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Absolutely Revolting

October 2005, no. 275

Welcome to the October 2005 issue of Australian Book Review!
James Ley reviews Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
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Slow Man begins with an accident. Paul Rayment is cycling along an Adelaide street when he is struck by a car. When he emerges from a daze of doctors and painkillers, he discovers his life has been transformed by this random event. His crushed leg is amputated above the knee. From now on, he will ...
Book 1 Title: Slow Man
Book Author: J.M. Coetzee
Book 1 Biblio: Knopf, $45 hb, 266 pp, 1741660688
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Slow Man begins with an accident. Paul Rayment is cycling along an Adelaide street when he is struck by a car. When he emerges from a daze of doctors and painkillers, he discovers his life has been transformed by this random event. His crushed leg is amputated above the knee. From now on, he will require the attention of a full-time nurse to help with life’s most basic chores; his limited mobility will mean he is rarely able to venture forth from his small flat.

The first third of Slow Man takes the reader through the aftermath of the accident. It is a disciplined and quite masterful piece of psychological realism. Coetzee’s prose is, as always, a model of clarity and understatement; its rhythms are carefully measured but insistent. Paul struggles to be reconciled to his new, unwished-for existence. His bitterness and anger gradually give way to loneliness, which in turn begins to manifest itself in the form of an increasing infatuation with his carer, a sensible and efficient Croatian woman named Marijana.

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Lorien Kaye reviews The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
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The Book Thief marks a departure for Markus Zusak. It is his first novel for adults, has broader concerns than his earlier work, and makes clearer his ambitions to be considered a serious writer. His first three novels, for young adults, were primarily focused on the masculinity of the boys in a working-class Sydney family ...
Book 1 Title: The Book Thief
Book Author: Markus Zusak
Book 1 Biblio: Picador, $35 pb, 588 pp, 033036426X
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The Book Thief marks a departure for Markus Zusak. It is his first novel for adults, has broader concerns than his earlier work, and makes clearer his ambitions to be considered a serious writer. His first three novels, for young adults, were primarily focused on the masculinity of the boys in a working-class Sydney family. His next book, The Messenger (2002), foreshadowed the development we see in The Book Thief. Presented for young adults, The Messenger could easily have been marketed as a ‘crossover’ novel. It took Zusak into new and strange territory with a story about a young man mysteriously chosen and directed to intervene in other people’s lives.

Read more: Lorien Kaye reviews 'The Book Thief' by Markus Zusak

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Alison Ravenscroft reviews Kayang and Me by Kim Scott and Hazel Brown
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Contents Category: History
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Readers of Kayang and Me should not be lulled by the beauty of its prose or by its seemingly easy location within the now-familiar genre of indigenous life story. This book dislodges its white readers from positions of quietude or certainty, and takes us into a world marked by irredeemable loss – our own as well as Noongars’. Among other things, Kayang and Me points to the crucial things that settler-colonisers have lost or forsaken in the mistaken pursuit of the bounties of colonisation, and it calls for nothing less than a radical remaking of the Australian nation-state. Significantly, it installs writing and reading as practices through which the past, present and future might come to be differently known and newly imagined. The white reader is shown to be implicated in the story she holds in her hands, in its vision of another future as well as in its tragic present and past.
Book 1 Title: Kayang and Me
Book Author: Kim Scott and Hazel Brown
Book 1 Biblio: FACP, $29.95 pb, 270 pp
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Readers of Kayang and Me should not be lulled by the beauty of its prose or by its seemingly easy location within the now-familiar genre of indigenous life story. This book dislodges its white readers from positions of quietude or certainty, and takes us into a world marked by irredeemable loss – our own as well as Noongars’. Among other things, Kayang and Me points to the crucial things that settler-colonisers have lost or forsaken in the mistaken pursuit of the bounties of colonisation, and it calls for nothing less than a radical remaking of the Australian nation-state. Significantly, it installs writing and reading as practices through which the past, present and future might come to be differently known and newly imagined. The white reader is shown to be implicated in the story she holds in her hands, in its vision of another future as well as in its tragic present and past.

Read more: Alison Ravenscroft reviews 'Kayang and Me' by Kim Scott and Hazel Brown

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Alan Atkinson reviews Botany Bay: Where histories meet by Maria Nugent
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Contents Category: Australian History
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Tasmania was named Tasmania, instead of Van Diemen’s Land, because of a need to push the island’s history back as far as possible beyond 1803. The Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman was usefully iconic partly because he had nothing to do with convicts. But yearning for a distant past, a past cut off from the present, was common among nineteenth-century Europeans. As John Stuart Mill remarked, ‘comparing one’s own age with former ages’ was suddenly an everyday habit. The fact that several generations divided Tasman’s visit from British settlement was almost an advantage.
Book 1 Title: Botany Bay
Book 1 Subtitle: Where histories meet
Book Author: Maria Nugent
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $39.95 pb, 256 pp
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Tasmania was named Tasmania, instead of Van Diemen’s Land, because of a need to push the island’s history back as far as possible beyond 1803. The Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman was usefully iconic partly because he had nothing to do with convicts. But yearning for a distant past, a past cut off from the present, was common among nineteenth-century Europeans. As John Stuart Mill remarked, ‘comparing one’s own age with former ages’ was suddenly an everyday habit. The fact that several generations divided Tasman’s visit from British settlement was almost an advantage.

Much the same can be said about Captain Cook and Australia’s eastern mainland. The period between Cook’s arrival and the First Fleet was only eighteen years. But, as with Tasman and Tasmania, that gap provided Australian history with a remarkably broad perspective, another set of stories, another pattern of daily life. Just as some of the great nineteenth-century British novelists – George Eliot, Thomas Hardy – liked to write about the time before railways, Cook gave to Australia an intriguingly unfamiliar dimension.

Read more: Alan Atkinson reviews 'Botany Bay: Where histories meet' by Maria Nugent

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Sylvia Lawson reviews Do Not Disturb: Is the media failing Australia? edited by Robert Manne
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Contents Category: Non-fiction
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Article Title: Not so random
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Rupert Murdoch is the Napoleon of our times. He has gone on conquering largely because certain governments – Bob Hawke’s among them, in early 1987 – have persistently acquiesced, changing or moderating regulations as his battle plans required. It was once possible to view him as bound, in George Munster’s phrases, ‘on a random walk … [on which] despite the ever greater accumulation of means in his hands, he contributed more and more to the spreading confusion about ends’. That was written more than twenty years ago; Munster’s great book, A Paper Prince (1985), remains valid as a rigorous and witty account of Murdoch’s rise, and as an exemplary study of the relations of media, money and politics. But that walk is not so random now.
Book 1 Title: Do Not Disturb
Book 1 Subtitle: Is the media failing Australia?
Book Author: Robert Manne
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $29.95 pb, 232 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Rupert Murdoch is the Napoleon of our times. He has gone on conquering largely because certain governments – Bob Hawke’s among them, in early 1987 – have persistently acquiesced, changing or moderating regulations as his battle plans required. It was once possible to view him as bound, in George Munster’s phrases, ‘on a random walk … [on which] despite the ever greater accumulation of means in his hands, he contributed more and more to the spreading confusion about ends’. That was written more than twenty years ago; Munster’s great book, A Paper Prince (1985), remains valid as a rigorous and witty account of Murdoch’s rise, and as an exemplary study of the relations of media, money and politics. But that walk is not so random now.

In Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia?, David McKnight and Robert Manne between them show how Murdoch has proceeded, not only to near-global dominance of the press, but to strongly ideological and retrogressive ways of using it. Giving special attention to the commentaries of Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun and Greg Sheridan in The Australian, Manne shows how vigorously the Murdoch press in this country has promoted the Iraq war. In a meticulous analysis, McKnight shows the anti-democratic nature of Murdoch’s increasing power; once the cross-media regulations are lifted, his dominance will be further strengthened by ‘television entertainment of an aggressively conservative, populist and patriotic kind’.

Read more: Sylvia Lawson reviews 'Do Not Disturb: Is the media failing Australia?' edited by Robert Manne

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Allan Patience reviews Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji’s 2000 coup by Michael Field, Tupeni Baba and Unaisi Nabobo-Baba
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Contents Category: Politics
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Article Title: A new heart of darkness
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The cliché of the South Pacific as a tropical paradise is contradicted by the hellishness of the Melanesian/Polynesian political scheming that characterises most of the region. It is a form of scheming that would make Byzantine politics appear like the polite equivalent of an election for office in the Country Women’s Association. From Port Moresby to Suva, political élites hide behind a fraying façade of democratic governance while slyly engaging in corruption, crime, venality and spite in their dealings with each other and with the citizens they pretend to govern. Many are adept at manipulating the language of anti-colonialism to colonise their own peoples. The ramshackle states they have constructed cannibalise public resources, including resources donated by overseas governments and aid agencies. The South Pacific is becoming a zone of indefensible human suffering. This can be seen in the collapsed ‘state’ of Nauru, the recent violent civil conflicts in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville, and the looming governance crisis in Papua New Guinea. Fiji illustrates the South Pacific’s ‘hell in paradise’ theme vividly with its two coups in 1987 (led by Sitiveni Rabuka) and the even worse misfortunes of the Chaudhry Government in May 2000 at the hands of the notorious George Speight.
Book 1 Title: Speight of Violence
Book 1 Subtitle: Inside Fiji’s 2000 coup
Book Author: Michael Field, Tupeni Baba and Unaisi Nabobo-Baba
Book 1 Biblio: Pandanus, $34.95 pb, 288 pp
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The cliché of the South Pacific as a tropical paradise is contradicted by the hellishness of the Melanesian/Polynesian political scheming that characterises most of the region. It is a form of scheming that would make Byzantine politics appear like the polite equivalent of an election for office in the Country Women’s Association. From Port Moresby to Suva, political élites hide behind a fraying façade of democratic governance while slyly engaging in corruption, crime, venality and spite in their dealings with each other and with the citizens they pretend to govern. Many are adept at manipulating the language of anti-colonialism to colonise their own peoples. The ramshackle states they have constructed cannibalise public resources, including resources donated by overseas governments and aid agencies. The South Pacific is becoming a zone of indefensible human suffering. This can be seen in the collapsed ‘state’ of Nauru, the recent violent civil conflicts in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville, and the looming governance crisis in Papua New Guinea. Fiji illustrates the South Pacific’s ‘hell in paradise’ theme vividly with its two coups in 1987 (led by Sitiveni Rabuka) and the even worse misfortunes of the Chaudhry Government in May 2000 at the hands of the notorious George Speight.

Read more: Allan Patience reviews 'Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji’s 2000 coup' by Michael Field, Tupeni...

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Ann McGrath reviews Aboriginal Victorians: A history since 1800 by Richard Broome
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The sepia-toned photograph on the front cover of historian Richard Broome’s new book presents the reader with two young indigenous Australian boys, taken around 1900 at Ramahyuck, an ‘Aboriginal mission’. Bright-eyed, alert and pleased with themselves in white shirts, woollen vests, jackets and trousers, they appear to be wearing possum or kangaroo skin cloaks. A closer look, however, reveals that the furs draped thickly around their shoulders are not iconic cloaks, but their successful catch of tasty rabbits.
Book 1 Title: Aboriginal Victorians
Book 1 Subtitle: A history since 1800
Book Author: Richard Broome
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $39.95 pb, 467 pp
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The sepia-toned photograph on the front cover of historian Richard Broome’s new book presents the reader with two young indigenous Australian boys, taken around 1900 at Ramahyuck, an ‘Aboriginal mission’. Bright-eyed, alert and pleased with themselves in white shirts, woollen vests, jackets and trousers, they appear to be wearing possum or kangaroo skin cloaks. A closer look, however, reveals that the furs draped thickly around their shoulders are not iconic cloaks, but their successful catch of tasty rabbits.

Broome, an experienced researcher and teacher, has provided a detailed study of the experience of ‘Aboriginal Victorians’. While Aboriginal history writers of recent decades have adopted either the grand scale of nation or the intimate scale of family and community, Broome has instead focused on the regions/colony/state of ‘Victoria’. Traversing an encyclopedic set of facts and detail of chronological and regional variety, this book is written in the empirical, synthetic style of the ‘general history’. Broome’s bird’s-eye view of time passing inevitably fosters a master narrative. Yet by regularly citing other historians, Broome circumvents the all-knowing effect of the general history’s authorial voice. Occasionally, he will also disagree with them. To balance the accounts, he presents indigenous historical interpretations, though these narrators are less likely to be named. In the telling of this vast Victorian history, however, Broome does name, and provide brief stories about, many indigenous individuals and their families. In aiming to reclaim their rightful place in the state’s history, he has not heeded the oft-heard cries for confidentiality.

Read more: Ann McGrath reviews 'Aboriginal Victorians: A history since 1800' by Richard Broome

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Anne Pender reviews Dearest Munx: The Letters of Christina Stead and William J. Blake by Margaret Harris
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This edition of Christina Stead’s letters to her lifelong partner, William J. Blake, offers an intriguing window into a passionate literary marriage. It also provides a welcome addition to Stead studies. Readers do not often have access to the personal letters of a great writer, let alone access to such a rich correspondence between a writer and his or her partner. As Stead’s partner was also a writer, this correspondence is peculiarly and delightfully literary.
Book 1 Title: Dearest Munx
Book 1 Subtitle: The Letters of Christina Stead and William J. Blake
Book Author: Margaret Harris
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah Press, $54.95 hb, 574 pp
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This edition of Christina Stead’s letters to her lifelong partner, William J. Blake, offers an intriguing window into a passionate literary marriage. It also provides a welcome addition to Stead studies. Readers do not often have access to the personal letters of a great writer, let alone access to such a rich correspondence between a writer and his or her partner. As Stead’s partner was also a writer, this correspondence is peculiarly and delightfully literary.

Margaret Harris states in the introduction to Dearest Munx that the letters are a true correspondence, as opposed to being a mere collection of letters. This distinction is no exaggeration. The letters answer to one another fully and fittingly, revealing an astonishing mutuality of concerns. Harris also introduces the letters by explaining how they document the relationship in a particular way, being both extensive and intensive. Moreover, the letters are unique in providing ‘a firsthand account’ of the way the two writers represented their relationship and its dynamic as it was lived, rather than as it was recollected or dramatised in story. In this correspondence, we have an evolving record of the daily lives of two dedicated writers, covering both the minutiae of everyday existence and portraying a world of intellectuals over an extraordinarily volatile period of the twentieth century, from 1929 to 1968.

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Fred Ludowyk reviews 3 books about language
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Contents Category: Language
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Article Title: Wash your mouth out!
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Books on language have been immensely popular in recent years. Simon Winchester’s The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1999) was a study of the relationship between James Murray, the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the insane citation collector Dr Minor. Winchester followed this with The Meaning of Everything (2003), a history of the Oxford English Dictionary project. In Australia, the reception of Don Watson’s Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (2003) and of Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words (2004) demonstrated the general reading public’s interest in language matters.
Book 1 Title: A Word On Words
Book Author: Pam Peters
Book 1 Biblio: CAE Press, $19.80 pb, 90 pp
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Book 2 Title: Away With Words
Book 2 Subtitle: A frolic through the landscape of language
Book 2 Author: Ruth Wajnryb
Book 2 Biblio: ABC Books, $27.95 pb, 328 pp
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Book 3 Title: Language Most Foul
Book 3 Author: Ruth Wajnryb
Book 3 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $29.95 hb, 230 pp
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Books on language have been immensely popular in recent years. Simon Winchester’s The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1999) was a study of the relationship between James Murray, the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the insane citation collector Dr Minor. Winchester followed this with The Meaning of Everything (2003), a history of the Oxford English Dictionary project. In Australia, the reception of Don Watson’s Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (2003) and of Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words (2004) demonstrated the general reading public’s interest in language matters.

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David Gilbey reviews The Paradoxes of Water: Selected and new poems 1970–2005 by Rod Moran
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Article Title: Cruel psalm
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One of the things Rod Moran is good at is an oxymoronic tenacity – a kind of deliberate insouciance, a restrained violence – due to his embrace of metaphor. His best poems articulate disturbing comparisons and create surreal hybrids. You can see this in some of the early poems from High Rise Sniper (1970–80) selected for this new collection, such as ‘Chemical Worker’: ‘this pure acid, like some cruel psalm, / gives us daily bread ... [the living] / have a place in the maggot’s equation.’ Or, from ‘Cross Country’: ‘half a galah flock/ is spattered in its own pink / feathers and gore in mad array, / swimming down the highway / like grotesque fish / in the heat’s bright lagoon.’ The poems have an intensity that demands considerable attention and makes every line count.
Book 1 Title: The Paradoxes of Water
Book 1 Subtitle: Selected and new poems 1970–2005
Book Author: Rod Moran
Book 1 Biblio: Salt, $29.95 pb, 125 pp
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One of the things Rod Moran is good at is an oxymoronic tenacity – a kind of deliberate insouciance, a restrained violence – due to his embrace of metaphor. His best poems articulate disturbing comparisons and create surreal hybrids. You can see this in some of the early poems from High Rise Sniper (1970–80) selected for this new collection, such as ‘Chemical Worker’: ‘this pure acid, like some cruel psalm, / gives us daily bread ... [the living] / have a place in the maggot’s equation.’ Or, from ‘Cross Country’: ‘half a galah flock/ is spattered in its own pink / feathers and gore in mad array, / swimming down the highway / like grotesque fish / in the heat’s bright lagoon.’ The poems have an intensity that demands considerable attention and makes every line count.

Read more: David Gilbey reviews 'The Paradoxes of Water: Selected and new poems 1970–2005' by Rod Moran

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Gillian Dooley reviews The Journal of Fletcher Christian: Together with the history of Henry Corkhill by Peter Corris
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Of all places on earth, Pitcairn Island must surely have the strangest history. Everyone knows about the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789 (not a bad year for uprisings) and about the settlement founded by the mutineers and their Tahitian consorts on this remote Pacific island. Now Peter Corris has created a fiction based on a distant family connection between Fletcher Christian and Corris himself, through his Manx ancestry.
Book 1 Title: The Journal of Fletcher Christian
Book 1 Subtitle: Together with the history of Henry Corkhill
Book Author: Peter Corris
Book 1 Biblio: Vintage, $32.95 pb, 283 pp
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Of all places on earth, Pitcairn Island must surely have the strangest history. Everyone knows about the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789 (not a bad year for uprisings) and about the settlement founded by the mutineers and their Tahitian consorts on this remote Pacific island. Now Peter Corris has created a fiction based on a distant family connection between Fletcher Christian and Corris himself, through his Manx ancestry.

The cleverest part of this book may well be the introduction. Seamlessly, Corris moves between a plausible narrative about his childhood interest in the mutiny and his daughter’s current genealogical research, and a tall tale of 200-year-old manuscripts bequeathed to him by a mysterious elderly relative called Corkhill. He writes of his excitement at discovering that one of these manuscripts was Christian’s journal: ‘“Fletcher Christian”. My throat went dry. That name, those two words – both with so many resonances and echoes that had played in my imagination for so long.’ He describes his dealings with British professors, who helped him to authenticate the documents and to translate Christian’s journal, written partly in Manx; and with ‘Associate Professor Epelli Latekefu of the University of the South Pacific’, who translated the bits written in Tahitian. There’s not a trace of parody in his discussion of ‘Dr Macconochie’s’ editorial procedures: ‘He has provided headings at appropriate points which are lacking in the original and followed conventions … not observed by Christian.’

Read more: Gillian Dooley reviews 'The Journal of Fletcher Christian: Together with the history of Henry...

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Ian Barker reviews Dowling’s Select Cases, 1828 To 1844 edited by T.D. Castle and Bruce Kercher
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The prodigious effort that went into the compilation of Dowling’s Select Cases was entirely consistent with his own approach to judicial office, including producing the copious writings that found their way into the book. As Dr Bennett put it in his biography of James Dowling (2001), industry and perseverance were the hallmarks of Dowling’s accomplishments. To produce the chronicle now published, the editors and their helpers followed Dowling’s notes through his nine volumes of cases, cross-referencing many to his 268 judicial notebooks. The cases were recorded by Dowling by hand and required considerable typing. They are arranged chronologically and according to subject matter. The book will not be a threat to Harry Potter but will endure as of considerable interest to lawyers and historians.
Book 1 Title: Dowling’s Select Cases, 1828 To 1844
Book Author: T.D. Castle and Bruce Kercher
Book 1 Biblio: Frances Forbes Society for Australian Legal History, $100 hb, 1035 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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The prodigious effort that went into the compilation of Dowling’s Select Cases was entirely consistent with his own approach to judicial office, including producing the copious writings that found their way into the book. As Dr Bennett put it in his biography of James Dowling (2001), industry and perseverance were the hallmarks of Dowling’s accomplishments. To produce the chronicle now published, the editors and their helpers followed Dowling’s notes through his nine volumes of cases, cross-referencing many to his 268 judicial notebooks. The cases were recorded by Dowling by hand and required considerable typing. They are arranged chronologically and according to subject matter. The book will not be a threat to Harry Potter but will endure as of considerable interest to lawyers and historians.

Read more: Ian Barker reviews 'Dowling’s Select Cases, 1828 To 1844' edited by T.D. Castle and Bruce Kercher

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Ian Britain reviews The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume 3
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With the greatest novels, you can plunge into them anywhere and still savour their greatness; it is recognisable on every page. You won’t need to have read the two earlier volumes of these edited diaries to recognise that same quality throughout the third – and I mean novelistic greatness, of which all the great diaries (from Samuel Pepys’s to James Lees-Milne’s) partake in important ways.
Book 1 Title: The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume 3
Book Author: Paul Hetherington
Book 1 Biblio: NLA, $59.95 hb, 712 pp
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With the greatest novels, you can plunge into them anywhere and still savour their greatness; it is recognisable on every page. You won’t need to have read the two earlier volumes of these edited diaries to recognise that same quality throughout the third – and I mean novelistic greatness, of which all the great diaries (from Samuel Pepys’s to James Lees-Milne’s) partake in important ways.

Read more: Ian Britain reviews 'The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume 3'

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Jonathan Pearlman reviews Righteous Violence: The Ethics and Politics of Military Intervention edited by Tony Coady and Michael O’Keefe and A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War In Iraq edited by Thomas Cushman
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Article Title: Yet this is what war is
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The fears and tensions in the aftermath of September 11 created an unusual political climate in the US, in which it became possible for the government to lead an invasion without having to explain precisely why. Nobody seemed to quite know who or what was guiding the administration as it led the charge for war: was it utopian neo-conservatives trying to reshape the world in America’s image? Was it isolationist hawks trying to wipe out an old foreign foe? Was it oil-hungry Texans? Was it paranoid security advisers, regretful of their failures and with a new bent for pre-emption, no matter how distant the threat?
Book 1 Title: Righteous Violence
Book 1 Subtitle: The Ethics and Politics of Military Intervention
Book Author: Tony Coady and Michael O'Keefe
Book 1 Biblio: MUP, $34.95 pb, 238 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Book 2 Title: A Matter of Principle
Book 2 Subtitle: Humanitarian Arguments for War In Iraq
Book 2 Author: Thomas Cushman
Book 2 Biblio: University of California Press, $44.95 pb, 320 pp
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The fears and tensions in the aftermath of September 11 created an unusual political climate in the US, in which it became possible for the government to lead an invasion without having to explain precisely why. Nobody seemed to quite know who or what was guiding the administration as it led the charge for war: was it utopian neo-conservatives trying to reshape the world in America’s image? Was it isolationist hawks trying to wipe out an old foreign foe? Was it oil-hungry Texans? Was it paranoid security advisers, regretful of their failures and with a new bent for pre-emption, no matter how distant the threat?

Years later, the war is far from over and the reasons for it are still not quite clear. Everyone seems to agree that the situation in Iraq is, at the least, a mess, but not everyone will agree that it had to be thus or that it will not be fixed, and there is still ample room on all sides for certainty and strong convictions. So, for those who want to argue, there are facts aplenty to be marshalled, stressed and convoluted. There has been good (the quick war, the removal of Saddam Hussein, the election turnout); and there has been bad (the insurgency, the Sunni boycott, Abu Ghraib, the lack of weapons of mass destruction). Pick up the Wall Street Journal and you will find a tendency to the good; pick up The Independent and you will find a tendency to the bad. But the predispositions have already been predisposed; the minds have largely been made up. Each person has his or her filter to let the facts drip through.

Read more: Jonathan Pearlman reviews 'Righteous Violence: The Ethics and Politics of Military Intervention'...

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Martin Duwell reviews The Past Completes Me: Selected poems 1973–2003 by Alan Gould
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Alan Gould’s writing career began in the early 1970s when he was one of the ‘Canberra Poets’. This substantial selection covers thirty years and clearly shows both the achievements and the limitations of his work: I think the former outweigh the latter. One of the strengths of his poetry is a consistent vision; thirty years gives the opportunity for that to be explored in all its ramifications. The centre of this vision is history or, in its unintellectualised form, the past. Almost all the poems relate to this in one way or another. Even the later poems of humour or love or the waiting for a child’s birth are framed by the overriding meditation on the past, so that, though they are expressions of an intimate personal life, it is one conducted on the surface of the immense, slowly changing patterns of history.
Book 1 Title: The Past Completes Me
Book 1 Subtitle: Selected poems 1973–2003
Book Author: Alan Gould
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $22.95 pb, 285 pp
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Alan Gould’s writing career began in the early 1970s when he was one of the ‘Canberra Poets’. This substantial selection covers thirty years and clearly shows both the achievements and the limitations of his work: I think the former outweigh the latter. One of the strengths of his poetry is a consistent vision; thirty years gives the opportunity for that to be explored in all its ramifications. The centre of this vision is history or, in its unintellectualised form, the past. Almost all the poems relate to this in one way or another. Even the later poems of humour or love or the waiting for a child’s birth are framed by the overriding meditation on the past, so that, though they are expressions of an intimate personal life, it is one conducted on the surface of the immense, slowly changing patterns of history.

At least history is never merely an opportunity for researched poetic vignettes. An early poem, ‘Mount Kosciusko Essay’, immediately sees that one of the essential problems is the issue of perspectives and scales. The poet, whose perspective enables him to see that a mountain hut is grimier than it was a year ago and that rats have been at work, also thinks of how the earth’s mantle adjusts ‘minutely, immensely’.

Read more: Martin Duwell reviews 'The Past Completes Me: Selected poems 1973–2003 ' by Alan Gould

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Michelle Griffin reviews Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs by Gerald Murnane and Literati by James Phelan
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I could always rely on Gerald Murnane for a beautiful quote. Nine years ago, when I was researching a piece on writers and technology, he told me he wrote all his books on a manual typewriter with the index finger of his right hand: ‘My favourite word to type, as a one-finger typist, is “afterwards”,’ Murnane told me over the phone. ‘It’s a beautiful whirly movement with one finger.’ Afterwards, as I transcribed his perfectly weighted sentences, it was clear that Murnane had probably already written the words he spoke to me. ‘I tend to think of words as written things rather than spoken things,’ Murnane writes in ‘The Breathing Author’, one of the more recent pieces in Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, his first book in a decade. ‘While I speak, I often visualise my words as being written somewhere at the same time.’
Book 1 Title: Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs
Book 1 Subtitle: Essays
Book Author: Gerald Murnane
Book 1 Biblio: Giramondo, $24.95 pb, 225 pp
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Book 2 Title: Literati
Book 2 Subtitle: Australian contemporary literary figures discuss fear, frustration and fame
Book 2 Author: James Phelan
Book 2 Biblio: Wiley, $29.95 pb, 291 pp
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I could always rely on Gerald Murnane for a beautiful quote. Nine years ago, when I was researching a piece on writers and technology, he told me he wrote all his books on a manual typewriter with the index finger of his right hand: ‘My favourite word to type, as a one-finger typist, is “afterwards”,’ Murnane told me over the phone. ‘It’s a beautiful whirly movement with one finger.’ Afterwards, as I transcribed his perfectly weighted sentences, it was clear that Murnane had probably already written the words he spoke to me. ‘I tend to think of words as written things rather than spoken things,’ Murnane writes in ‘The Breathing Author’, one of the more recent pieces in Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, his first book in a decade. ‘While I speak, I often visualise my words as being written somewhere at the same time.’

Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs showcases Murnane at his freshest and most direct: as an essayist. As he says in his three-paragraph introduction, ‘I should never have tried to write fiction or non-fiction or even anything in-between. I should have left it to discerning editors to publish all my pieces of writing as essays.’

Read more: Michelle Griffin reviews 'Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs' by Gerald Murnane and 'Literati' by James...

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Mary Eagle reviews Judy Cassab: A portrait by Brenda Niall
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In Brenda Niall’s biography of Judy Cassab, the art forms of the subject and the author – life story and portraiture – are nested one in the other. As the story builds, one comes to accept that certain unsparing reflections on the subject’s personality and behaviour have as their authority Judy Cassab herself. She emerges as a heroine in a decidedly modern mode.
Book 1 Title: Judy Cassab
Book 1 Subtitle: A portrait
Book Author: Brenda Niall
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $49.95 hb, 308 pp
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In Brenda Niall’s biography of Judy Cassab, the art forms of the subject and the author – life story and portraiture – are nested one in the other. As the story builds, one comes to accept that certain unsparing reflections on the subject’s personality and behaviour have as their authority Judy Cassab herself. She emerges as a heroine in a decidedly modern mode.

Reproduced in this biography (though not written about) is a late portrait of Cassab’s husband Jancsi Kämpfner. He sits smiling with his eyes obstinately half-closed, as if daring Jucókám to go beyond the visible to his inner self. Her response was to paint what she saw, thereby recording the challenge Jancsi mischievously posed, yet following her usual practice, which was to reflect the persona of a sitter as it was presented to her. In portrait after portrait by Cassab, we get the sitter as proffered, in public or private mode, and sensitively rendered by the artist. Cassab’s skill at capturing a likeness and correctly assessing a situation took her to the forefront of the art world in London and Australia, where she attracted many commissions to paint royalty and other public figures. Her commissioned portraits, like the intimate ones, were designed to give satisfaction to the sitter without undue flattery and to display an insight into personality. She did not waver from a commitment to civility, though it was constraining to a twentieth-century Western artist. Critics evidently regarded social good sense as detrimental to creativity. In Australia, Cassab was accused of ‘compromise’. She came to separate her role as portraitist from her artist’s ambition to push the medium of painting towards abstraction and the expression of an inner self.

Read more: Mary Eagle reviews 'Judy Cassab: A portrait' by Brenda Niall

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Morag Fraser reviews Civil Passions: Selected Writings by Martin Krygier
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Martin Krygier’s deft, discursive prose could persuade anyone except an ironclad ideologue that it is exhilarating as well as healthy to examine one’s prejudices and complacencies. Krygier is also a writer possessed of a frank openness that gives credence to the idea that you can judge a book by its cover. I suspect he’d also enjoy the piquancy of maxim busting. The cover of Civil Passions is a particularly beautiful one: a detail of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s 1338–40 fresco, the Allegory of Good Government. Its Giottoesque precision and its colour – those luminous Sienese pinks and reds – would be reason enough to use it. But there is a deeper fitness to the choice, and it has to do with what Krygier describes as his destined mode of being: one of hybridity.
Book 1 Title: Civil Passions
Book 1 Subtitle: Selected Writings
Book Author: Martin Krygier
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $34.95 pb, 303 pp
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Martin Krygier’s deft, discursive prose could persuade anyone except an ironclad ideologue that it is exhilarating as well as healthy to examine one’s prejudices and complacencies. Krygier is also a writer possessed of a frank openness that gives credence to the idea that you can judge a book by its cover. I suspect he’d also enjoy the piquancy of maxim busting. The cover of Civil Passions is a particularly beautiful one: a detail of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s 1338–40 fresco, the Allegory of Good Government. Its Giottoesque precision and its colour – those luminous Sienese pinks and reds – would be reason enough to use it. But there is a deeper fitness to the choice, and it has to do with what Krygier describes as his destined mode of being: one of hybridity.

Read more: Morag Fraser reviews 'Civil Passions: Selected Writings' by Martin Krygier

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Kate Baillieu reviews The Life and Death of Harold Holt by Tom Frame
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This is not an airport read; anyone wanting colourful stories about Harold Holt’s private life will have to dig deep. Dr Tom Frame, Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force, has written the first substantial biography of Australia’s seventeenth prime minister, who succeeded Robert Menzies in early 1966 and drowned on 17 December 1967. The Life and Death of Harold Holt, about ten years in the making, is a meticulously researched and scholarly work, and should become an essential reference for anyone interested in Australian politics and history. It wasn’t a commissioned work, but Frame deals with his subject sympathetically.
Book 1 Title: The Life and Death of Harold Holt
Book Author: Tom Frame
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $35 pb, 392 pp
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This is not an airport read; anyone wanting colourful stories about Harold Holt’s private life will have to dig deep. Dr Tom Frame, Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force, has written the first substantial biography of Australia’s seventeenth prime minister, who succeeded Robert Menzies in early 1966 and drowned on 17 December 1967. The Life and Death of Harold Holt, about ten years in the making, is a meticulously researched and scholarly work, and should become an essential reference for anyone interested in Australian politics and history. It wasn’t a commissioned work, but Frame deals with his subject sympathetically.

Read more: Kate Baillieu reviews 'The Life and Death of Harold Holt' by Tom Frame

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There is no God, I was made in this man’s image:

those slate-dark eyes of his are mine,

the dented bridge of our his-my nose.

I laugh with his rasping cackle in me.

I walk with his stooping, trudging gait,

swearing his ‘Jesus bloody Christ’

in a sudden fist-curl of temper.

My right ear points like a flesh-antenna as his does,

and being my father I bear his name.

Haphazardries of kin passed on from birth

that to see him wizened on his cancer bed,

his insides turned to water,
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Read more: 'Ash Saturday' a poem by Craig Sherborne

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David McCooey reviews The Best Australian Poetry 2005 edited by Peter Porter
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Comedy isn’t the only art that requires good timing. Poetry also requires it. Indeed, poetry might be partly defined as the art of giving things away at the right moment. Illustrating this we have The Best Australian Poetry 2005. In this elegant anthology, we find Peter Goldsworthy’s inspired description of our planet: ‘Our earthen dish is seven parts water / one part china, and a tiny bit japanned.’ We also find Brett Dionysius on the 175-year-old tortoise Harriet, which, having outlived Charles Darwin, thinks: ‘Now I’m with Steve Irwin at Australia Zoo. / I Harriet, time-lord tortoise: outlive him too.’ We find Jennifer Harrison’s arresting description of ‘grammar’s lovely utterly cold snow’. We find Keith Harrison’s ‘kind of stretched villanelle’ (as he describes it), which begins: ‘The summer night is dangerous and deep.’ We find the unsettling climax of Aileen Kelly’s ‘His Visitors’, in which ‘fetid ivies’ ‘reach up and suck out the light’. We find Anthony Lawrence’s poem about the Wandering Albatross, with its reference to ‘the compass glass of its eye’. And we find the terrible, uncomic climax of Judith Beveridge’s powerful poem ‘The Shark’.
Book 1 Title: The Best Australian Poetry 2005
Book Author: Peter Porter
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $22.95 pb, 190 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Comedy isn’t the only art that requires good timing. Poetry also requires it. Indeed, poetry might be partly defined as the art of giving things away at the right moment. Illustrating this we have The Best Australian Poetry 2005. In this elegant anthology, we find Peter Goldsworthy’s inspired description of our planet: ‘Our earthen dish is seven parts water / one part china, and a tiny bit japanned.’ We also find Brett Dionysius on the 175-year-old tortoise Harriet, which, having outlived Charles Darwin, thinks: ‘Now I’m with Steve Irwin at Australia Zoo. / I Harriet, time-lord tortoise: outlive him too.’ We find Jennifer Harrison’s arresting description of ‘grammar’s lovely utterly cold snow’. We find Keith Harrison’s ‘kind of stretched villanelle’ (as he describes it), which begins: ‘The summer night is dangerous and deep.’ We find the unsettling climax of Aileen Kelly’s ‘His Visitors’, in which ‘fetid ivies’ ‘reach up and suck out the light’. We find Anthony Lawrence’s poem about the Wandering Albatross, with its reference to ‘the compass glass of its eye’. And we find the terrible, uncomic climax of Judith Beveridge’s powerful poem ‘The Shark’.

Read more: David McCooey reviews 'The Best Australian Poetry 2005' edited by Peter Porter

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Melinda Harvey reviews The Garden Book by Brian Castro
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These are hostile times for literary fiction in Australia. New novels are well advised to don flak, not flap, jackets. And it’s not just a simple case of critics sniping from the sidelines, wanting their piece of the action. This is a full-blown civil war involving all the vested interests – publishers, editors, journalists, publicists and booksellers – not just writers and readers. The smarting adjectival arrows continue to find their targets. Current fiction is too dreamy, starchy, inconsequential, ingrown, belletristic, portentous. While our non-fiction writers have been doing time in South American jails and running the gauntlet of spy networks, our best novelists have been tending the lily-livered genres of historical fiction and fable. Many of them have been accused of skedaddling off to the library at a time when a confrontation with the forces of xenophobia, philistinism, fogeyism and greed is more than ever required. Novel-writing, in a word (and it’s one that has been flung around with a degree of passion recently), has become ‘gutless’ storytelling.
Book 1 Title: The Garden Book
Book Author: Brian Castro
Book 1 Biblio: Giramondo, $27.95 pb, 316 pp
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These are hostile times for literary fiction in Australia. New novels are well advised to don flak, not flap, jackets. And it’s not just a simple case of critics sniping from the sidelines, wanting their piece of the action. This is a full-blown civil war involving all the vested interests – publishers, editors, journalists, publicists and booksellers – not just writers and readers. The smarting adjectival arrows continue to find their targets. Current fiction is too dreamy, starchy, inconsequential, ingrown, belletristic, portentous. While our non-fiction writers have been doing time in South American jails and running the gauntlet of spy networks, our best novelists have been tending the lily-livered genres of historical fiction and fable. Many of them have been accused of skedaddling off to the library at a time when a confrontation with the forces of xenophobia, philistinism, fogeyism and greed is more than ever required. Novel-writing, in a word (and it’s one that has been flung around with a degree of passion recently), has become ‘gutless’ storytelling.

Read more: Melinda Harvey reviews 'The Garden Book' by Brian Castro

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Pamela Bone reviews Come With Daddy: Child murder–suicide after family breakdown by Carolyn Harris Johnson and Kangaroo Court: Family law in Australia (Quarterly Essay 17) by John Hirst
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He said, she said. Is there any way to talk about this sad subject without taking sides? And a thought for a reviewer: how to resist the temptation to find a book a ‘good book’ if you agree with its arguments, and a ‘bad book’ if you disagree? I disagree with most of what John Hirst has to say in Kangaroo Court: Family law in Australia, but I’m trying to be fair. The essay is lucidly written (indeed, its message could hardly be clearer); it is extensively, if selectively, researched; and it raises important matters that we, as a society, need to think about.
Book 1 Title: Come With Daddy
Book 1 Subtitle: Child murder–suicide after family breakdown
Book Author: Carolyn Harris Johnson
Book 1 Biblio: UWA Press, $34.95 pb, 158 pp
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Book 2 Title: Kangaroo Court
Book 2 Subtitle: Family law in Australia (Quarterly Essay 17)
Book 2 Author: John Hirst
Book 2 Biblio: Black Inc., $13.95 pb, 118 pp
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He said, she said. Is there any way to talk about this sad subject without taking sides? And a thought for a reviewer: how to resist the temptation to find a book a ‘good book’ if you agree with its arguments, and a ‘bad book’ if you disagree? I disagree with most of what John Hirst has to say in Kangaroo Court: Family law in Australia, but I’m trying to be fair. The essay is lucidly written (indeed, its message could hardly be clearer); it is extensively, if selectively, researched; and it raises important matters that we, as a society, need to think about.

According to Hirst, a La Trobe University historian, the Family Court of Australia has, in following the principle of ‘no fault’, abandoned moral judgment. It is a court that has allowed thousands of good and loving fathers to be deprived of their children. It is a court that is powerless to enforce its own orders when mothers (it’s always mothers) refuse to cooperate with access orders.

Read more: Pamela Bone reviews 'Come With Daddy: Child murder–suicide after family breakdown' by Carolyn...

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Peter Haig reviews Secrets of the Jury Room: Inside the black box of criminal justice In Australia by Malcolm Knox and The Gentle Art of Persuasion: How to argue effectively by Chester Porter
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According to Aristotle, rhetoric is ‘the ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion’. In today’s parlance, the term is often used pejoratively, connoting an obfuscation of truth. This would come as no surprise to Aristotle, whose treatise on the topic, Rhetorica, demonstrated an acute awareness of the dangers posed by the adroit manipulation of the means of persuasion for dubious ends.
Book 1 Title: Secrets of the Jury Room
Book 1 Subtitle: Inside the black box of criminal justice In Australia
Book Author: Malcolm Knox
Book 1 Biblio: Random House, $32.95 pb, 374 pp
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Book 2 Title: The Gentle Art of Persuasion
Book 2 Subtitle: How to argue effectively
Book 2 Author: Chester Porter
Book 2 Biblio: Random House, $32.95 hb, 235 pp
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According to Aristotle, rhetoric is ‘the ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion’. In today’s parlance, the term is often used pejoratively, connoting an obfuscation of truth. This would come as no surprise to Aristotle, whose treatise on the topic, Rhetorica, demonstrated an acute awareness of the dangers posed by the adroit manipulation of the means of persuasion for dubious ends.

Aristotle identified three appeals essential to effective persuasion: logos, pathos and ethos. Ethos is persuasion based on the character and credentials of the communicator; logos is the appeal to reason; and pathos appeals to emotion and passion. Lesser minds than Aristotle are alive to the power of these appeals, as much a part of the salesman’s or motivational speaker’s lexicon today as they were of the classical ‘rhetor’s’. Perhaps in no profession, however, is mastery of the means of persuasion the prerequisite for success that it is for the barrister. It is a frequent criticism of our adversarial legal system that the truth will not always emerge from a contest in which, as Robert Frost lamented, the ‘jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer’.

Read more: Peter Haig reviews 'Secrets of the Jury Room: Inside the black box of criminal justice In...

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Vesna Drapac reviews The French explorers and the Aboriginal Australians 1772–1839 by Colin Dyer
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In this book, Colin Dyer draws on the writings of French explorers from ten expeditions spanning the years between 1772 and 1839. His aim is ‘to enable readers to make as close an acquaintance as possible directly with the French explorers and the Aboriginal Australians during their encounters’. He presents the material with little contextual information or analysis, maintaining that he has ‘no personal axe to grind … no thesis or argument to prove, no preconceived conclusion to impose’. This stance, as we will see, has its advantages and its limitations.
Book 1 Title: The French explorers and the Aboriginal Australians 1772–1839
Book Author: Colin Dyer
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $32.95 pb, 240 pp
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In this book, Colin Dyer draws on the writings of French explorers from ten expeditions spanning the years between 1772 and 1839. His aim is ‘to enable readers to make as close an acquaintance as possible directly with the French explorers and the Aboriginal Australians during their encounters’. He presents the material with little contextual information or analysis, maintaining that he has ‘no personal axe to grind … no thesis or argument to prove, no preconceived conclusion to impose’. This stance, as we will see, has its advantages and its limitations.

In an introductory chapter, Dyer summarises the expeditions themselves and briefly alludes to the sources he uses. The expeditions were led by Marion Dufresne (1788), Lapérouse (1788), Bruny D’Entrecasteaux (1792 and 1793), Nicolas Baudin (1801, 1802 and 1803), Louis de Freycinet (1818 and 1819), Louis-Isidore Duperrey (1824), Hyacinthe de Bougainville (1825) Dumont d’Urville (1826), Cyrille Laplace (1831) and, finally, D’Urville once more (1839). Those charged with leading the expeditions had official instructions that stated clearly that they were to be respectful towards any native populations they encountered, ‘to endeavour to reconcile their friendship’, to act with ‘mildness’ and ‘humanity’, and in situations where the ‘natives’ were not willing to part with things, ‘never to employ force’. The absence of the kind of violence and brutality with which we have come to associate life on the ‘frontiers of civilisation’, and the attention of the French to the details and rituals of the Australians’ daily life, are noteworthy throughout.

Read more: Vesna Drapac reviews 'The French explorers and the Aboriginal Australians 1772–1839' by Colin Dyer

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Peter Pierce reviews Babes In The Bush: The making of an Australian image by Kim Torney
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The central contention of Kim Torney’s Babes in the Bush: The making of an Australian image is that ‘the lost-child image continues to resonate with Australians’. The cover illustration is from Frederick McCubbin’s famous painting Lost (1886), which Torney elevates to ‘the iconic image of the lost child story’. The task set out in these assertions, and iterations of them, is to find why the image continues to resonate in Australia now that the phenomenon of children lost in the bush is such a rarity, compared with the nineteenth century. (Torney quotes the alarming statistic from the Melbourne Argus index for the 1860s of seventy children fatally lost in the bush.)
Book 1 Title: Babes In The Bush
Book 1 Subtitle: The making of an Australian image
Book Author: Kim Torney
Book 1 Biblio: Curtin University Books, $35 pb, 270 pp
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The central contention of Kim Torney’s Babes in the Bush: The making of an Australian image is that ‘the lost-child image continues to resonate with Australians’. The cover illustration is from Frederick McCubbin’s famous painting Lost (1886), which Torney elevates to ‘the iconic image of the lost child story’. The task set out in these assertions, and iterations of them, is to find why the image continues to resonate in Australia now that the phenomenon of children lost in the bush is such a rarity, compared with the nineteenth century. (Torney quotes the alarming statistic from the Melbourne Argus index for the 1860s of seventy children fatally lost in the bush.)

Read more: Peter Pierce reviews 'Babes In The Bush: The making of an Australian image' by Kim Torney

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Michelle Haines Thomas reviews Noble Sindhu Horses by Lynette Chataway and 98% Pure by J.D. Cregan
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With broadly similar subjects – Australians in South-East Asia – and related themes that touch on culture shock and existential angst, you could be forgiven for thinking that Noble Sindhu Horses and 98% Pure might have something in common. But these two first novels are a lesson in the difference that self-control and sensitivity on the part of the writer, and good judgment on the part of the editor, can make. To draw on the Asian motif for a moment, Noble Sindhu Horses is a delicate Asian broth, restrained and subtly flavoured, while 98% Pure is street-vendor chop suey – a bit of a mess and not so good for your health.
Book 1 Title: Noble Sindhu Horses
Book Author: Lynette Chataway
Book 1 Biblio: Pandanus, $29.95 pb, 232 pp
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Book 2 Title: 98% Pure
Book 2 Author: J.D. Cregan
Book 2 Biblio: Otmar Miller Consultancy, $29.95 pb, 384 pp
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With broadly similar subjects – Australians in South-East Asia – and related themes that touch on culture shock and existential angst, you could be forgiven for thinking that Noble Sindhu Horses and 98% Pure might have something in common. But these two first novels are a lesson in the difference that self-control and sensitivity on the part of the writer, and good judgment on the part of the editor, can make. To draw on the Asian motif for a moment, Noble Sindhu Horses is a delicate Asian broth, restrained and subtly flavoured, while 98% Pure is street-vendor chop suey – a bit of a mess and not so good for your health.

In Noble Sindhu Horses, Lynette Chataway has drawn on her time with an aid agency in a northern Thai village to explore not only the overseas experience but its near devastating after-effects. The characters of Francis and Ava, along with their daughter Elizabeth, are based on Chataway’s own family, and there is a strong sense of that reality in the writing. She manages to avoid the tedious eyewitness travelogue aspects to which so many other ‘I went overseas and then I wrote a novel’ writers have fallen prey. There are observations that only hard-won understanding can yield, and the novel rings with authenticity and integrity. Small moments are telling, such as when Ava goes to the supermarket, with a mental image of a starving refugee boy, under whose gaze she cannot bring herself to buy ‘toilet spray, or Exit Mould, or Ajax, or ice cream, or cordial, or instant noodles’.

Read more: Michelle Haines Thomas reviews 'Noble Sindhu Horses' by Lynette Chataway and '98% Pure' by J.D....

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ABR Poetry Competition

Earlier this year, Stephen Edgar won the inaugural ABR Poetry Competition. He picked up a cheque for $2000, and ABC Television made a feature about him and other shortlisted poets – not bad coverage for poets in a country many of whose newspapers and general magazines have so lament-ably and short-sightedly reduced their coverage of poetry. Well, the competition is on again. Its principal aim is to uncover some of the best new poems being written in this country. Up to six of them will be shortlisted in the March 2006 issue; the winner will be announced in April 2006. Full details appear on page 8. The entry form is also available on our website, or on request. The closing date is December 15.
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ABR Poetry Competition

Earlier this year, Stephen Edgar won the inaugural ABR Poetry Competition. He picked up a cheque for $2000, and ABC Television made a feature about him and other shortlisted poets – not bad coverage for poets in a country many of whose newspapers and general magazines have so lament-ably and short-sightedly reduced their coverage of poetry. Well, the competition is on again. Its principal aim is to uncover some of the best new poems being written in this country. Up to six of them will be shortlisted in the March 2006 issue; the winner will be announced in April 2006. Full details appear on page 8. The entry form is also available on our website, or on request. The closing date is December 15.

Read more: Advances - October 2005

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Article Title: Bring on Warnie
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An Indian fast-food outlet has named itself after Mahatma Gandhi and features a caricature of his face in neon lights. Tacky? Certainly. Only in America? Only in Australia, actually, or at least that’s what a major cable television channel would like to suggest.
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An Indian fast-food outlet has named itself after Mahatma Gandhi and features a caricature of his face in neon lights. Tacky? Certainly. Only in America? Only in Australia, actually, or at least that’s what a major cable television channel would like to suggest.

I saw this story about nefarious goings-on in Melbourne, and the indignation of a Gandhi family member, while sitting in a Singapore hotel room. It was one of only a handful of reports mentioning Australia that I encountered during a month overseas. It doesn’t take long after leaving Australia’s shores to be reminded just how inconsequential one member of the ‘coalition of the willing’ really is on the world stage. I was struck, too, by how much less attention terrestrial and cable television in Asia paid to the US than does the Australian media. In four weeks, a few news topics pertaining to Australia attracted the attention of the international media that I encountered: floods in northern New South Wales; a rally protesting against the federal government’s industrial relations plans; the women’s cycling tragedy in Germany; the world champion Australian poker player; and, of course, the Ashes series.

Read more: 'Bring on Warnie' by Bridget Griffen-Foley

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Article Title: Harry Potter and the fantastic Australians
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Within a week of the recent release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, millions of children and adults around the world had read it. Now comes the long wait for the final tome in this cleverly designed series by the prolific J.K. Rowling. Nil desperandum. The fantasy novel for children – and especially crossover books which, like the Harry Potter series, appeal to both adults and children – has a long tradition, and there are a myriad other fantastic books to turn to, many of which have been written by Australian authors.
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Within a week of the recent release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, millions of children and adults around the world had read it. Now comes the long wait for the final tome in this cleverly designed series by the prolific J.K. Rowling. Nil desperandum. The fantasy novel for children – and especially crossover books which, like the Harry Potter series, appeal to both adults and children – has a long tradition, and there are a myriad other fantastic books to turn to, many of which have been written by Australian authors.

If nothing else, the series has been an outstanding marketing phenomenon that has attracted millions of children and adults to fantasy writing. There is no doubt that Rowling has a masterly command of dialogue and of the intricacies of plotting. She has created a likeable and resilient main character, and a convincing and enticing secondary world. However, her writing occasionally lapses into the prosaic, some of her ideas are clearly derivative and the later books in particular would have benefited from a substantive edit. Despite this, the series – in particular, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) – may well become classics, joining other great European fantasies for children.

Read more: 'Harry Potter and the fantastic Australians' by Stephanie Owen Reeder

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Anna Ryan-Punch reviews Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Still Waving by Laurene Kelly
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The Young Adult ‘issue novel’ is a difficult thing to do well. To write one that rises above the mediocre requires a careful avoidance of both sentimentality and sensationalism, and the better books succeed by either tackling an unusual or topical issue, or by looking at a situation from a novel angle. These two books – though covering very different terrain – are good examples.
Book 1 Title: Does My Head Look Big in This?
Book Author: Randa Abdel-Fattah
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $16.95 pb, 340 pp
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Book 2 Title: Still Waving
Book 2 Author: Laurene Kelly
Book 2 Biblio: Spinifex, $19.95 pb, 278 pp
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The Young Adult ‘issue novel’ is a difficult thing to do well. To write one that rises above the mediocre requires a careful avoidance of both sentimentality and sensationalism, and the better books succeed by either tackling an unusual or topical issue, or by looking at a situation from a novel angle. These two books – though covering very different terrain – are good examples.

Read more: Anna Ryan-Punch reviews 'Does My Head Look Big In This?' by Randa Abdel-Fattah and 'Still Waving'...

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Article Title: Beach Burial
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for Craig Sherborne

 

‘Grief wrongs us so.’

                                                  Douglas Dunn

To the sea we bear our fathers in state –

or what they’ve done to them: the square conversions.

Surf mild as receding tides,

we slump in dunes with our burdens,
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for Craig Sherborne

 

‘Grief wrongs us so.’ 
                                                 Douglas Dunn

 

Read more: 'Beach Burial' by Peter Rose

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Article Title: The Judgment of Cambyses
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This must be a page from The Manual

For the Instructing of Humanity,

Showing the improvement of the Social Order

By the avoidance of personal identification

With Suffering, a turning-away to private Sanity.
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This must be a page from The Manual
For the Instructing of Humanity,
Showing the improvement of the Social Order
By the avoidance of personal identification
With Suffering, a turning-away to private Sanity.

Read more: 'The Judgment of Cambyses' by Peter Porter

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Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letters to the Editor - October 2005
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Books Alive

Dear Editor,

Jeremy Fisher criticises the 2005 Books Alive campaign (Letters, ABR September 2005) for failing to do things it was not set up to do, and then acknowledges that it does the things it was set up to do extremely well. Fisher says: ‘The ASA has no issue with increasing the sales of Australian books. But that no longer appears to be the focus of Books Alive. Books Alive had the potential to be a unique opportunity to promote Australian literary culture. It has mutated into “an Australian Government initiative that aims to encourage all Australians to experience the joys of reading”.’
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ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

 

Books Alive

Dear Editor,

Jeremy Fisher criticises the 2005 Books Alive campaign (Letters, ABR September 2005) for failing to do things it was not set up to do, and then acknowledges that it does the things it was set up to do extremely well. Fisher says: ‘The ASA has no issue with increasing the sales of Australian books. But that no longer appears to be the focus of Books Alive. Books Alive had the potential to be a unique opportunity to promote Australian literary culture. It has mutated into “an Australian Government initiative that aims to encourage all Australians to experience the joys of reading”.’

Read more: Letters to the Editor - October 2005

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Stella Lees reviews 5 picture books
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Contents Category: Picture Books
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Article Title: Beyond the confines of reality
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No kangaroos, emus or possums in this lot – just pigs, rats, hares, cats, dogs and fantastic monsters. Australian picture books are in a healthy state if these five beautifully produced, cleverly constructed and thoughtful examples represent the genre. All celebrate that peculiarly human gift, imagination – the unsuspected alternatives, the leap outside the confines of reality. All would provide a happy reading experience for children of any age, and are illustrated without condescension by witty and confident artists. From the child imagining castles in the air to the adult building them a little too high, these authors and artists reveal their insights into all kinds of human behaviour.
Book 1 Title: Castles
Book Author: Allan Baillie
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $24.95 hb, 32 pp
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No kangaroos, emus or possums in this lot – just pigs, rats, hares, cats, dogs and fantastic monsters. Australian picture books are in a healthy state if these five beautifully produced, cleverly constructed and thoughtful examples represent the genre. All celebrate that peculiarly human gift, imagination – the unsuspected alternatives, the leap outside the confines of reality. All would provide a happy reading experience for children of any age, and are illustrated without condescension by witty and confident artists. From the child imagining castles in the air to the adult building them a little too high, these authors and artists reveal their insights into all kinds of human behaviour.

Read more: Stella Lees reviews 5 picture books

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Article Title: Parrotology
Article Subtitle: On the necessity of parrots in poetry
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A couple of months ago, driving with my daughter just outside the wheat-belt town of York, Western Australia, we came across a ‘28’ parrot that had just been struck by a car. I scooped it up in a cloth, and my daughter held it on the back seat until we could get home. Having been bitten numerous times by those ‘strong and hooked’ beaks, I warned her to be wary. But the parrot – a splay of emerald, turquoise, black and yellow feathers – was too dazed to bite, and clearly had a broken wing. Though we’ve always called these beautiful birds 28s, technically they are a ring-necked parrot, and possibly even the Port Lincoln variety of ring-necked. The demarcation lines between varieties are hazy. The local ‘nickname’ matters as local names do. We eventually handed the injured bird over to the local ‘bird lady’, who later let me know that it had died due to massive brain damage. My daughter doesn’t know it died. She said it was the closest she’d ever come to something so ‘amazing’. I left it at that.
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A couple of months ago, driving with my daughter just outside the wheat-belt town of York, Western Australia, we came across a ‘28’ parrot that had just been struck by a car. I scooped it up in a cloth, and my daughter held it on the back seat until we could get home. Having been bitten numerous times by those ‘strong and hooked’ beaks, I warned her to be wary. But the parrot – a splay of emerald, turquoise, black and yellow feathers – was too dazed to bite, and clearly had a broken wing. Though we’ve always called these beautiful birds 28s, technically they are a ring-necked parrot, and possibly even the Port Lincoln variety of ring-necked. The demarcation lines between varieties are hazy. The local ‘nickname’ matters as local names do. We eventually handed the injured bird over to the local ‘bird lady’, who later let me know that it had died due to massive brain damage. My daughter doesn’t know it died. She said it was the closest she’d ever come to something so ‘amazing’. I left it at that.

Read more: 'Parrotology: On the necessity of parrots in poetry' by John Kinsella

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