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Absolutely Revolting

October 1998, no. 205

Peter Craven reviews Reading the Holocaust by Inga Clendinnen
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Contents Category: History
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The Holocaust is a subject which numbs the mind and petrifies the soul. This is the point at which Inga Clendinnen starts her remarkable set of essays about it. The Holocaust is a Gorgon and the only way to destroy it, Perseus-like, is to hold it’s image on the screen of the shield and stare back. The historian of The Aztecs, this remarkable woman who has always attended to the inflections of human pain, says at the outset that extreme suffering should be paid attention. She has lived in interesting times without partaking of the horror and this is her amends. This remarkable exercise in metahistory, this sustained meditation about the nature of historiography – an essay in which criticism and representation keep coming together and breaking apart – began with Clendinnen’s sense of the inadequacy of her own response to the Demidenko controversy and it ends, not inappropriately, with a discussion of the relative claims of literature and historical writing in the face of the Holocaust Medusa.
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The Holocaust is a subject which numbs the mind and petrifies the soul. This is the point at which Inga Clendinnen starts her remarkable set of essays about it. The Holocaust is a Gorgon and the only way to destroy it, Perseus-like, is to hold it’s image on the screen of the shield and stare back. The historian of The Aztecs, this remarkable woman who has always attended to the inflections of human pain, says at the outset that extreme suffering should be paid attention. She has lived in interesting times without partaking of the horror and this is her amends. This remarkable exercise in metahistory, this sustained meditation about the nature of historiography – an essay in which criticism and representation keep coming together and breaking apart – began with Clendinnen’s sense of the inadequacy of her own response to the Demidenko controversy and it ends, not inappropriately, with a discussion of the relative claims of literature and historical writing in the face of the Holocaust Medusa.

Read more: Peter Craven reviews 'Reading the Holocaust' by Inga Clendinnen

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Peter Steele reviews Author! Author! Tales of Australian Literary Life edited by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
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‘Anecdotes’ meant originally ‘the unpublished’ – sometimes, no doubt, the unprintable. Nowadays we think of them as being tales which have something or other up their sleeves: a morsel of irony, a pinch of encouragement, a gesture of affectation. Anecdotes are yarns which have had a couple of drinks.
Book 1 Title: Author! Author!
Book 1 Subtitle: Tales of Australian Literary Life
Book Author: Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Book 1 Biblio: OUP $26.95 hb, 294 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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‘Anecdotes’ meant originally ‘the unpublished’ – sometimes, no doubt, the unprintable. Nowadays we think of them as being tales which have something or other up their sleeves: a morsel of irony, a pinch of encouragement, a gesture of affectation. Anecdotes are yarns which have had a couple of drinks.

Read more: Peter Steele reviews 'Author! Author! Tales of Australian Literary Life' edited by Chris...

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Andrew Riemer reviews The Oxford Literary History of Australia edited by Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
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The index to this literary history lists four references – one neutral, three critical – to Leonie Kramer as the editor of the 1981 The Oxford History of Australian Literature and one each to the publication itself, to Adrian Mitchell, who was responsible for the survey of fiction, and to Vivian Smith as the author of the section on poetry – there is no reference to Terry Sturm, who wrote on drama. None of the sixteen critics and scholars who contributed to the new survey engages in any significant manner with the aims and aspirations of that publication, even ‘though it is acknowledged in the Introduction – together with the work of H.M. Green, Cecil Hadgraft, Geoffrey Dutton, G.A. Wilkes, Ken Goodwin, Laurie Hergenhan, Bob Hodge, and Vijay Mishra – as providing ‘frameworks and a background of references’. The implication seems to be not so much that The Oxford History of Australian Literature reflects an unjustifiably conservative view of national literature – a complaint that arose almost as soon as it was published – but that its methods, ideals, and emphases are irrelevant to the literary culture of the late nineties.
Book 1 Title: The Oxford Literary History of Australia
Book Author: Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $49.95 hb, 488 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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The index to this literary history lists four references – one neutral, three critical – to Leonie Kramer as the editor of the 1981 The Oxford History of Australian Literature and one each to the publication itself, to Adrian Mitchell, who was responsible for the survey of fiction, and to Vivian Smith as the author of the section on poetry – there is no reference to Terry Sturm, who wrote on drama. None of the sixteen critics and scholars who contributed to the new survey engages in any significant manner with the aims and aspirations of that publication, even ‘though it is acknowledged in the Introduction – together with the work of H.M. Green, Cecil Hadgraft, Geoffrey Dutton, G.A. Wilkes, Ken Goodwin, Laurie Hergenhan, Bob Hodge, and Vijay Mishra – as providing ‘frameworks and a background of references’. The implication seems to be not so much that The Oxford History of Australian Literature reflects an unjustifiably conservative view of national literature – a complaint that arose almost as soon as it was published – but that its methods, ideals, and emphases are irrelevant to the literary culture of the late nineties.

Read more: Andrew Riemer reviews 'The Oxford Literary History of Australia' edited by Bruce Bennett and...

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Dennis Altman reviews Two Nations: The causes and effects of the rise of the One Nation Party in Australia edited by Robert Manne
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Contents Category: Politics
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Even if Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party were to self-destruct after the next federal election, which I suspect is a real possibility, it has earned itself a position in Australian political history. Hanson herself must be one of our most remarkable political figures, having risen within three years from the obscurity of a Liberal nominee for an unwinnable electorate to a politician with media coverage almost equivalent to that of the major party leaders.
Book 1 Title: Two Nations
Book 1 Subtitle: The causes and effects of the rise of the One Nation Party in Australia
Book Author: Robert Manne
Book 1 Biblio: Bookman Press, $19.95 pb, 194 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Even if Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party were to self-destruct after the next federal election, which I suspect is a real possibility, it has earned itself a position in Australian political history. Hanson herself must be one of our most remarkable political figures, having risen within three years from the obscurity of a Liberal nominee for an unwinnable electorate to a politician with media coverage almost equivalent to that of the major party leaders.

Read more: Dennis Altman reviews 'Two Nations: The causes and effects of the rise of the One Nation Party in...

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Anthony Lawrence reviews Whirling by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
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Contents Category: Poetry
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Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s ability to reveal the marvellous in the seemingly mundane layers of the quotidian is a striking aspect of this new book. There are compassionate, fluid meditations on many aspects of urban life, ageing, and a quirky cast of characters from the poet’s life and wide reading.
Book 1 Title: Whirling
Book Author: Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $19.95 pb, 52 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s ability to reveal the marvellous in the seemingly mundane layers of the quotidian is a striking aspect of this new book. There are compassionate, fluid meditations on many aspects of urban life, ageing, and a quirky cast of characters from the poet’s life and wide reading.

Read more: Anthony Lawrence reviews 'Whirling' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

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Contents Category: Obituary
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Geoff Dutton was a man-of-letters who for many years made (with Max Harris) Adelaide seem one of the lively centres of Australian literary culture. One thinks of him in association with the magazines Angry Penguins, Australian Letters, and the original Australian Book Review, not to mention the inauguration of an Australian publication list for Penguin Books, and then, when that soured, the setting up of Sun Books, one of the most innovative of Australian publishing ventures at that time – which was in the difficult slough period of the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s.
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Geoff Dutton was a man-of-letters who for many years made (with Max Harris) Adelaide seem one of the lively centres of Australian literary culture. One thinks of him in association with the magazines Angry Penguins, Australian Letters, and the original Australian Book Review, not to mention the inauguration of an Australian publication list for Penguin Books, and then, when that soured, the setting up of Sun Books, one of the most innovative of Australian publishing ventures at that time – which was in the difficult slough period of the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s.

Read more: Obituary for Geoffrey Dutton, 1922–1998 by Thomas Shapcott

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Contents Category: Essay
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Article Title: Natural Horizons
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State of mind: it’s a simple phrase but it is one which has always interested me. ‘State of mind’ is about what? Sets of feelings? Predispositions and moods? Or perhaps more it’s a term to do with the groove which thoughts regularly follow along. A state of mind is one which makes you respond in a particular way: you tend to act in a particular way; you have recurrent feelings.

The phrase interests me because it defines a feeling so intimate – so normal and everyday. Indeed, it is so intimate that it becomes difficult to say what a state of mind is. What are its boundaries? Where does it stop? Is this mind-set just mine or is it something to do with events out there, the latest news about the economy, the extravagant telephone bill which has just arrived, the relaxed feeling of walking along a beach, a recent argument, an enjoyable dinner party? For however influential and pervasive states of mind are, they are also fluctuating, amorphous things.
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State of mind: it’s a simple phrase but it is one which has always interested me. ‘State of mind’ is about what? Sets of feelings? Predispositions and moods? Or perhaps more it’s a term to do with the groove which thoughts regularly follow along. A state of mind is one which makes you respond in a particular way: you tend to act in a particular way; you have recurrent feelings.

The phrase interests me because it defines a feeling so intimate – so normal and everyday. Indeed, it is so intimate that it becomes difficult to say what a state of mind is. What are its boundaries? Where does it stop? Is this mind-set just mine or is it something to do with events out there, the latest news about the economy, the extravagant telephone bill which has just arrived, the relaxed feeling of walking along a beach, a recent argument, an enjoyable dinner party? For however influential and pervasive states of mind are, they are also fluctuating, amorphous things.

Read more: National Library of Australia Essay | 'Natural Horizons' by Martin Harrison

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Gail Jones reviews Duckness by Tim Richards
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Quirky and Enigmatic
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A title like Duckness summons expectations of the quirky, the paralogical, and the obliquely enigmatic, and this collection delivers all three – though somewhat unevenly. It traverses imaginary heterotopias which both are and are not Melbourne, and which centre, for the most part, on disturbing and difficult questions of simulation and authenticity.
Book 1 Title: Duckness
Book Author: Tim Richards
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $16.95 pb, 162 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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A title like Duckness summons expectations of the quirky, the paralogical, and the obliquely enigmatic, and this collection delivers all three – though somewhat unevenly. It traverses imaginary heterotopias which both are and are not Melbourne, and which centre, for the most part, on disturbing and difficult questions of simulation and authenticity.

In one of the most successful stories, ‘Cloudy Days in Velsk’, Richards extends ad absurdum the conceit of a weather announcement – on SBS, as it happens – which includes in its usual line-up mention of the wholly unlocatable city of Velsk. This shudder in the habitual order of things generates earnest speculation as to possibilities of hoaxes, extra-terrestrials, time warps, and conspiracies, which by the thirty-fourth and final broadcast have issued as a form of mass-hysteria. Theories are printed in The Age, cultural studies gurus are consulted, television debates ensue, but the enigma simply dissolves in its own typically occluding weather. This story is marked by the restraint and elegance of its prose: ‘Is it possible to retain the memory of an insinuated city? Maybe these are questions better left to philosophers and theologians. But I know that I am not alone in yearning for weather reports which offer metaphysical distraction … ’ and places Richards firmly in the tradition of male speculative short fiction which includes Bail, Carey, Brooks, and Wilding.

Read more: Gail Jones reviews 'Duckness' by Tim Richards

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The last thing a highbrow hack needs is to find himself in a sustained bout of controversy with a blockbusting writer from the other side of the tracks. A few weeks ago at the Melbourne Writers Festival, I found myself a participant in a discussion about reviewing (and whether the critic was a friend or a foe) which rapidly turned into a sustained accusation on the part of the bestselling novelist Bryce Courtenay that I and the chairman of the panel, Professor Peter Pierce of James Cook University, were literary snobs with no conception of any popular genres in general and no apprehension of the critical injustices (and personal pain) which Courtenay in particular was subjected to by us and all our ilk.
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The last thing a highbrow hack needs is to find himself in a sustained bout of controversy with a blockbusting writer from the other side of the tracks. A few weeks ago at the Melbourne Writers Festival, I found myself a participant in a discussion about reviewing (and whether the critic was a friend or a foe) which rapidly turned into a sustained accusation on the part of the bestselling novelist Bryce Courtenay that I and the chairman of the panel, Professor Peter Pierce of James Cook University, were literary snobs with no conception of any popular genres in general and no apprehension of the critical injustices (and personal pain) which Courtenay in particular was subjected to by us and all our ilk.

Read more: 'Highbrow and Lowbrow' by Peter Craven

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David McCooey reviews Australian Lives: An Oxford Anthology edited by Joy Hooton
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Contents Category: Biography
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Joy Hooton must know more about Australian autobiography than anyone else. Her critical and bibliographical works are now complemented by this marvellous anthology – humorous, plangent, and surprising. It replaces the more literary Penguin anthology by the Colmers (an important collection, though now somewhat outdated), and more than accounts for the period not dealt with in Gillian Whitlock’s impressive UQP anthology of contemporary Australian autobiography.
Book 1 Title: Australian Lives
Book 1 Subtitle: An Oxford Anthology
Book Author: Joy Hooton
Book 1 Biblio: OUP, $39.95 hb, 298 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Joy Hooton must know more about Australian autobiography than anyone else. Her critical and bibliographical works are now complemented by this marvellous anthology – humorous, plangent, and surprising. It replaces the more literary Penguin anthology by the Colmers (an important collection, though now somewhat outdated), and more than accounts for the period not dealt with in Gillian Whitlock’s impressive UQP anthology of contemporary Australian autobiography.

Read more: David McCooey reviews 'Australian Lives: An Oxford Anthology' edited by Joy Hooton

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J.R. Carroll reviews Blind Justice by Robin Bowles
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Contents Category: True Crime
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On the evening of 14 November 1984, the body of young mother and housewife Jennifer Tanner was found by her husband Laurie slumped on a sofa in their farmhouse at Bonnie Doon, a tiny hamlet near Mansfield, in Victoria’s high country. It looked as if she had shot herself: there was a gunshot wound in her forehead and a bolt-action .22 rifle between her legs. One of her hands was partly around the barrel. Uniformed police on the scene declared it a suicide, detectives were not called in, no photographs were taken, no forensic tests were done, the place was cleaned up next day – and that was that.
Book 1 Title: Blind Justice
Book Author: Robin Bowles
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $17.95 pb, 419 pp
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On the evening of 14 November 1984, the body of young mother and housewife Jennifer Tanner was found by her husband Laurie slumped on a sofa in their farmhouse at Bonnie Doon, a tiny hamlet near Mansfield, in Victoria’s high country. It looked as if she had shot herself: there was a gunshot wound in her forehead and a bolt-action .22 rifle between her legs. One of her hands was partly around the barrel. Uniformed police on the scene declared it a suicide, detectives were not called in, no photographs were taken, no forensic tests were done, the place was cleaned up next day – and that was that.

Read more: J.R. Carroll reviews 'Blind Justice' by Robin Bowles

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Greg Dening reviews A Life on the Ocean Wave: Voyages to Australia, India and the Pacific from the journals of Captain George Bayly 1824–1844 edited by Pamela Statham and Rica Erickson
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A white-haired, white-bearded Captain George Bayly peers benignly out at us from the 1885 photograph frontispiece of A Life on the Ocean Wave. With epaulettes to his black uniform jacket, braided sleeves, a sword at his side and a ceremonial captain’s head-piece on the table beside him, Bayly looks the quintessential retired man of the sea. He looks like a man Charles Dickens should have been describing. We should be meeting him in some sea-side parlour, in some sailortown tea-palace. He looks as if he has a story to tell.
Book 1 Title: A Life on the Ocean Wave
Book 1 Subtitle: Voyages to Australia, India and the Pacific from the journals of Captain George Bayly 1824–1844
Book Author: Pamela Statham and Rica Erickson
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah Press, $49.95 hb, 364 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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A white-haired, white-bearded Captain George Bayly peers benignly out at us from the 1885 photograph frontispiece of A Life on the Ocean Wave. With epaulettes to his black uniform jacket, braided sleeves, a sword at his side and a ceremonial captain’s head-piece on the table beside him, Bayly looks the quintessential retired man of the sea. He looks like a man Charles Dickens should have been describing. We should be meeting him in some sea-side parlour, in some sailortown tea-palace. He looks as if he has a story to tell.

Read more: Greg Dening reviews 'A Life on the Ocean Wave: Voyages to Australia, India and the Pacific from...

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Joy Damousi reviews Convict Women by Kay Daniels
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Contents Category: Australian History
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In a recent history of punishment in Australia, Mark Finnane observes that there is a ‘seemingly inexhaustible vein of convict history’. This has been especially true most recently of the history of convict women and the increasing number of accounts which are now being published in this field is to be welcomed. These studies offer a corrective to histories which have relegated convict women to a footnote, and, perhaps more significantly, some historians have attempted to reconceptualise and recast our understandings of colonialism, gender, power, and sexuality during the nineteenth century.
Book 1 Title: Convict Women
Book Author: Kay Daniels
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $24.95 pb, 276 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/MXvmRJ
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In a recent history of punishment in Australia, Mark Finnane observes that there is a ‘seemingly inexhaustible vein of convict history’. This has been especially true most recently of the history of convict women and the increasing number of accounts which are now being published in this field is to be welcomed. These studies offer a corrective to histories which have relegated convict women to a footnote, and, perhaps more significantly, some historians have attempted to reconceptualise and recast our understandings of colonialism, gender, power, and sexuality during the nineteenth century.

Read more: Joy Damousi reviews 'Convict Women' by Kay Daniels

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Kate Macdonell reviews Mallawindy by Joy Dettman
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If I were inclined to draw connections between books and food, Joy Dettman’s first novel would have to be a hamburger: it’s big, it’s juicy, it’s relatively quick to consume and it’s packed with all the generic trimmings of which a good meaty mystery is made. And while certainly Mallawindy’s characters are thus rather stereotypical and the quality of Dettman’s writing a little clumsy at times, this book is worth sampling if you’re ever so slightly addicted to narratives with gusto. It’s the kind of book you could easily enjoy on the plane, on the tram, or, yes, even on the couch and forget where you were – and this is apt given that one of the primary concerns of this book is not so much food (although a portion of it has made its way into Michael Gifkins’ 1994 extravaganza, Tart and Juicy) as memory loss.
Book 1 Title: Mallawindy
Book Author: Joy Dettman
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $22.95 pb, 378 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/0JBEbJ
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If I were inclined to draw connections between books and food, Joy Dettman’s first novel would have to be a hamburger: it’s big, it’s juicy, it’s relatively quick to consume and it’s packed with all the generic trimmings of which a good meaty mystery is made. And while certainly Mallawindy’s characters are thus rather stereotypical and the quality of Dettman’s writing a little clumsy at times, this book is worth sampling if you’re ever so slightly addicted to narratives with gusto. It’s the kind of book you could easily enjoy on the plane, on the tram, or, yes, even on the couch and forget where you were – and this is apt given that one of the primary concerns of this book is not so much food (although a portion of it has made its way into Michael Gifkins’ 1994 extravaganza, Tart and Juicy) as memory loss.

Read more: Kate Macdonell reviews 'Mallawindy' by Joy Dettman

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Marion Halligan reviews Marias War by Amy Witting
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Ever since I heard Amy Witting speak at the recent Melbourne Festival, I have been thinking about her name, which is a chosen not a given name and therefore may be considered for its meanings. It occurred to me that there may be conscious artistry in her name as in her work. Amy: that must mean love. And Witting will be knowledge, awareness. The two an expression of the novelist’s desire. Her new book has both in good measure. Even more strongly here than in her earlier work, I have the sense of Witting’s voice speaking to us. Of course her medium is the characters through whom her plot works itself out, and the wise things spoken are the words of these characters, but I had an intimate sense of their being hers as well. You could extract her bons mots, her reflections, her epigrams, and make a nice little volume of the wit arid wisdom of Amy Witting. But of course you would lose a part of their power, and all the poignancy that context gives.
Book 1 Title: Maria's War
Book Author: Amy Witting
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $24.95 pb, 254 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Ever since I heard Amy Witting speak at the recent Melbourne Festival, I have been thinking about her name, which is a chosen not a given name and therefore may be considered for its meanings. It occurred to me that there may be conscious artistry in her name as in her work. Amy: that must mean love. And Witting will be knowledge, awareness. The two an expression of the novelist’s desire. Her new book has both in good measure. Even more strongly here than in her earlier work, I have the sense of Witting’s voice speaking to us. Of course her medium is the characters through whom her plot works itself out, and the wise things spoken are the words of these characters, but I had an intimate sense of their being hers as well. You could extract her bons mots, her reflections, her epigrams, and make a nice little volume of the wit arid wisdom of Amy Witting. But of course you would lose a part of their power, and all the poignancy that context gives.

Read more: Marion Halligan reviews 'Maria's War' by Amy Witting

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Bruce Gillespie reviews Singing the Dogstar Blues Alison Goodman
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Readers of science fiction tend to discover the genre during their early teens, which should make sf an ideal sub-genre of Young Adult fiction. But the mainstay of the Young Adults genre, as it has developed over the last thirty years, is the novel of family relationships. Science fiction writers are often uncomfortable with personal relationships. The stars are their destination, not the living room; transcendence is the game, not emotional sustenance.
Book 1 Title: Singing the Dogstar Blues
Book Author: Alison Goodman
Book 1 Biblio: HarperCollins, $12.95 pb, 200 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/kjPDnd
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Readers of science fiction tend to discover the genre during their early teens, which should make sf an ideal sub-genre of Young Adult fiction. But the mainstay of the Young Adults genre, as it has developed over the last thirty years, is the novel of family relationships. Science fiction writers are often uncomfortable with personal relationships. The stars are their destination, not the living room; transcendence is the game, not emotional sustenance.

Read more: Bruce Gillespie reviews 'Singing the Dogstar Blues' Alison Goodman

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Damien Broderick reviews The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy edited by Paul Collins
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Article Title: Space Age Genre
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Science Fiction (speculative fiction, sf, sci-fi, whatever) is not much more than a century old. H.G. Wells called his pioneering efforts ‘scientific romances’, still a good name, and his wonderfully fecund The Time Machine and War of the Worlds were published as late as 1895 and 1898. So Australia as a Europeanised nation is even younger than this ‘space age’ genre. If you push it back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818, its birth coincides with white settlement. Time enough, you’d think, to grow plenty of Aussie sf.
Book 1 Title: The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy
Book Author: Paul Collins
Book 1 Biblio: MUP, $39.95 hb, $29.95 pb, 188 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Science Fiction (speculative fiction, sf, sci-fi, whatever) is not much more than a century old. H.G. Wells called his pioneering efforts ‘scientific romances’, still a good name, and his wonderfully fecund The Time Machine and War of the Worlds were published as late as 1895 and 1898. So Australia as a Europeanised nation is even younger than this ‘space age’ genre. If you push it back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818, its birth coincides with white settlement. Time enough, you’d think, to grow plenty of Aussie sf.

Read more: Damien Broderick reviews 'The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy' edited by...

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Jenny Pausacker reviews The Divine Wind by Garry Disher
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Article Title: Parallel times
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Ten years ago historical novels were an unwanted rarity in Australian children’s publishing. Instead, there was a vogue for time-slip novels where a contemporary kid went travelling back into the past, as though history would be too hard for younger readers to handle without some sort of tour guide.
Book 1 Title: The Divine Wind
Book Author: Garry Disher
Book 1 Biblio: Hodder Headline, $14.95 pb, 151 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-divine-wind-garry-disher/book/9780734419316.html
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Ten years ago historical novels were an unwanted rarity in Australian children’s publishing. Instead, there was a vogue for time-slip novels where a contemporary kid went travelling back into the past, as though history would be too hard for younger readers to handle without some sort of tour guide.

At the time I can remember worrying that this represented a kind of ‘dumbing down.’ But I needn’t have worried. History moves in cycles and the historical novel is currently among the most vigorous and varied genres in Australian children’s fiction – sometimes set in Australia, sometimes focusing on children in concentration camps or street kids in fourteenth-century Jerusalem.

One of the most notable turning points in this particular cycle was Garry Disher’s The Bamboo Flute. Disher’s first person, present-tense narrative had an immediacy that whisked the reader across time and space faster than Doctor Who’s Tardis, subtly pointing out the parallels between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the recession of the 1990s.

Read more: Jenny Pausacker reviews 'The Divine Wind' by Garry Disher

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