: a narrator who bears the now-forgotten former name of a far-flung metro station (Obligado); a half-abandoned luxury apartment in central Paris overlooking the Seine; a girl in a raincoat, black skirt, and sweater; a small band of suspicious characters; a black Labrador named Raymond; two locked heavy suitcases, a big car, and empty city streets; the fear and expectation, sustained throughout, that something bad is bound to happen. The cover photo chosen by Yale University Press of a pair of sleek female legs emerging from a car is perhaps too overtly posed to match Modiano's subtlety, although the fragmentary composition and the play of light and shadow are convergent with elements of the novel's tone.

Shelley Davidow's multi-generational memoir begins in 1913 with her Jewish great-grandfather Jacob escaping the pogroms of tsarist Lithuania for the rigours of life in the American Midwest. The English language eludes Jacob, who struggles to make a decent living in his adopted country. Poverty contributes to his wife's untimely death. Jacob's son and daughter are consigned to a Jewish orphanage. Loss and sorrow seem to afflict Jacob's family, as if hardship is genetically encoded, and can be passed down to future generations along with his innate musicality.

Although William Carlos Williams, with some accuracy, claimed that ‘every’ poem is an ‘experiment’, the number of successful experiments is relatively rare. Jordie Albiston’s new ‘long poem’ or ‘verse novel’ (call it what you will) is triumphantly experimental in both technique and content.

In technique, Albiston has done several things which, in other hands, would almost certainly have not turned out well. The whole book is written in syllabic rather than accentual verse, a metre used with mixed success last century, by Marianne Moore (1887–1972) and a few others. Albiston here has deliberately flirted with the pentameter by ensuring every line across her 136 pages has exactly ten syllables. Her ‘free verse’ rather than iambic lines are arranged (as if by a related algorithm) into five-line stanzas. The result is unexpectedly convincing and agreeable to read.

An even less predictable success is the highly effective diction and syntax Albiston has invented for the interior monologues of her two canine protagonists, Jack and Mollie. We sense the precedent of Les Murray’s ‘The Cows on Killing Day’ (and perhaps James Joyce’s later novels), but Albiston’s solution to ‘voicing her dogs’ is entirely her own.

Despite our also being animals, we humans are warned these days against anthropomorphism. Albiston is in no doubt as to what her two ‘pooches’ are thinking – and neither are we readers after being given such privileged access. Take these lines from Jack, for instance, as he faces euthanasia near the end of the book:

I have the comprehend I will not be
return I have too the comprehend that
I have loved Her that I will always love
Her & that at this final love will have 
all of the everything good in the end

Mollie, on the other hand, is bigger, younger, and less academic (and, dare one say it, very female). A few lines from her are a different thing altogether:

yip! o yip! i love being here i love being
here with jackie boy & her & him i
just love everything everywhere cos this
is the life! there’s so much to smell & see
& explore & do & i love getting . . .

Most of the text, however, consists of an equally compelling past-tense third-person narration (occasionally addressed to a ‘Dear Reader’) in which the vulnerable ‘ownee’ rather than ‘owner’ of the two dogs is referred to throughout as ‘J’. This provides a distancing which nicely undercuts what might otherwise have been sentimental (especially for those readers not especially devoted to dogs). Such distancing also gives the author’s recurrent struggles with depression an extra poignancy. The dogs’ sensitive awareness of these difficulties is, in turn, even more moving, as is the juxtaposition between Jack’s mode of ‘speaking’ and J’s. This is well suggested near the story’s beginning where the author writes:

... she was somewhat
alone & she simply wanted something

to love ... and then the light
switched on & her heart was lit & she saw
it up there the Dog Star she is not with

the very well when she comes to pick me
up she holds me too squash even with the
worry-worry I do the sad & bold
goodbye to mother brother gather my
self for what next ...

Jack & Mollie (& Her) is, at its core, a specific study of canine-human psychological interdependence, as it has developed over millennia. It also possesses a considerable, though not particularly remarkable, narrative. The dogs, especially Jack, get into various scrapes and misadventures, and, maybe ironically (since this is an Australian story after all), they and their ‘ownee’ also experience (rather disturbingly) a flood and a bushfire. The friends and family of J are deliberately somewhat remote from the central figure whose loneliness is being offset, even ‘cured’, by Jack and Mollie. The ending is inevitably a little ‘bitter sweet’. I don't intend to spoil it, other than to warn that if you finish this book in a café you may well be embarrassed by tears.

Jordie AlbistonA further important dimension of Jack & Mollie (& Her) is the insight it offers into clinical depression, the way the disease seems to appear and disappear without explanation (though some factors such as marriage break-up and job losses can be partly suspected). J’s two dogs are rightly fearful of this top canine, referring to him by various names such as ‘Boss Dog’ or ‘mister bossy boots’. J handles her diagnosis in various ways and with differing degrees of success, including, as Jack notes, ‘doing the go-round / in the no-light’. Like the dogs, the reader is also nervously alert for the Boss Dog’s reappearance. Much has been written about this particular mental illness, but it is hard to imagine anything more effective in dismissing simplistic notions about how the afflicted should just ‘get a grip’ and ‘pull herself (or himself) together’. As the dogs know, it’s never that simple.

It’s saddening to think there may be potential readers ready to dismiss Jack & Mollie (& Her) as ‘merely’ a strangely written account of a depressed female poet’s ventriloquial relationship with her two pooches. These readers couldn’t be more wrong. This is a book about important issues, and this reviewer would not be surprised to see the book taken up and enjoyed well beyond the confines of those already familiar with the earlier, but rather different, achievements of this major Australian poet.

ARDUOUS PATH

Dear Editor,

Susan Sheridan's review of Marianne Van Velzen's retelling of the extraordinary life of Ernestine Hill, Call of the Outback (April 2016), while very positive overall, drew attention to the absence of any substantial quotes from Hill and the book's failure to reproduce any of Hill's vast archive of wonderful photographs. Sadly, and unknown to your reviewer, this was a situation forced upon the author and her publisher.

ABR'S NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH MONASH UNIVERSITY

Australian Book Review is delighted to announce a major new partnership with Monash University.

This alliance between ABR and the internationally renowned Group of Eight university augurs well for students, scholars, writers, and readers. The magazine will be active on campus, leading workshops, commissioning new writers (academics and students), and presenting collaborative events.

Australian Book Review was founded in 1961, the year in which Monash University's began to accept students at its Clayton campus. This alliance complements ABR's close ties with the higher education sector.

Professor Rae Frances, Dean of Arts at Monash University, welcomed the new agreement: 'Monash University is very excited about our partnership with one of Australia's leading cultural magazines. We share ABR's commitment to excellence and originality and a belief in the critical importance of the Arts. Together we can provide wonderful opportunities for our staff and students and make a major contribution to the country's cultural life.'

Peter Rose, Editor of ABR, commented: 'This partnership with one of Australia's great universities is a terrific development for ABR. Although the magazine is rather smaller, to say the least, many of our goals and creative programs chime with those of the University – an international outlook, an enduring commitment to scholarship, and ideas aplenty. ABR looks forward to a massive injection of new talent and energy from our colleagues at Monash.'

Peter Rose (ABR Editor) and Professor Rae Frances (Dean of Arts) at the signing of the agreement between Australian Book Review and Monash University, 27 April 2016 (photograph by David Sheehy)

GEORDIE WILLIAMSON TO PICADOR

ABR reader surveys (more of which anon) reveal that Geordie Williamson is one of our most popular and respected contributors. Geordie, who published his first review in ABR back in 2001, is a past winner of the Pascall Prize and the influential chief critic of The Australian. He also edited The Best Australian Essays 2015 (Black Inc.). He is the author of The Burning Library: Our Great Novelists Lost and Found (Text, 2011) and a forthcoming history of his Scottish family, Lairds of Rapa Nui

Geordie Williamson, in a real boost for Australian publishing, has been appointed publisher of Pan Macmillan's Picador imprint. He begins work this month. He told Advances: 'For me at least, the role of Picador publisher is something like being hired as chief taster at the chocolate factory. It has an illustrious history as an imprint both here and overseas, and hopefully - given the depth of talent coming through the ranks of contemporary writing in Australia - one with an illustrious future, too. I feel excited about the task ahead.'

JOLLEY HARVEST

When the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize closed in mid-April we had received about 1,350 entries, our biggest field to date – not surprising, given that total prize money has increased from $8,000 to $12,500, thanks to the generosity of ABR Patron Ian Dickson.

Pleasingly, thirty per cent of entries came from overseas: writers in a total of thirty-eight countries entered the Jolley.

Now our three judges – Amy Baillieu, Maxine Beneba Clarke, and David Whish-Wilson – will be kept busy reading all these stories and shortlisting three of them. The shortlist will appear in our August issue, and a special guest will name the overall winner at a special ceremony on Saturday, 27 August, at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

SHORTS@45

ABR always enjoys partnering with fortyfivedownstairs, that admirable, valiant not-for-profit theatre and gallery at (yes) 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. This year, with fortyfivedownstairs and Hill of Content Bookshop, ABR will co-present three 'Shorts@45' in which major and emerging writers will read from their new fiction or non-fiction releases. First up are Arnold Zable and Rod Jones on Monday, 6 June. These are ticketed events. To book please call fortyfivedownstairs (not ABR) on (03) 9662 9966 or visit their website.

GIVEAWAYS GALORE

Why is bad singing so funny? Is it vaudeville or a case of Schadenfreude? Curiously, we have two new films about the egregious soprano par excellence, Florence Foster Jenkins (who died soon after giving a disastrous recital in Carnegie Hall in 1944). The first – Marguerite, directed by Xavier Giannoli – screened during the recent French Film Festival and is not to be missed. Arts Update hasn't laughed so hard since it read public defences of Tony Abbott's intervention in the Prime Minister's Literary Awards in 2014. Now, directed by Stephen Frears, the great Meryl Streep plays the grande dame in Florence Foster Jenkins. Arts Update regular Ian Dickson's review will appear on its release in early May.

Courtesy of Entertainment One, we have ten double passes for new or renewing print or online subscribers to Florence Foster Jenkins. We also have ten double passes to Mia Madre (Palace Films), directed by Nanni Moretti, which also opens on May 5.

SURVEY TIME

We love hearing from readers as to what they like about Australian Book Review – whom they enjoy reading; what they would like to see more (or less) of. Please complete our reader survey and help us to go on improving the magazine. The survey takes about five minutes to complete. Feel free to skip any questions. The survey is totally anonymous – unless you want to be in the running for one of two five-year complimentary subscriptions to ABR Online (in which case we will need your name and email address).

PAST MATTERS AT MONTSALVAT

Celebrate Australian indigenous culture and literature at the Past Matters festival (May 6-7). Montsalvat and the Nillumbik Reconciliation Group again invite you to join a gathering of some of Australia's best writers and thinkers as they explore Australia's indigenous past and give voice to its present. Speakers include Alexis Wright, Alex Miller, Jack Waterford, Tom Griffiths, Campbell Thomson, and Neika Lehman.

In the opening night event, presented in conjunction with Australian Book Review, Miles Franklin Award-winner Alexis Wright will be in conversation with Jack Waterford, former Editor and Editor-at-large of The Canberra Times, onetime Freedom Rider, and one of Australia's finest journalist-commentators on indigenous affairs. They will be joined by poet and land-rights activist-lawyer, Campbell Thomson (shortlisted in the 2016 Peter Porter Prize) and a panel of writers and journalists.

GIDEON HAIGH IN DUNOLLY

Bendigo Writers Festival and Victoria Law Foundation present 'An Afternoon with Gideon Haigh' in the Court House at Dunolly Historic Precinct on Sunday 22 May, 2016. Join Haigh as he discusses his new book, Certain Admissions, which tells the story of the scandalous 1959 Melbourne murder trial of the dashing but erratic John Kerr.

Visions of the future are always forged within a present. The Great Depression led sober economists to wonder whether capitalism and economic growth had come to an end. Golden Era economists of the 1950s and 1960s, confident they knew better, promised that the formula for permanent growth had been discovered. In the 1970s a combination of high inflation and unemployment – known as 'stagflation' – brought a painful end to such hopes, and the pessimists once again argued that this was the new normal. Instead came the giddy exuberance of the 1980s and 1990s. This spawned books like Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which declared that Western democratic capitalism had won and would be the 'final form of human government'.

Today, gloom is back in fashion. Fukuyama's hopes for democracy have been toppled by the meteoric rise of China and the return of an authoritarian Russia, and for capitalism by the largest crisis since the Great Depression. These times call for a different kind of book – one like Satyajit Das's A Banquet of Consequences. Will pessimism prove prescient this time around?

In the early years after Federation, Australia's first prime minister, Edmund Barton, was accommodated on the top floor of the Victorian Parliament in Spring Street, in a converted garret. At the end of a parliamentary day, the convivial Barton would invite ministerial colleagues up to the flat where they would talk long into the night. Then, as one senator later recalled, before going home they would cook chops and make billy tea in the open fireplace 'in bush fashion'.

Could any of our current leaders boil a billy? Is an open fire in the PM's suite even allowed? Perhaps in this sense our system of government has lost something useful. Prime ministers are better accommodated these days, but they have lost the bucolic capacity to resolve policy over a barbecued chop and a cup of tea.

Jack Kerouac spent his elderly years sequestered in a crumbling Mexican hacienda that 'smelt like beer and farts'; his amphetamines replaced with antacids, his octogenarian skin 'the colour and texture of beef jerky'. Never mind that Kerouac actually drank himself to an early death in Florida, because somehow this alternate universe, the starting point of Lynnette Lounsbury's second novel, We Ate the Road Like Vultures, has the tragic atmosphere of reality. Just imagine how crushed Lulu – the teenaged Australian protagonist – feels when she tracks down her diminished idol: 'I only ever read about you being young and mad and wanting everything ... here you are all old and wanting nothing.' By page eight, poor Lulu has already witnessed Kerouac's one-time muse, Neal Cassady, coaxing urine droplets from his withered Johnson, her romance for the Beat generation similarly drying up.

While reading Julian Barnes's latest novel, I recalled the day forty years ago when Philippe Petit spent an hour on a cable slung between the tops of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. The image of that minuscule figure dancing back and forth between those massive buildings was a perfect metaphor for the life of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75), who was forever torn between responsibility to his art and what Joseph Stalin saw as his responsibility to the state.

Shostakovich's story is well known and some of the issues arising from it have been contentious among historians for decades. Barnes has not written a history but a biographical novel, with all of the freedom that implies. The Noise of Time, a short book, quickly brings Shostakovich to life and then shifts backwards and forwards in time, fleshing out his complex character and the burgeoning pressures heaped on him, along with the intermittent laurels (including several Lenin and Stalin Prizes). The writing moves swiftly, like a stone skipping across a pond, light touches leaving deep ripples. The novel is a pleasure to read, even as it guides the reader inexorably into the leaden world of the USSR and of Stalin in particular: a world of fear and fear's nasty sidekick, anxiety. As well as offering a vivid and tormented Shostakovich, there is a studied reminder of the determination of Soviet leaders to control every means of communication, especially music, partly because Stalin himself liked music, knew its power, and indeed appreciated many of Shostakovich's compositions for films.

'That was the summer ...' begins Josephine Rowe's début novel, A Loving, Faithful Animal, and with this classic overture she evokes that most common of literary tropes, the summer in adolescence that changes everything. But this is the summer, she continues, when a sperm whale washes up dead at Mount Martha, and all the best cartoons go off the air, replaced by broadcasts of the first Gulf War, and a neighbourhood girl digs her nails into flesh until the blood breaks through. So much for the summer of teenage love. Rowe makes it clear from the first paragraph of this clenched, resolute study of family damage that sentiment has no place here. She will reveal something harder and truer.

Already known for her disciplined short stories, poetry, and essays, Rowe has made some firm choices in this first novel. She has decided to focus tightly on one family, bestowing on each member – young Ruby ('Ru'), her rebellious older sister Lani, weary and embittered mother, Evelyn, messed-up Vietnam veteran father, Jack, and his brother 'Tetch' – their own extended chapter, narration, and perspective. The novel is set in what must be 1991, as the war begins, in a town in country Victoria, and as Jack reaches the limits of his post-traumatic endurance and takes off, the rest of the family steps forward, no longer subdued, and speaks in turn. The cast of characters might seem stereotypical, but Rowe gives each a distinct treatment, her assurance in the short fiction form making each account into compelling and singular emotional experiences which keep propelling the novel, even as each tale prickles more and more, every page revealing carefully stitched gashes and fresh hurts.

Emanuel Levy has had a prestigious career as a senior critic at Variety, professor of film and sociology, and jury member at fifty-four international film festivals. His exhaustive account of the careers of five gay male auteurs is peppered with quotes from his own interviews with them. This awfully titled book may frustrate some readers, including Levy's peers in screen studies, to whom it will seem slight. Film buffs fond of these directors are probably familiar with much of what's on offer here. For the 'general reader', the book is a breezy introduction to questions of 'gay' cinema; but as an introduction it fails to position these careers in the broader universe of queer representation, and it all but ignores non-white directors and women.

Do we really need another slim volume on the great Stephen Sondheim? Along with innumerable reviews, essays, and articles, we have Craig Zadan's account of Sondheim's early career, Sondheim & Co (1974), Meryle Secrest's Stephen Sondheim: A Life (1998), and the promise of a definitive biography from the critic David Benedict. If that were not enough, we also have Sondheim's conclusive reflections on his oeuvre, Finishing the Hat (2010) and Look I Made a Hat (2011). To add to the mix, organisations like the American Sondheim Review and the British Sondheim Society and websites like sondheimguide.com keep the aficionado up to date with all related Sondheim productions and materials. A 2015 recipient of the USA's highest honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Sondheim (now eighty-six) is the most lauded and written-about living theatre practitioner in America.

Ethan Mordden has titled his work On Sondheim: An Opinionated guide. Anyone who is familiar with the works of the prolific Mordden will be aware that the adjective in the title is redundant. Mordden has made a career out of being the most adamant person in the room. On subjects ranging from opera recordings to American theatre to gay history, Mordden is never shy about sharing his viewpoint. His major topic is the American musical theatre on which he has written a plethora of books and articles.

For more than a year and a half the armed conflict in Ukraine has touched many in Australia. On 17 July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in the war zone after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. There was a short burst of jubilation by pro-Russian rebels on social media, before it became clear that this was not a military machine but a civilian airliner. All 283 passengers and fifteen crew were killed, including thirty-eight residents of Australia.

In the aftermath of the MH17 tragedy, expert advice was often partisan. Academic commentators with expertise in Ukrainian history and politics are rare, not only in Australia. Moreover, in a situation where ongoing ethnic strife seems entangled with a 'new cold war' between Russia and 'the West', it is hard to retain analytical distance. Passions also run high because the painful memory of World War II is well alive in the region, expertly exploited by propagandists on all sides. Some analysts – such as Richard Sakwa (reviewed in ABR, November 2014) – have essentially taken Russia's side, blaming the European Union and NATO for the conflict. More mainstream commentary has pointed the finger at Vladimir Putin's imperialist ambitions. Others see it as an ethnic conflict between Russians and Ukrainians, intractable and primordial.

Growing up with a violent and controlling father who served in the Vietnam War may be a familiar story, but Ruth Clare's memoir takes us deeper, into the mind of the child and her day-to-day reality, where she is constantly primed for her father's next act of cruelty. Resembling a novel in its sensory detail and riveting narrative, Enemy recreates life in Rockhampton, where Clare grew up in the 1970s and 1980s.

In recent years, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder has made sense of the psychological damage to Vietnam veterans. But when Clare was a child, there was no such understanding. Her mother bore the brunt of the father's aggression, with devastating effects, but Clare learned to be more resilient. Her strength came at a price. She was in a constant state of hyper-vigilance, not unlike her father's readiness for enemy attack.

Michael McDonnell knew he had a bestseller on his hands. Historical biographies regularly top the New York Times bestseller list, and his research uncovered a larger than life figure named Charles de Langlade. Born in 1729 to an Indian mother and a French-Canadian father, Langlade grew up straddling two cultures, but that did not stop him from becoming a leader of the Anishinaabeg, a linguistically connected group that included tribes like the Odawa (Ottawa) and the Ojibwe.

Forrest Gump-like, Langlade seemingly appeared at every turning point in the French and Indian War. Indeed, his raid on a British trading post helped trigger the war. He led the Indian warriors at the 'massacre' of Fort William Henry and fought in the battle for Quebec, where he was rumoured to be the sharpshooter who killed the British General James Wolfe. After the defeat of his French allies, Langlade shifted allegiance to the British, fighting against the Americans in the Revolutionary War. Once again on the losing side, he recovered, establishing a trading post on the site of present day Green Bay, earning him the title, 'Father of Wisconsin'.

Papua New Guinea is so close to Australia, and yet so far away. We rarely hear about our near neighbour, unless there is a crisis reported in the media. Julius Chan's highly readable memoir should encourage more Australians to develop more curiosity about PNG, its complex history and multiple cultures.

Twice prime minister of Papua New Guinea (1980–82, 1994–97) and now governor of the province of New Ireland, Chan has been involved in politics since 1968. He has also pursued an energetic business career. As an author, he proves himself to be thoughtful and committed to both family and nation, with very definite views on leadership: 'If you work with me and I happen to be the captain, then you just have to do it the way I think is right and if you do not, the greatest thing about democracy is that you are free to go.'

The Australian way of life has been much influenced by the proximity of most of the population to the coast. While we often think of the sunny side of that existence in terms of the beach, certain shadier aspects of the Australian experience have been shaped at the docks.

'Australia's major ports have been the birthplace of the nation, home to the tight-knit communities that were pivotal in the birth of the union movement and the Australian Labor Party, as well as to "colourful identities" and empires of the criminal underworld,' writes Duncan McNab in Waterfront.

In Places Women Make, Jane Jose writes that she is ‘not proving a theory about the skills of men versus those of women’, but celebrating ‘the places in cities we know women have given us’.

Jose moves with sometimes disorienting rapidity from place to place, from female lord mayor to colonial matron to feisty 1970s female activist. We learn that the female perspective is ‘different’, that women are natural storytellers and homemakers, that ‘listening and talking is the way women love to work’. We are continually told that women are ‘instinctive’, ‘warm’, ‘intuitive’, ‘always concerned with the survival of the species’, and ‘love gardening and making gardens’. Some women, ‘despite these female characteristics’, are also determined, ambitious, persistent, and strong. Most women she includes are in positions of wealth and privilege, either by marriage or birth. There are few working-class heroines here.

William Yang is one of Australia's best-known and most prolific photographers. In William Yang: Stories of love and death, Helena Grehan and Edward Scheer interrogate the political and aesthetic themes running through this artist's output.

Set during the lead-up to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984, The Burning Elephant is coloured by political eruptions. Through the eyes of young Govinda, a story unfolds about discord within a marriage, sectarian violence, and the anticipation of a family preparing to emigrate to Australia.

From a rosy-cheeked preschooler to a glaring nationalist, this survey of recent children's pictures books features characters for readers of all ages. Emerging and established Australian picture-book makers demonstrate the range of talented storytelling available in this genre.

WHICH POETS HAVE MOST INFLUENCED YOU?

Emily Dickinson, for her economy; Shakespeare, for his geometric patterning; Elizabeth Bishop, for her precision; Manley Hopkins, for his extravagant tensions; Jorie Graham, for her sustained experimentation with form; Lewis Carroll, for his rhythms; Dr Seuss, for his irrepressible sense of whimsy, and the absurd.

ARE POEMS 'INSPIRED' OR MAINLY THE WORK OF CRAFT?

Life is inspiring. Poetry is (joyful) work.

On 7 September 1922, seventeen-year-old Richard Lane left England on a six-week voyage to Australia, not to set foot in his home country again for three and a half years. For much of the intervening time he would work as a government-funded 'Barwell Boy', or indentured farm labourer, on small rural holdings outside Adelaide and in western New South Wales.

Richard Lane, despite his ultimate profession, was not an inspired writer. His earnest diary entries, intended for the edification of his relatives, read at first like letters home from boarding school. From the SS Bendigo, with its airless, porthole-less cabins in a converted cargo hold, each housing eight boys and redolent with human smells, he begins by doggedly listing, in short declarative sentences, meals that vary from substantial to putrid, his chronic seasickness, and the peculiarities of his travel companions, which range from habitual drunkenness to insanity requiring incarceration in irons. Young Richard, gently raised in an affectionate, upright family in Bristol, is shocked, on the second day out, to discover 'one of the worst evils of this world': two of his young compatriots are playing cards for money. We quickly surmise that this voyage will constitute a sharp learning curve. Days out, the passengers learn of a radio message from a sinking German ship; another vessel is closer, and they need not detour to join the rescue.