Recently in Authors Category

Interview with Russell B. Farr

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Ticonderoga Publications is a small press based in Perth which specialises in science fiction short story collections. The founding editor is Russell B. Farr. He recently spoke to the Speakeasy weblog.

Speakeasy: Can you tell us a little about Ticonderoga Publications (TP) and its place in the Aussie speculative fiction (SF) community?

Russell Farr (RF): Ticonderoga Publications started in 1996 initially to produce a chapbook of the Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley story, Custer's Last Jump, as I was involved in a convention bringing Waldrop to Australia. It was a small print run, Shaun Tan provided the cover, and it sold for $7.95. At the time Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G. Byrne were doing remarkable things with Eidolon - both the magazine and also books - and they put up with me hanging around asking dumb questions. At the time the main indie book publishers were Eidolon, Mirrordanse (Bill Congreve) and, standing head and shoulders above them, was Aphelion (the late, great Peter McNamara). I thought what they were all doing was pretty cool, so I was soon following along, publishing collections of stories by Steven Utley, Simon Brown, Stephen Dedman and Sean Williams.

Jump forward to 2012 and we're still going. We've expanded to include my wonderful fiancé, Liz Grzyb, as business and creative partner, and we've got between 25-30 titles in print. We've published collections by Angela Slatter, Lisa L. Hannett, Kaaron Warren, Felicity Dowker, Justina Robson, Lucy Sussex, Greg Mellor, the late Sara Douglass, and a number of others. We've been able to produce a number of anthologies, a Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror series, and next year will start publishing original novels.

We've never set out to have an agenda, or a place in the Australian SF community, we just happily hang out there and make what I hope are good books. We don't really see ourselves as catering to any niche, just publishing what appeals to us - we see so many fantastic writers and want to share them with the world.

Christopher Koch Interview

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lost_voices.jpg    Born in 1932, Christopher Koch has won the Miles Franklin Award twice, for The Doubleman in 1985, and for Highways to a War in 1996. He is now back with a new novel, Lost Voices, and he recently spoke to Susan Wyndham for The Age.

The book a man produces at 80 might be seen as a map of his life's deepest concerns, and so it is with Christopher Koch's Lost Voices. The novel, like the man, has returned to his native Tasmania and it began, he says, with his ''interest in the idea that the past resonates off the future. I've done it before in Out of Ireland and Highways to a War, but this time I wanted it to be within a family.

''I wanted to look back from a distance at my childhood. This is probably the least autobiographical book I've written in terms of the characters, but I've tried to create a sense of what it was like here in the 1940s. At my age you realise you are living in a different world from the one you grew up in.''

[...]

In Lost Voices, ''every character in the 19th century has a counterpart in the 20th century''. In life, Koch says, ''things that happen in the past have counterparts in the present. We have ancestral memories - it sounds a bit far out but so many Australians go to Europe to the places of their ancestors and recognise those places.'' Koch himself remembers travelling through Switzerland and feeling that he'd been in a particular valley before.

He also cites scientific research into animal memory. ''Chickens run from the shadow of the hawk and they have never seen a hawk; certain memory circuits are inherited from the mother. If animals have this, why should it not be stronger in humans?''

Charlotte Wood Interview

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Charlotte_Wood.jpg    Charlotte Wood is the author of four novels, editor of the anthology Brothers and Sisters, and Love and Hunger, a mediation on the pleasures of simple food. She recently spoke to Jo Case for the Wheeler Centre.

Do you identify as an Australian writer?

I don't especially, but I'm often told that I am a particularly Australian writer. I think it's more a result than from intent; particularly in my last couple of novels (The Children and Animal People), I've written about what I've seen around me in contemporary Australia.

I think perhaps it's something akin to having an Australian accent - something you can't help - rather than a conscious thing.

So, it's not that you're setting out to be a particular kind of Australian, or that you think of yourself as an Australian writer?

I don't even know what makes a writer Australian, apart from working here - but even that is debatable when you think about Peter Carey or Shirley Hazzard. I remember hearing a Canadian publisher at one of our writers' festivals say, 'If I'm going to publish an Australian novel, it's got to be really Australian. It's got to be identifiably Australian, otherwise why don't I just publish a Canadian novel?' And I thought, well how would you know what's 'really Australian'? And perhaps you might publish it because it's interesting.

I once had a meeting with an agent in London, who wasn't interested in my work. That part was fine, but she said, 'Look, write something really Australian and then we can talk'. I was completely bamboozled - I thought, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

But I think what she was trying to say, basically, was 'be more like Tim Winton'. I can see why readers abroad might pick him as especially Australian, given the settings for much of his work, but it's a bit depressing if that's all they see. He writes very beautifully about a great many things other than landscape and Being Aussie. Like being a son, a lover or father or a brother, about self-destruction, about growing up, about mystery, and regret ... just about being human really, I think. Sometimes I wonder what he must feel about being so corralled into being the 'Aussie story' pin-up boy. I would find it depressing if I were him.

This agent ... I was sort of just sitting there like an idiot, and then she said, 'Oh, Scots writers are always moaning because we say, we want proper Scottish writing and they say, this is Scottish writing."

Tara Moss Interview

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assassin.jpg    Tara Moss moved to Australia in 1996 and published her first novel, Fetish in 1999. Since then she has gone on to be one of the highest-selling crime writers in the country. Her latest novel, Assassin, has just been released and she spoke to Karen Hardy for The Age. She began by talking about recent misogynist statements from the likes of Alan Jones.

"We should call out inappropriate comments, like these ones, when they're made; we should encourage women to follow their dreams, whatever they might be; encourage more women to take part in public life, if they're able. Obviously it's not the life everyone would choose but there is real value in encouraging women to not only know they're able to take part in public life in a significant way but in showing it as something aspirational.'' She sees something of this in her role as an author. Her latest book, Assassin, the sixth and final installment in the Makedde Vanderwall series, is out now.

''I'm a crime novelist so it's a tricky one because the world of crime is depressingly filled with statistics about violence against women ... men tend to commit crimes, particularly violent crimes, and women, in the majority of those cases, tend to be the victims. It's a very depressing reality.

''As a crime writer, being able to capture the reality of what's going on around you, you do end up writing about violence against women. To balance that it's important to have strong female characters, ones who are police officers, who are survivors, who are able to deal with this very ugly element of society in a way that's inspiring and constructive.''

With her heroine Mak, Moss wanted to create a character who was strong and smart ''but slightly naive at the beginning so that I could take her on a journey and give her an arc of sort through the series''.

Cate Kennedy Interview

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cate_kennedy.jpg    Cate Kennedy came into notice with her novel The World Beneath in 2009, but she is mainly known for her short stories. She has a new collection of them titled Like a House on Fire and she recently spoke to Helen Garner for "Readings".

'Everything's ordinary in my work,' she says when we sit down to talk about her new short story collection, Like a House on Fire. 'The whole confessional thing, where you're always taking your own emotional temperature, is no use to me. I don't have any lofty ambitions. And I don't want characters who are larger than life. I live in a very ordinary place, a farm on a river. I listen to other people and I hear what they're saying. The gift is the ordinariness - things that are well-used, unexpressed, taken for granted. I love to look at those things in a fresh way.

'People often say there has to be drama in a story, but I think, what about the day after the drama? You've had the baby or the bike accident, and you wake up the next morning. I'm really interested in aftermath - what we do with what's happened to us.'

'Like the woman in your poem who's lost a baby,' I say. 'Every morning waking is like going through a windscreen.'

'Yes,' she says, 'I'm interested in the way people behave when power has been stripped from them. The way they put themselves back together again. Not so much what they're feeling or thinking, but what they do. We're revealed by our actions. I want people in my stories to act, even if what they're doing seems distorted or deformed by the damage that's been done to them. That's what keeps me watching them.'

Interview with Lily Brett

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lily_brett.jpg    Lily Brett won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Fiction in 1995 for her novel Just Like That, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book award in 2000 for Too Many Men. She recently published her fourth novel, Lola Bensky, and spoke to Jessica Au for "Readings"

Lola Bensky follows a 19-year-old rock journalist as she traverses the music scene from London to LA in 1967. You also began your career writing for Australian rock newspaper Go-Set at 18. Do you think that writing from or of ourselves allows for greater depth or truth?

I think that one way or another we all write from our own experience. No-one else is creating the characters or the stories. Whether the facts or the storylines match our real lives is irrelevant. I think it is important to write about what you know. What you care about. What matters.

I try to be as honest as I can when I write. I try not to flinch or to disguise or shy away from something that might feel very painful to me. I want people to know who they are reading about, whether the character is a rock journalist or a private detective.

Lola shares several contemplative moments with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and co. - music icons that you also interviewed over the years. There's a charisma and vulnerability to each of these characters as we see them through Lola's eyes. How do you approach writing these real-life personalities in fiction?

When I write about real-life personalities in fiction, I want to make those portraits as accurate as I can. I want to portray the people I am writing about as real people, which they are. I did this in my novel, Too Many Men, with Rudolph Hoess, the commandant of the death camp Auschwitz. I wanted to show Rudolph Hoess as a real person - a husband, a father, a hard worker, someone we could all identify with, not as someone you could easily dismiss as just a monster.

I thought about Lola Bensky and that period of time in the mid to late 1960s for many years before I wrote the book. I made a lot of notes. When I did start writing it was very intense. I worked seven days a week for 11 months. I barely went outside. I was certain that I must be suffering from a vitamin D deficiency because of the lack of sunlight.

I love the feeling of being immersed in a novel. Being so steeped in another world that that world becomes your reality. For the entire time I was writing Lola Bensky I was in 1967. The fact that it was 2011 barely registered. One of the surprising things about writing is that if you are still enough, memories and feelings that have been buried for decades can emerge with great clarity.

Robert G. Barrett (1942-2012)

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robert_barrett.jpg    The Australian writer Robert G. Barrett has died after a long battle with cancer. Best known for his novels featuring his hard, street-wise character, Les Norton, Barrett wrote over 20 novels starting with You Wouldn't be Dead for Quids in 1984. He turned to writing after sustaining a work place injury and taking a writing course. His novels were very popular in Australia and he is said to have sold over 1 million copies of his books.

Margo Lanagan Interview

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margo_lanagan.jpg    Margo Lanagan's most recent book is Sea Hearts (aka The Brides of Rollrock Island), a young adult fantasy novel. She recently spoke to Stephen C. Ormsby about the writing and publishing trade:

Do you see the future of fantasy and science fiction as bright? If so, which authors are driving it?

Oh, fantasy and science fiction are very bright, particularly as the movie industry is becoming capable of reproducing our stories on-screen so much better now.

Who's driving it? Well, the huge sellers, Rowling and Meyer, are kicking the market along nicely. I wouldn't say there were particular authors who were leading either genre in new directions; we're all following our own obsessions, and we move the thing along (and in a thousand different directions at once!) collectively rather than individually.

What themes are being overused?

Any theme that's being picked up because the author thinks it's trendy, rather than because it's something they want in their heart to explore. I think if you've got a burning desire to write YOUR vampire or mermaid novel, you shouldn't be put off by people saying that that horse has bolted.

Are movies of books ruining the book?

Sometimes they are; sometimes they're doing absolutely staggeringly wonderful things for the book. The movie of The Hunger Games, for example!

I know, you don't quite mean that. But no, movies and novels are two different experiences, and a novel continues existing, with its own integrity, even after a movie's been made of it, whether that movie reduced or insulted the book or whether it extended and enriched our experience of the story. Books have nothing to fear.

Do you see ebooks threatening traditional publishing?

Not threatening, just adding a whole array of new challenges. I've no doubt that the best and most flexible publishers will survive the onslaught of epublishing and go on to great things.

Gillian Mears Interview

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gillian_mears.jpg    Gillian Mears has had a big year with her novel Foal's Bread, being shortlisted for most of the major Australian literary awards, and winning a few of them, including The Age Book of the Year Award and the Prime Minister's Literary Award. She spoke to Estelle Tang for the "Kill Your Darlings" weblog.

In the preamble to Foal's Bread, there's an exhortation: 'Man, woman, boy or girl, when you arrive at the jacaranda tree, take a lick of your horse's salty neck.' Is this something you did when riding a horse? What of your own experiences on a horse did you draw on for this book?

I grew up in northern NSW, in Grafton, and probably from the age of 9 to 20 nothing was more important for me than riding horses, and horses. Grafton is a very subtropical, humid town, so often there were lots of storms. So prior to a storm, the humidity builds - and my horse would often develop a very deep sweat. So it was a just a delicacy, really, to take a little lick.

Was that out of dehydration or was it more of a physical bond you felt with the horse?

The latter. It was a playful thing to do. It's incredible how salty a horse's neck is. I had read somewhere that during World War I the soldiers would be very starving for salt so they would lick the light horses. That always stayed with me.

[...]

It is beautiful how memories can coalesce in a way that is unexpected, especially throughout a life that goes unfulfilled. I want to talk about that great chasm between promise and lack of fulfillment. What is it about fallen dreams that strikes us so much when we read other people's stories?

I knew when I set out to write Foal's Bread that I did want to fill my readers with a feeling of yearning. And the unfulfilled promise of Noah Nancarrow, nothing does that more profoundly for me. Lainey, her daughter, realises that the thing her mother most didn't want to be was mediocre. And with all the Olympics frenzy at the moment - there's something unbearably empty about winning, and yet it quite clearly pierces the public's longing for triumph. So I think I was interested in writing about those things in the high jump world, something which is a totally deceased world, really.

Emily Maguire Interview

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fishing_for_tigers.jpg    Emily Maguire burst onto the Australian literary scene with her first novel, Taming the Beast, in 2004. She is now back with her new book, Fishing for Tigers and she was recently interviewed by Bronte Coates for "Readings".

Your first novel, Taming the Beast, portrays an intimate relationship between a female student and her male teacher. Here, you explore a relationship between an older woman and younger man. How aware were you of differences and stereotypes while writing these characters?

Age and gender and all that play a part in who we are, but how much of a part and in what way varies enormously. It would be a mistake to attempt to write 'an eighteen-year-old' or whatever. I can only write this particular eighteen-year-old and that particular thirty-five-year old woman and so on. So, in that sense, I'm no more aware of stereotypes related to their ages than I am about anything else. They each are who they are.

As for the differences between characters of different ages, well, again, it's more about how those differences (and similarities) play out in specific situations. In the case of Taming the Beast, that relationship is criminal as well as unethical. In Fishing for Tigers it's an unusual pairing, but the ethical questions it raises are more slippery. The specific life experiences and associated vulnerabilities of Mischa and Cal are, arguably, more important in terms of how their relationship plays out than the age difference.

Amy Espeseth Interview

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sufficient_grace.jpg    Scribe Publications certainly seem to be able to pick some very interesting sounding novels. One of their latest is Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth. The author spoke to Deborah Robertson for "Readings". Excellent cover as well.

In her entrancing debut novel, Sufficient Grace, winner of the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, Amy Espeseth takes us into a community of Pentecostal fundamentalists and tells a mighty tale of sin and retribution, intimately examining the lives of people whose religion is a warm yet claustrophobic embrace.

Set in rural Failing, Wisconsin, the novel is narrated by thirteen-year-old Ruth: 'Daddy says you can tell a lot about a man's heart from the way he kills a deer. First off, a body don't shoot if he ain't willing to take it all the way. A guy takes a bad shot and wounds something good, he best get himself ready for some long trails tracking.'

Sufficient Grace is not a novel built from research or flights of fancy, but one that is deeply embedded in its author's own experience. Of Norwegian descent, Amy Espeseth was born into a fundamentalist Pentecostal family in Barron, Wisconsin, in 1974. She has lived in Australia for the past 16 years, but given her novel's keen sense of authenticity and rootedness, it was inevitable when we met that I ask her about autobiographical influences.

'For as much as I notice the small little details of the world,' says Espeseth, 'I tend to be pretty blind and ignorant about the details in my writing, and I would never have thought that I was writing about my childhood until it was pointed out to me that Ruth is very similar in nature and background and appearance and a lot of other things to me, so probably it was the closest I could get to writing in my own voice without writing a memoir.'

Clive James Interview

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nefertiti.jpg    You get the impression from this interview that Brian Appleyard originally wanted to talk about Clive James's new volume of poetry Nefertiti in the Flak Tower. But life tends to get in the way so a lot of the interview concentrates on the poet's health issues, work plans, and family complications. Whatever the original intention the final outcome is very interesting indeed.

"I had suicidal thoughts when I was young. I fancied myself as a melancholic, quite a lot of people do, it's a fashionable thing. Anyway, all these ideas were coming to me when I was going to sleep, ideas of self-destruction. They all promptly vanished the moment I was under real threat. There was a sudden urge to live. I wanted to do more, to write more."

It was, for a long time, not clear that he would make it. Close to death on several occasions, his intake of medication seems to have been vast and not always welcome: "They once gave me a mood stabiliser because I was getting a little ratty. I mean, the last thing you want as a writer is a mood stabiliser."

[...]

He has always written poetry. This, he says, is his best book -- "I have never before reached this pitch of intensity" -- but it is also his darkest. Well known for his television shows, his comical memoirs and his hilarious book reviews, he has, as a writer, always been much darker than his public persona would suggest. One review that he wrote about The Incredible Hulk was included as part of an English exam. A woman who sat the exam paper recently wrote to tell him she had to be escorted from the room because she was laughing so much.

Toni Jordan Interview

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nine_days.jpg    Toni Jordan came to our attention back in 2008 with her first novel Addition, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. She is now back with her third novel, Nine Days and she recently spoke to Linda Morris for "The Age":

At a guess, the photograph [see cover at top] was taken some time in 1940, probably at Melbourne's Spencer Street Station. War had been declared in Europe and Menzies was backing Britain, boots and all. Neither the limbless veterans of Pozieres nor Europe's grim battlefield graveyards could check the enthusiasm of Australia's sons busting to fight for the Empire...

...Text publisher Michael Heyward had come across the still many years before while flicking through the archives of Melbourne's State Library and passed it to Jordan as she was casting about for an idea for her next novel.

''I noticed how gorgeous it was,'' Jordan says. ''It is a really heartbreaking moment but I didn't know if it could translate into something, and I really didn't think it would.''

She stuck the picture over her desk and for almost a year thought she'd never find a story to match its intimacy and grandeur.

Then, one day in July last year, the story came tumbling out. ''I just thought and I just typed.''

Chloe Hooper Interview

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the_engagement.jpg    Chloe Hooper's first novel was A Child's Book of True Crime back in 2002. That was followed by the very successful non-fiction work,The Tall Man. Now she has returned to fiction with The Engagement. The author recently spoke to Jane Sullivan for "The Age":

"I had a dark night of the soul after this book went to the printer,'' Chloe Hooper confesses. ''I thought, 'Don't tell me I've just done a literary Fifty Shades of Grey'.''

Let's be clear about this. Hooper's second novel, The Engagement, is not a sadomasochistic romp designed to titillate millions of women readers. It's a sophisticated, multilayered work that combines the headlong appeal of a thriller with a nuanced mystery about our darker sexual and romantic desires.

What it does do, however, is pose much the same questions as everyone is asking about the extraordinary Shades of Grey phenomenon. What is it that women fantasise about, and why? Do they want to be their dream man's bride, or sex slave?

Hooper, aged 39, a tall, slim woman with clear pale eyes, is best known in Australia for her acclaimed 2008 non-fiction book The Tall Man, but started out as a novelist (her first novel, A Child's Book of True Crime, came out in 2002 and was shortlisted for the British Orange Prize for women's fiction). She did her homework after she finished The Engagement and read Fifty Shades of Grey, which she found very formulaic.

Jacinta Halloran Interview

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pilgrimage.jpg    Jacinta Halloran was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer in 2007. That manuscript was subsequently published by Scribe under the title Dissection. Halloran has now published her second novel, Pilgrimage, and she recently spoke to Jane Sullivan for The Sydney Morning Herald:

We're talking at a cafe near Halloran's home in Elwood, where she lives with her husband and three children. She's a slight, slim figure dressed in shades of brown, with expressive hands, and is all too aware that in her novels and short stories she tends to write about female doctors facing a personal crisis.

But she says that's not autobiographical. ''I'm interested in writing about a character who has tried to live her life and, for whatever reasons, circumstances have conspired and she ends up in a situation where things haven't turned out the way she might have hoped.

''How does she move on to make sense of her life? I'm interested in struggle and how that might or might not be resolved.'' She laughs. ''I'm not really interested in happy things.''

Pilgrimage came about after Halloran took a two-week trip to Romania to see ottoman carpets at the Black Church in Brasov. She had a vague idea she would like to set a novel overseas and Romania sounded inspiring: ''Transylvania! The Black Church!''

What she found was a sombre country still recovering from the repressions of the Ceausescu regime, a great sense of hospitality and pride in local customs, and the glimmerings of a story.

Belinda Castles Interview

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hannah_emil.gif    Belinda Castles won the Australian/Vogel Award back in 2006 for The River Baptists and, while it has been some time between drinks, she has returned in 2012 with her second novel Hannah & Emil. She recently spoke to Jessica Au for "Readings":

Tell us about writingHannah & Emil - where did the idea start for you?

Hannah and Emil is based on the lives of my grandparents. As a child I knew bits and pieces about their lives but there were two secrets that emerged when my German grandfather died. One was that my grandmother was Jewish, and so then were her sons, and that my grandfather had had a German family before meeting my grandmother. His German son died fighting for the Hitler Youth Army. This was made doubly poignant because my grandfather's father was murdered by the Nazis.

These facts stayed with me and later in life, when I received a batch of letters my grandmother had written to Melbourne from Kent after WWII to friends there, I felt that I had her voice. As soon as I expressed interest in writing this book, there was a deluge of papers, photographs, anecdote - a real treasure trove. It became something I had to do, a responsibility to my family and to myself.

Paul D. Carter Interview

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eleven_seasons.jpg    Paul D. Carter's novel, Eleven Seasons, won the 2012 Australian/Vogel Award earlier this year. The author recently spoke to Angela Meyer for the Melbourne Writers Festival blog:

I like how the novel interrogates different cultures around the game--good and bad--through Jason's encounters. Was it important to you to shine a light on both the positive and negative aspects?

My greatest aim with this novel was to write a book that dealt with football but which non-followers of the game could appreciate. I wanted to get the reader to think of football as a sphere in his life that was interdependent with the other spheres in his life: his relationship with his mother, his relationships with his friends, his relationships with girls. Football is something he uses for a sense of selfhood and direction, in the same way that other people might embrace music or dance to provide themselves with these things.

This said, I felt it was important to look at the way the way football culture might inhibit him as much as it provides him with solace. I think it can be easy to escape the hard work of growing up and figuring yourself out if you are part of a club or institution that does this figuring out for you. I think this issue extends to cultural pursuits outside of football as well, but in football it is quite explicit.

Geoffrey McGeachin Interview

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blackwattle_creek.jpg    Geoffrey McGeachin won a Ned Kelly Award for his 2010 novel, The Diggers Rest Hotel, the first Charlie Berlin novel. Now he's back with a follow-up, Blackwattle Creek, and he was interviewed for the Penguin website on its release.

What is your new book about?

Blackwattle Creek catches up with Charlie Berlin in 1957, ten years on from his introduction in The Diggers Rest Hotel. Berlin is still a Melbourne copper, still dealing with the traumas of his wartime service but he is now married with kids and a house in the suburbs. He seems to be holding it all together but an apparently simple request from his wife to have a chat with a just-widowed friend leads to his life spiralling out of control as he's embroiled in events that take him down a very dark path.

What or who inspired it?

I wanted to pick up Charlie ten years later and see how he was coping and also to see how Australian society was changing over that period. This took me to 1957 post-Olympics Melbourne and I had an idea about an object being inadvertently placed into a coffin and having to be retrieved. That actually came about from my father's favourite cap being put into his coffin rather than placed on top with his wartime medals. Though his cap was never retrieved the incident gave me an idea for a story where a soldier's medals are accidentally placed inside the coffin and when his widow asks for them back she sees something disturbing. Coming across something called Project Sunshine, while doing research, let me tie in British atomic testing in Australia, radioactive fallout and Cold War paranoia, and then I was off and running.

What was the biggest challenge, writing it?

My biggest challenge was probably making time since I have a parallel career as a photography teacher. I love historical research and creating characters and letting my imagination wander so I need a fair bit of mulling time - a few extra hours in the day or days in the week would be useful.

Robert Hughes (1938-2012)

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robert_hughes.jpg

Robert Hughes (1938-2012), the expatriate Australian art critic and writer, has died in New York after a long illness.  There are many obituaries out there already and by reading them you'll get a good idea of what he did and what he wrote.  A couple of good pieces that you may well miss have been written by Chong on his Culture Mulcher blog for Crikey.


Elsewhere:

"The Age", "The Australian", "Herald Sun", "The Sydney Morning Herald", "The Brisbane Times", "The Guardian", "The Telegraph", "The New York Times", "The Los Angeles Times", "The Financial Times".

Mike Shuttleworth Interview

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mike_shuttleworth.jpg    Mike Shuttleworth is the program director for the 2012 Melbourne Writers Festival. As the event gets closer, he spoke to The Wheeler Centre blog.

This is your first year as program manager with the Melbourne Writer's Festival. What's been the best thing about the job so far?

Working with a fantastic and dedicated team has been amazing. We have programming committees with a lot of expertise and that helps, too. Steve Grimwade's understanding of how to put a festival together is something to marvel at.

What's been your biggest challenge?

Aligning guests to panels so that we can show writers to their best is obviously what it's all about. Making use of visiting writers' time, so that they are busy - but not beaten like a rented mule - is always a challenge, so there is a lot of negotiation that goes on well before we launch.

Getting my head around a program with 400 writers, 350 sessions and some big international programs has been pretty challenging. It has been full-on since February, when we put the schools program to bed, and will remain that way until late on Sunday 2 September when Robert Dessaix gives the closing night address. He really is an extraordinary and singular voice in Australian writing.

Mischa Merz Interview

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bruising.jpg    I must admit that, post Ali, I haven't had a lot of interest in boxing. In the sixties and seventies it seemed to be a global cultural phenomenon. Maybe because, aside from the Olympics, it was the only sport that seemed to be televised and viewed across the world. I've noticed the steady rise of women's boxing, but only in passing. Angela Meyer may have a similar overall view of the sport - I can't be sure - but she was certainly intrigued and captivated by Mischa Merz's Bruising, an account of her life in the ring. Meyer interviewed the author for her weblog LiteraryMinded.

You mention in the book that women are encouraged to be aware of aggression, or aggressive exercise as catharsis, but are generally discouraged to take it as far as fighting. Do you think many women might be held back by what they still see as 'inappropriate' displays of strength and ferocity?

I think probably less and less with each generation. Women of my age (without being too specific) were probably more self-conscious and you still hear them worry about building too much muscle or looking strong. And in some of the classes I have taken they are appalled at the suggestion of hitting someone. Even when I ask them to hit me, who has been hit many times and is virtually immune to it, they shake their heads as if I have asked them to decapitate me. Others are more keen to give it a go and a small number of them can be quite dangerous and I have to really watch myself with them. Back when I started, though, aggression by women was still regarded as something only the insane or hysterical would do or maybe a last resort for a woman being attacked. People struggled with the idea that it was functional rather than emotional and that physical aggression has legitimate application in sport. But this idea that you only hit someone if you're upset or out of control made it hard for women to take it on. They quite naturally didn't want to look crazy. And fair enough. But these days I see teenage girls really mixing it up and getting very physical and aggressive in sport without a second thought. I think there's a parallel with surfing. Women's surfing has really taken off in the same time frame as I have been boxing and they had to deal with the same doubts and discouragement. But then men were teaching their daughters from young and so a whole bunch of women have popped up fully formed. But there is still a bit of resistance with boxing. Men still say things like 'girls are too pretty to box' as if there are no pretty boys also boxing. It also implies that a woman's looks are more important than anything else about them. But I've seen quite a few women now with slightly bent noses and frankly, it enhances their looks. Maybe that's just me seeing them through the skewed eyes of a fanatic. I tend to regard anyone with a broken nose as being slightly more beautiful.

Venero Armanno Interview

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venero_armanno.jpg    Venero Armanno's ninth novel, Black Mountain has just been published by University of Queensland Press. He spoke to Jessica Au of the "Readings" weblog:

The novel takes us from the sulphur mines of Sicily to the slopes of Mt Etna and into the centre of 20th century Paris - what was a research process like?

Both those areas you mention were infinitely fascinating to me, so there came a time when I had to physically force myself to quit the research and actually start writing.

Really, the terrible nature of life and death in the sulphur mines, juxtaposed with the excesses of life in the Paris of the twenties - especially in the maisons closes (legalised high-class brothels) - could have kept me occupied another ten or twenty years.

The thing is, I'm a writer of fiction, so I always need to remind myself that research isn't 'story' and that there is a time to absorb all that research, and consider it, then more or less forget it and start to concentrate on characters and what their particular journeys might be.

I will say though that I've now got material enough for plenty more books that might flow from Black Mountain. We'll just have to see if this one finds a readership interested in seeing what might come next.

Nicki Reed Interview

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unzipped.jpg    Nicki Reed's debut novel Unzipped is published this month by Text. She spoke to the "Readings" website about the novel, seeing it in a bookshop for the first time and Daniel Craig.

Tell us about the first time you ever saw one of your books in a bookshop.

The first time I saw Unzipped was at Readings Carlton. I looked at it and couldn't look at it. I didn't cry but I considered it. I was with a friend and she took a photo of >me and the book on her phone. Later I walked past the Australian authors section and there was that beautiful cover, face-out and eye-level, shock and delight and good measure of 'eh?!'

In an alternate life, what would you be if not a writer?

Who needs an alternate life? I've got two lives. The writing life, where I've written a novel, had it published, people care what I think and my domestic life, three sons and a husband, parent teacher interviews, wrestles over homework and kisses goodnight. It is peculiar to turn up to a photo shoot and an interview then get back into your car and be who you were before. See missed calls from your other life. Which Nicki will I be today?

Isobelle Carmody Interview

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isobelle_carmody.jpg    Australian fantasy author Isobelle Carmody has a new book out titled Metro Winds. This is a collection of short stories and features a series of takes on traditional fairy tales. The author spoke to Samantha Selinger-Morris for "The Age":

Why, you wonder, has Carmody taken a proverbial shredder to the usual fantasy archetypes and instead dragged her otherworldly characters through the dross of ordinary life?

''Because I think there's this perception that fantasy and fairytales don't have anything to say about life,'' says Carmody, one of Australia's most successful fantasy writers. ''And the thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life. Once upon a time, if you wanted to talk about the notion of child abandonment, of a mother not being a good mother, that's built into the mother who sends the babes into the woods and they use the bits of bread or stones to come home again. [These stories were] a way of looking at these possibilities that you didn't talk about.

''I don't believe in fairies floating around and I don't believe in telepathy but there are things I want to say that just simple real-life stories don't let me say.''

The key to why Carmody would turn to fairytales to explore real-life heartache lies with the author's childhood. Her upbringing has many of the markings of a tale by the Brothers Grimm.

Alex Miller Interview

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alex_miller.jpg    Alex Miller is in Europe promoting his latest novel Autumn Laing. When he was in Ireland he spoke to Arminta Wallace for "The Irish Times":

"One of the pleasures of writing fiction," he says, "is that if you get the setting right, and if you get the story right - the situation blowing up like a beautiful big storm cloud - characters arrive fully formed. And you think, Yes, I'll have that one, and that one; thanks, mate. It's a wonder. And a great delight to see them. They come in out of the mists of nothing, with gestures already developed."

Miller is forthright and opinionated, with the confidence that comes from a lifetime of work in his field - he's 76 - and a plethora of prizes, including two Miles Franklin Literary Awards, a Commonwealth Writer's Prize, even a Chinese Annual Foreign Novels 21st Century Award.

What interests him most in fiction, he says, is the complexity of human relationships. That, he says, is what novels should be about - and what keeps them interesting to us. He achieves this in spades in Autumn Laing, whose gossipy, fully rounded central characters weave an ensemble dance as compelling as any soap opera. He says he wrote the book in five months. "And it's the biggest book I've ever written. But it's all of a piece. All of a mood."

Sue Woolfe Interview

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oldest_song_in_the_world.jpg    Sue Woolfe is probably best known for her 1996 novel Leaning Towards Infinity, which won the South East Asia and South Pacific Region Best Book award in the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. She has just published her latest novel, The Oldest Song in the World, and she spoke to Linda Morris for "the Age":

The extremities of Australia's interior and the blunderings of well-intentioned whites are what salt Woolfe's fourth novel, The Oldest Song in the World, a departure of backdrop and topic for the award-winning novelist who has tended to familiar urban settings in her long fascination with frustrated genius and the bonds between mothers and daughters.

Woolfe's first novel in nine years begins as a familiar fish-out-of-water tale before opening out into a novelistic exploration of the disconnect between black and white culture via a heroine marooned by personal adversity.

...

The interior first beckoned in 2005, two years after publication of her third novel, The Secret Cure, while on sabbatical from the University of Sydney, where she teaches creative writing. Her daughter, Kitty, had been offered work experience in a remote Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory and Woolfe accompanied her for an initial two-week sojourn, then stayed for more than a year and a half.

In that dry brush country, nursing children in her lap, Woolfe would muse for hours on what drew the eyes of indigenous women to the horizon, how Aboriginal culture valued companionable silence over idle chit-chat, and the complex web of kin that leaves little room for friendships.

All the while Woolfe wrote, without once inciting curiosity about the thoughts she put on paper. It occurred to Woolfe, a writer by stubborn temperament and profession, that this was a truly non-materialistic, paperless culture. ''I remember walking up the road and it was a sunny afternoon, not too hot, and all the women of the family were lying on a verandah, a lot of undulating bodies, and they were chatting about this and that, and I had this immense sense of what a lonely society we are.''

Clive James - Not Dead Yet

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It seems that the news of Clive James's imminent demise was rather over-cooked.  Yes, he's unwell. No, he's not dropping off the twig just yet.

It seems the reports were a little doctored by a certain media outlet to give the impression that James was on the way out.  The man himself explains, and John Birmingham sees an interesting side of the story.

Clive James Health Update

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Back in December I mentioned here that Clive James was unwell with leukemia and lung problems.  He has now admitted that he thinks he'll never visit Sydney again as his lung problems make it impossible for him to fly.  Reading between the lines, you'd have to conclude that he doesn't think he'll have much longer.

Adam Ford Interview

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adam_ford.jpg    Adam Ford is a poet and novelist who lives in Castlemaine in country Victoria. The "Wild Colonial Girl" is aiming to move to that town and recently spoke to Adam about living in Castlemaine and the literature scene there.

Are there any books set in the area?

Fiction? Not that I know of, which is unforgiveable of me. There probably are -- I'll have to look into that. I have read a few local histories, and know of some others that are about. I have also read and heard a number of poems about the area, but nothing specifically set up as "poems about Castlemaine".

What's Castlemaine Word Mine? Why was it set up?

I came along post-establishment, but the brief version is that it's a group of writers who've set up a non-profit organisation to promote writing and reading in the area. We run a monthly reading series and are starting to offer a few writing workshops as well. We have worked and are developing plans to work more in partnership with other writing and reading organisations in the area, like the local library, local art festivals, local independent journalism websites and the like. We were set up around mid-2011, so it's early days for us yet.

Peter Carey's New Award

Further to the entry on Peter Carey's latest novel on Monday comes the news that the author was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday honors announced on Monday.  You can read reactions from "The Age" and "The Australian".

Paul D. Carter Interview

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eleven_seasons.jpg    Paul D. Carter recently won the Australian-Vogel Literary Award for his novel Eleven Seasons. This is a rare beast, an Australian novel about sport, which follows the young career of Jason Dalton who joins the AFL team Hawthorn. The author spoke to Chris Flynn for "Readings".

After setting out to write a sports story (inspired by the baseball prologue in Don DeLillo's Underworld), Carter quickly realised that there was more value in using AFL as a means to explore how young men mature into adulthood, or in some cases, avoid doing so: 'It's hard being young because you have no autonomy and you have a lot of anger, a lot of angst. Sport, music, fashion, having a place to go can help sublimate those feelings into a safe place, which is self-productive.' Eleven Seasons not only tackles these feelings of needing to belong but also raises vital questions about how cloistered education and young adult life can be.

'What's the difference between being a man and being an adult? Is the world of football, which is full of men, a substitute for being an adult? What is it that characterizes a man as being distinct from a boy? Richard Ford said in The Lay of the Land that being a man is all about showing hardness. I think that's pretty true. Male models never smile, Clint Eastwood never smiles, rich men on magazine covers never smile. There's a firmness, a hardness there, you've graduated from being a boy, you carry the weight of something. The best representations of masculinity often come across in performance. The characters in the book, particularly at the football club, are constantly expressing their manliness through bravado.'

Tony Cavanaugh Interview

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promise.jpg    Tony Cavanaugh has been best known to date for his scriptwriting for film and television. Now he has turned his hand to a novel and has produced Promise, about a psychopath who targets teenage girls. He was interviewed by Steve Dow for "The Age":

It took Cavanaugh, who lives on the Gold Coast, just three months of full-time writing, often beginning at 3am, to produce Promise, about a psychopath, Winston, who stalks the Sunshine Coast hinterland armed with extensive readings in the serial killer literary canon and the psychological tropes of "cognitive thinking" and "catastrophising", and who is being pursued by Darian Richards, a retired, clever and superficially misanthropic homicide detective.

Clearly there was a creative upside to the dark mood in which Cavanaugh found himself after the recent "reasonably traumatic" collapse of his marriage to film writer and director Simone North - he produced her film I Am You, based on the real story of the murder of a teenage girl - but he wouldn't recommend others follow a course of separation and divorce to fuel a first novel.

The father of three has dedicated Promise to his children Delaware, Charlie and Scarlett, but wants his youngest to wait before reading it; the graphic noir nature of Winston's brutality required the author to take cold showers.

Garth Nix's Big Idea

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A few days back I linked to an interview with Garth Nix regarding his new novel, A Confusion of Princes. Garth has now written a short piece about how it came about for John Scalzi's blog "Whatever".  As Scalzi puts it, Nix's journey "is best described as a series of detours".  Nix, himself, says:

I'm not sure any of my novels have any one big idea. I like the concept of a humongous idea striking suddenly, after months or possibly years of lying around doing not much at all, allied with the popular belief that post-lightning all you have to do is retreat to a darkened room and bash out the words, a kind of a minor bureaucratic tidy-up after the brilliance of the lightning bolt.

Maybe it does work like that for some writers. But for me the ideas are more like sparks of static electricity. Mostly small, and myriad, and occasionally annoying. They are also not random, but generated by the act of writing (in which I would include daydreaming, note-jotting and open-mouthed musing to say, the neighbourhood cat). The writing generates more ideas, in turn inspiring more writing, which generate more ideas and so on.

In the case of A Confusion of Princes, it would need the psychoprobe of classic science fiction to identify and separate all the ideas and the seeds for those ideas. This is because it took me a long time to write this book, while I was also writing other books, so I can't remember. (To tell the truth, even when I write a book quickly I find it difficult to identify the genesis of any particular idea. Usually I just make something up that sounds plausible.)

Drusilla Modjeska Interview

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the_mountain.jpg    Drusilla Modjeska is best known for her non-fiction (Poppy, The Orchard and Stravinsky's Lunch being prime examples), but now she has decided to take a wander down the fiction road with her first novel The Mountain, She was recently interviewed by Geordie Williamson for "Readings":

'Looking back, I think I was always a kind of novelist in hiding and I rather wish I'd learned the art of fiction after Poppy. I guess the reasons I didn't are complex - to do with having one foot in the university system, probably psychological reasons going back to childhood when I'd get into trouble for my 'stories' (my mother called them my embroidery!) and also a deep vein of interest in history which also goes right back to early days of school.'

Just as tough to resolve was the question of relations between history and invented experience, since Modjeska's academic background had in the past placed her on the other side of the divide. The challenge, she says, 'was learning to trust the characters as the foundation of the novel and let the history speak through them'. It is a measure of her success that the huge amounts of information contained in The Mountain - from the early years of independence to Highland bark-cloth design, traditional land ownership and forest exploitation - are allowed to unfold through characters' individual experience rather than editorials embedded in the text.

The question all of this information raises is more personal: to what degree has the author's life informed The Mountain? While Modjeska is at pains to explain that the novel is not autobiographical, she readily admits how deeply it has been informed by her time in Papua New Guinea (she did go into the field with her then husband, and completed a year at university in Port Moresby before moving to Australia in the early 1970s), by her return trips, and by her wide reading of history, poetry, fiction and anthropology by locals and outsiders. More recently, Modjeska's efforts to establish small-scale education and arts-based projects in two villages has renewed her ties to PNG:

'I like Hilary Mantel's phrase "informed imagination" and that's how I think of it, and what I hope I have come some way towards achieving. So yes, the "history", the background against which the lives and loves of the characters take shape is 'informed' and I hope will be recognisable to others who have lived through those extraordinary years, but it is as much an exercise in "imagination"... For instance, while Rika and Aaron are fully imagined characters, the conflicting pressures on them - political, emotional, cultural - are informed by what I have seen, and known (in others) and read.'

James Bradley Interview

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james_bradley.jpg    Sydney-based writer James Bradley was recently awarded the Pacall Prize as Australia's best critic. He publishes his reviews and critical essays in newspapers such as "The Age", "The Sydney Morning Herald" and "The Australian" as well as a number of Australian literary magazines. He also blogs at "City of Tongues" where he occasionally reprints his critical works. I've always liked James's reviews: he isn't genre-centric and is quite willing to review science fiction on television as well as literary novels. Added to that you always come away from one of his reviews knowing full well if the work under discussion is worth your time. A rare ability these days it seems.

Stephen Romei interviewed James, after his win, for "The Australian":

Q: James, congratulations on winning the Pascall. What does this award mean to you?

A: It's incredibly exciting and very flattering. But it's also slightly humbling, because I tend to think of myself as a jobbing writer rather than something as exalted as a critic.

Q: As the judges say, you are a practicioner-critic, someone who experiences both sides of the fence. How does this inform your approach to reviewing? And, more broadly, what are your principles for reviewing, what do you set out to achieve, in the review itself and in the wider cultural/literary discussion?

A: I think people tend to assume reviewing and writing are somehow at odds with each other, but I've never really felt they are. But I think novelists probably do approach books slightly differently to other readers, since it's difficult for us not to be aware of how mysterious the process of creation actually is, or to turn off that bit of the brain that is looking at the nuts and bolts and wiring and wondering how they pulled that off. Likewise as a writer I suspect you're a bit more aware of the way something sits in a living tradition: if somebody's writing about something the chances are it's responding to things you've thought about as well, or even written about, so there's a real thrill (and sometimes a little bit of envy) when you see someone really knock something out of the park. Whether any of that shows up on the page I don't know, but I think it's there nonetheless.

As for principles, someone once said that the only bad writing is dishonest writing, and I tend to agree. The best thing you can do is write from the heart and talk about how you felt and what you think. Part of that is about being honest about what you thought, but it's also about acknowledging your own prejudices and being prepared to acknowledge critical judgements are always provisional. I know a lot of the writing I'm proudest of is writing where I'm trying out ideas, or exploring something I'm not quite sure about. Partly that's because the best writing is always actively engaged with thinking something through, but it's also because it helps break down the barrier between the reader and the writer, and to make them part of the process. One of the reasons I hate pontificating in print is because critical writing should always be part of a conversation, and nothing kills a conversation quicker than some windy know-all.

Basically though, I write about books and film and television because I love them and find them endlessly pleasurable and exciting, and I want to find a way of sharing that passion. In my experience most critics are basically enthusiasts, and I'm no different.

Garth Nix Interview

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confusion_princes.jpg    Garth Nix has turned his hand to space opera with his new novel, A Confusion of Princes. The book was released in Australia in mid-April, and in the UK and USA in mid-May. The author was interviewed by Michael Levy for "Publishers Weekly".

Although you've written science fiction in the past, you're best known for your fantasy series. Why write one versus the other?

I'm not sure that there's anything that you can't do in either form. In any genre you're working in you can always find a way to tell a particular kind of story. I love fantasy, I love science fiction, I love all kinds of fiction, in fact. I don't particularly know why I chose to write a science fiction story except that the book seemed to lend itself to a science-fictional setting. I could probably have written it as fantasy, too - a story about a vast empire and near-immortal princes who are reborn and who are superior to normal humans in many ways except ethically, but for some reason I wanted to write a space opera adventure so that's the story that came out. A Confusion of Princes has a classic coming-of-age structure, it's a bildungsroman, so the core characteristics of the story, the setting and the tropes, are less important than the human story at the center.

A Confusion of Princes is dedicated to Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton, the best YA science fiction writers of the mid-20th century. What does Princes owe them?

I've dedicated the book to Heinlein and Norton because their young adult books were very important to me growing up. One of the things I wanted to do with A Confusion of Princes was to write a modern version of the kind of adventure story that I loved when I was young, and that I still read, one that will work for teenagers and adults, and hopefully that's what I've done. This is a naval story too, so there's probably some C.S. Forester in there, as well. Also, someone asked me the other day if I was a fan of Roger Zelazny's Amber books, which I am. They're about the political machinations of princes seeking power, so there's probably a Zelazny influence as well as many others. Authors are influenced by everything they've ever read. If you've read widely enough it helps you create your own mix.

Susan Johnson Interview

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hundred_lovers.jpg    Susan Johnson's latest novel, My Hundred Lovers, is about to be released. The author spoke to Helen Greenwood for "The Age":

Johnson's latest book, My Hundred Lovers, brings wit and ambition to a mock memoir by a woman called Deborah.

Johnson imagines Deborah's life through her bodily memories and devises a bold structure based on 100 sensual moments.

The lovers of the title are not what you might expect. Chapter 16 is ''Giggling'', chapter 49 is ''A dress'', chapter 67 is ''Breasts''. Of course, Johnson trawls through Deborah's sexuality. One chapter is called ''Three men in one day'' and in another we meet ''The Deflowerer, again''. The final, enigmatic chapter is simply ''The Hundredth Lover''.

''For women, sex, eroticism and sensuality are really linked; they are not compartmentalised,'' Johnson says. ''So when people ask is it literally 100 lovers, I say, no, it's actually 100 moments of the loving life of the body and the body's lovers.''

Her book knits together themes that run through her six other novels: eroticism and sensuality, expatriation, her love of France, writing and art, and the complexities of relationships between men and women.

Clive James Watch #18

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Nefertiti in the Flak Tower

Clive James has recently released a new collection of poetry titled Nefertiti in the Flak Tower

He spoke to Mark Colvin on the "Friday Late" program on ABC News.
Derwent May reviewed the collection for Standpoint magazine and titled his piece "Never a Dull Verse".

Daily Telegraph

James is the current, or possibly recent, television reviewer for "The Daily Telegraph" in the UK.  His most recent columns are as follows:
April 12 - on The Syndicate
April 5 - Why British TV drama has lost the plot.
March 30 - They didn't see the iceberg? Neither did we

The Telegraph doesn't mention that James is on leave or why the most recent review is April 12.

Book Review

James reviews Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald for "The Atlantic":

"As with all great essayists, his writing had a poetic component, but it was a poetry cleansed of poeticism. No modern American prose writer of consequence ever postured less: compared with him, Mary McCarthy is on stilts, Gore Vidal grasps a pouncet-box, and Norman Mailer is from Mars in a silver suit. At his best, Macdonald made modern American English seem like the ideal prose medium: transparent in its meaning, fun when colloquial, commanding when dignified, and always suavely rhythmic even when most committed to the demotic.

"In fact, he seemed to get his rhythm from ordinary conversation: the hardest trick for a prose writer to pull off, because vulgarity always threatens. Macdonald, however, was poised even when he joked. His wonderful book Parodies--wonderful because the choosing is done with an ear for true wit--was constantly in print up until 1985, so he could never have quite been forgotten, but people did forget that his prose was interesting no matter what he talked about. Right through the war, he railed against the Allied bombing campaign. His humane articles never had a chance of affecting anything, because the Allied effort was dictated by the necessity to win, not by ethics; but the articles are still interesting. A dull paragraph wasn't in him."

Other

A comment forum which started in January 2008, in The Fortean Times, about an article that James wrote for The Monthly, is still going strong.

Bill Moyers interviews James on the publication of his book Cultural Amnesia.  The video upload is dated 4 May 2012, but the book was released in 2007.

Anna Funder Interview

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anna_funder.jpg    At the end of April Anna Funder was interviewed by Farid Farid for SBS. At the time of this interview the author's novel All That I Am had been longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. That has since been upgraded to a shortlisting.

The idea of refuge and exile figures in nuanced ways in your latest work, how do you feel in general towards Australia's stance with its treatment of refugees in their latest waves?

I was deeply depressed and bewildered by our treatment of refugees earlier this decade - and not only refugees. The careless exile of Vivian Solon, the reckless imprisonment of Cornelia Rau, who was mentally ill. It shames me that my country allowed refugees seeking asylum here from terrible situations to be imprisoned indefinitely without trial. It made me think very differently about what it was to be Australian. I felt that horrors were happening - suicides, hunger strikes, the permanent psychological maiming of children in suburbs not far from where I lived. I think to some extent it's still going on.

The gender controversy surrounding Miles Franklin has subsided this year with seven women including yourself being nominated for the prize, how do you feel about the whole debate?

I think that the statistics speak for themselves - too few great women writers are recognized in prizes, review space and reviewing. After that, it gets more complicated - a lot more complicated. Writing really well, independently and for the long haul takes vast repositories of self-confidence, a kind of self-belief that can be hard for sane, well-socialised women to sustain. But it can be done. And, of course, great works come also from the mad and anti-social among us too.

Peter Carey Interview

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chemistry_of_tears.jpg    Nina Caplan interviews Peter Carey, for "New Statesman", as his latest novel is published in the US:

Why is Carey so fond of these lurid, self-aggrandising lawbreakers? Most of his novels contain at least one. "I have a bad character." What, "Sumper, c'est moi"? He's joking, I think, and anyway, all characters are partially "moi". But this does seem an odd way to deflect my attention from his roots.

I can understand his reluctance: geographical stereotyping is reductive and Australians have suffered from this more than most. Until recently, white Australia was a fledgling, trying to emulate, overtake and detach itself from the mother country all at once; then there's the fraught history of white Australia's mistreatment of the original inhabitants. This book is partly about the difficulties we all have in seeing what we do not wish to see. Carey cites the New South Wales Aboriginals failing to register the incoming ships of the First Fleet "because they did not know such things existed"; a stunning piece of wilful blindness mirrored by the Englishmen, who then nearly died of starvation while surrounded by the indigenous notion of plenty. There is no tree of knowledge in the sunburned country - on the contrary. It occurs to me that if your homeland's original sin is all about obfuscation and you have ideas you wish to present clearly, it makes sense to take to your heels. Still, only an Australian would turn coming from Australia into the conversational equivalent of a crime.

But then, Carey writes incessantly about crime. His second book of short stories is en­titled War Crimes; his first, The Fat Man in History, posits a post-Marxist world where being obese is a criminal activity. He invents thieves and liars and gambling addicts and, yes, convicts. As for Ned Kelly, Carey's extraordinary act of ventriloquism had the dubious distinction of making Australia's most notorious crim an international sensation. Of the central trio in The Chemistry of Tears, one, as we have seen, almost wound up a convict (he narrowly escaped becoming a parricide, too); another is a thieving, dipsomaniac horologist, and, while Henry seems the soul of probity, he might be said to be guilty of plagiarism - a favourite Carey sin.

Elizabeth Harrower Interview

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watch_tower.jpg    I had dinner recently with W.H. Chong, cover designer for Text Publishing, and he was extolling the virtues of a book that Text were about to re-issue in their Classics line. The book was The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower. "Never heard of it," I said. He just looked at me like I was an idiot. I checked up on the author when I got home. And, yes, he was right, I really am an idiot.

As the book is being distributed Gay Alcorn interviewed the author for "The Age":

Harrower is 84, tall and straight-backed, dressed stylishly in black pants, black top and a neat neck scarf. Her fourth and last novel, The Watch Tower, was published in 1966. This month it was re-published as a Text Publishing Classic, one of 30 remarkable, and mostly out of print, Australian books. She is immensely pleased, having thought that nobody would again talk about Elizabeth Harrower, novelist, until she was dead.

..Harrower was close to Patrick White, in 1973 Australia's first winner of the Nobel prize for literature. She was friends with celebrated writers Christina Stead and Kylie Tennant and writer and political adviser Richard Hall. She was a close friend, too, of painter Sidney Nolan and his wife Cynthia. Her friends urged her to write, and were cross when she did not.

''Patrick was always very angry with me for not writing, enraged, he was horrible. Only people who really care about you care about whether you are doing that or not.'' She brings out a book White inscribed for her in 1986. ''To Elizabeth, luncher and diner extraordinaire. Sad you don't also WRITE.''

Over three hours, first at her apartment overlooking a glorious Sydney Harbour, then at lunch at a local restaurant in the inner city, Harrower tries to explain what happened. It is the first interview she has given for more than 20 years, and she talks about everything - and quizzes her interviewer in detail about all of life's doubts and joys - but she is reluctant to analyse her books and there are long pauses when she grapples with the question of why she stopped writing.

It's not as though she ran out of things to say - ''there were probably too many things to say''. It's not as though her work was poorly received - her second novel, The Long Prospect, was described as ranking ''second only to Voss as a post-war work of Australian literature''. It's not as though she was busy raising children - she never married and is childless. She doesn't dismiss the question as irrelevant, either. ''It's a very good question,'' she says.

Wendy James Interview

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the_mistake.jpg    Wendy James, who I interviewed here on "Matilda" way back in 2006. Now she has just had her fourth novel, The Mistake, published by Penguin. Recently she spoke to Angela Savage:

Out of the Silence mixes characters from real life -- like feminist suffragette Vida Goldstein and working-class country girl Maggie Heffernan -- with fiction, producing a novel that is compelling and informative. How did you come across these characters?

I'd read about Maggie Heffernan in books and articles about 19th century Australian women's history. Her story has been written about fairly frequently; it's almost a case study. I'd read about Goldstein in other contexts as well, because of her work for the suffrage and also as a pacifist, but the unexpected connection between these two very different women was immediately exciting. So many things that interest me about the nineteenth century (and ours, too) -- in particular issues surrounding class and gender -- could be explored using a compelling real life story.

You refer to the Lindy Chamberlain case in The Mistake in exposing the media's role in shaping public opinion. Were there any other real life cases or characters that inspired the novel?

The novel's initial inspiration came from the story of Keli Lane, the water-polo champion who was recently convicted of murdering her infant daughter, Tegan. Tegan hasn't been seen since she was discharged from hospital with her mother in 1996, and despite extensive police searches, authorities have been unable to locate her. Lane herself maintained throughout the period of investigation (though her story changed) that the child had been adopted out unofficially. The case is certainly sensational, but it was the attitude of some media -- including various internet sites -- that really struck me. The focus was all on Lane's perceived "character" -- promiscuous, secretive, ambitious, a liar -- rather than the available, and completely circumstantial, evidence. Like Chamberlain before her, Keli Lane was found guilty in the court of public opinion even before she went to trial.

Interview with Peter Carey

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Peter-Carey-2012.jpg    Jan Dalley, of the "Financial Times", recently had lunch with Australian author Peter Carey over a few glasses of red in New York. The author's latest novel, The Chemistry of Tears, is either just out, or just about to be, in the US. And while it's always interesting to hear a writer talk about his latest book, don't we just long for a mention, a mere hint, of the next book? Course we do.

So, I foolishly ask, does he feel jaded about US politics and the upcoming election? Suddenly, a small flash of temper. "I'm not jaded, I'm enraged, which is a little different!" Obama, he says fiercely, "tricked us".

Carey, who has had dual US-Australian citizenship since 2002, adds: "I wept when he was elected, with pleasure and joy. We never thought he was a radical but we did believe he would try to do what he said. But he was not able to, and he has a passionate belief in compromise, that's who he is. It was f**ked from the beginning. Meanwhile the other lot have got worse."

For his next book, Carey is harnessing this head of steam to fuel a new challenge, "to deal with political events in Australia". It will be, he says, a story of three generations, running from the Battle of Brisbane in 1942, through 1975, "when the American government f**ked over the Australian government", up to the present day. "I feel strongly about it - it'll be really good to write an Australian book. I often have to go back on business but otherwise my relationship with my country is through the newspapers."

I'm lost. Battle of Brisbane? "Yeah, no one knows about that." Over the course of two days in November 1942, it turns out, Australian troops and American troops attacked each other in the streets of Brisbane, with violent incidents, gunfire, barricades; there were several deaths. As for Carey's take on the constitutional crisis of 1975, we'll have to wait for the book for that. He has set it in a place just like Bacchus Marsh (where his brother and sister still live), and its narrator, an unreliable journalist, is just Carey's age. But the guy's nothing like him, he insists - although "everyone wants you to be writing about yourself".

Stephanie Alexander Interviews

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stephanie_alexander.jpg    Stephanie Alexander is best known for her monumental The Cook's Companion, the first port of call for nearly every Australian cook, including this one. But Alexander has just written a memoir titled A Cook's Life and has been talking about it.

Chris Gordon of "Readings" spoke to her:

Stephanie, congratulations on your book. I would have thought it quite a brave book to write, as an exposé of your life. What prompted you to share your memories and experiences now?

I have explained in the introduction of A Cook's Life the exact moment when I decided to try and write my memoirs. And sometimes it was painful and sad to remember and reflect, and at other times I was delighted with the memories that flooded in. It seemed important to try and acknowledge the importance of both.

The book is a memoir, rather than an autobiography. It is not a record of my entire life, day by day. Very early on I realised that my recollection of many of the important dates in my life was infuriatingly vague. I knew when I was born, when my siblings were born, and I could easily recall watershed years of school entry, university entry, travelling to Europe the first time, and opening restaurants, but within these huge chunks of living I had to do much digging into old notebooks and cross-referencing my guesses with the memories of my friends.

I loved reading about your early life and trying to pick the experiences and influences that would have an impact on you later. It does like seem like your mother was pretty extraordinary - can you tell us more about your childhood and how that's shaped you today?

I am aware that my childhood was very different to the experiences of most of my contemporaries and I am what I am today because of the influence of both my parents. Food, friendship, books and an interest in the wider world were part of my life ever since I can remember.
And Andrew Stephens had lunch with her for "The Age":

The many thousands who own Alexander's 1126-page tome The Cook's Companion might feel as if they know her already, as if she lives in their kitchen as an ''encouraging friend''. The new book brings this extraordinary person into deeper, nuanced relief: frank and informative (especially about Melbourne's restaurant history), the pages are also tempered with emotion, humour and a wonderful appreciation of pleasure and hard work. Her book gently insists through its account of her projects, family, great friendships and, through it all, her love of food, that life is intricate, a honeycomb of feelings, triumphs and loves, alongside some dreads - and regrets.

During its creation, editors asked whether she really wanted to keep certain passages in which the much-admired Alexander allows self-criticism to filter through. Yes, she did want to keep them. It was important, she says, to offer the whole of herself. ''I think I am very hard on myself ... I would be dishonest to leave that out.''

M. L. Stedman Interview

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light_between_oceans.jpg    It seems to be the time of the debut Australian novelist. After the publication of The Rook by Daniel O'Malley a few weeks back we now have The Light Between the Oceans by M.L. Stedman, an Australian author living in London. Seems publishers on both sides of the Atlantic were rather keen on this one. The author was interviewed for "The Age" by Linda Morris.
In the US, Stedman procured a ''high six-figure'' for this, her first novel-length manuscript, a rare book that crosses literary and commercial fiction. ''It was wild, just so far beyond my experience and imagining. I have no explanation for it,'' she says of the bidding war. Stedman interviewed each interested publisher, clear-eyed and stubborn in her intent to find someone who recognised her endeavours to explore life's eternal questions about truth, redemption and the nature of happiness for a broad readership of women and men.

Her belief in the authority of the reader lies partly behind her attempts to maintain relative anonymity in the wake of her mass-market success.

Her official biography comprises a single line: ''M.L. Stedman was born and raised in Western Australia and now lives in London.'' Even her first name, Margot, is concealed.

And, yes, there is a book trailer:

Discussion of Christopher Brennan, Part 3

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The following is the third of a three-part discussion of the works of Christopher Brennan that took place in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald during 1936.  It began with a report of a lecture by Hilary Lofting, and continued with an essay by John Sandes on the merits, or otherwise, of Brennan's poetry.

CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD.  

Sir,-In last Saturday's issue, under the heading "Literary Misapprehension," Mr. John Sandes says: "Mrs. Mary Gilmore wrote in a letter to the Editor of the 'Herald': "The desire to see Christopher Brennan published in enduring form is equally a desire to see Australians stand face to face among the writers of the world." Then he adds, "It may surprise Mrs. Mary Gilmore to learn that Chris. Brennan's poetical work, or, at any rate, a large part of it, was published by subscription in Sydney."

May I reply that it is no surprise to me, as I bought several copies of this collection, as well as of the smaller book. But these are but a portion of his work, and it was to a complete edition of all he did that I referred, and because no partial collection can give him the standing in Europe that his scholarship should command. Mr. Sandes in his article does not mention either Brennan's published prose or his lectures -- which even in notes were literature. It was in the desire to see all this published that I wrote the letter referred to by Mr. Sandes; and this Is, I am told, the aim of the executors. I have been told that the volume in contemplation will be about four times as large as the (sectional) one that was published by subscription.

I am, etc.,

MARY GILMORE.

King's Cross. Sept. 7.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 September 1936


CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD.

Sir,-Mrs. Mary Gllmore's letter in your issue of September 10 covers the ground in relation to the partial collection of Brennan's poetry mentioned in Mr. John Sandes's intensely interesting article. May I, as the lecturer from whose words this discussion sprang, add that I also have known this partial collection for many years, that I, in fact, read my excerpts from it at the fellowship address in question?

The theme of that address was that a "complete" collection of the work of an Australian major poet should be made available before its absence becomes a present reproach and a future loss to Australian Imagination and scholarship.

I am, etc.,

HILARY LOFTING. Sydney, Sept. 12.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September 1936


HOMAGE TO BRENNAN.    

TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD.  

Sir,-There has been much wild talk and there has been much lip service about Australia's greatest poet. We think that those of our readers who were friends of Brennan in his life, and the still larger number to whom he is an honoured name, will be glad to realise that there is no call for lamentation over the prospective loss of his work.

Brennan, before his death, had the insight to make one of his dearest and loyalest friends, R. Innes Kay, his literary executor, and Mr. Kay's loyal and thorough stewardship has prevented any ill-judged, sporadic, and inaccurate publication of Brennan's work, and has prepared the public for the edition of the forthcoming Brennan omnibus. The editing of this omnibus will be in the hands of a committee, Messrs. R. Innes Kay, J. J. Quinn, and C. H. Kaeppel, with Miss Kate Egan, treasurer, and Miss K. Donovan, secretary, It will include every surviving thing that Brennan has written, with the possible exception of his lectures on the Homeric question and his compositions in German, which have now only an antiquarian interest. The omnibus would have appeared long since, but for the difficulty in securing a small portion (not more than ten per cent.) of Brennan's work that was in the hands of others. But the committee felt, and rightly, that the omnibus should be definitive.

There is another matter to which with great happiness we refer. All lovers of Brennan's work have noted the irresistible songfulness of some of his lyrics. No one has noticed it better than Mr. Horace Keats. It has been our privilege to hear his first scores of "The Wanderer" cycle. Properly to appraise them, would, we think, take a Strangways. We would only say we recall the singing fairy of "Midsummer Night's Dream," and, that hearing them, we heard the fusion of two artists-the poet and the musician. That these gems of art will be heard in England and America it is good to know, but we may be acquitted of any parochialism if we are avowedly glad that they will be heard first in Australia -- at the forthcoming series of lectures on Brennan, all of which will conclude with selections from the Wanderer cycle, played by Mr. Keats and sung by his gifted wife, so well known by her platform name, Miss Barbara Russell.

I am, etc.,

KATHLEEN DONOVAN.

Hon. secretary, Chris Brennan Committee.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 1936

Note: this last letter was originally published on this weblog on 6 April 2011.  I've reprinted it here as it fits the rest of the discussion.

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for these pieces.]

Discussion of Christopher Brennan, Part 2

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The following is the second of a three-part discussion of the works of Christopher Brennan that took place in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald during 1936.  It began with a report of a lecture by Hilary Lofting, and will conclude next week with letters to the paper in reply to the essay below.

BRENNAN'S POEMS.

A Literary Misapprehension.

(BY JOHN SANDES.)

Mr. Hilary Lofting, in addressing the Fellowship of Australian Writers on July 15 on the poetry of the late Chris. Brennan, stated, according to the report in the "Herald" next morning, that "there is no published collection of his works." Mrs. Mary Gilmore, who is herself a well-known authoress, in referring to the statement by Mr. Lofting, wrote in a letter to the Editor of the "Herald". "The desire to see Christopher Brennan published in enduring form is equally a desire to see Australians stand face to face among the writers of the world." It may surprise the lecturer, and also Mrs. Mary Gilmore, as well as the reading public in general, to learn that Chris. Brennan's poetical work, or, at any rate, a large part of it, was published by subscription in Sydney, shortly before the war, by G. B. Philip and Son, Pitt-street. A few copies of it are still available at the publishers' well-known bookshop.

Turning over a mass of old letters and papers recently, this present writer came across a cutting from a Sydney morning newspaper. The cutting was printed early in the fateful year 1914. The journal itself has since passed away, or, perhaps, it might be more truthfully said of it, in the words of another great poet, that it

    " . . . has suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange."

The cutting contained a review article entitled "Three Poets," "An Appreciation." It dealt with "Poems" by Christopher Brennan, The Witch Maid" by Dorothea Mackellar, and "The Three Kings" by Will Lawson. The reviewer, in introducing the three, remarked that "they had little in common except for the share that each of them manifested in those inborn qualities of sympathy, reflection, intuition, depth of feeling, sensitiveness to beauty, and gift of expression, which help to make the poet as distinct from the verse-writer." He went on to observe that the poetical works of the three poets were "as dissimilar from each other as a Tschalkowsky symphony, a group of Schubert's "Lieder," and a collection of Sousa's marches -- but they all have poetry in them."

WARM EULOGY.

There is no lack of enthusiasm for Chris. Brennan's poetical merits in the review. "Mr, Chris. Brennan's large and handsomely-produced volume," we read, "brings together a mass of poetic work the composition of which has extended over many years. The author has long since established his claim to be recognised as a writer of marked originality, whose deep thought is set forth in an ornate diction, jewelled with far-sought words and phrases, that not seldom dazzle the reader so thoroughly that it is difficult to make out the outline of the idea under the rich and glittering dress in which it is presented. Mr. Chris. Brennan's poetry is not easy reading. His appeal is to the lettered few. Not at the first, or even at the second, reading will the line and mass of his thought emerge from his verse, but gradually there dawns on one an impression that this poet's plummet goes down to the profundities -- that he takes soundings in a mighty ocean where the purely lyric poets never venture. A huge discontent with the present ways of living looms up with menace. One might say that the Celtic temperament of the poet has -- blended with it -- something of the old Hebraic denunciatory fire."

That Judgment seems to be in general agreement with the opinion of Mr. Hilary Lofting that "one had almost to study Brennan's verse before one could like it." The reviewer, however, goes on to show that the poet is not always obscure and also that at times Chris. Brennan wrote not only with Hebraic fire, but also with the prophetic gift of one of those old Hebrew seers. Take, for instance, those typically Brennanesque verses ending with a prophecy the fulfilment of which at the present time, more than twenty-two years after the critique was printed, appears -- not only to the members of the Rositrucian Order at Perth, who are bent on building an asbestos tower from which to view the conflagration, but also to many millions of other people -- to be dismally imminent.

The first line of the first verse shows that the piece was written in the poet's youth. Here are the verses, sombre and powerful in thought, vividly clear in expression, assuredly indicating "a huge discontent with the present ways of living":

   The yellow gas is fired from street to street,
      Past rows of heartless homes and hearts unlit,
   Dead churches, and the unending pavement beat
      By crowds -- say, rather, haggard shades that flit.

   Round nightly haunts of their delusive dream,
      Where'er our paradisal instinct starves,
   Till on the utmost post its sinuous gleam
      Crawls on the oily water of the wharves.  

   Where Homer's sea loses his keen breath, hemmed
      What place rebellious piles were driven down --
   The priest-like waters to this task condemned
      To wash the roots of the inhuman town!

   Where fat and strange-eyed fish that never saw
      The outer deep, broad halls of sapphire light,
   Glut in the city's draught each namelss maw --
      And there wide-eyed unto the soulless night.

   Methinks a drown'd maid's face might fitly show
      What we have slain, a life that had been free,
   Clean, large nor thus tormented-even so,
      As are the skies, the salt winds and the sea.

   Shall we be cleansed, and how? I only pray
      Red flame or deluge may that end be soon.

That last line stands out stark and grim at the present crisis in the history of civilisation.

The reviewer in his notice comments: "Unlike a great deal of the poetry in this volume, that passage is perfectly straightforward. And it opens vistas. It grips the mind." That cannot be denied. But it is the grip of horror, not of pity. How differently Tom Hood has treated the same "motif" in those lines that begin

   Take her up tenderly,
      Lift her with care.
   Fashioned so slenderly,
      Young, and so fair.

"THE WANDERER."

The reviewer reports that there are four long poems in Chris. Brennan's book, the parts of each being loosely connected together by a central idea epitomised in the title. Also there is a set of epilogues. He picks out specially "The Wanderer," because, he says, in it the central thought is clearer, as well as nobler than in the others, while the diction is at the same time less heavily loaded with illusion and more apt in helping the reader to comprehend the complex of scenes, ideas, and emotions, that the author conjures up. "Yet even this poem," he says, must be read again and again before its full meaning beats into the mind. The reflections of an old man with a lifetime of memories behind him -- memories of wife and child long dead, memories of hunger and cold, and everlasting struggle -- arouse clear-cut mental pictures, and the poignant sympathy that is, in fact, a shivering realisation that what the poet describes may be the lot of any one of us some day." Then he adds: "Yet one has sudden glimpses of a new outlook'" and he quotes these lines from "The Wanderer":

   You at whose table I have sat, some distant eve,
   Beside the road, and eaten, and you pitied me,
   To be driven an aimless way before the pitiless winds;
   How much ye have give, and knew not, pitying foolishly!
   For not alone the bread I broke but I tasted, too.
   And you unwitting live, and knew the narrow soul
   That bodies it, in the landmarks of your fields,
   And broods dumbly, within your little season's round
   Where after sowing comes the short-lived summer's mirth.

   And after harvesting the winter's lingering dream,
   Half memory and regret, half hope crouching beside
   The hearth that is" your only centre of life and dream;
   And, knowing the world how limitless and the way how long
   And the home of man how feeble and built on the winds;
   I have lived your life, that eve, as you might never live,
   Knowing and pity you if you should come to know.

Here is the reviewer's summing-up of the poet's message: "That passage conveys the impression somehow that one has been living in a narrow box and that the bottom has suddenly dropped out of it, precipitating one that the immensities. We find in this poem that profound dissatisfaction with life as it is today, which is the moving spirit of all evolutionary progress, and also a noble craving to fight againnst the powers of evil. There is no happiness in inertia. Energy for the strenuous upward climbing, and courage for the combat -- these are the themes of Mr. Brennan's muse."  

Within the past few days this present writer held in his hand, in the publishers' bookshop, one of the large handsomely produced volumes of Chris. Brennan's "Poems" referred to in the old, faded, yellowing "appreciation." It awakened poignant memories. It is the same book, but it was not the identical copy of it that was received two and twenty years ago, "With the compliments of the publisher -- For Review."

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 September 1936

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

Discussion of Christopher Brennan, Part 1

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The following is the start of a three-part discussion of the works of Christopher Brennan that took place in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald during 1936.  It begins with a report of a lecture by Hilary Lofting, a Sydney journalist and brother of Hugh Lofting (author of the Dr Doolittle books), about the Australian poet Christopher Brennan (1870-1932).

"Only Major Poet": Christopher Brennan

"Christopher Brennan is our one major poet, and there is no published collection of his works. It is a standing disgrace."

This statement was made by Mr. Hilary Lofting, the author, at a meeting of the fellowship of Australian Writers at the Shallmar Cafe last night, when he pleaded for recognition of the poetical talents of the late Christopher Brennan.

Mr. Lofting said that Brennan had been a member of his household during one of the last years of the poet's life. One had almost to study Brennan's work before one could like it.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 July 1936

And in response:

Christopher Brennan: To the Editor of the Herald.

Sir,-In his address to the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Mr. Hilary Lofting said: "One had almost to study Brennan, work before one liked it." Then, striking a comparison, he offered the supplementary remark that it needed three hundred years of Shakespeare to be liked. A quip, droll enough to have made old Chris shake his sides, if he had been there to hear it.

Later on in the evening, Mr. Lofting specified it as being "our job to read and know Brennan . . . " a splendid idea for those who can spare themselves "that time which never can return." But, "extra jocum," one cannot govern taste; because no man considers rightly who is unable to think for himself. Moreover, genius owes nothing to testimony; or, if it does, we might subscribe to a new maxim, "Poeta fit non nascitur." In the present case it seems certain that Brennan will come to his fame with a merry wind. During the period of his life, he was a very dear and lovable man; one who, in the words of Edward Gibbon, "multiplied his own experience by reading and reflection, and lived in distant ages and remote countries."

I am etc.

HUGH MCCRAE.

Camden, July 17.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 July 1936

And then:

Christopher Brennan and Fame

Sir, - In regard to his letter in this morning's paper, there is no one more capable of assessing the place of Christopher Brennan, either personally or in his prose and poetry, than Hugh McCrae, and it is always a delight when he writes of anyone. But may I seem to differ and yet go further than Mr. McCrae, and say that perpetuity rests, not on genius, but on rag paper? Genius dies, books perish, but rag endures. Because of this I last week formulated a proposal to the Fellowship of Australian Writers that it initiate a movement for a subscription rag-paper edition of Brennan's complete works. Perhaps there might be a conference arranged of heads of all the bodies interested in scholarship, art, and literature, so that something universal could be done. Brennan was a scholar as well as a writer, and art should be represented in all our commemorating and perpetuating books.

I am, etc.,

MARY GILMORE

King's Cross, July 20

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 July 1936

Followed by:

Chris Brennan.

Sir, - The recently published remarks of Mr. Hilary Lofting as to Chris. Brennan and the subsequent correspondence appearing in your columns are very encouraging. They give, not more heart -- for it is a labour of love for the man as much as his work - but more promise to the writer and Mr. J. J. Quinn in their joint labour already well advanced, of the publication next year of as complete an edition of Chris's prose and verse as the reluctance of some who survive him to produce his books and manuscripts will permit. It is hoped soon to give your correspondents and others interested in the publication of Chris's works an opportunity of displaying that interest in a practical manner. Every time I read in the Press enthusiasms from admirers of Brennan's verse, I am reminded of an occasion when Chris's intellectual attainments being exclusively in eulogy, the late A. G. Stephens stamped angrily about the grass saying, "Why doesn't somebody say what a lovable man he was?" We shook hands. In conclusion, may I ask for leave, publicly, to thank Mr. Hugh McCrae for his letter.

I am. etc.,

CHRIS'S EXECUTOR.

Sydney, July 24.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 1936

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for these pieces.]

Note: This discussion will continue on Friday with a long reply by John Sandes

Interview with Deborah Robertson

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sweet_old_world.jpg    Deborah Robertson's debut novel, Careless, in 2006, received a lot of attention. It was the winner of the Nita Kibble and Colin Roderick awards; shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year Awards, the NSW Premier's Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Australian Book Industry Awards, Western Australia Premier's Book Awards an the Miles Franklin Award; and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Orange Prize. A formidable list. And now the author has released her second novel, Sweet Old World. She spoke to Susan Wyndham:
Writing the novel wasn't simple, either. ''I didn't really know what it was when I wrote it the first time,'' Robertson says. It began as the story of three sisters who collaborate to make a baby - one gives an egg, one her womb and the third, infertile sister would raise the child.

''I worked on that for a year, 18 months,'' Robertson says. ''I'd been writing in Perth and turning my wheels and not getting any traction and I thought, OK, I'll upset the apple cart and see what happens.''

...

Her next move, in 2009, was from Perth to Melbourne.

''It just had to be a big city and I wanted weather as radically different from Perth as possible but not Tasmania. I was trying to make things as hard as possible for myself. I think I write best when things are extreme or I'm in a particular period of intensity in my life. I sort of carve books out of myself.'' She achieved her aim. Living alone in Fitzroy North, she became completely absorbed in her work.

''This is the hardest book I've ever written in ways I could never imagine, probably because of the intense solitary nature and the fact that nothing around me was familiar,'' she says. ''It was essentially a convent life but the devotion was writing. It burned away the last of my illusions about what would be expected of me in a committed writing life.''

Kate Grenville Interviews

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kate_grenville.jpg    As Kate Grenville's latest novel, Sarah Thornhill, is published in the UK, she is undertaking a ranging book tour of the UK and Ireland. She spoke to Stephanie Cross of "The Independent":

Opening in 1816 on New South Wales's Hawkesbury River, Sarah Thornhill picks up where The Secret River left off, and reunites readers with the Thornhill clan. The head of the family, a figure based on Grenville's own forebear, was a thief "sent out" from London to Australia, there becoming a successful farmer. The exact details of Grenville's ancestor's story are lost to history, but the fictional Thornhill is involved in the massacre of Aborigines.

For Grenville, the trilogy has been a very personal undertaking. "The Secret River began because, at the age of 50, I suddenly realised I knew nothing about how my own family had got its foothold in Australia," she explains.

And to Andrew Williams of the Metro website:

What is your new book, Sarah Thornhill, about?

It's set in colonial Australia and it's about a woman who discovers an ugly family secret concerning a massacre of aboriginal people and what she does about it.

You've written about this subject before - why are you interested in it?

When I was growing up we weren't taught these aspects of Australia's past - it was all about pioneer heroes. It's no good trying to ignore it - let's look at it and acknowledge the wrongs committed in the past. One well-documented case is the Waterloo Creek massacre in New South Wales in 1838, one of the very few cases that came to court. Perpetrators of massacres weren't often caught - and if they were, they were often let off. This massacre involved aboriginal women and children being chained neck-to-neck, taken up a hill and shot. Their bodies were burned. This aspect of our history needs to be acknowledged and my way of addressing it is by writing books.

Not everyone is so keen to acknowledge it, are they?

No. A little while ago, we had something called the 'history wars' in Australia, in which two schools of historians were at each others' throats - one group said aboriginal people died out due to measles. The problem with finding written evidence is it was in no one's interest to write: 'We went out and shot 12 aboriginal people today.' However, they did write things such as: 'We went out with our rifles and dispersed the natives.' The word 'dispersed' comes up again and again in the records and you can guess it probably meant we shot at them and shot some of them.

And also to Eileen Battersby of "The Irish Times":

The sparky, intelligent Grenville is direct and, though she remains on the polite side of blunt, a realist who speaks her mind. There is a likable energy about her and a curiosity about everything. Her daughter, Alice, has recently graduated from a combined arts and science degree - "Can you imagine? What a fabulous mixture of information" - and is currently minding baby sloths.

Grenville reads widely and carefully and misses little. "It's not easy being a writer, it's not easy being a woman writer and it's certainly not easy being an Australian woman writer." Her prose is deliberate and carefully weighted. She explains the difficulty of coming of age in Australia at a time when history had an official version that deleted many of the uglier facts. "We were horrified by the Nazis and by the Afrikaners, and yet we had our own crimes that we had not dealt with. And you have to remember that when I was young - I was born in 1950 - most Australians still regarded England as home. Imagine that: 'home' a place you had never been to. We were far closer to Asia than to Europe."

She took an arts degree at Sydney University and, true to the ritual adhered to by generations, set off for England, where she worked at a number of jobs, including film editing, and even developed a short-lived version of an English accent. But, as she says, "I am an Australian", and it seems she was fated to be a writer: her father had written three books in his retirement, and her mother provided a valuable legacy of stories, "stories that didn't always have all the facts, so I had to find them".
Australian, UK and US bookcovers:




SarahThornhill-aus-cover.jpg    SarahThornhill-uk-cover.jpg    SarahThornhill-us-cover.jpg

Hilary McPhee Interview

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hilary_mcphee.jpg    Continuing Jason Steger's literary lunches, this past week he spoke with Hilary McPhee, who, in 1975, founded McPhee Gribble publishers with the late Di Gribble.

The last time I saw Hilary McPhee was at a distance. It was October at the funeral of Di Gribble, her great friend and cohort in the publishing company, McPhee Gribble. She looked - not surprisingly - stricken with grief.

The two were in the vanguard of Australians trying to break the British grip on domestic publishing. They acquired rights from the US, tried to build a list of books in translation and first published writers such as Tim Winton and Helen Garner.

''It's very hard,'' she says now, ''when a friend who has been an absolutely critical part of your life is no longer there. Her daughter Anna, my god-daughter, is very like Di, very forthright. I said to Di before she died that she'd left us with Anna, 'who is going to remind us of you all the time because she's so like you'. In manner and character.''

Margo Lanagan Interview

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sea_hearts.jpg    Margo Lanagan has just published her new novel, Sea Hearts, her first since Tender Morsels in 2008. The author was recently interviewed by Gabrielle Wang.

What is your daily writing routine?

Get up as early as possible and, before I'm awake enough to attack myself with criticisms, start writing (I write the first draft of everything longhand, in biro on lined bank-weight paper). If I can get in a couple of hours before breakfast, that sets me up for a productive rest-of-the-day.

Breakfast, then head off to my rented Writing Room, two blocks from my house. Install myself there, immerse myself again. I still aim for ten pages a day - I'm not allowed to beat myself up about it if I don't make the count, but I do have to try. I've found that if I'm on a roll and write substantially more than ten pages, I'm in fact stealing words (and likely slightly sloppy words) from the next day.

Sometimes the ten pages are done by 11am, sometimes it takes a full 8 hours to get them. Whatever's happening, don't let anxiety leak into the process. Keep it as enjoyable and hopeful as possible. Writing snacks: raw carrots, Vita-Weats, anything crunchy - but low fat (don't want to get sleepy!) - I literally chew my way through plot glitches. If I can, stop writing at a point in a scene where something interesting's about to happen, to make it easy to start again next day.

Debut Novel: The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

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the_rook.jpg    A new debut novel, The Rook, by Australian author Daniel O'Malley is picking up some good coverage from critics and readers alike (it currently has an Amazon rating of 5 stars). Lev Grossman, in "Time" magazine, lists the novel as one of the seven books he's looking forward to in 2012. "Publisher's Weekly" gave the novel a starred review (no link as you have to be a subscriber to see any content on their website), and "Library Journal" described it as: "Part suspense, part dark humor, this debut is rumored to be one of those up-all-nighters." Which isn't too shabby.

The author has his own website set up for the book and there is a Youtube video:


Carrie Tiffany Interview

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carrie_tiffany.jpg    It's been a while since we've heard from Carrie Tiffany. In fact it's been seven years since she published her first novel, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, to widespread acclaim, including being shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and Orange Prize. Now she's back with her new novel, Mateship with Birds, and Susan Wyndham interviewed her for "The Sydney Morning Herald" and "The Age".

''I don't go round making up stories,'' she says. ''There's so much narrative in our lives.'' For her, writing is ''an act of collage, free association, memory, noticing and putting things together. I don't write in a particularly linear way. When I've amassed a certain amount of material I print it out, put it on the floor, move the furniture, walk around it and think, where are the connections?''

With a masters degree in creative writing and success as a fiction writer, she still works full-time as a journalist for an income but also for ideas and a love of the land and its people. She has written for "The Victorian Landcare Magazine" for 15 years and when we talk she is working on a government white paper on biodiversity and ''a weeds thing''.

''It takes me into a world that is interesting,'' Tiffany says.

''I'm not sure about a career as a writer. I'm not interested in novels set in coffee shops.''

Peter Carey Interview

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peter_carey.jpg    As Peter Carey's new novel, The Chemisty of Tears, hits the bookshelves, he is interviewed in "The Age" by Simon Mann:

These days, anything written about Carey inevitably carries the label ''dual Booker winner'', noting the fact he is almost alone in twice winning Britain's top literary accolade, for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001. They and his load of other trophies might add uncomfortably to the weight of expectation success brings. But Carey says he is only aware of the self-imposed pressure, that doing what he does always ''feels risky and difficult''.

''Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry,'' he says. ''It's never any different, because in the end what you do is make the difficulty for yourself, which is the novel.''

Reflecting further, he adds: ''The real anguish is just making the thing and then, after that, well, it's awful to be criticised and it's awful to be not liked, it's awful to be any of those things. Basically, the writer of fiction is the person who comes in every day and puts his head up his bum and goes to work.''

Colleen McCullough Interview

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colleen_mccullough.jpg    The Age newspaper is rather taken lately with the idea of interviewing someone over lunch. Its not a bad idea - it gets the subject a little more relaxed and you get the added bonus of covering the restaurant/cafe as well. Recently Jason Steger met up with Colleen McCullough in the Sofitel in the city.

She has come to Melbourne for a day. Not from her home on Norfolk Island, where she lives in a house she bought more than 30 years ago on the proceeds of her rather successful second novel, The Thorn Birds. She's been in Sydney talking about her new book, Life without the Boring Bits, a sort of memoir cum collection of essays cum rant that is very Colleen. But she can't get back home for a while because there aren't many flights to her outpost in the Pacific.

Last time I saw her was in that home she shares with her husband, Ric Robinson, a Norfolk Island local. It was not long before she was due to have a major operation and, to be honest, I wondered whether I'd see her again. But here she is, I'm happy to say; a bit frailer but undaunted. She takes a lot of aspirin - ''a wonderful drug'' - and still loves a fag. And she still has her raucous laugh.

Shaun Tan in Conversation

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Gaiman and Tan.jpg    Neil Gaiman and Shaun Tan seem to be developing something of a double act these days, appearing on stage at literary events around the world. The two met last year at the Edinburgh book festival, and Gaiman recently wrote up their conversation for The Guardian newspaper.
Neil Gaiman: Your stuff is always laconic. One of the things I love about it is that a picture is worth a thousand words and you make your pictures work very hard.

Shaun Tan: Part of it is that I don't trust myself as a writer. I still lack confidence, probably because the first 20 or so stories I wrote were roundly rejected. I actually started out as a writer and then converted to illustration because I realised that there was a dearth of good illustrators in genre fiction, at least in Australia at that time. I diverted all of my resources to visual imagery, and as a result I noticed that my writing did become more and more pared down, until it started to approximate my normal speaking patterns. When I write a story I imagine I'm telling it to someone like my brother. And we don't talk that much [laughs] - it condenses everything down and that's a very Australian thing, too.

Clive James Interview

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clive_james.jpg    Clive James has been unwell.

Not in the Jeffrey Barnard sense, but in the kidney failure, lung disease and leukemia sense. But he's 72, and still belting out the essays and books, the most recent of which is A Point of View, which contains transcripts of the radio talks he did for BBC's Radio 4 over the past several years.

As the book hits the shelves in time for Christmas, James was interviewed for The Australian news paper by David Free:
And even with his cancer in remission, James must pay regular visits to a clinic for blood infusions. "My immune system is being successfully replaced with an immunoglobulin drip-feed that encourages reading for at least a couple of hours a week."

All this means that James, at the moment, can't be interviewed except by email. This isn't a bad arrangement when you're interviewing one of the wittiest writers in the world. It will, however, make it hard for me to throw in the standard references to the man's physical appearance, the firmness of his handshake and what kind of beverage he leans back to sip on while considering his answers.

Improvising, I offer James the chance to provide a scene-setting description of himself. "Surprisingly hale and hearty-looking for someone described in the newspapers as being at death's door," he replies. "Clive James gives few outward signs of feebleness to anyone who did not know him when his energy was unimpaired. When he sets the kitchen on fire, as old men are inclined to do, he is a little slow at getting to the blaze. His eyes are a bit screwed up, but he hopes to get that fixed."

It hurts to think of James as an old man. If he is one, then those of us who grew up with his books and television shows must be growing old, too.

Janette Turner Hospital Interview

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janette_turner_hospital.jpg    Janette Turner Hospital is probably best known as the author of the novels Orpheus Lost and Oyster. She has also written a number of short stories which have appeared in 6 separate collections. The latest of these, Forecast: Turbulence, has just been released. The author was recently interviewed for The Australian by Stephen Romei:
Like Shirley Hazzard, but more prolific. Not like Peter Carey, though: no matter how celebrated he becomes overseas he will almost be more famous, some might say notorious, in the country he left 20 years ago. Like Carey, Hospital tries to teach would-be writers the art and craft of fiction: would-be American writers mainly, he at the City University of New York, she at the University of South Carolina.

When I mention to a well-read friend that I'm interviewing Hospital and that her new book, Forecast: Turbulence, includes a beautiful memoir set in Brisbane, she says, "Oh, she's Australian?" Yes, she is, as Australian as Hugh Jackman, who features as an object of desire in two of the short stories in Hospital's new book. As Australian as Patrick White, in whose name a literary award is given each year to an important writer the judges consider to be under-recognised. Hospital picked it up in 2003.

If Hospital presents as something of an enigma, she is partly to blame, or credit, for that. Late in our interview, when I mention the topical debate about the under-representation of women in literary culture, especially on the prize circuit, it's news to her.

"It's been a long time since I worried at all about what happens to the book," she says. "I'd rather not do interviews, I would rather not be profiled, I'd rather live my private life and enjoy the pleasures of writing."

Sara Douglass (1957-2011)

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sara_douglass.jpg    Sara Warneke (better known by her pen-name Sara Douglass) has died at the age of 54.

Born in Penola in South Australia she attended school in Adelaide and became a Registered Nurse before studying early modern English History at the University of Adelaide. She later became a lecturer in medieval history at la Trobe University in Bendigo, Victoria.

She wrote a number of novels without success before trying her hand at fantasy and being signed to HarperCollins Voyager in 1995, a fantasy publishing list that has flourished over the years, most probably as a direct result of the huge success that Douglass achieved. Over the years she published 20 novels and received a number of awards in the Australian fantasy field.

She died in Hobart on September 26 of ovarian cancer.

Obituary by Lucy Sussex in The Age.

Nick Earls Interview

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true_story_of_butterfish.jpg    Nick Earls, author of Zigzag Street, Bachelor Kisses and Perfect Skin, has branched out into the crime field with his latest novel, The True Story of Butterfish. He was recently interviewed for The Age by Linda Morris.
Earls's prolific oeuvre of 12 novels and two short-story collections has steadily built him an international reputation as a contemporary writer who makes comic yardage - from subtle irony to groan-out-loud gags - out of the emotional entanglements of decent men during episodes of self-evaluation and transformation: ''I knew these men in the world, people who thought a lot and sometimes talked a lot, thinkers to the point of overthinkers who sometimes underestimated their competence and often didn't realise their strengths and I had not seen them much in fiction.''

Joshua Lang, Earls's lead character, is an internet blogger trading in pop-culture trivia to pay the bills, and an occasional spin doctor willing to turn a blind eye to a tawdry secret or two, his ambitions of living the gonzo life long behind him.

Dogged by self-recriminations following a disastrous relationship, Lang is not so much mean as dispirited, morose with the choices he's made in life.

''I had a narrator who was a thinker and who could, in his own way, crack wise even if a lot of it stays inside, and I was aiming for a certain directness with the narration,'' Earls says. ''Maybe that puts Josh not a million miles from Philip Marlowe.''

Peter Salmon Interview

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coffee_story.jpg   Peter Salmon is an Australian writer now living in England, and his first novel, The Coffee Story, will be released later this week. The publishers, Hachette, describe it as "A wild, caffeine-fuelled deathbed confession of love and betrayal that spans four continents." The author was interviewed for Readings bookshop by Kabita Dhara.

Coffee, its production and consumption, obviously plays a major role in your novel. There are beautifully evocative passages describing the roasting and grinding and preparation of the perfect cup of coffee, and some of your characters have an encyclopaedic knowledge of coffee. Where did your particular interest in coffee come from? And how do you brew your perfect cup?

Legend has it my first words were 'cup coff' so it was obviously there pretty early. And working at the wonderful Readings in Lygon Street cemented the love. It really is the best drink in the world. As for the perfect cup, the best coffee I've ever had was the coffee I had in Harar recently - a superb coffee is taken for granted, and any family that beckons you to join them will always have a glorious cup for you. I hate tea, by the way. Just so you know.

You have a very distinctive style. Which books and writers do you think have influenced you stylistically? And which books and writers do you look to for inspiration?

As I said, I'm not a lover of the 'well-crafted novel' - I like a book that is not afraid to digress, to obfuscate, and do the odd thing that annoys the reader. I really like the strange ... Books like Memoirs of My Mental Illness by Judge Schreber, and The Robber by Robert Walser (best opening lines ever - 'Edith loves him. More on this later.'). Plus Proust and Henry James, both of whom are far stranger than they are given credit for. But I guess if there is one book that informs The Coffee Story more than any other, it's The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow - frankly, I owe him most of the royalties. Don't tell him though. Please.

Craig Sherborne Interview

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amatuer_science_of_love.jpg    Craig Sherborne is best known for his two volumes of autobiography, Hoi Polloi (2005) and Muck (2007), but has now produced his first novel, The Amateur Science of Love, which has just been published by Text.

He recently spoke to Liza Power from "The Age":

After the death of his close friend, the great poet Peter Porter, last year, Sherborne wrote a tribute. He began: ''[Poetry] wasn't just some media voice reducing human experience to sound bites and headlines. It was the highest application of language. It was the most resonant chiming of music and meaning: 'I play the sad music my conscience urges.' ''

Fittingly, then, The Amateur Science of Love began as a poem. Titled Showing, it painted the portrait of a mastectomy patient, Sherborne's then lover, and was written when its author was in his late 20s. Later published in his collection titled Bullion in 1995, it was a turning point.

''It was the first decent poem I'd ever written,'' he says. ''I hadn't really written anything I'd liked much, apart from a play for Radio National. It was difficult subject matter but I felt I'd suddenly found my voice: the tone, structure, simplicity, unpretentiousness. [Writing it] felt like finding my purpose in life.''

Its second beginning, a short story titled Unforgiven, was published in The Monthly in 2008. Like its later incarnation as a novel, it's a love story and while it begins ''To be unforgiven is no great shame'', both tales unfurl in a way that suggests otherwise.

''The idea that got the book started was this person trying to redeem himself, sitting down to write a testament. He's failed the relationship [he's in] but he can't ask for forgiveness because the only person he can ask has died. He has to redeem himself to himself. And maybe that's just making excuses but it's crucial to his survival. Unless he does it, he's less than half a human being.''

Geraldine Brooks Interview

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calebs-crossing-198x300.jpg    A new novel from Geraldine Brooks is always major event in Australian publishing - you'll recall she won the Pultizer Prize for March back in 2006. So as she has her latest book, Caleb's Crossing, out in the bookshops, the writer is interviewed by Mark Rubbo for Readings.

In an interview you said that your journalistic training meant that you threw words down on the page and then fixed them up later. The voice in this book, the young woman Bethia who befriends the young Indian, is perfect in expression and tone and is as one would imagine a young woman in the seventeenth century would write. This seems to belie the 'throwing down of words'. Can you tell us - how you do find the voice?

Some days the writing is fluid, some days not. Those days, you go back to the ma- terial the next day, and revise and revise until it feels right. The voice for Bethia was more difficult than many because there is little written by colonial women or girls before 1750 that has survived, and my tale takes place 100 years earlier. I had a few shards of verbatim court records, a few letters and so forth from the period, but not a lot. I had to create her voice from these scant raw materials.

The impact of Europeans on the indigenous society and culture seems peripheral to the American story. Do you agree, and is this something Caleb's Crossing is trying to redress?

I would disagree with that. I think it is integral to the story, which doesn't mean there aren't the same controversies, the same labelling as 'black armband history' that we encounter in Australia when someone tries to probe first contact and the history of indigenous relations with European colonists.

Hazel Rowley (1951-2011)

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hazel_rowley.jpg    Hazel Rowley, the Australian biographer, has died in New York at the age of 59.

Rowley was born in Lodon and migrated to Adelaide, South Australia, with her family at the age of 8. She achieved a PhD in French from the University of Adelaide before moving to Melbourne and lecturing at Deakin University.

She is probably best-known in this country for her biography Christina Stead, published back in 1993. Following this publication, she moved to the US where she tackled, with much success and praise, a biography of
Richard Wright in 2001, and then Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, in 2005, before writing her most recent biography of the Roosevelts, Franklin & Eleanor. She was due to tour Australia celebrating the publication of this book, before she suffered a series of strokes and a heart attack that led to her death. She will be greatly missed.

Shaun Tan and Oscar

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the_lost_thing.jpg   Shaun Tan's short animated film, The Lost Thing, based on his book of the same name, has been nominated for an Oscar. This, of course, puts Tan into rather rarefied company.

The nominees in this category are:

"Day & Night" Teddy Newton
"The Gruffalo" Jakob Schuh and Max Lang
"Let's Pollute" Geefwee Boedoe
"The Lost Thing" Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann
"Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary)" Bastien Dubois

Gerard Elson, from Readings bookshop, interviewed Tan back in November about the making of the film. The interview page contains a link to the film's trailer.


The Awards will be presented in Los Angeles on 27th February.

A paragraph in the obituary column recently took my thoughts back to a small room on an upper floor of a building in the heart of Brisbane. I see again a troop of fairies dancing about the whitewashed walls of that dingy little chamber-green fairies, pink fairies, and elves of other colours: some coy, some roguish, and all very dainty. Some are frolicking; others are perched sedately on the crowns of mushrooms and toadstools. Between the elfin groups are several small paintings and a number of inscribed photographs, of poets and musicians. The floor space of the room is equally crowded, it has shelves containing large quantities, untidily arranged, of articles and poems clipped by their author from newspapers and magazines; a small table, upon which rests a vase of flowers and a battered old typewriter; a chair facing the machine, and a visitor's chair near the door; an ancient couch to provide surcease from labour, and, supporting the gesture of hospitality made by that second chair, a small primus stove. In the chair facing the typewriter, her elbows resting on the table, and her dark, unusual eyes glowing behind glasses, sits the woman who is literally the presiding genius of this room. It is she who has caused the fairies to dance on the walls, even as she caused them during many years to dance on the printed page.

Alas, though, I write only of a memory. The fairies of the city room vanished some years ago when failing health compelled their creator to forsake the spot, and she herself was "made one with Nature" on March 18, when, as the obituary columns recorded, Mabel Forrest, poet and novelist, passed away. By that event Australia lost one of the most gifted women she has ever produced. Nevertheless, I for one am not wholly sorry that she has gone. She had suffered much, in many, ways, especially so in recent years. Indeed, she gave considerably more to life than life gave to her. Almost it seemed that the high gods, having equipped this daughter of a Queensland station with strange talents -- strange in the sense that poetic ability did not "run in the family," and was not stimulated by education determined capriciously to plague her with mundane misfortunes.

Thus there was not perhaps one year of her married life free from misadventure of some kind. Nor did she experience calmness in widowhood and middle-age. Her aged mother was killed in a street accident; various little affairs of business"went wrong," and in the meantime a weak heart frequently left her prostrated and unable to work. Her consolations were the affection of her daughter -- and of late of her grandchildren -- her poetry, her friends, her fairies, and, season by season, flowers of all kinds. Rarely did the table in the quaint little Room of the Fairies lack flowers from various gardens of Queensland.

Facility in Versemaking

Surely Mrs. Forrest's life was a striking example of courage and industry in the face of adversity. For more than 30 years she contributed a steady stream of verse and short stories to publications throughout Australia -- and recently England and America -- and for a considerable portion of that time her typewriter was her sole means of livelihood. No other woman in the Commonwealth has contrived to maintain herself by freelance work for such a long time. Five books of verse and four novels -- most of them published within the last 10 years -- represent a considerable achievement for any Australian, but   these are merely a modest portion of the entire body of literary production accomplished by Mrs. Forrest. Necessarily much of her work was "pot-boiling," and of no real merit, but the amount of good verse relative to the total quantity written by this industrious and sorely-tried woman is somewhat astonishing.

Both the quantity and the quality is explained by the fact that she was a "natural" poet. It is an odd thing that women poets in Australia appear to be more facile than men. At any rate, Mrs. Forrest's verse fell from her typewriter with extraordinary sureness. A brain teeming with elfin fancies and colours created ideas without stint, and happy words waited upon the ideas right heartily, so that the writing of a poem was less of a tax upon her mentality than it was upon her physical resources. It was a custom of hers to write me gossipy letters on the back of carbon copies of poems that had won approval from various editors, and in every instance it could be noted that the "second thoughts," the alterations," were very few. Many of the verses went from the typewriter to print without a word being amended. The one weakness was punctuation -- and in this Mrs Forrest was not singular among women writers.   Once an academic visitor -- he was among those who had the superficial impression that the signature, "M. Forrest," belonged to a man -- attempted to present her with a book dealing with the niceties of verse-making. The idea, it seemed, was to improve her work technically. Mrs. Forrest would have none of it. She had never "learned" verse-making, she said, and did not propose to begin after she had won editorial and public approval for a quarter-century. So, sitting in her little Room of the Fariies, she smiled blandly across the typewriter at her mentor, just as she smiled at scores of other visitors who came to offer either advice or homage, and then she went on with her work in the some old non-technical way.

A Poet's Self-epitaph

Poems came to Mrs. Forrest of their own accord, as it were. More than once she dreamed of a colourful scene, or a gay romance, and set it down in verse soon after waking. Sir Matthew Nathan, then Governor of Queensland, once described to her a 15th century window in his English home, and was charmed soon afterward to receive a dainty poem, full of quaint conceits, framed around that window. Several years ago I wrote in a book of the glories of the Macpherson Range, and told of the things to be seen and heard when sitting on a doorstep at dawn on the edge of a jungle. That "doorstop at dawn" caught Mrs. Forrest's fancy, and the verses she wrote around the phrase contained imaginings even brighter than the original scene. Another "objective" poem, and a charming trifle it was, had

her old typewriter as its subject. Another, vivid and colourful, was based upon a picturesque pumpkin seen at the Brisbane Show. (Did not Furnley Maurice once say that he would like to write a poem on an old boot?) Mrs. Forrest also wrote in verse what may be regarded as her own epitaph. Imagining the poet to die in the autumn -- which she herself did -- she wrote three verses mingling colour and irony, and then added this expressive verse:-  

   If I should make her epitaph
      It would be writ in petals fair:
   'Twould be half sob and half a laugh
      The scented phrase I'd fashion there   
   (More true than chiselled ones, perchance),   
   "She used to hear the fairies dance".

No other Australian poet, with the possible exception of Hugh McCrae has displayed such aptitude for creating pictures in verse. Colour for her had "a universal tongue" and under its influence her fancy roamed in far places. She had never travelled. "It is extraordinary," she once said to me, "that I am always in the same place while my friends move around the earth." Nevertheless her vivid imagination took her to scenes denied to others. She roamed in secret places of the earth, among vanished nations, in Eastern cities, in glorious gardens, among "peach blossoms blowing over sodden grass," beside singing brooks, and even   among "ribbons on city counters, rolled like tyres for pixy cars." She was fond of the verse of Lord Dunsany, and when she read his phrase, "And the butterflies sang of lost pink cities," she was away immediately on wings of fancy to that enchanted spot: -

   The city that I know to-day is grey,  
      Grey river and grey tower and greyer street;
   But sometimes, at the coming of the spring
      I hear a distant fluting, honey sweet,
   And guess, unseen, a ghostly player cries     
   The lost pink cities of the butterflies.

Life, as I have said, frequently bore very harshly upon Mabel Forrest, but always there were compensations; always there were the "lost pink cities of the butterflies." It is, I think, by and through these compensations that she would wish to be remembered -- not as the woman who smiled wanly and said, "I have had a dreadful time this year," but as the poet who "used to hear the fairies dance."

First published in The Argus, 6 April 1935

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

Interview with DBC Pierre

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lights_out.jpg  Although his latest novel, Lights Out in Wonderland, has been out and about for about six months now, DBC Pierre is interviewed by Laura Barnett for The Guardian. It's only a short piece, but newspapers seem to be becoming more and more reluctant to make such pieces available on their websites.
What got you started?

Anger. I was unemployed, and had just spent a day feeling overwhelmingly disenchanted. In anger, I wrote a sentence and then a paragraph and then a page. And then I just kept going.

What was your big breakthrough?

The mind and person and spirit of the literary agent Clare Conville. I found her after 12 rejections, and she absolutely understood what I was trying to do.

Which writers do you most admire?

Gore Vidal - he was my first exposure to free-form writing. And Thomas Mann, for the utter and absolute beauty of his writing.

What's the greatest threat to literature?

Profit. Markets pull away from quality and head for the quick, easy and low. As more people are interested in Katie Price than Ernest Hemingway, the market will naturally exponentiate in her direction.

Ruth Park (1917-2010)

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ruth_park.jpg

Ruth Park, the New Zealand-born Australian author, died in December at the age of 93. Best known for her novel The Harp in the South (along with its sequel Poor Man's Orange) and for her children's series featuring The Muddle-Headed Wombat, Park won the Miles Franklin Award for Swords and Crowns and Rings in 1977.

Born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1917, Park arrived in Australia in 1942 where she met and married the writer D'Arcy Niland. Her first novel, The Harp in the South, was published in 1948 after winning The Sydney Morning Herald Literary Competition in 1946 - the novel was serialised in that newspaper in 1947. She followed this with a sequel, Poor Man's Orange, in 1949.

As well as her literary novels she wrote extensively for children, winning the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Children's Book award in 1981 for When the Wind Changed, and the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award in 1981 for Playing Beatie Bow. Her Muddle-Headed Wombat series started in 1962 - after originally appearing in a radio serial in the 1940s - and continued until the early 1980s. The books were extensively published in overseas markets.

Playing Beattie Bow was filmed in 1986, and both The Harp in the South and Poor Man's Orange were adapted for television in 1987.

You can read obituaries of the author here:

The Australian
The Courier-Mail
The Herald-Sun
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Clive James Watch #17

Review of Revolt of the Pendulum: Essays 2005-2008

Nicholas Lezard in "The Guardian": "When a collection of James's essays slides out of the Jiffy bag, other books can wait a while, for James's is the one I want to read first, even if I've read half the pieces before. But you or I won't have read more than half, and probably not even half, because we don't subscribe to all the magazines that James contributes to. We aren't aware of the Monthly (Australian, founded 2005) or the Australian Literary Review, and we don't see the New York Times as often as we'd like to. And we've never had a chance to get our hands on Previously Unpublished.

"Here, then, you might think, is more of the same, and if you've made up your mind one way or the other about Clive James then you might see little point in changing it. After all, his is a consistent viewpoint, informed as it is by experience, learning, and a fondness for the political centre. He spends just as much time telling off the left as he used to, in terms that suggest doctrinaire ideological positions indicate a tin ear when it comes to listening to history."

Reviews of The Blaze of Obscurity 

Mark Broatch in "Sunday Star Times" (NZ): "Readers interested in the man behind the ego may indulge in psychological biography beyond what he allows us: his absence as a father, the avowed uxorialism (an unexpected paean to his wife appears about halfway) and two daughters, the endless pursuit of female attention, the guilt about 'wasting time' on TV's evanescent virtues. But James admits/claims that he himself doesn't know what he is out to achieve, let alone why.

"Among all the creation, the essays (Cultural Amnesia being a high point), the memoirs, the novels, the busy website, the boy from South Sydney claims poetry is his true passion. Yet being Clive James, verse becomes another arrow in his quill to beguile, seduce, persuade. He notes in Blaze that a visiting Stirling Moss, the racing car driver, beat him to the Sydney university beauty simply by dint of sheer charisma, when James' poems had failed to make an impact. This was 50 years ago. It seems Clive James' attempts at seduction will never stop as long as he draws breath. And with his gifts, that is something for which we should be truly grateful."

Sunil Iyengar in "The New Criterion": "...James's most pointed barbs are reserved for himself. The author is shown as a young terror, donning a cape and mask at nightfall, ransacking construction sites and decimating lawns with makeshift scooters. In relating each childhood sequence, James's tone is wry and bemused, happily void of neurotic tics or psychobabble. Yet the shade of his father is never absent. For much of the book, the young James questions his own virility, latches onto strong male figures, and tries hard to alienate his mother. Nonetheless, the two bonded over a ritual viewing of four movies a week: 'My mother and I quarreled frequently but we reached a comforting unanimity on such matters as what constituted a lousy picture.'"

Essays

"How Broadway Conquered the World" - Atlantic Monthly

"Rocket Man" - review of Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman in The Financial Times.

"Words Fail in the Pacific" - review of HBO mini-series "The Pacific"

Interview

Prior to an appearance at the Richmond Festival in late November, James spoke to Will Gore of the "Elmbridge Guardian".

Other

The Wikiquote site has a number of quotes taken from James's works.

Reprint: Australian Authors VIII: Vance Palmer by Aidan de Brune

When you begin reading any book or magazine story written by Vance Palmer, you may do so with the comfortable feeling that you are going to be well satisfied when you reach the end. There is nothing erratic about his literary work; it is level, flawless and polished, like a table made from Queensland silky oak by a cabinet-maker who takes pride in his trade. Vance Palmer is an accomplished journeyman -- a craftsman in words who has served his apprenticeship thoroughly, and has mastered his trade, giving you guaranteed good value for money when you buy what he has made with his pen. "A typical Vance Palmer four-square yarn," means a story well constructed, written with care, with no loose ends in the plot, and no slovenly phrasing. His name on a book is a trade mark that you can trust.

Discussion of the major Australian novelists of to-day invariably begins with the brilliant constellation of women writers who have come to the fore in recent years. Henry Handel Richardson, Brent of Bin Bin, Katherine Prichard, Velia Ercole, Barnet Eldershaw, G. B. Lancaster, Alice Rosman, Helen Simpson -- a surprisingly strong list of Australian writers -- to begin with, all known and respected in England and America -- and all women! The discussion turns to men writers. Invariably someone says, 'Well, there is Vance Palmer. . . ' His name comes first to mind. With Dale Collins and Jack McLaren he has presented the Australian theme to English and American readers in a certain virile, straight forward, sincere and unassuming way that lacks the wild emotional force of the woman writers but is no less convincing and genuinely Australian for that. Here is the Australian male in literature, modern but capable and full of a quiet strength, as he is in life.

Like the "Champion Ringer" famed in western shearing sheds, Vance Palmer comes from Queensland. He was born in Bundaberg, the sugar-town at the mouth of the Burnett River. In his early and impressionable youth he must have seen the picturesque gangs of Kanakas cutting the tall green cane and singing their deep-voiced Island songs as they flashed the broad cane-knives, in the sunlight. He would have seen, too, the white labourers, the roughest-mannered but physically the most perfect speciments of masculinity to be found anywhere on the earth, arriving at the cane fields after shearing sheds were cut out, for a few months' big pay and desperately hard work, "cane-slogging." Perhaps he saw fights and riots between Kanakas and white labourers, or watched great muscled timber fellers, stripped to the waist, sweating in the sun as they cleared the jungle from the Isis scriblands, revealing the rich, red volcanic loam where in more and more sugar cane was to be planted. Perhaps, too, he went to the Sand Hills, where the Burnett River flows out to the ocean, and watched the gulls planing over the dunes where another young native of Bundaberg, Bert Hinkler, made and flew box kites the size of aeroplanes even before the triumphs of Wilbur Wright and Bleriot. And no doubt in the Burnett River young Palmer caught eeratodi, the archaic fish that can live out of water, and are found only in that stream.

Colour, strength, romance, during the impressionable age of childhood gave him a background for his writing which he has never lost, for all his later sophistication and urbanity, and world-travelling, and painfully acquired "literariness." Asked recently to express an opinion on Australia as a literary theme. Palmer replied:

"A man can only write about the life he knows. If he is an Australian he will naturally take his themes from his own country. I have written countless magazine stories set in places as far apart as China and Mexico, but I wouldn't attempt any serious work set in those countries -- they don't stimulate my deepest interest. Australia can provide all the themes required by any writer who knows his country."

There is a brave and heartening declaration from one who has travelled all the world, and proved himself a master of the literary trade! Vance Palmer has been four times to London on literary business, and once on the business of the A.I.F. He spent a year travelling through Russia and Siberia, in the days before the revolution, incidentally learning much about his job of writing from the works of the great Russian masters, Tolstoi, Gorki, Dostoevski, Poushkin -- all geniuses of narrative style and psychological insight. He has sojourned in the colourful East, and has lived through the uncertainties, terrors and comedy of a revolution in Mexico. Yet always he has returned to Australia, and in his serious work it is always of Australia that he writes. His early days in Bundaberg, and at the Ipswich Grammar School (Queensland's "Athens"), the days which he spent as a jackeroo on a Western Queensland cattle station, and what he noticed when living on the edge of the crashing surf at Caloundra, near Brisbane, or during the year which he spent recently on Green Isand, near Cairns, on the Barrier Reef -- these essentially Australian experiences have given him and will continue to give him, the inspiration for his best work.

His books, like those of all the best Australian authors, are difficult or impossible to obtain from Australian book sellers; who will offer you, instead, English "throw-out" lines if you ask for decent reading matter. Something will be done about this, no doubt, when Australian publishing gets firmly established. The best of Vance Palmer's novels, all recently published in England, are "The Man Hamilton" (1908), "Men are Human" (1930), "The Passage'' (1930), and "Daybreak." "Men are Human" and "The Passage" were "Bulletin" prize-winners. A collection of his short stories, entitled "Separate Lives," was published in 1931; and a book of plays entitled "The Black Horse" was issued in 1924.

He is one of the foremost of the gallant band who are endeavouring to convince the Australian public that Australia as a country is interesting to read about. "It will probably take a lot of writing, of the highest class," he says, "to convince Australians that their life is as interesting as any other."

Vance Palmer's work is of the "highest class," and we are proud of him for that reason.

First published in The West Australian, 20 May 1933

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

D. M. Cornish Interview

factotum_au.jpg   Factotum, the third book in D. M. Cornish's Monster Blood Tattoo series has now finally been published. The author spoke to the "SFRevu" website:
SFRevu: The story you've written--about RossamĂĽnd Bookchild and his path to self-knowledge, in a fascinating world full of exotic individuals, monstrous dangers and astounding settings--is a true epic. How did you set about writing this adventure?

Cornish: One word at a time, forming into one sentence at a time, gathering in to one paragraph at a time, slowly accreting into a chapter, into an entire novel. Writing feels like internal juggling, like there is a thousand balls in the air and I have to keep each one up or all will fall.

During the whole process I have been very aware of making sure my style of writing in some way fitted the setting, that the texts read in some part as if they may have well come from the Half-Continent themselves, that they were written by a denizen of that place - which in a way I suppose they are.

SFRevu: What sorts of stories influenced or inspired you, specifically in terms of TFT?

Cornish: Hmm, no surprises, the first to be named is Mr Tolkien's little set, LotR, in close combination with Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels: E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, H.P. Lovecraft's The Curious Case of Charles Dexter Ward (and everything else he has ever written), Frankenstein, anything by Kafka, Mr Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, Steppenwolfe by Hesse, The Last of the Mohicans and Deerstalker by James Fennimore Cooper, King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (and everything else he has done), Poe, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Having C.S. Lewis's Narnia series read to me as a child, and also his book Out of the Silent Planet and the two other books that are a part of that series. Batman: The Dark Night Returns by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson, Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo, Elektra: Assassin by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz, Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock, Homer's Iliad, anything by Ms. Austen (except perhaps Mansfield Park - I like her when she is being less acid), all the wonderful monsters in Orion by Masamune Shirow, Nausicaä by Hayao Miyazaki, Master & Commander by Patrick O'Brian (and the entire Aubrey/Maturin series - though only after a reviewer in the Washington Post mistook him as an influence on my writing when reviewing Foundling (TFT Book 1)).

Let's see, what else? Avenues & Runways by Aidan Coleman, Our Language by Simeon Potter, Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. I could go on and on but I have to stop somewhere...
Other book covers:
factotum_uk.jpg  factotum_us.jpg
UK edition  US edition

Reprint: Australian Authors VII: Dulcie Deamer by Aidan de Brune

Dulcie Deamer has had an adventurous life. She was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1890, her father being a doctor.

She never went to school, her mother being her sole teacher. At the age of eight she was allowed the unrestricted run of her father's fine library, and she read the novels of Lord Lytton and Sir Walter Scott, abhorring -- as she confesses -- all "children's" books. Her hobbies were natural history and archaeology, and whatever books she wanted on these subjects were bought for her. From the very beginning, any information she could obtain concerning the Stone Age drew her like a magnet. She disliked dolls, adored animals, and preferred trees and flowers to the society of other children.

At eleven she began to write verses. A year later her family moved to Featherstone, a tiny bush township in the North Island, and here for five years she ran wild, riding unbroken colts, shooting, learning to swim in snow-fed creeks, and going for long, solitary rambles of explora- tion through the virgin bush. It was here in the thick scrub, where there was always the risk of encountering wild cattle or a wild boar, that what she describes as ''memories of the Stone Age" came to her. And so, when the newly-started 'Lone Hand" magazine startled Australasia by offering a prize of 25 pounds for the best short story submitted to it, Dulcie Deamer, then 16, sent along her first serious prose effort -- a story of the savage love of a cave-man.

It won -- and altered the whole course of her life.

For some years previously her parents had been training her for a stage career. This original idea was not abandoned. At 17 Dulcie Deamer was touring New Zealand with a little company playing melodrama in all the back-block townships. It was thus she met her future husband, Albert Goldie, who was at that time business manager for one of Williamson's companies.

A whirlwind courtship ended in a marriage in Perth, Western Australia -- the bride being not yet 18. Then came a tour of the Far East, with Hugh Ward's London Comedy Company, which her husband was then managing. Here all manner of adventures befell the young actress-authoress. A bomb was thrown into her carriage in the streets of Bombay, where anti-British rioting had broken out.

Luckily it failed to explode. She was caught in another riot in the Temple of Kali, in Calcutta, and only saved by the intervention of a Brahmin priest. A fat Bengalese millionaire, hung with necklaces of pearls the size of broad beans, nearly succeeded in trapping her into his harem, and in China she saw execution grounds littered with freshly severed heads.

These excitements provided material for
an Indian novel, which was published in New York, which city she visited when she was 21. In the meantime a book of her collected Stone Age stories had been published in Sydney, and three sons had been born to her.

In the following years she visited Lon
don, Paris, and Rome, and her family had increased to six. During a second visit to the United States she was involved in strike riots in the vicinity of Chicago, and had to run for her life from a couple of bayonet charges, when the military were called out, the strikers having turned the street cars loose under their own power, and started to wreck the suburb with torn up paving stones. Previously to this she had been booked to sail on the ill-fated Titanic, but had changed her plans at the last moment, and taken passage on the Olympic, sailing four day sooner. To gain experience on this voyage she travelled steerage with thirteen hundred imigrants from every European country.

She was again in America during the
Great War, and witnessed all the frenzies of Yankee excitement on Armistice Day.

Immediately after the war three of her
novels were published in London and New York-- "Revelation," "The Street of the Gazelle," and "The Devil's Saint." Her work is strongly coloured with imagination. "Revelation" and "The Street of the Gazelle" deal with Jerusalem in the time of Christ, "The Devil's Saint" is a mediaeval romance dealing with witch-craft and black magic.

Finally she returned to Sydney, which
she had for long regarded as "home." Here she settled down to journalism, but by no means had finished with adventures, one of which was a visit to the famous Homebush abattoirs, disguised as a man, for no woman is allowed to witness the actual killing.

During the last few years a de luxe
edition of her short stories ("As It Was in the Beginning") was published in Melbourne, with illustrations by Norman Lindsay, and a volume of her poems ("Messalina") has recently been brought out in Sydney. She has now turned her attention to play writing, her first play being produced last year. She hopes to contribute screen stories to the newly established Australian film industry. She has written a number of serials for Australian papers, and is now engaged in a new long novel, which will be published in Australia by the Endeavour Press towards the end of the year.

First published in The West Australian, 13 May 1933

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

Roger McDonald Interview

Please tell us about your latest novel...

When Colts Ran began differently from my other novels. It did not grow out of itself in the same way. Its parts originated in long stories, almost novellas, with a variety of main characters. First there was a failed novel about a runaway boy (Colts) and his bumptious mentor, an old soldier (Major Buckler). I finished that novel ten years ago; it was about to be published as "To the Night Sky" when I backed out because of a nagging feeling that I had failed to bring it to a proper finish. Over the next decade parts of what became When Colts Ran were published as stories in "The Bulletin", "Best Australian Stories", and "Making Waves: Ten Years of the Byron Bay Literary Festival". Another part won the O. Henry Prize as one of the best twenty stories published in the USA (2008). The accolades encouraged me to bring them together but they had much more in common than a collection of short stories. Then I'd written a story about a rugby playing minister who became a quadriplegic, and another about two boys who witness a horrific car accident. They became part of the mosaic.

Colts, the runaway boy, the title character, passes through the seven ages of man in this novel - he is present in every chapter from adolescence to old age, watching, walking away, coming back, reliable, unreliable, losing himself in drink and dreams, while rousing love, affection, and sometimes terminal exasperation. Colts is my hymn to the virtues of failure, the way life has of conveying hope while "singing of despair" (to adapt Cyril Connolly's phrase on F. Scott Fitzgerald).
While not actually a "book trailer", the book's publisher has released a video of the author talking about the book:

Reprint: Australian Authors VI: "Banjo" Paterson by Aidan de Brune

If the Commonwealth Government were to appoint an Australian Poet Laureate there can be no doubt that the first holder of that high office would be Andrew Barton Paterson, known far and wide as "Banjo" Paterson. His name is a household word. More truly than any other of our numerous Australian poets, he has expressed the spirit of this land in verse.

"Banjo" Paterson, now nearing seventy years of age, is the undisputed Dean of Australian, poetry. His verses, since they first began to appear in the "Bulletin," fifty years ago, have been receited throughout the length and breadth of the land, in shearing sheds, at bush concerts, wherever two or three Australians have gathered around a camp fire. The rollicking rhythm of his ballads, the apt phrases, sometimes slangy, sometimes high poetry, have brought joy to hundreds of thousands of readers and listeners.

While poets of high-falutin "schools of thought" have piped in their thin and genteel voices to meagre audiences of bored listeners, this robust singer of the wide plains and monutains of the bush laud has "bestrode them like a Colossus." The people, with their true instinct to recognise what is sincere in art, have given "Banjo" Paterson the applause which only a major poet can command. Over 100,000 copies of "The Man from Snowy River" have been sold. Probably there is not a man, woman, or child in Australia who does not know at least some of Banjo Paterson's verse by heart.

Australia's Poet Laureate has had an interesting and varied career and a wide experience of both bush and city life. He was born in 1864 at Narrambla, Xew South Wales, and was educated at the Sydney Grammar School. He practised as a solicitor for fifteen years before deciding to take up journalism, when his verses were beginning to make him famous.

"The Man from Snowy River" was published in book form in 1895, and from that time his position as a national songster was assured.

He was editor of the "Evening News" for five years, and acted as correspondent of the London "Times" on sugar-growmg, pearl-diving, and Australian subjects generally. When the Boer war broke out, he went to South Africa as Reuter's correspondent.

On the outbreak of the Great War, in 1914, he volunteered for active service wilh the A.I.F. Though over military age, he was given the rank of major, joined the Remount Unit, and saw service in Egypt and Palestine.

He has travelled extensively outback, particularly in Central Australia and the Northern Territory, where be went buffalo shooting. In one of his verses he describes typical buffalo country:

   Out where the grey streams glide,
      Sullen and deep and slow,
   And the alligators slide
      From the mud to the depths below,
   Or drift on the stream like a floating death 
   Where the fever comes on the south wind's breath
      There is the buffalo..

In addition to "The Man from Snowy River" he has published "Rio Grande's Last Race," and "Saltbush Bill," besides a novel entitled "An Outback Marriage," and a humorous book entitled "Three Elephant Power." He has also edited a collection of "Old Bush Songs."

Now, after a silence of many years, he has ready a new book of poems, which will be published before Easter, by The Endeavour Press, with illustrations by Norman Lindsay. The most popular poet and the greatest illustrator in Australia will thus collaborate for the first time in the pages of a book, though it was Norman Lindsay who designed the original cover for "The Man from Snowy River."

The title of the new verses is "The Animals Noah Forgot." In a foreword the poet explains that the native bear refused to go in the Ark because Noah did not carry a stock of gum leaves-- and the platypus refused because he was afraid of being trodden on by the elephant!

Most of the poems deal in a humorous, but very understanding way, with the Australian bush animals.

The wombat, for example:

   The strongest creature for his size,
      But least equipped for combat,
   That dwells beneath Australian sides is Weary Will the Wombat.

The Platypus, who "descended from a family most exclusive":

   He talks in a deep unfriendly growl
      As he goes on his journey lonely;
   For he's no relation to fish nor fowl,  
   Nor to bird nor beast, nor to horned owl.
      In fact, he's the one and only!

The bandicoot, who "will come to look at a light, and scientists wonder, why":

   If the bush is burning it's time to scoot
   Is the notion of Benjaimn Bandicoot.

The flying squirrels:

   Never a care at all Bothers their simple brains;
      You can see them glide in the moonlight dim
   From tree to tree and from limb to limb.
      Little grey aeroplanes.

These few quotations show that none of the poet's old brilliance of phrase has been lost. Besides descriptions of the bush animals, there are poems on shearers, bullock drivers, cattle dogs, and a rattling good ballad of the Army Mules, which would be a credit to Rudyard Kipling, if that Dean of English Poets had rhymed it.

The multiude of admirers of Australia's national poet will welcome his "return to form." The young poets of the post-war generation might well study this book, and take a lesson from one of the "Old Hands" at the game of versifying. It is only by sheer hard work and a constant observation of men and nature that poetry euch as "Banjo" Paterson's, which looks so easy, is written.

My literary work? Well, about fifty to sixty serials, under various nom de plumes in London and New York -- some dozen of them only appearing in book form. Not until I had completed the walk around Australia, and had settled down in Sydney again, did I attempt to make use of my partiality for crooks and their works. My first story on these lines was "Dr. Night," published in the "World's News." Then followed "The Carson Loan Mystery" published by the N.S.W. Bookstall Company, Ltd., of Sydney. A little later the "Daily Guardian" (Sydney) ran "The Dagger and Cord" as a serial, and immediately it ended in the newspaper Messrs. Angus and Robertson, Ltd., published it in book form. Then, in the columns of the "Daily Guardian" followed "Fingerprints of Fate" (published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd., under the title of "The Shadow Crook"), and "The Little Grey Woman." Since then I have devoted myself more particularly to serial writing, under my own name and nom de plumes, totalling in all fourteen stories. My amusements? Two absorbing ones. Writing mystery stories and entreating federal politicians to foster a national Australian literature. The first easy -- the other apparently very difficult.

First published in The West Australian, 6 May 1933

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

Note: The last paragraph of this essay is a strange one: why did de Brune think it necessary to include his own literary bibliography?  As a means of implyig he knew what he was talking about?  Given that he had a partial biography published the previous week in this same series of articles, you'd have to think that he had a certain number of words to fill about Peterson and ran a tad short.

Tim Flannery Interview

when_colts_ran.jpg   Roger McDonald's previous novel, The Ballad of Desmond Kale, won the Miles Franklin Award in 2006, so each new book will be greeted with a high degree of expectation. His most recent novel, When Colts Ran, is now published by Random House. The author spoke to "Booktopia":
here_on_earth.jpg   Tim Flannery, best known for his book The Weather Makers and for his time as Australian of the year in 2007, has released a new title, Here on Earth. On the eve of its release he spoke to Kathleen Noonan from "The Courier-Mail":
In a new and ambitious book launched recently, Here on Earth: An Argument For Hope, Prof Flannery sets out to chart two histories: the twin stories of our planet and our species. But when he talks about the future of the planet, mining and climate change is never far from the conversation.

In the book, he quotes American ecologist Aldo Leopold: "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen."

So, how do the Tim Flannerys of the world stay optimistic in a world of wounds?

In other words, how do scientists looking at the devastating impact of humans on the planet's ecosystems, notably climate change, and not become raging, throw-their-hands-in-the-air pessimists?

He says narrow horizons and short time frames are always misleading and we need to take a long view to see the truth path of our evolutionary trajectory.

"I am hopeful because I am taking the long view. In writing this book, despite the challenges we now face, I feel optimistic for the future for our children and grandchildren. It's only by seeing the planet in that way can you see the potential for hope."

Prof Flannery, the mammalogist and palaeontologist, environmentalist and global warming activist who in 2007 was named Australian of the Year, has spent a lifetime examining the destruction of land and sea. This is his first major work since The Weather Makers in 2005, which argued that, if climate change was not slowed, it would cause mass species extinctions.

Yet, the new book is Prof Flannery's most hopeful writing yet. He says if we survive this century, future prospects will be enhanced.

The book was launched by actor Cate Blanchett in Sydney, and you can watch a video interview with the author from ABC Radio National Breakfast.

Kate Morton Interview


distant_hours.jpg   Kate Morton, author of The Shifting Fog (aka The House at Riverton) and The Forgotten Garden, now has her third novel, The Distant Hours, published this week by Allen & Unwin. She was interviewed recently by Rosemary Sorensen for "The Weekend Australian".
The Distant Hours begins with a prologue quoting a (fictional) classic tale called The True History of the Mud Man, written by the father of three spinster sisters living in the crumbling Milderhurst Castle in Kent. Then, the story's narrator, Edie (who Kate admits is in many ways much like the author), begins her part of the story.

"It started with a letter," she writes. "A letter that had been lost a long time, waiting out half a century in a forgotten postal bag in the dim attic of a nondescript house in Bermondsey." Going on to muse about the sighing of thwarted messages and letters that eventually "make their secrets known", Edie then laughs at herself, pleading with the reader: "Forgive me, I'm being romantic."

"It's not a self-conscious decision to write the way I write," Edie's real-life creator says. "It's what I like to read, so it's very natural to me. Before The Shifting Fog I'd written pretty crappy manuscripts, but when I wrote that one, I had no expectations of publication. I'd just had a baby (Oliver, now six), and I can be very honest, my thoughts and expectations about publication had dried up.

"As I was writing it, I said to Davin [her husband] many times, "This is really fun, but no one is ever going to want to read this. It's for me.' "

A video trailer for the novel has been produced:

Sean Williams Interview

force_unleashed_2.jpg   Adelaide writer Sean Williams has been writing authorised novels within the Star Wars universe for some time now. His latest, The Force Unleashed II, was released at the beginning of October in the US. He spoke to George Ivanov, in a 2-part interview, about how this all came about, and why he still does it:
What attracted you to write in the Star Wars universe and what sustains your interest in it?

I love a good space opera adventure story. There's no point in hiding it, and no shame in admitting it. Star Wars gives me a chance to play with a bunch of wonderful toys without having to worry too much about how it all works. (There is part of me that always wants to sneak a bit of real science in, just to keep it relatively grounded, but I am very aware that this not what Star Wars is all about, as opposed to, say, the Doctor Who I also loved as a kid, which is very much about hammering home the scientific method, if hidden behind a lot of hand-waving.) So preposterous plots, huge set-pieces, iconic characters, humor, romance - Star Wars has it all. Brilliant.

One of the things I love perhaps a bit too much about working in the extended universe is just how large and baroque the EU has become. A lot of it remains internally consistent and rigorous - amazingly so, in fact - but there are nonetheless so many threads that haven't been tied off, so many places and beings that have been mentioned only once, that I can't help but want to come to their aid, to lift them out of obscurity, to remind readers that this is a rich and varied galaxy full of wonders and terrors both. Sometimes I get into trouble with my editors for being too obscure, but I figure it's a risk worth taking. And always, among the millions of fans of the EU, there's at least one who appreciates the effort.

Reprint: Australian Authors IV: Miles Franklin by Aidan de Brune

Thirty years ago literary circles in Australia were astounded by the publication of an extraordinary book, written by a girl of sixteen, Stella Miles Franklin. The title of the book was audacious -- "My Brilliant Career." The "brilliant career" of a girl of sixteen might have meant any thing -- a reading of the book itself shows that it meant a great deal. The story is in the form, partly, of fiction, and partly of autobiography, and it bears on every page the imprint of sheer genius. It throbs with a passionate love of the Australian bush, and particularly of horses, and with an equal passionate hatred of the cruelties of life endured by the people on the land, particularly by the women. It is the first statement, and to this day it remains the greatest statement, of the case for Australian bush womanhood.

In a preface to the book Henry Lawson said:-- "The description of bush life and scenery came startlingly, painfully real to me; and I know that, as far as they are concerned, the book is true to Australia -- the truest I ever read. She has lived her book, and I feel proud of it for the sake of the country I came from, where people toil and bake and suffer, and are kind."

The youthful author herself says in her introduction: -- "This is not a romance. I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams. .... Do not fear encountering such trash as descriptions of beautiful sunsets and whisperings of wind. We (999 out of every 1,000) can see naught in sunsets save as signs and tokens whether we may expect rain on the morrow. There is no plot in the story, because there has been none in my life, or in any other life which has come under my notice."

But the last chapter swells to a magnificent paean of youth's brave challenge to the world: -- "I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do.    

"Ah! my sunburnt brothers -- sons of toils and of Australia -- I love and respect you well, for you are brave and good and true. I have seen not only those of you with youth and hope strong in your veins, but those with pathetic streaks of grey in your hair, large families to support, and with half a century sitting upon your work-laden shoulders. I have seen you struggle uncomplainingly against flood, fire, disease in stock, pests, drought, trade depression, and sickness, and yet have time to extend your hands and hearts in true sympathy to a brother, in misfortune, and spirits to laugh and joke and be cheerful.  

''And for my sisters a great love and pity fills my heart. Daughters of toil, who scrub and wash and mend and cook, who are dressmakers, paperhangers, milk-maids, gardeners, and candle-makers all in one, and yet have time to be cheerful and tasty in your homes, and make the best of the few cases to be found along the dusty track of your existence. Would that I were more worthy to be one of you --- more a typical Australian peasant -- cheerful, honest, brave!      

"I love you. I love you. Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, closer, tighter, tighter around you. A few more generations, and you will be enslaved as were ever the moujiks of Russia. I see it, and know it, but I cannot help you. My ineffective life will be trod out in the same ground of toil. I am only one of yourselves, I am only an unnecessary, little bush commoner. I am only a -- woman!

"The great, sun is sinking in the west, grinning, and winking knowingly as he goes, upon the starving stock and drought smitten wastes of land. Nearer he draws to the gum-tree, scrubby horizon, turns the clouds to orange, scarlet, silver, flame, gold!  Down, down he goes. The gorgeous, garnish splendour of sunset pageantry flames out; the long shadows eagerly cover all; the kookaburras laugh their merry mocking good-night; the clouds fade to turquoise, green, and grey; the stars peep shyly out; the soft call of the moke-poke arises in the gullies! With much love and good wishes to all -- Good-night!  Goodbye!  Amen!"  

The MS. of "My Brilliant Career" was taken to England by Earl Beauchamp, then Governor of New South Wales, and it was published by Blackwood, of Edinburgh. Like many another fine Australian book it has been allowed to go out of print, and copies are now quite unobtainable. Perhaps it will be re-issued by one of our Australian publishing houses soon. Meanwhile, what happened to Miles Franklin? She went abroad, and has been lost to Australia for more than twenty years. She threw herself into organising work for the Feminist Movement in the United States of America, wrote thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, and made speeches in every State of the Union. When the war broke out she went to Salonika with the Scottish Women's Hospital. After the war she had a most responsible position as secretary of the housing committee in London. In all these years of great organising achievement she   was definitely lost to Australian life and letters.  

Now she has returned to her native land. A year ago a book appeared, "Old Blastus of Bandicoot," under her name. The book is modestly described as an ''opuscule," but all the old fire and dash is there. John Dalley, in the Sydney "Bulletin," sums up what many other critics have said about this book: "The characterisation's the thing. Nothing so good has been done in any previous novel about the Australian bush."

This year the Endeavour Press will print and publish in Australia a sprightly detective story by Miles Franklin, entitled "Bring the Monkey!"-- modestly described as a "light novel." Is that, then, the whole story of Miles Franklin? We shall see. Is it likely, or possible, that a writer of such power and sheer genius as the author of "My Brilliant Career" should have been silent for more than twenty years?

Miles Franklin will not admit it, but whether she likes it or not people are identifying her with the mysterious "Brent of Bin Bin," whose books (published by Blackwood, of Edinburgh, be it noted) are acknowledegd to be the finest presentation in fiction of the Australian outback epic which have yet been written. "Brent of Bin Bin" loves the bush and understands horses, and hates injustice to bush women, as only the author of "My Brilliant Career" and "Old Blastus of Bandicoot" could love, and understand, and hate.

The "Brent of Bin Bin" triology ("Up the Country," "Ten Creeks Run," "Back to Bool Bool") are already Australian classics. Despite the fact that they are difficult to obtain, as are most Australian books published overseas, they have gone into numerous editions, and are hailed by a multitude of discerning readers as being absolute portents for the future of the Australian novel -- a real and true portrait, not a caricature, of outback life.

If Miles Franklin is also "Brent of Bin Bin," then she is the greatest Australian bush novelist alive. And if she is only Miles Franklin of "My Brilliant Career" and "Old Blastus of Bandicoot" she takes second place to one writer alone -- the tremendously gifted and mysterious author who writes in Miles Franklin's manner under the pseudonym of "Brent."

First published in The West Australian, 22 April 1933

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

Reprint: Australian Authors III: Bernard Cronin by Aidan de Brune

Bernard Cronin, president of the Society of Australian Authors, is one of those stalwart "professional" writers whose books command a world sale; but unlike some of the other Australian authors of this class, he has not gone abroad to live and work in exile, away from the source of his inspiration.

He accepts the challenge which the Australian bush offers to writers of major fiction.

"The writer in the Old Country," he has stated, "finds his scenery, as it were, ready made for him. In this country it is definitely not to be found upon the surface of things. One has to dig deeply to become aware of the very great natural beauties of the Australian landscape. Real treasure is mostly of the buried variety. To my mind there is more character in an old Aussie gum tree than in any other tree I ever heard of. Incidentally, I should say that that much abused genius, D. H. Lawrence, came closer to an understanding of the spirit of the Australian landscape than any other writer, local, or imported, has yet done. He is the first scribe definitely to sight the real genii of the bush."    

We may take this to mean that Bernard Cronin is intrigued by Australia as a literary theme, but he does not "sentimentalise" his subject.

"Our trouble is that we lack real breeding, and crudeness is a poor scaffold for the Arts. Further, the indifference of our rulers to the absolute need to develop a national soul has not made matters any better. Hansard will never make this country aware of the sublimities of human destiny. We need to see Australia from her own standpoint, and with her own individuality. The Arts are our only hope of salvation."

By this last phrase our fierce realist is revealed as an idealist, after all. The title of his new book, "The Sow's Ear," which will be published this year in Australia, shows that the author is concerned with making something fine from our "crude" material. The story is set in the Tasmanian timber country, in the days before the war. It is a ruthless exposure of the tragic life of young girls enslaved by the system of marrying without love, at the command of domineering parents. The heroine longs for something better, but must accept her fate. In her passionate desire to escape from the bondage of the bush, she works to win for her two little daughters the chance in life which was so bitterly denied to herself.

Bernard Cronin's novels all have this "fierce'" quality. He has aimed at exposing what he considers to be wrong, stupid or uneconomic. In this sense he is the strongest of the Australian writers who wish to make us aware of our short comings, so that we may eliminate them, and become a truly civilised nation.

He is fully equipped for the literary task which he has set himself. He came to Australia forty years ago, at the age of six years, in charge of the captain of the old Orient steamer Austral. On the way out he nearly killed an able seaman, who was painting the ship's side, holding to the deck with one hand. Young Cronin jumped with both feet on the sailor's hand, "just to see what would happen." The sailor let go, but was providentially rescued.      

Perhaps it was this impish spirit of curiosity that eventually led Cronin to become a writer, and to jump, figuratively, upon the fingers of his Australian readers. "I am not really pugnacious," he says, "but I resent with violence anything that strikes me as being cheap." He tells us that he began to write as soon as he learned that a pencil may be sharpened by biting it.

He decided to become a farmer, and entered the Dookie Agricultural College. In 1901 he was dux of the college and gold medallist. He then had jackeroo experience on Kewita Station, South Gippsland, and Ulupna Station, in the north-east of Victoria, before taking up cattle farming on the north-west coast of Tasmania, where he remained for ten years. His experience there has provided him with material for nearly a dozen novels and serials, and innumerable short stories.

He has published the following novels: "The Coastlanders," 1918; "Timber Wolves," 1920; "Bluff Stakes," 1922; "Salvage," 1923; "Red Dawson," 1927; "White Gold," 1927; "The Treasure of the Tropics," 1928; "Dragonfly," 1928; "Toad," 1929; "Bracken," 1931; and, in conjunction with Arthur Russell, "Bushranging Silhouettes," 1932. Six of these novels have been issued by London publishers in cheap editions -- a sure proof of their popularity.

Now living in Melbourne, Bernard Cro nin has revealed the humanitarian impulse which lies below his "fierceness" by his work for the Derelict Society, which he founded in conjunction with Gertrude Hart. He is also the founder of the Society of Australian Authors, and has shown a very great zeal in striving to remove the handicaps under which our writers have to work. "There is much to discourage the Australian writer," he says. "Nevertheless, he holds steadily to his job. He hopes that the pioneering work which he is doing will prove an invaluable foundation for the generation of writers to come. Give him the support of his own Government and public, and he will win to wider distinction inside a decade. But he'll win through, anyway."  

When Australian authors have finally won recognition from their own people, the name of Bernard Cronin will stand high in the roll of honour of those who have fought for this objective.

First published in The West Australian, 15 April 1933

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

Note: interesting last paragraph.  I'd tend to say that Bernard Cronin has been largely foregotten.

David Malouf Watch #3

Reviews of Ransom

Psita Chakravarty In "The Telegraph" (Kolkatta, India): "He tells his story with a vital immediacy, picking out details in his lucent prose. The sharp edges of experience are made to gleam with a peculiar intensity. Malouf treats of lofty characters and situations...If at times he borders on the overly sentimental, the emotional impact of the story remains undiminished. For Malouf's readers share with his lead characters that most powerful thing -- the knowledge of mortality."

On the "A Momentary Taste of Being" weblog: "Ransom is a short book, an exquisitely carved book, a book of deep and harrowing emotion and a reminder of what is important in life.  I suspect that this is one of those books that will speak more to age than to youth--more to those who have had children and who know what it would feel like to make Priam's journey."

Anne Moore on the "Inform Enlighten Entertain" weblog: "In the original text, this ransom is mentioned in a few lines. Malouf takes that moment and opens it up, creating a character who discovers his humanity in the enemy's embrace. This is a lovely read."

Donald Brown in "The Quarterly Conversation": "Malouf delivers a lesson on how the novel, against epic conventions (or, perhaps, as social equality vs. hierarchy), aspires to a glimpse of individuality that is meaningful because we have to imagine it as our own, as something we too have seen and contain. We are both Priam marveling at Somax's way with an anecdote and Somax marveling at his daughter-in-law's skill. The fact that Somax also mourns a dead son is the kind of novelistic coincidence that lets us suspend disbelief for a purpose. We want to see that the grief Priam faces in outliving a son can be borne, must be borne, by all parents so afflicted, whether a ruler or a cartdriver. This lesson we might suppose we already know. But Priam doesn't, and seeing him grasp it is one of the payoffs of Malouf's account."

Also reviewed on the "Bibliojunkie" weblog.

Ransom has been shortlisted in the Fiction category of the 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

Various Ransom book covers:

ransom.jpg    ransom_uk.jpg    ransom_us.jpg
Australia  United Kingdom  USA


Review of An Imaginery Life

On "BookCrossing": "Malouf has created a raw yet beautifully poetic novel. Malouf has artfully (almost cryptically) delved into the contemporary arguments 'How does one determine barbarian and civil' and 'How to inhabit a place without occupying it'? More powerfully, he shows how one man can loose himself in while being a member of a prestigious society yet discover himself on the outside of the known world and know the life he is supposed to live."

Other

Malouf wrote about the power of music for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

In June, David Malouf was a guest of a fund-raiser for "Australian Book Review". Chong was there and reported on it for Crikey.  He was asked to take some photos of the event but wasn't pushy enough to get the best shots.  He decided to draw the writer instead.  A better solution in my mind.

For the BBC, Nick Bryant chose Malouf as one of eight "Famous Australians you've never heard of." For the BBC audience that is.

Reprint: Australian Authors II: Louis Stone by Aidan de Brune

Louis Stone, the author of "Jonah," and "Betty Wayside," is one of the most remarkable of Australian authors. His books, published in England, were allowed to go out of print during the War, and are now almost unobtainable. Second-hand copies of ''Jonah" have been sold for as much as ÂŁ2/10/ each. Competent critics declare that this book is a worthy successor to "Robbery Under Arms" and "For the Term of His Natural Life" amongst Australian novels that can properly be called "classic."

''With one book," declared A. G. Stephens, when "Jonah" was first published, "Mr. Stone has put himself in the front rank of Australian authorship." Mr. John Galsworthy wrote- "I have lapped up your novel, which I consider extraordinarily actual, vivid, and good."

With such praise it is difficult to understand why Mr. Stone's book was ever allowed to go out of print. Australian authors have certainly had small encouragement from their own countrymen in the past. The new edition of "Jonah," which is to be published this year by The Endeavour Press in Sydney, will make tardy amends to Mr. Stone for twenty years' neglect of his masterpiece.

What is it that makes "Jonah" a really great book? Norman Lindsay perhaps supplied the answer when he wrote: "Louis Stone's streets and people are instantly vitalised and known at a glance." Let us take an example of his descriptive power. It is the reader's introduction to Mrs. Yabsley, the mountainous washer woman pilosopher:- "Cardigan Street was proud of her. Her eyes twinkled in a big, humorous face; her arm was like a leg of mutton; the floors creaked beneath her as she walked. She laughed as a bull roars; her face turned purple; she fought for air; the veins rose like cords on her forehead. She was pointed out to strangers like a public building as she sat gossiping with her neighbours in a voice that shook the windows. Her sayings were quoted like the newspapers. Fraymen laughed at her jokes."        

Note with what artistry the novelist has built up a complete picture in simple words. We note the same forceful quality in the description of Jonah himself, the larrikin hunchback, with his "large head, wedged between the shoulders as if a giant's hand had pushed it down, the masterful nose, the keen grey eyes, and the cynical lips."    

Jonah is truly an unforgettable character. Born in the squalor and cruelty of slum life, he becomes leader of the "Push," and dictator of its fierce laws. One of the most terrifying passages in all literaure is the description of the Push "dealing out stouch" to a victim: 'The Push opened out, and the man, sobered by danger, stood for a moment with bewildered eyes. Then, with the instinct of the hunted, he turned for home and ran. The Push gave chase. Again and again the quarry turned, blindly seeking refuge in the darkest lanes. As his pursuers gained on him he gave a hoarse scream -- the dolorous cry of a hunted animal. But it was the cat playing with the mouse. The bricklayer ran like a cow, his joints stiffened by years of toil; the larrikins, light on their feet as hares, kept the pace with a nimble trot, silent and dangerous, conscious of nothing but the desire and power to kill."        

From this fierce and savage environment Jonah escapes, thanks to Mrs. Yabsley's motherly humorous advice and the influence of his own baby son, by Mrs. Yabsley's daughter, Ada. When Jonah first sees the baby, "flesh of his flesh; bone of his bone," "He remembered his deformity, and with a sudden catch in his breath, lifted the child from its cradle and felt its back, a passionate fear in his. heart. It was straight as a die . . ."Sool 'im!" he cried at last, and poked his son in the ribs."                    

From that moment his regeneration begins. "'e's the only relation I've got in the world; 'e's the only livin' creature that looks at me without seein' my hump," says Jonah to Mrs. Yabsley. The story of his victory over sordid surroundings, and of how the larrikin and wastrel wins   through to self-respect is told throughout with the sureness of touch and gift for observation that only great novelists possess.

Louis Stone, a quiet-speaking and cultivated man, is now living in retirement at Randwick. He was born in Leicester, and came to Australia as a child. He is a graduate of Sydney University, and was a schoolmaster for many years. His favourite authors are Flaubert and Virgil. He has a keen appreciation of classical music, of which he is an accomplished critic. With these scholarly interests it is all the more remarkable that the theme of his magnum opus should have been the lowest life of Sydney's slum streets, but to the humanist all life is interesting and this perhaps explains why Mr. Stone turned to a subject which most writers would have found unattractive, or too difficult. It is well that he did so.

The larrikin pushes of Sydney, have almost entirely disappeared. But in one great book that interesting phase of Australian evolution has been put on record for all time.

First published in The West Australian, 8 April 1933

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

J. J. Cooper Interview

deadly_trust.jpg  When you're trying to increase your name-recognition as the author of a specific form of action thriller it helps if you can get another big-name to endorse your style. Brisbane author JJ Cooper has done just that in securing a front-cover comment from Lee Child, author of the best-selling Jack Reacher novels.

Cooper's hero, Jay Ryan [interesting initails there] has now appeared in the author's second book, Deadly Trust, which has just been published. He was interviewed for "The Courier-Mail" by Bruce McMahon.
Cooper was already a huge fan of Child and his former military policeman, Jack Reacher, who wanders the US as a lone ranger, resolving many-faceted dramas with guile and fists.

"I wanted to write something similar to the Reacher series and that's what I set out to do - that quick writing, precise and that doesn't have to be proper English per se," explains Cooper, 39.

"I'm not a literary fiction writer and I don't ever intend to be. I'm a commercial writer, looking for something for readers to enjoy. I write for entertainment."

Cooper's hero is Jay Ryan, now a former army interrogator looking to enjoy the quiet life between Byron Bay and Brisbane in Cooper's second book. But someone's out to kill him and there's an anthrax attack on the Gold Coast. What follows is Ryan's one-man battle against enemies within and without.

Deadly Trust is a fine, fast-paced thriller that manages to use a southeast Queensland landscape without parochial cringe and successfully introduces an action man with flaws, unlike some previous efforts from ex-British soldiers-come-authors. And like the aforementioned Reacher, Ryan travels pretty light with just the credit card in his boot.

Reprint: Australian Authors: Norman Lindsay by Aidan de Brune

Norman Lindsay, artist, philosopher, and novelist, is an Australian phenomenon. His fame is world-wide. Like Nellie Melba, he has surprised the world with the possession of a rare gift, and shown that genius can be native to this land of empty spaces and a small population. Norman Lindsay is acknowledged to be the greatest living illustrator in black-and-white, and one of the finest craftsmen with the pen who has ever lived. Even those who dislike the nude in art, which Norman Lindsay lavishly displays, are compelled to acknowledge the incomparable dexterity and technical excellence of his work.

He is many-sided. In his serious work as an artist he has proved himself a master of oil-painting, water-colour, etching, wood engraving and dry-point. His pen and ink illustrations to the sumptuous editions of Greek and Roman classics which have been published in London are sought by collectors of rare books throughout the world. In the spacious gardens of his home at Springwood, in the Blue Mountains, there are dozens of life-size sculptures which he has modelled. In his studio there are numerous models of sailing-ships in full rig, among them the clipper Thermopylae and an Elizabethan warship, which experts consider to be perfect in every detail. His model of Captain Cook's Endeavour is preserved in the Melbourne Museum. For twenty years he was principal cartoonist on the Sydney 'Bulletin' and he still contributes occasional humorous drawings and cartoons to that journal. He is a brilliant conversationalist and charming host. His home at Springwood has been a place of pilgrimage for many celebrated people, such as Anna Pavlova, Fritz Kreisler and Melba, who have been eager to pay their respects to an Australian who has proved his claim to the title of genius.

Norman Lindsay is the author of a number of books. "The Magic Pudding", a humorous tale for children, written and illustrated by him, is an Australian "best- seller." It was published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd. "A Curate in Bohemia," published by the N.S.W. Bookstall Co., Ltd: was written many years ago. It deals with the humorous aspect of life amongst the artists in Melbourne, in the 'nineties. More than 50,000 copies have been sold. Turning to more serious themes, in "Creative Effort," published in London, in 1924, Norman Lindsay expounded the philosophical basis of artistic endeavour. A philosophical novel, in dialogue, "Madame Life's Lovers," published in London, in 1929, gave further expression to the serious side of his thoughts.        

Leaving the artistic theme, he described in "Redheap," published in London and New York, in 1930, the humorous aspects of family life in an Australian mining town of forty years ago. Exception was taken to the book by the Australian Customs officials, who ordered the return of 10,000 copies to London. "Redheap" has now been turned into a play by Floyd Dell, the celebrated American dramatist, and is to be produced in New York this year. When "Redheap" was banned, Norman Lindsay left Australia, declaring that a country which consistently neglected its authors or treated them shabbily was not a properly civilised place. He travelled through America and England, and incidentally arranged for the publication of more of his novels. Two of these, "Mr. Gresham on Olympus" and "The Cautious Amorist," have recently been issued in both London and New York. Although not banned; it is difficult to obtain them in Australia, owing to the curtailment of book importing by adverse exchange rates and prevailing economic conditions.    

In London, Norman Lindsay persuaded Mr. P. R. Stephensen, a Queensland Rhodes Scholar with practical experience in book publishing in England, to undertake the organisation of an Australian Book Publishing Company, to encourage the work of our local authors. On Mr. Stephensen's arrival in Australia four months ago, the Bulletin Newspaper Company agreed to place its organisation and resources at the disposal of the new firm, of which both Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Stephensen are directors.          

This new Australian publishing house will begin issuing books next month under the imprint of The Endeavour Press. The press-mark of the firm is a design of Captain Cook's Endeavour in full sail, designed by Norman Lindsay. The first novel issued will be a new book by Norman Lindsay, entitled "Saturdee," a humorous story about Australian schoolboy pranks, mischief and fun. Its appearance will be eagerly awaited.  

First published in The West Australian, 1 April 1933

Note: you can read a little about the banning of Redheap here.

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

Jessica Anderson (1916-2010)

tirral.jpg  It was very remiss of me, a month or so back, not to make mention of the passing of Jessica Anderson, author of the Miles Franklin Award winning novels Tirra Lirra by the River (1978) and The Impersonators (1980).

Anderson was best known for these two works but she was also the author of another 5 novels and a collection of short stories. This might be considered a rather low level of output of a career that started in 1963 and concluded in 1994 with the publication of One of the Wattle Birds in 1994, but the work was of consistently high quality, and we should be grateful for that.

Jessica Anderson was born in Gayndah, Queensland, in 1916 and lived most of her life in Sydney, other than a few years in London. She started her career as a novelist rather later in life than most, although she had previously written short stories for newspapers and novel dramatisations for radio.
  
You can read tributes and obituaries from:
Readings
The Australian Society of Authors
"Australian Book Review"
"The Australian" newspaper
"The Sydney Morning Herald" newspaper
"Overland" magazine
imperson.jpg

Leanne Hall Interview

this_is_shyness.jpg  In 2009 Leanne Hall won the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Writing for her novel This is Shyness. That novel has now been published and the author has been interviewed by Jo Case for Readings.com:
The book began with the names of Wildgirl and Wolfboy, the two narrators, and thinking about what kind of place they would inhabit led to the 'suburb of darkness idea'. From there, the central theme of the one long night emerged. 'I wanted to write about one of those really, really crazy magical nights - probably one of the first really crazy magical nights you ever have as a teenager - and how you never forget that kind of situation.'

The teenagers in the book are vividly drawn - not just their youthful bravado and conscious hipster cool, or the delicious, volatile fizz of attraction at that time of life, but their transitional state. They're no longer children, but not yet adults - and while they're both on an irreversible path away from childhood, they're young enough to relish a brief return to some of its forgotten pleasures, even (perhaps especially) as their problems - and their feelings for each other - are anything but childish. Wolfboy and Wildgirl ride their bikes and explore underground tunnels on their quest to recover a precious item of stolen property from the sugar-crazed Kidds. 'I thought it was pretty funny to set a couple of urban streetwise teenagers on a quite old-fashioned quest for an object,' laughs Leanne. 'To me that was the biggest joke, to send these really cool teenagers on a quest for an object, which is such a sort of dorky childhood thing.'

Alexandra Adornetto Interview

halo.jpg  Alexandra Adornetto came to prominence back in 2006 when she signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins as a 14-year old. Now with three books in the original series completed she has started a new young adult trilogy, this time featuring angels. As the book is published in Australia the now 18-year-old is interviewed by Blanche Clark for "The Courier-Mail".
But Adornetto has cracked a tougher market, signing a $100,000-plus publishing deal in the US for her young adult trilogy about angels. The first book, Halo, is out tomorrow in Australia and she will embark on a US tour to promote the book next month.

"I had so many people saying to me, 'It's very, very hard to get published in the US' and I thought, 'OK, maybe in a couple of years, I'm just going to slog away at it'," Adornetto says.

"And then it happened so quickly."

Last year her publisher at HarperCollins, Lisa Berryman, sent the Halo manuscript and a synopsis for the next two books to US literary agent Jill Grinberg, who is based in New York.

Grinberg represents the cream of Australian young adult authors: John Marsden, Garth Nix and Melina Marchetta, to name a few.

"Jill Grinberg called me up at the end of last year and said, 'I think you should come over to meet with some publishers'," Adornetto says. "I did my last exam and literally got on a plane and went to the US."

Five days later she was signed to Feiwel and Friends, an imprint with Macmillan. I ask Berryman later how significant this deal is.

"It's unreal. It's extraordinary," she says. "Alex is going off to this huge author tour and she is covering most of the US. This is something they are not doing for everyone any more because it's so expensive, so it's a coup on every level."

The book has also been sold to Atom in the UK, Twilight author Stephenie Meyer's publisher.

Shirley Hazzard Interviews

shirley_hazzard.jpg    As she approaches her 80th birthday in January 2011, Shirley Hazzard has been interviewed by "The New Yorker" about "travel and transit", and by Richard Ford at the PEN World Voices Festival in May.

"The New Yorker":
When did you begin travelling?

When I was still just a girl. My father was in the diplomatic service, and we moved with his postings. I lived for some years in the Far East, for instance, and it was quite wonderful. The transition and shifting from one place to another meant that I had no education, really. Of course I went to school with I was little, but it was not possible through adolescence to keep an absolute continuity of things. I never went to university, for instance, and there were long gaps in any kind of organized studies.

Did you regret this lack of formal education?

I think that moving around contributed immensely to my life. I would never say that I suffered from it at all. It was quite the opposite. I am uneducated in a sense, but I did read all the time, and I knew very marvellous people. I may be wrong in saying this, but I haven't felt any great privation, because I read constantly and learned other languages. It was reading that was most important to me.

It sounds as though travelling and reading are closely related for you.

All the intellectual pleasure I had as a child came from reading. It was such a pleasure, this act of reading and discovering, and of course it whetted my appetite all the time. One travelled in the reading, as it were.

Richard Ford:

Hazzard said poetry was "the longest important thing in my life." Ford said he thinks writers now "feel challenged to be tough on the page." Hazzard said we are lucky to have "a very flexible language" but that it is nonetheless "a challenge to find another shade or tone."

Richard Ford: "Do you think places have spirits?"

Shirley Hazzard: "I don't know how to express that. A place is always changing... and yet the language gives us continuity. I wish I had a more romantic vision of place."

Richard Ford: "What is the hardest part of being a writer?"

Shirley Hazzard: "I like writing dialogue. I like to have an open ear for speech."

Richard Ford: "Is there something you don't like about writing?"

Shirley Hazzard: "No."

Shirley Hazzard: "Well, writing checks or something."

Richard Ford: "Literary theory has pretty well strangled itself."

Shirley Hazzard: "I don't feel we need to be instructed all the time. The more criticism the less spontaneous acceptance there is."

This interview was recorded and you can watch it here.

Jon Bauer Interview

rocks_in_the_belly.jpg   Jon Bauer's debut novel, Rocks in the Belly, is about to be published by Scribe. Meanjin magazine's blog, "Spike", interviewed the author in the lead-up.
Do you keep a writer's notebook (or equivalent)? If so, can we take a peek - what's something you jotted down recently?

I think the good ideas don't need writing down, but in those anxious moments where the fear of losing one might be keeping me preoccupied or awake, I'll make a note in my phone in the form of a reminder.

Then days later I might be having a coffee with someone, or wake up in the morning to something like: Man steals dogs for glory of reuniting them; Cancer cry for speech; Two with Jung; Fists thing; Love over lover.

I put reminders in my phone too, for errands I have to run. Often reminders that have begging messages attached to them where I've tried to coerce the future-me. 'Book dentist. Go on. You know you should!'

But there's always the snooze option, so my mobile is like this little snow plough of jobs to do and stories to write that I repeatedly snooze. 'Pay gas bill. Do! Go on! You know you should!' Snooze.

Jonathan Strahan Interview

jonathan_strahan.jpg  West Australian Jonathan Strahan is a nominee for a 2010 Hugo Award in the category of Best Editor, Short Form. Leading up to the announcements of the winners at the World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne in September, Jonathan was interviewed by Ian Nichols in "The West Australian". (And, no, that is not a photo of me.)
Strahan's love of science fiction and fantasy started when he was a child but his involvement in the scene began when he walked into a little bookshop in Subiaco looking for a copy of Larry Niven's The Integral Trees, and was introduced to the world of fandom. That was in 1984. In 1990 he became part of the editorial team at the seminal small-press magazine Eidolon and he has been an editor for 20 years, working with some of the most famous names in the business, such as Jack Dann, his co-editor on Legends [of Australian Fantasy], and for many publishers. And now he has been nominated for a Hugo, the highest accolade in the world of science fiction, as best short-form editor for the third time, at the World Science Fiction Convention, Aussiecon 4, to be held in Melbourne in September.

The first time he was nominated "it was a bolt from the blue . . . I was floating for weeks". This time it's a home convention.

"It's an honour," he says. "There will be many people I know in the audience; my whole family will be there. If I win, it will be special." All three of the Australian nominees for the Hugo Awards are from WA, including Shaun Tan, who is also a guest of honour.


Interview with Christos Tsiolkas

the_slap.jpg   The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas has been published in Britain to a number of rather glowing reviews. A while back he was interviewed by Tom Shone from "The Times":
"I think Australian writing has been locked up in the shadow of the English and the Irish," he says. "In the sense that Australians don't want to write the Australian novel, they want to write the perfect English novel or the perfect Irish novel. What I love about the Americans is that they have found an English that is distinctly theirs." He could as easily be talking about his own declaration of independence with The Slap, a tremendously vital book in every sense. Completed at a gallop, it fairly crackles along, juiced up with novelistic licence and peeled-eyeball candour, the characters driven by their appetites into a thrilling, vital approximation of what it is to be alive. When he handed the book to his editor, she got back to him in just three days. It should have told him something.

"I had no idea [The Slap] was going to take me to Lexington Avenue. I really didn't. Trying to stand back, I'm interested in why it has proved so popular. I wonder what it says about contemporary writing -- can you be popular without being populist? Can you write for a large audience in a way that allows you to do the best work you can that is not condescending?"
The interview is titled "Novel of the year?" which might be a good pointer come Man Booker longlist time.

D. M. Cornish Interview

monster_blood_tattoo.jpg   D. M. Cornish, author of the "Monster Blood Tattoo" novels Foundling and Lamplighter was interviewed by the people at "The Enchanted Inkpot" weblog.
Ello - I am a true fan of the Monster Blood Tattoo series. From the title of the series to the intricate details of your world building, I am completely overwhelmed with admiration. The thing about this series is that it sinks into your psyche and you just can't forget it. The Half-Continent is filled with amazing and frightening monster, but some of your human characters are even more frightening. Where did all these creatures come from? How did you create them? Did you have a lot of nightmares when you were younger?

DMC - Well, firstly, thank you for such encouraging praise! As to where all the beasties both human and non come from, I can not rightly say. Certainly a wide cross-section of influences have played their part, from Star Wars and Doctor Who, LotR, Narnia, the Cthulhu Mythos and all that, through manga (Akira, Orion, Appleseed, Ghost In The Shell for example), and of course all the real and wonderful horrors of real creation - the slimy, thorny, snaggle-toothed critters lurking in the oceans and hidden places. Really, as I sit to write/draw a beastie for a text, I find myself making it up in the moment, with ideas swirling and coagulating as need dictates. I do not think I have more than the usually share of nightmares - my dreams are certainly very vivid, often with a strong narrative that will link one dream to the next through a night's sleep.

Ello - I understand that it took you 10 years to create the Half-Continent. What was those 10 years working on this world like? Were you surprised to find the world you were creating was coming so incredibly to life?

DMC - I reckon it has been about 18 years since I first began to pointedly create what has eventually become the Half-Continent - and I am creating it still. There have been moments when I have indeed realised and been very grateful to have (after so long a period of invention) a setting functioning well enough to employ in a story. Then I wonder to myself, How on earth did this happen? It was certainly a very natural evolution, an often unconscious expression of some urge turning away inside me.
The third novel in the series, Factotum, will be released in Australia in October this year.

Margo Lanagan Short Interview

margo_lanagan.jpg   Margo Lanagan, Sydney-based author of Tender Morsels, talks to "Spike", the Meanjin magazine blog:
Do you write full time or do you have a 'day job'? How does this help/hinder your writing?

Oh, I have a day job, three days a week technical writing, currently for the University of NSW. It helps because it keeps a trickle of money coming in; also because it stops me climbing into my own navel and disappearing totally inside myself and my own obsessions. It makes me converse with more normal people. It makes me go on trains and buses and acknowledge that there are other people in the world, with lives that are different from, but just as important as, my own. And many of those lives don't have books in them; or they have enormous textbooks in them (MACROECONOMICS or MUSIC AND EMOTION) rather than novels or short-story anthologies.

On the other hand (whine), it takes up a lot of TIME, you know? When I could be writing works of genius. And completing them so much faster. Or so I tell myself.

However, day job work tends to make me more efficient - and possibly, even, more productive, I hate to admit - because I have to plan, and organise myself around an already-given shape to the day. If I start with nothing, I can just faff away whole weeks looking sideways at the work-in-progress and not doing anything about it.

Sue Woolfe Interview

sue_woolfe.jpg    Sue Woolfe, author of Leaning Towards Infinity, was interviewed this evening on the ABC TV program "Talking Heads". You can read the transcript of the interview here.

Morris Gleitzman Interview

now.jpg    Morris Gleitzman has recently published Now, the third book in a trilogy following Once and Then, and was last week interviewed by Marc McEvoy for "The Age".

These books are getting rave reviews, not least from my 11-year-old son who is now holding out for this latest book.
Gleitzman has never been afraid to confront young readers with serious issues. Boy Overboard is about a family living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan who seek asylum in Australia; and Two Weeks with the Queen is about a boy whose brother has cancer and who befriends a gay man dying of AIDS.

And in 2004 the then-immigration minister Amanda Vanstone accused Gleitzman of political propaganda for writing about refugee children in detention in Girl Underground. This was despite it being an uplifting tale focusing on everyday concerns of children with an undercurrent of humour (like all his stories). "I would never write stories with only despair and defeat and the dark side of life," he says.

"It's our potential for good stuff I'm most interested in exploring but that has most meaning when juxtaposed with things that can go wrong."

Gleitzman says he is concerned that the media can encourage children to develop a pessimistic view of the world: "I want to help children develop strengths that allow them to feel they don't have to push things away mentally . . . If we 'cotton-ball' kids, it produces adults who are too scared to think for themselves and are easily manipulated."

Les Murray Television Interview

les_murray.jpg   Les Murray, one of Australia's premier living poets, was interviewed by Peter Thompson on ABC TV's "Talking Heads" this evening. You can read the transcript of the program here.

John Birmingham Interview

after_america.jpg    John Birmingham, Australian author of After America, blogger, and newspaper columnist has been interviewed by "The Australian Literature Review" weblog.

Do you read much Australian fiction, and do you have some favourites (other than your own)?

I'm a big fan of Matt Condon's work. I think every book he's written since The Pillow Fight has been worthy of being stamped with a big fat Novel of the Year stamp. He is the best literary novelist working in this country today. Of the genre writers, I can't go past one of Peter Corris's Cliff Hardy novels without immediately placing it within my possession. He seems to have written hundreds of these things, but they never lose their freshness and sizzle.

Is there any specific kind of fiction you would like to see more of in Australia?

Zombie-First Fleet-Time travel-crossovers. I don't know why we don't see more of these. The field is wide open, people!

Many books about fiction writing neglect character, or treat the topic haphazardly or in an overly structured way. What is your response to the suggestion that the book How to be a Man, by yourself and Dirk Flinthart, could be a useful tool for writers to use for thinking about developing fictional characters?

My response is flabbergasterment! That is the first time anybody has suggested that to me ever. But I guess when thinking it, about the way we build characters for novels, yeah, why not. I might even do it myself next time. The character question is an interesting one though. A lot of literary fiction seems to emphasize character, and in particular internal character struggles, over story. That's why I think, for the most part, literary fiction doesn't sell very well. People like stories. Having said that, of course, one of the most frequent criticisms of genre fiction is that the characters are all wooden and two-dimensional. And look, often that's true. But often it's not. I just finished a book by Peter V. Brett, The Desert Spear, the second in his demon war series. And instantly people are rolling their eyes and thinking, oh God, not another sub-Tolkien sword and sandal marathon. But they'd be wrong to think that. Pete's book is awesome, not just because of the really tight control he wields over a truly epic narrative, but because his command of character is every bit as good as any self-declared literary novelist.

Benjamin Law Interview

family_law.jpgBenjamin Law may not be a name known to many in the Australian literary world, but he is the senior writer on Frankie magazine and has now published his first book, The Family Law, about his eccentric family. Marieke Hardy interviewed him for "Readings".
Law himself seems unfazed by the thought of splashing his dirty laundry across the page, and insists that nothing about the book is exaggerated. 'You don't have to manufacture drama in my family. Just put any two members in the same room, and it's like a chemistry experiment - something will happen. Or perhaps it's an experiment in zoology. Shark versus squid, that type of thing'.

Ben and I first became aware of each other's work when both regularly contributing to the gorgeous 'sharp, witty, everyday and anecdotal' Frankie magazine. Initially shy in correspondence, our online banter soon became freeform and relentless; a friendship blossoming through a desire to both impress and shock. Through our written work - not only for Frankie, but also, in Ben's case publications such as The Monthly and The Big Issue - we both enjoy a flirtation with what author David Sedaris refers to as 'the illusion of intimacy'. Allowing readers in to a degree that - to the observer - may appear dangerous to the author's privacy, or lack thereof.

But it's one thing for Law to reveal gasp-inducing facts about his own sex life and personal bathroom habits (to say any more would, I'm afraid, be what's known in the industry as a 'spoiler'), quite another altogether to drag in extended family members. Law's brothers and sisters get the full going-over in Family Law, and his mother and father seem to fare in similarly raw terms.

Lauren Fuge Interview

when_courage_came_to_call.jpg  Lauren Fuge was a 14-year-old schoolgirl when her query proposal to Random House Australia produced a request to see the rest of her manuscript. Two years later her first novel, When Courage Came to Call, has been published and she has now been interviewed by Louise Schwatzkoff for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

For Fuge, writing provides an escape from mundane reality. While her friends wallpaper their bedrooms with music posters and celebrity photographs, Fuge covers hers with plot lines and imaginary maps.

"Real life isn't terrible but it's a bit boring," she says. "I want some more excitement so I read and I write."

Along with her school books, her shelves are jammed with fantasies and war fiction. "I'm a sucker for fantasy worlds. I love them so much," she says.

"I always liked reading because it was an escape but then I realised I didn't have to be stuck in other people's adventures. I got the urge to do it myself."

When Courage Came to Call is not a fantasy, though it takes place in an imaginary universe. The characters are soldiers, rebels and criminals, wielding rifles rather than magic wands. Fuge acknowledges a debt to John Marsden's young adult classic Tomorrow When the War Began. She also drew on history classes about World War I and newspaper stories about criminal gangs.

The story is gripping but clearly not the work of a mature author. The political tensions between warring nations are explained with clunky simplicity. The characters - except for the narrator and the villain - are loosely sketched. Fuge tends to describe their attributes rather than allow them to emerge through the action. Still, the same could be said of many an adult writer.

For all the detail about explosions, weaponry and military hierarchies, she confesses her research process was somewhat haphazard. She wrote every night after dinner and homework, then checked the details later. It took two months to finish.

"When I started, I was going to set it in World War II but after about 100 words, I decided not to. It would mean I had to do research and I'm lazy, so I just decided to make up a new world."

Randolph Stow (1935-2010)

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The expatriate West Australian author, Randolph Stow, has died at his home in England at the age of 74.

Stow was born in Geraldton, Western Australia, in 1935. He followed his education at the University of WA with lecturing in English Literature at the Universities of Adelaide, WA and Leeds. He worked on an aboriginal mission as an anthropoligist and as a patrol officer in the Trobriand Islands. He had lived in England since 1966.

In 1958 he won the second Miles Franklin Award for his novel To the Islands, and in 1979 he was presented with the Patrick While Literary Award.

Many tributes to the author are already starting to appear with a number of people commenting on Stephen Romei's piece on The Australian newspaper's literary blog, "A Pair of Ragged Claws".

Rebecca James Interview

beautiful_malice.jpg    Back in October last year "The Wall Street Journal" wondered if Rebecca James might be the next J. K. Rowling. They based that thought on the upcoming publication of James's first novel Beautiful Malice which they said had "become a publishing phenomenon that is sparking an aggressive bidding war world-wide."

That novel is now published and the Booktopia weblog decided to ask the author "ten terrifying questions":
5. Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?

Because when I tried out for the Sydney Philharmonic they laughed?

6. Please tell us about your latest novel?

I won't rewrite the back cover blurb because you can find that anywhere so I'll just say what I think Beautiful Malice is about. It's about friendship - and how sometimes you can have a friend who isn't good for you. It's about family and love and loyalty and betrayal and the aftermath of murder and how you have to keep on hoping even when you are afraid to. And that probably sounds very ambitious and like TOO MUCH ALREADY but I hope that it successfully combines all the above with a compelling plot.

7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?

I certainly hope they're entertained enough to read to the end! It would be a terrific bonus if they are also keen for my next book.

Clive James Watch #16

Reviews of The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years

Christopher Tayler in "London Review of Books: "James's memoirs sometimes present themselves as the serio-comic case history of a bizarre personality disorder that causes him to act, speak and write like Clive James. Twenty-nine years, so far, in the making, they operate on a double time-scheme. The figure who writes each book from a stance of increased wisdom with regard to his bungling younger self slowly changes his aims and methods, evolving in tandem with the figure he depicts. Unreliable Memoirs (1980), the first instalment, which tells the story of his childhood and youth in the Sydney suburbs, was written when he was 40, already well known but not yet a household name...there's a feeling that the real story - the story of a writer with a powerful sense of the ridiculous slowly turning into someone with only a vestigial one - is being simultaneously shirked and relived. The things James does now are characteristically wide-ranging, including as they do maintaining his extensive personal website and a reactivated musical career with Pete Atkin, but by 2001 the tendency to project himself as a sage in print had got out of hand."

James Panichi on ABC Radio National's "Book Show": "If the self-justification eventually becomes annoying, it's because loyal readers would have been expecting more. If there is someone who has what it takes to examine the interplay between cultural values and the role of television in western society it's Clive James. Here's a brilliant writer who went from a childhood in Australia, in which TV didn't exist, to a world in which the medium has become everything. Yet James has little to say about that transformation. He gets bogged down in the weirdness of the scenarios his producers have put him in, and neglects to examine the role TV is playing. But there may be a happy ending. Now in his 70s, James is focusing on his writing. If there is another instalment of his memoirs in the works, his fans may find a chronicle of this part of his life more palatable. Clive James the writer is a lot easier to love."

Interview

Alyssa McDonald in "The New Statesman":

You turned 70 not long ago. Looking back over the years, would you say there was a plan?
In retrospect, it looks like a master plan, but I just followed my nose. There are still things I haven't done - I need another 40 or 50 years of life. They say the first person who'll live to 150 is already alive, but I've got a feeling it's probably not going to be me.

Your career has had a very broad scope. Was that intentional?
It just feels like a natural consequence of the way the mind works. I just want to use every possible means of expression. The way fields of creativity connect and develop is one of the interesting things about life.

What would you still like to do?

Every writer would like to write a play. For one thing, it pays well.

Poetry

"A Perfect Market" in "Poetry Magazine".

Other

James was nominated for the poetry category of the Costa Book Awards for his collection Angels Over Elsinore, but was beaten to the award by A Scattering by Christopher Reid.

The "Chester Chronicle" chose James as providing one of the quotes of 2009: "The smartest move I ever made in showbusiness was to start off looking like the kind of wreck I would end up as. I was already aged in the wood."

Helen Garner Watch #9

Reviews of The Spare Room

Steven Riddle on the "A Momentary Taste of Being" weblog: "I have finished my first book of the decade, and I could wish that it had been some other.  Not that this isn't a superb, compact, beautiful, and harrowing book.  It is.  In every respect it is well composed and beautiful executed. However, it is the kind of book that fills me with anxiety and dread--and I can't really say why--only that for me it is so."

"Crayongirl's Blog": "It might be short, but it truly is beautifully written.  The details leap out of the page, as Helen becomes more distressed by her friend's illness she focuses more on the beauty around her, noticing the red hue of a pot or the smell of coffee haunting the house after an evening of attempts at coffee enemas...It may sound strange to say, but I really enjoyed this book.  It was beautiful, haunting and elegiac, the prose was spartan but held such a variety of emotions from page to page."

Jess on the "Start Narrative Here" weblog: "The emotional impact on the reader doesn't come solely from the question of the morality of shady alternatives that falsely encourage hope in terminally ill patients, but rather the strength of the relationship between Nicola and Helen, even at its darkest and when all hope appears to be lost. As an unashamedly selfish twenty-something, it made me ask myself the question of how far would I be willing to go for someone I care about? What responsibilities to our loved ones do we hold in our relationship with them? To what extent are we willing to accept responsibility of their well being? In The Spare Room, Helen is happy to take on the draining routines of care even though she wasn't asked, but she also recognizes her own inability to fully deal with the situation."

Genevieve Fox writes of various reactions to the book amongst her fellow book club members.

"The Guardian" chose The Spare Room as one of "The Decade's Best Unread Books" describing it as: "This deceptively slight novel is as good as anything Canongate has ever published. Or will publish. It's deceptive in many ways and I think its great subtlety is one of the reasons that it will only get fully appreciated over time. I've read it three times now and on each occasion my awe at what Garner has achieved increases. The Spare Room is a brutally honest novel about death, friendship and emotional dishonesty, written in prose that manages to be both delicate and visceral. It was overlooked by all the judges of the literary prizes in this country and these prizes are key for a book like this to sell in any serious quantity. But I still remain confident that this exceptional book will be come to be widely regarded as a modern classic. Because that is what it is."
 
Other

Mae, of the "Mad Bibliophile" weblog, went along in February to see Helen Garner in conversation with Jennifer Byrne at the new Wheeler Centre in Melbourne.

You can see some video of that night's events.

Kate Grenville Watch #7

Review of The Idea of Perfection

Jill on "The Orange Prize Project" weblog: "A word of caution to readers who haven't read The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville. It's like a wonderful homemade soup. You first add the ingredients, slowly stir and then after hours of simmering, it becomes a tasty delight. The Idea of Perfection took a few chapters to get going, but readers who stick with this story are in for a wonderful literary experience...Through this character-driven story, Grenville showed readers that perfection is nothing more than an idea - a perception held by an individual. The perfect face, perfect marriage and even a perfect bridge are never really perfect. Anyone can find a flaw. However, it's the flaws that make those things so interesting."

Reviews of The Secret River

On the "Joe Bloggs" weblog: "It's a well told story, based a little on the true experiences of the authors ancestors. It is full of wonderful descriptions of Australia and its contrast with grey London. The dialogue is written in italics, which I found a little distracting, but it is a wonderful, simple tale, well told. I'm not sure about the title, I found it a little misleading but you make your own mind up. A great read."

On the "Lady of Leisure" weblog: "Grenville makes it clear that the growth and settlement of white people comes at a huge moral price for the settlers. Murder, a crime which in most cases was far worse than the ones for which they were sent to Australia in the first place, became an accepted method of dealing with the 'blacks'. It was justified as necessary in order to survive. This must have weighed heavily on the minds of those men and women involved. Despite this,  as Grenville points out, future generations, even the children of the original settlers, are unaware of this guilt."

Reviews of The Lieutenant

On the "Melbarts" weblog: "This is a work of huge imaginative power and grace. Grenville has a distinctive, authoritative take on the historical novel; rather than overburdening the reader with realms of historical fact, she wears her obviously considerable research extremely lightly. Historical details unfold as they are needed for the momentum of the narrative...The book, then, is deeply political but in no way is it politically correct. Nor should it be seen as a substitute for history: hopefully it will send scurrying to the history books those interested readers searching for more background information."

Natasha Tripney in "The Observer": "Writing in a clear, simple style, Grenville elegantly evokes the wonder and tension inherent in the first meetings between these two different worlds."

Lesley McDowell in "The Independent": "Kate Grenville's latest novel, about a young 18th-century English astronomer who is among the first settlers and soldiers to arrive in New South Wales, is historical fiction elevated into the category of 'literary fiction', not so much by its research as by its psychological truth. Historical writers know that their readers demand a certain level of information: we want to learn about times different from our own, and it's not so much recognition that we crave in our ancestors as a sense of their difference...The Lieutenant is a lovely example of historical fiction at its best: complex, demanding, and always revealing."

Interview

On the author's website.

Other

Grenville reflects on her use of historical material in her recent work, in an essay titled "The Novelist as Barbarian" for the Naional Library of Australia.

On Slow TV, the author discusses:

The Lieutenant (Part 1)
The Lieutenant (Part 2)
Writers in a Tme of Change, her keynote address at the 2009 Festival of Ideas, held at the University of Melbourne.

The "Booklover Book Reviews" weblog gives an overview of all of Grenville's novels.

Tom Keneally Watch #11

Reviews of The People's Train

Tom Adair in "The Times": "Why bother with Thomas Cook? For the price of a novel step aboard a Thomas Keneally tour of the world without leaving your armchair. Take off to Africa (Towards Asmara), the Middle East (The Tyrant's Novel), to America (Confederates) or to wartime Germany (Schindler's Ark)...Keneally's tours outshine his titles. The People's Train (emblematic of the Russian Revolution), is yet another lacklustre title. But, once aboard, the author's restlessness pays off. You're en route to Australia via Shanghai, then on to Russia, surveying the turbulent years of the early 20th century...A lesser writer might lazily have succumbed to historical hindsight, but Keneally portrays the mayhem of Russia in flux with a stringent adherence to the order (and disorder) of things. He presents in convincing minutia the Russia that is, creating a brittle verisimilitude that makes its melodramatic endgame surprisingly real."

Jon Wright on the "Bookmunch" weblog: "Keneally does a superbly consistent job of capturing his protagonist's voice. There is something faintly ridiculous about someone of Samsurov's radical credentials bothering himself with Brisbane's parochial issues, and his sense of muted dissatisfaction (even boredom) -- did he really escape incarceration and flee Russia via Japan and Shanghai for this -- is portrayed with great skill. He is meant for greater things and, in fact, the reader is alerted to this fact from the outset. The first part of the book is introduced as the retrospective memoir of Samsurov, "Late Hero of the Soviet Revolution," so we know all along that, come 1917, he will be back in the motherland, leading the charge...There are a few moments in Keneally's book when pedagogy trumps narrative flow, and this is a pity. Samsurov has a habit of explaining various aspects of Russian life or history to one of his Brisbane interlocutors in conspicuously precise detail: this sometimes feels like the author filling in potential gaps in his readers' knowledge, and it is all rather heavy-handed. This minor flaw aside, it is hard to fault Keneally's book. He paints a vivid portrait of what it must have felt like to be a Russian émigré stranded in early twentieth-century Australia but, just as importantly, it tells us a great deal about Australia's response to the world-changing events that were gradually coming to a boil."

Review of Australians: Origins to Eureka

Chris Saliba on "Webdiary": "In this new history of Australia novelist Thomas Keneally takes the reader from our continent's origins, some 45 millions years ago, when the landmass that is now Australia broke away from the super-continent known as "Gondwana". (The southern landmass Gondwana also comprised of India, Africa, South America and Antarctica. The name given to the other, northern landmass is Laurasia.)  Australians ends with the Eureka uprising, that extraordinary event of Australian history, which forged the iron in the nation's democratic soul. Privilege, authoritarian government, political chicanery, the interests of money, nepotism, all would feel the inexorable, countervailing forces of popular democratic agitation..Australians is a grand and absorbing feast of a book. There were many sections that I lingered over slowly, savouring Keneally's gift for bringing such a wide cast of characters to life, making the book a real experience. Keneally also writes in a witty, almost lapidary prose that is most appealing."

Review of Schindler's Ark

Lorraine Douglas on "The Complete Booker": "Keneally began researching and writing his documentary style novel - Schindler's Ark. I feel this first title signifies the Biblical message of Schindler's salvation of the Polish Jews he rescued in his factory in WW2. Akin to Noah saving mankind on his ark, Schindler's factory was considered a safe haven - almost like paradise compared to the concentration and labour camps of the Nazi regime. In many references in the book, Schindler is compared to and considered God...This is a powerful and unforgettable story...There is a real human touch to Keneally's writing which helped me to feel the intensity of the Holocaust and realize the message of Schindler's life."

Other

Keneally chose 5 books about Russia for "The Moscow Times".

It seems the author is rather prone to wardrobe malfunctions, of a sort.

Keneally will be appearing at the 2010 Auckland Writers and Readers festival - 12-16 May.  He also gave the opening address at the 2010 Adelaide Writers' Festival.

And he ponders the Archibald Prize.

Patricia Wrightson (1921-2010)

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patricia_wrightson.jpg   Doyen of Australian writers for children and young adults, Patricia Wrightson has died at the age of 88.

Wrightson was the author of 28 novels, from The Crooked Snake in 1955, to A Wisp of Smoke in 2004. She was the winner of many prizes in Australia including: the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award in 1956 for The Crooked Snake, in 1974 for The Nargun and the Stars, in 1978 for The Ice is Coming, and in 1984 for A Little Fear. She was awarded an OBE for services to writing in 1978, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1986. The Children's Writing Award category of the NSW Premier's Literary Awards is named in her honour.

Not a lot of obituaries have been printed as yet, but you can get some idea of the esteem in which she was held by reading the following:

ABC News

"The Australian newspaper

"The Daily Examiner" newspaper, Grafton

Judith Ridge on the "Misrule" weblog

Jonathan Shaw on his weblog

,A href=http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/author-delved-into-world-of-children-20100401-ri05.html>"The Sydney Morning Herald" newspaper

Michael Robotham Interview

bleed_for_me.jpg    Michael Robotham is the author of a number of excellent crime thrillers including Lost, Suspect, and Shatter. HIs latest novel, Bleed for Me, has just been published and over the weekend he was interviewed by Jason Steger.
Robotham is one of those writers who doesn't plot in advance. He started the book twice, discarding 30,000 words of very different novels each time. ''It's like digging and you find a little dinosaur bone and you start brushing away and you don't know if you've found a massive dinosaur or a buried dog bone.''

He wouldn't have it any other way. ''If I knew what was going to happen right through from chapter to chapter it would be like a normal job. I wouldn't be excited about going to work every day. Things happen when I write that excite me, things surprise me, things shock me and things frighten me. And if they do me, they must the reader as well.''

But if the writer is in control, how can this happen?

''Like in all drama, you create these seeds of conflict, put your characters under pressure and see how they react. And suddenly you either come up with something new to throw into the mix to totally turn everything on its head or a character will react in a way you don't sort of expect.''

Peter Goldsworthy Interview

gravel.jpg   Peter Goldsworthy, author of Everything I Knew, has published a new collection of eight stores titled Gravel. He was interviewed by Angela Meyer for the "LiteraryMinded" weblog.

The book is published by Penguin Books, under the Hamish Hamilton imprint.

You're skilled at capturing that moment of erotic awakening, in 'The Nun's Story', and also in Everything I Knew. It's the kind of topic that draws the reader in through memory, the senses and the imagination. Is the best kind of art, for you, something that stirs the intellect, emotions and physical body all at once?

Exactly. Too much literary fiction is pure confection - all head; too much popular fiction is cheap emotions - all heart. There are great exceptions; there is nothing human - nothing of the heart - in Borges' best stories, and they are wonderful. But he knew to keep them short; he would never risk boring us with a novel. I want - unhumbly - to speak to all the organs at once. I've often written about this - as essay called the Biology of Literature, for one - how writing can make us weep and laugh of course, but can make the goosebumps rise (Robert Graves' test of great poetry), or make our hairs stand up on end, or fill us with awe, or stop us sleeping for days.

Which story in Gravel was the most difficult to write, and why?

Hard to say. They are always a mixture of pain and pleasure. 'Sometimes pus, sometimes a poem - but always pain', the poet Yehudi Amichai wrote. 'Shooting the Dog', perhaps - a story that was given to me by my wife Lisa, from her days as a young teacher in the bush. Or the last one, on the love between a middle-aged man and a school girl.
As a child I was pretty often covered in various forms of gravel rash - falling off bikes, tripping in the school playground, which always seems to be covered with bitumen - so I cringe just a little every time I see that cover.

David Malouf Watch #2

Reviews of Ransom

Elizabeth Speller in "The Independent": "David Malouf's book is born of war. He was first gripped by the stories of the eighth-century BC Iliad as a Brisbane schoolboy in 1943, living among sandbagged buildings and watching constant American troop movements north to the battles of the Pacific. He began this novel 60 years later, drawing on that ancient tale of war just a year or so after the destruction of the World Trade Centre...It is not surprising that his take on extreme and seemingly inexorable violence should be told from the sidelines and should speculate on the back-story of the Trojan war: on bruised humanity, of small glances and fancies, hopes and fortunes dashed, rather than the clash of weapons and heroic egos. But the themes of this apparently simple, yet immensely moving, modern novel are still vast: loss, forgiveness, love and redemption."

David Hebblethwaite on his "Follow the Thread" weblog: "What I take away the most from Ransom is the portrait of a world which is not my own. I haven't the knowledge to judge how authentic is Malouf's depiction of ancient times (and it's a legendary version, anyway), but it's convincing enough for me. This is a society to which the idea of things happening by chance is an alien concept, where everyone is bound to the stations given them by the gods, even a king: he must be seen to be a king, becoming more 'object' than individual - which is why Priam's plan to disguise himself causes such controversy. It takes some effort to connect with this world that thinks so differently, and so it should - but the reward is a fully immersive tale."

Tom Holland in "The Guardian": "If Classic FM published fiction, then Ransom is the kind of novel that would surely result. David Malouf's reworking of the climactic episode of the Iliad demonstrates that epics are no less susceptible than symphonies to being chopped up and repackaged in accessible, bite-size chunks...No one, and certainly not a writer as talented as Malouf, can go far wrong with material like this. As in the Iliad, so in Ransom, the moment when Priam finally meets Achilles and states his mission brings a lump to the throat. Both the lyricism of his prose and the delicacy of his characterisation enable Malouf to avoid the risk of bathos that so often stalks novelists when they try to update epic. He also manages to avoid another tripwire with his treatment of the gods: the immortals, though they manifest themselves throughout the novel, tend to do so elliptically, appearing on the margins of Priam's vision, or else by revealing personal knowledge of a character that no mere mortal could be expected to know."

Darryl Accone mentions Malouf's novel in an essay entitled "Of Walls, Wars, Food and Games" in the "Mail and Guardian": "Malouf moves imaginatively and thoughtfully beyond Homer, the precursor he always respects. There is no expedience to his embellished and enlarged tale, which concentrates on Priam's attempts to recover Hector's body from Achilles. Ransom has been 66 years in the making, from a rainy afternoon in 1943 when Malouf first encountered the story of Troy. For him, and for us, it has been worth the wait."

Edmund White in "The New York Times": "Mr. Malouf is an Australian writer and perhaps his fascination with the wisdom of "barbarians" comes out of his interest in the Aborigines of his country; Mr. Malouf's masterpiece, "Remembering Babylon," is about a 19th-century white adolescent sailor who falls overboard and spends years living among the Aborigines. He nearly forgets English and adopts the culture of the tribe he lives with..."Ransom" is a similarly serious, often beautiful examination of the contrast between the simple sincerity of the carter and the strangely abstract existence of the king. It is dignified and thought-provoking -- but it doesn't seem to me to be exactly a work of art, to be fully realized and embodied in the lives of its characters. It is more a metaphysical inquest than episodes from messy, contingent experience."

Articles by Malouf

In December, Malouf wrote a piece for The Australian newspaper calling for the preservation of Yungaba, an historic building in Brisbane that was threatened with demolition.

"The Sydney Morning Herald" published an extract from Malouf's essay On Experience, which was to be published by Melbourne University Press.

Interview

Anna Metcalfe in "The Financial Times".

Others

The Red Room Company has video-taped a talk by David Malouf titled "The Wordshed, David Malouf in the House of Writing."
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Each part runs about four minutes.

The author paid a visit to homeless Clemente students  at Mission Australia, who are studying Remembering Babylon.

Lisa Hannett Interview

Lisa Hannett is a recent graduate of Clarion South, the science fiction and fantasy writers workshop held in Queensland each year. A story of hers, "The Good Window", was featured on the "Fantasy Magazine" website in September last year.  She has now been interviewed on that website by T. J. McIntyre:

What inspired "The Good Window"?

I'd had a few of the story's elements kicking around in my mind for a while, but a flight I took from Tasmania home to Adelaide last year was the catalyst I needed to bring them all together. Basically, we had just taken off and the plane had made a really sharp turn--so sharp that all I could see out my window was vibrant green grass, dense forests, and sparkling waters. No horizon, just ground. And since Adelaide's been experiencing intense drought for years, Tasmania's lush landscape came as a shock. It was such a contrast to what I'd gotten used to seeing at home! So, since I generally tend to think morbid thoughts at the beginning of my flights, I looked out at this gorgeous view and thought, 'If the plane crashed right now, this would be the last thing I saw. Apart from the plummeting towards death part, that wouldn't be half bad.'

Once the plane righted itself, I started thinking about how our perspectives--literally, what we see when we look out at the world--influence the way we experience life. From there it was a quick step to: What if a character's world view was mostly based on what she saw outside her window each day?

You can also read another interview with the author which was conducted as part of the 2010 Australian Specfic Snapshot.

Kirsten Tranter Interview

the_legacy.jpg   Kirsten Tranter's first novel, The Legacy, is the first of two she is contracted to write for HarperCollins. As the book is released she was interviewed by Miriam Cosic for "The Australian".
She first toyed with the idea of her novel while escaping the reality of Darwin, in the Northern Territory, a location she didn't find conducive to working on her thesis. Her husband had taken a job here in indigenous media. "I was a bit isolated," she says, clearly understating her point. "There was no one to talk to about my work, no one within a 5000-mile radius."

She filled in time by toying with the idea for a book - how easy it would have been to disappear, or to be disappeared, during the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001 - and wrote a few tentative chapters. It began to overlap with another idea: an alternative take on Henry James's most famous novel. "I always wanted to rewrite that story because I can't stand the way it ends," she says. "I felt indignant about it, maybe more than most ... There was something about the way [Isabel Archer] just disappears into a depressing, mysterious future. And for a lot of people who lost people in 9/11, it was very hard to accept that they had died. People were always described as missing, that was in the notices all over the city." Tranter was living on the Lower East Side when it happened. After Darwin, Tranter put the novel on the backburner. She came back to Australia in 2006 after her son, Henry, was born. Teaching a writing course at a university, she felt inspired to return to fiction. "I started thinking of myself as a creative writer again, and someone said, 'You should apply for an Australia Council grant; it will only take you a day to do it.' "

She had nearly finished her thesis. Her fellowship had run out. She was also teaching Shakespeare at another university, working as a part-time research assistant there and doing part-time work for her mother's company, Australian Literary Management. A grant sounded handy: she applied to the Australia Council and succeeded. "I didn't clear the decks and sit down to write until I finished my dissertation," she says. "Then I wrote it really quickly. I was ready to write it."

Garry Disher Interview



wyatt.jpg    Garry Disher's new novel, Wyatt, has just been published by Text Publishing. It is the first novel in the Wyatt series since The Fallout in 1997.

He was recently interviewed by Jo Case for "Readings":

Wyatt is 'an old-style hold-up man: cash, jewels, paintings'. He avoids the drug scene and is restricted in what he does by the fact that new technology has outstripped his expertise. Is there a certain appeal in writing an 'old-style' criminal like him? Does this add an extra challenge for you when deciding which situations he'll be embroiled in, and how he'll deal with them?

It's probably beyond my skills to create a loveable drug dealer. The face of crime has changed with drugs. There's a greater chance of viciousness and unpredictability when greed, addiction and huge profit potential are involved. Besides, it's more fun, and somehow more worthy, to show Wyatt holding up a payroll van rather than ripping off an addict or a dealer. The problem for me (and him) is finding ways to get the cash without having to hire a dozen guys with specialist technical know-how and gadgetry, not to mention showing the reader how it all works.

Your books - both the Wyatt and Challis and Destry series - are often very Melbourne in tone. Wyatt evokes a range of city locations, from Frankston's teenage mothers, to dodgy stallholders at the Queen Vic markets, architectural monstrosities in Mount Eliza and young yuppies in Southbank. How important is place to your writing?

Setting should be a vital element of all fiction and it's crucial in crime fiction. From a writing craft point of view, I can't see the characters until I see the ground they walk on, and vice versa. Setting is useful in all kinds of ways: adding to our sense of the characters, creating an appropriate mood (e.g., distress), appealing to our senses (we've all had a bus belch on us), and, more broadly, showing the social as well as the topographical diversity of a region.

Peter Temple Interviews

Peter Temple's novel Truth was published in October 2009 and has been receiving its fair share of attention.

I missed an interview with the author published in "The Australian" in October. Temple was interviewed by Peter Craven:

Truth comes to take in corruption in high places, intrigue in the police force, marital infidelity and family dysfunction, as well as the encircling drama of Victorian bushfires. So was he at work on Truth as towns outside Melbourne were burning down? "Oh, yes. I was writing this book until two months ago, but I knew long before the fires that it had to have the fires in it, that it was book set in high and dangerous summer."

What's the process of writing like for him? He looks at me as though this is an old story. "I wouldn't say I was fluent. There are days when it comes easily, after weeks of muddling. But the days that come easily aren't necessarily the better days in terms of the result. I often get bogged down and, when I do, I might jump three chapters ahead. In the end it's like repairing a tapestry.

"It's when there's the sense of urgency that I start to enjoy it. That's when it begins to take hold of you and you get the sense of the right words for stages and for the patterns that have formed." He is attracted to the drama of the crime story. "I like having a plot, I like characters with a reason to get up in the morning."

Temple couldn't make it to the UK for the recent launch of his novel there, but Bob Cornwell of TW Books was able to interview him by email:

Bob Cornwell: When we last met, after winning the 2007 CWA Gold Dagger for The Broken Shore, you were already talking about that book as the first part of a possible trilogy. How did you arrive at that idea?

Peter Temple: It came to me while I was finishing The Broken Shore. Stephen Villani had a bit part and I liked him as a character: knowing, sardonic, much older in his manner than his contemporary Joe Cashin. I thought he might deserve his own book and I began thinking about his life and his city, and that became Truth. But I don't know about a third instalment. I need to do something else. Get out more.

The book has been long in the writing. More relaxed deadlines this time around? Did the (I believe) unprecedented award from the Australia Council for the Arts in any way enable you to take what you have called "a longer swing at it"?
I was able to take my time with Truth and for that I'm indebted to the Australia Council's wonderful policy of giving money to all kinds of writers, even those badged as crime writers. Before this taxable gift, I've always written under the pressure of bills. Of course it is not in the interests of publishers for writers to escape the lash of need, but mine is patient - not happy but patient.

You normally work from a "feeling" about what you want to do. What was that feeling this time?
Melbourne is a city changing faster than many of its inhabitants like. I wanted to write something that could capture its present and its recent history through the hard eyes of a cop twenty-five years in the job. I did my usual fiddling around, trying to find a score for the story, trying to find a voice for Stephen Villani, trying to avoid exposition as far as possible, losing faith, and giving up on the enterprise from time to time.

Clive James Watch #15

Reviews of The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years

Roland White in "The Sunday Times": "Most television memoirs instinctively take on a chat-show format. Celebrities, dear friends all, are wheeled on to tell their stock anecdotes. The Blaze of Obscurity is more thoughtful about the mechanics and indeed the purpose of television, but James is not above a bit of celebrity work if the context requires it. He spotted Nigella Lawson's potential when everybody else thought she was too posh. He interviewed Leonard Bernstein while the conductor's hand was looking for a route into James's trousers, and he enjoyed several lunches with the Princess of Wales. He is entranced by Jane Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, found Ronald Reagan to be a showbiz trouper, and once changed the set of his show because Pavarotti was too bulky to tackle stairs...As James cannot find it within himself to write a dull paragraph, his book is an entertaining read. But there's no hiding the fact that the material on showbusiness and television has been well worked elsewhere."

Robert Yates in "The Guardian": "As always with James, the temptation is to play the man and not the ball - so willing is he to present a large, vivid target. Someone less inclined to provoke ridicule might not have written, en passant: 'I had been so caught up with learning to read Japanese' or: 'When waiting in the car with my driver, I would read to him from Simenon or Maupassant.' But what's a little ridicule next to James's fabulous appetites, next to his desire to acquire fresh knowledge and his delight in showing off? Besides, what a treat for the driver to have a little Maupassant in his ear while idling...Mostly, he relishes the experience - he has never lacked the conviction, he writes, that he was the 'natural centre of attention'. And he takes great pleasure in being invited to handsome places where there are beautiful women to entertain. Again, ridicule if you will, but he gets the self-tease in first."

Roger Lewis in "The Daily Mail": "Has there ever been a more vivid example of cultural schizophrenia than Clive James? On the one hand, he is mad keen to tell us about his highbrow achievements and credentials...Pitching hard for Elder Statesman in the Republic of Letters status, our author brags that in the grand salons of London, 'at the same table as David Hockney, Philip Roth, Harold Pinter and Sir Isaiah Berlin, it was flattering to be treated like one of the boys'....Let's hope they didn't think the portly James was the wine waiter. But that's what being a VIP celebrity artist is all about, isn't it? Your contacts. 'I made a conscious effort to remember it all,' says James, as if he was Marcel Proust...Unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten everything when it came to writing this book. He doesn't even let us know his own wife's name. Is this discretion, or a simple inability to focus on anything outside his own immediate frame of Humpty Dumpty big-head reference."

Essays

"Head and Shoulders Above the Rest" - The achievements of some people stand so tall, a statue in their honour can never match up.

"When Doing Nothing is an Option" - Living in a democracy can be trying, until you think of the alternatives.

"Climate Change - A Story Too Often told the Same Way" - Having one-sided discussions about climate change helps no-one.

"Automate at Your Peril" - Computerised systems may be useful but they can also get things very wrong.

"One Lesson to Teach the Young" - The young are the future, but they must still be reminded of the lessons of the past.

Extract

"The Times" published an extract from James's latest volume of his autobiography, The Blaze of Obscurity.

Interviews

James was interviewed by Andrew Denton for the latter's ABC TV "Elders" program.  You can watch the video of that interview, and read the transcript, here.

James Campbell in "The Guardian".

YouTube now has available an interview with Billy Connolly by Clive James.  It comes in two parts.

Other

James attended the London launch of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and had a few things to say about the contents, according to James Delingpole of "The Telegraph".

James's poetry collection, Angels of Elsinore, was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award.

James and the novelist Martin Amis appeared on a Manchester University panel discussion regarding the subject of ageing.  You can download a podcast of that discussion here.

Charlotte Wood Interview

brothers_sisters.jpg    At the end of 2009 Charlotte Wood (best known as the author of such novels as The Submerged Cathedral and The Children) released an anthology of stories titled Brothers and Sisters. She spoke to Jo Case of the "Readings.com" website:
The stories in Brothers and Sisters were all specially written for this anthology. What made you decide to commission new works rather than anthologise existing stories?

It was initially my publisher's idea - Jane Palfreyman's - to commission entirely new stories, and as soon as she said it, the whole project became much more exciting. Somehow, the writers agreeing to write to a theme injected the anthology with an element of risk, and therefore of energy, that I don't think it would have had otherwise. There was always the danger that having agreed, one might find one had nothing to say, so I suspect some of us had to work really hard, pushing our work in new directions in order to discover a way into the topic. I know some of the writers (including me) found the whole process much more confronting than they'd expected.

I think the commissioning of new works also had the unexpected side effect of giving the anthology a cohesion it might not otherwise have had. Obviously an editor's personal literary tastes come into play in choosing contributors like this (rather than existing work choosing us, as it were, simply by relating to the topic), so I think some common ground between the writers - a precision with language, a reflectiveness, a kind of smokiness - lies beneath the collection as a whole.

Alexandra Adornetto Book Deal

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"Beattie's Book Blog", out of New Zealand, is reporting that young Melbourne author Alexandra Adornetto has landed a six-figure publishing deal in the US for a YA trilogy.

The trilogy centres around three mysterious teens who enrol in a local high school. Nobody knows the truth: that they are angels on a mission to save a world on the brink of destruction. When Bethany, the youngest angel, falls for her classmate Xavier, she faces a frightening decision; will she defy the laws of Heaven by loving him?
You might remember that Adornetto made headlines a few years back when she signed a publishing deal with HarperCollins in Australia when she was only 13.

Di Morrissey Interview



silent_country.jpg    Di Morrissey is the author of some 17 novels, starting with Heart of the Dreaming in 1991. Along the way she has published such works as Blaze, The Reef, The Valley, Monsoon and The Islands. Her latest novel is titled The Silent Country, and as it appears in local bookshops she has been interviewed by Madeline Healy for "The Courier-Mail":
Morrissey, a former journalist, has written 17 books, most of which have made it to the Australian bestseller lists and a number of which are set in the Outback.

"Once I've got the place I just go there and people generally tell you stories and you hear stories," she says.

She has travelled to, and set her books in, Hawaii, South America, Vietnam and throughout Australia many times.

"You can't write about a place if you haven't been there," she says. "It's my journalistic background."

Morrissey began her writing career as a cadet at Consolidated Press before heading to London's Fleet Street. She spent eight years working on TV's Good Morning Australia, putting the writing career on the backburner, until she took the plunge and moved to Byron Bay to write.

"I have a writing cabin in Byron Bay with a little wooden hut out the back and I also have a house on the river about four hours out of Sydney," she says.

"I can work anywhere but it is nice to have a space where there are no distractions. You are more focused."

Morrissey's books are steadfastly set outside of major cities, a choice she has made because of her love of rural landscapes.

"I like to write about the colours of the Outback," she says.

"Getting off the bitumen and walking to the special places with indigenous guides is what I like. And to see it through their eyes is a real honour."


Emma Jones Interview

striped_world.jpg
  
Emma Jones's first poetry collection, The Striped World, won the Best Poetry Collection Award at the Queensand Premier's Literary Awards announced in September, and has since gone on to win the Felix Dennis award for debut poetry in the UK. The volume has now also been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (which "rewards the best work of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama) by a UK or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under") alongside such writers as Aravind Adiga and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The winner of this award will be announced later today, UK time.

The poet is currently writer-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust at Grasmere in the Lake District, and spoke to Peter Wilson for "The Australian" newspaper:

Sitting in her small cottage, Jones, 32, tries to explain the origins of her writing and casts her mind 17,000km and 25 years away to a house in Concord in Sydney's inner west. "We moved into a house when I was about seven and my parents found a crate of books that I guess the people had left up in the loft. They just laid all the books out saying 'Do you want any of these, because most of them were good'.

"There was one book that I still have. It is my most precious book. It was a 1950s kids' retelling of Greek myths and I loved this book. I was kind of fixated with it and I think that was what really started me, because I got really interested in mythology and things like that."

Softly spoken and with a slightly vulnerable manner for a 32-year-old, Jones is a touch nervous about giving her first lengthy interview because she fears it may be too early in her career to be receiving more attention than other poets.

Kate Grenville Watch #6

Reviews of The Lieutenant

Bill Marx in the "LA Times": "The Lieutenant compels as a historical novel exploring the sins of Australia's colonial past, an admirable testament to the necessity that the West learn to appreciate rather than condemn the Other. But Grenville's most thrilling achievement is to filter that lesson in social acceptance through the computational consciousness of a man whose head is in the stars."

Corrina Lothar in "The Washington Post": "At the heart of The Lieutenant lies the conflict that has long troubled modern man, a conflict given voice at Nuremberg: What is a soldier's obligation to disobey an order when it is against the law of humanity. Therein lies true tragedy."

Alison McCulloch in "The New York Times": "The Lieutenant is less a story of colonial struggle and encounter than The Secret River, and more the richly imagined portrait of a deeply introspective, and quite remarkable, man."

Teddy Rose on the So Many Precious Books, So Little Time weblog: "I loved Kate Grenville's The Secret River ... and was highly anticipating her next book. While I quite enjoyed it, I didn't love it like The Secret River. It took a long time for me to warm up to the character of Daniel Rooke . Once he started his relationship with the natives, I did warm up to him and loved reading about his special friendship with Tagaran. The problem was that it took well over 100 pages to lead up to this and it didn't last very long. I would have like to explore the relationship further."

The Synchronised Chaos weblog: "Scientific field observations as literary narrative hark back to centuries ago, to the days of the Origin of Species and to Captain Cook's descriptive logs. An educated person could be a writer, scientist, sailor, and humanist with opinions on a variety of topics, and everything would come through in his or her diary. Grenville's The Lieutenant draws upon and builds on that tradition, with historical and technical information enriching her distinctive, human characters' journey towards intercultural understanding."

Daisy's Book Journal weblog: "This was such a good book. It was based on real events (which are explained in the author's note at the end), but remains a work of fiction. I loved it from the very beginning. The story was accessible, interesting, heart-warming and tender. I was particularly fond of Rooke's work in astronomy and linguistics. His passion for these subjects were so thrilling, it was hard for me not to get caught up in it, too. When I got close to the end of the book, I had to put it down for and leave it for a few days. I generally have to do that when a book gets too emotional. No use me being a basket case for the rest of the day or not being able to sleep. Also, I really didn't want this book to end, so the little break prolonged it for me."

A number of reviews by readers are included on the BookBrowse website.

Grenville penned an author's note at the end of The Lieutenant.  The Meet at the Gate website has reprinted it.

Review of The Idea of Perfection

Bonnie on The Orange Prize Project: "Three times married Harley Savage is a master quilter and has a 'dangerous streak.' Douglas Cheeseman is a gawky engineer who's former wife has described him as a 'bridge bore.' They both arrive in Kararakook, NSW, she to help set up a pioneer heritage museum and he to direct the tearing down of the old bridge that has been deemed unsafe. Their developing relationship is explored in Kate Grenville's 2001 Orange Prize winning novel and within its' 400 pages lies a gem of a story.The beauty of this book is the detailed development of these two quirky characters, both so unsure of, and reticient to share too much of, themselves. Grenville masterfully, brings them together, and because of her attention to detail, you find yourself cheering them on and hoping that the author doesn't disappoint in the end. She doesn't."

Reviews of Dark Places

Blakkat Ruminations weblog: "It's reading a book like 'Dark Places' that really brings home to me the power of fiction and its ability to illuminate lives, past and present, that non-fiction or bare historical facts cannot hope to plummet the depth of. 'Love in the time of Cholera' resonated with me in the same way. The only similarity between the two is that they expose and reflect on male arrogance in the face of rampant (apparently) female desire around the turn of the last century, but it's probably more to do the with brutal honesty of the central character, the attention to detail and the authenticity of characters and setting that support the narrative that brings me to compare the two books in the first place."

Angela Meyer on the LiteraryMinded weblog: "The novel is told confrontingly and effectively in first person - and I have to say - I love a challenging narrator who both repels me and draws me in. On the whole I was fascinated by the way Singer saw the world around him. Grenville is a very accessible writer, at times a little too close to lacking subtlety. I found this too when I read The Secret River, but friends encouraged me to go back to the earlier works. And Dark Places did captivate me more than River."

Other

Lynn Walsh took some writing tips from Grenville's book Searching for the Secret River.

SlowTV has a a video of Grenville's presentation to the 2009 Melbourne Festival of Ideas, titled "Writers in a Time of Change".  The video is split into two parts.

Grenville spoke at the `Amazing Women' literary function at the National Library of Australia about the books that had inspired her as a child.

Sophie Lee Interview

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Sophie Lee is best known as an actor who appeared in such films as The Castle and Muriel's Wedding.  In 2007 she released a novel, Alice in La La Land, and she has now had published a children's book titled Edie Amelia and the Monkey Shoe Mystery.  As that book is appearing on the shelves she is interviewed by Fran Metcalf of "The Courier-Mail".

"I was really proud to work in the Australian film and theatre industries," she says. "But acting involved waiting for somebody to green-light your work a lot of the time and I am someone who really loves to work hard. There's something about feeling like you've done an honest day's work that I really love."

The bright lights of film and theatre that once mesmerised Lee began to dim as the grind of auditions and travel rubbed against her new-found role as a mother in 2003.

She enrolled in creative writing at University of Technology, Sydney and wrote her first book which also contained striking similarities to her own life.

Helen Garner Watch #8

Reviews of The Spare Room

Liesl Schillinger in "The New York Times": "The Spare Room reads like an unsparing memoir in which flashes of dark humor and simple happiness (a magic show, a grandchild's flamenco dance, a shared joke) lighten the grim record of an overwhelmingly difficult chapter in a woman's life, a chapter whose meaning she still struggles to decipher years on, whose sharper entries still stab her conscience, but can't be erased by time."

Jenn's Bookshelf weblog: "The Spare Room by Helen Garner is a short in length but is a very powerful little book. In a short span of time, it describes how cancer can effect a relationship. Garner's writing is painfully honest. Her characters are very real, almost too real at times. There were aspects about each of the characters that I liked and disliked. I commended Helen for her selflessness in agreeing to care for Nicola. At the same time, it angered me when, not a week into Nicola's stay, she begain to complain about how difficult the task was. And I commended Nicola for not giving in to her cancer, but was horrified at just how much she'd put her body through in the slight chance it might cure her of the disease. And the trust she put into this medicial center with very little proof of the treatment's effectiveness."

rosyb on the Vulpes Libris weblog: "This is a book about dying. About cancer. About the appalling strains that are put on the living in the face of terminal illness; about how people cope; about how people lie to themselves and to others, determined to cling onto life no matter what. About how all of us cling to certain values for comfort, how none of us can really give each other what we want and need...Stylistically, at first I did not take to this slim volume which -- in a reflection of the title -- seemed just a little too spare for my liking. Laying my cards on the table, despite the current fashion, I'm not always a fan of ultra-sparse elegance. It tends to  strike me in the same way as minimalist interior design: too controlled and lacking in personality. Garner is not a visual writer and I began to get frustrated with wanting to SEE things:  the characters and environment, particularly as it is set in Australia -- a country I have never even visited. I felt starved of visual detail and, being a visual person, I missed that...However, as I progressed beyond the beginning of the book, the sparse prose seemed less like a self-conscious style so much as a baldness, a rawness -- an attempt, perhaps, to present a no-bones account, a stark account of a painful reality. Garner might not draw many vivid pictures of the outside world, but she is masterful at drawing believable and absorbing psychological portraits of her characters...I found myself completely engrossed."

Review of Joe Cinque's Consolation

Squibs and Sagas weblog: "Joe Cinque's Consolation attempts to be a testimony of Joe Cinque's life but is actually a testimony on three main fronts.  Firstly, it is a testimony of Mrs Cinque's grief as filtered by Garner.  Secondly, Garner provides a testimony as a personal witness of the trials and thirdly, the binding of her life to the narration of this tale is a testimony to her own life and mental state at the time.  It is not the whole story and it holds a lot of prejudices and assumptions, but don't all testimonies?"

Other

Jason Steger, of "The Age", reported on a proposal to adapt Garner's novel, The Spare Room, for the stage.  The play is to be written by British actor Eileen Atkins, with the aim being that Venessa Redgrave might also feature in the production.

Simon Thomas sees similarities between the UK covers for The Spare Room and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.

Garner launched Anna Goldsworthy's memoir, Piano Lessons, in Melbourne in October.  SlowTV was there and the video of that event is now available.

Elizabeth on the Sixth in Line weblog, contemplates her relationship with, and feelings for, Helen Garner and her work:

I want to write to Helen Garner again and tell her how sorry I am. In my last letter to her I think I was trying to show off, trying to show her how clever I was under the guise of trying to get her to take me seriously in relation to my thesis topic. But now I suspect she will only experience my writing as pompous and peacock.

I am ashamed of my desire to impress Garner, my desire to seduce her, to make her my friend, to want her to rely on me for something, anything however small, just as I rely on her. I have to remind myself that I am a reader, one of many, an admiring reader perhaps but like everyone else, especially those who try to write themselves, I am prone to fits of jealousy. 

Interview with Kaaron Warren



slights.jpg    Kaaron Warren is an Australian writer of dark fiction currently based in Fiji. Her short fiction has been published in Year's Best Horror and Fantasy and Fantasy Magazine, amongst others. Her first horror novel, Slights, has just been published by Angry Robot Books in the UK, who also intend to publish her next two: Mistification and Walking the Tree.

Prior to the publicaton of Slights, Warren spoke to Robert Hood:
RB: As you see it, who or what has inspired your writing, thematically and stylistically?

KW: I take inspiration from everywhere! Singing Karaoke the other night, as I am wont to do, I chose "Hotel California". As I reached the end, I thought, "This song is a perfect short story, and ends in exactly the right place." I've listened to that song over a lot of years, and I've always known this. It ends in exactly the right place. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." I love that. Leaves a lot to the imagination, but puts you on the path to where they want you to go. What happens next is up to the listener. To the reader. This inspires me to end my stories in the right place!

Thematically, I'm inspired by the news, by the stories I hear, by the things I see. You never know when an idea will pop up. I recently read Magog by Andrew Sinclair. Written in 1972, it's a story of London, really, written in a vicious tone I loved. Throughout, I made notes, inspired by a sentence or a comment he made. Things like; he talked about three hundred dogs dumped on a bare rock in the Bosphorus. How you can see this island, with 299 skeletons chewed, one showing no signs of being eaten at all? This is something I could build a story around.

Stylistically, I'm inspired by writers like Raymond Carver, whose sparse fiction is so evocative it breathes. By William Golding, who writes diverse, deep fiction in his own clear voice. By Harlan Ellison, for his wild imagination he turns into real stories.

Really, I'm inspired by everything I read, good and bad. The bad helps me avoid the bad, the good spurs me to better work.

Geraldine Brooks Watch #8

Reviews of People of the Book

Jennifer Crocker on the "Tonight" website from South Africa: "Geraldine Brooks takes the reader on a history tour of note with People Of The Book, stopping along the way in the breathtaking sweep of her narrative to examine anti-semitism, the gruelling effect of war, and how love might be able to salvage the whole sorry mess...With her skill as a writer she handles her subject matter, which is based on a true story, with care."

Fiona on "a reader's random ramblings" weblog: "As an Australian, it is nice to read books with Australian voices and settings. Sometimes, however, Australian authors seem very self-conscious of their international readers, and tend to throw around a lot of Aussie slang for the sake of it. I think Brooks fell into this trap. At times I was cringing as the 'ockerisms' were flying!..I would recommend this book to readers who like to learn a little something as they're reading. It's a work of fiction, but is inspired by the true story of a Hebrew book known as the Sarajevo Haggadah."

People of the Book was shortlisted for the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Award, and also shortlisted for the Library of Virginina Awards.

Review of March

"Kate's Library" weblog gave the book four out of five: "This is a fantastic work of historical fiction on many levels - first being that it weaves another level to "Little Women", a solid classic (one of my favorites!). There are many times when the novel flashes back to March's early years as a husband and father - and I can picture the characters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Brooks describes these scenes well, but in a much more mature voice. She has taken this classic tale and added another layer to the story - focusing not on the little women left behind, but on the harsh realities of the times, and on the marriage of Marmee and March."

Review of Year of Wonders

Dominique on the "Coffee Stained Pages" weblog: "Brooks evokes the disgusting nature of the disease with skill...Yet Brooks tells this tale of suffering, love, friendship and sacrifice so masterfully that even I, of a squeamish disposition, remained transfixed to the end."

Interview

The author is interviewed by Michelle Breidenbach for the "Syracuse.com" website.

In "People of the Book," your character Hanna talks about how some foreign correspondents have "it can't happen to me" optimism and some are cowards. Where do you fit in?

I was the one, "It can't happen to me." I was in sort of a state of a certain amount of optimism. When you're in one of those places that's in crisis, when you see the news, you only see the violence. But you don't see that there are thousands of people living ordinary lives in those places at the same time. I guess I just identified with the people who were getting on with their lives.

In the afterward for "People of the Book," you thank all the people who shared their real stories with you. Why didn't you write their true stories? Why did you switch to writing fiction?

Because there's so much history of the Haggadah that you just can't know. It's just impossible. It was hard enough to track down the details of what happened during World War II, but to go back beyond that, to Venice in 1609 or to medieval Spain, we just have no idea who made that book, why they illustrated it at a time when that wasn't so common and then how it survived the Inquisition. The fact is that fact runs out very quickly with that story. So the only way to tell it is to take what's known and then fill in the voids with imagination.

Other

Brooks spoke at the 21st annual PEN/Faulkner Fiction Gala in late September in Washington D.C., on the subject of "revelation".  And she also gave the Kenneth Binns Lecture at the Flight of the Mind conference, held in Canberra over the weekend of October 24-25.
 
In a piece on swine flu, Chris Skaugset compiles a list of books dealing with disease epidemics, on which he includes Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.

Larissa Behrendt Interview



legacy.jpg   

Larissa Behrendt's first novel, Home, won the Best First Novel award for the South East Asia and South Pacific Region of the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize. That novel told the fictionalised story of her father's search for his Aboriginal identity.


Her latest novel, Legacy, is to be launched in Brisbane on November 20th and leading up to that event she spoke to Kathleen Noonan of the "Courier-Mail":

In Legacy she wanted to tell the story of the group of passionate young men and women who in 1972 established the Australian Tent Embassy in front of Parliament House.

The story centres on the relationships of fathers and daughters but strong indigenous women stalk the pages.

"I guess I've seen so many strong women," she says.

"If ever I hear white people say that Aboriginal culture oppresses women, I think: 'You ever been to a Redfern meeting?'

"I know there is violence against women in some households, but I grew up with a very different point of view.

"At most indigenous meetings, it is like this. The women sit back and let the men go on and on, doing all the grandstanding. Then the women go: 'Are ya done? Are ya finished? Right, this is what we're gunna do'."


David Foster Interview

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sons_of_the_rumour.jpg    With Sons of the Rumour, his first novel in seven years, about to be published, Miles Franklin Award winner David Foster talked to Paul Sheehan of "The Age".
Foster does not do small themes, not half measures. He is a scholar. He reads his favourite author, Juvenal, in the original Latin (self-taught). He won the University Medal for Chemistry at Sydney University. He has a PhD in biological inorganic chemistry from the Australian National University. He undertook postdoctoral study at the Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a gifted naturalist. (''Botany is one of the less egotistical fields.'') He's also been a drummer, a prawn fisherman and a postie. He was until recently a beekeeper (''They died this winter''). He turned to literature belatedly. Sons of the Rumour is his 13th novel and 15th book.
[snip]
With such a long a gap between books, he is unsure about the reception the new novel will receive, but busies himself thinking about the next book, growing food, and working on a postal run in Bundanoon to keep the cash flow going. ''I get on the old Honda 90, out in the wind and rain. It keeps you honest.''

Alex Miller Interview

lovesong.jpg    As Alex Miller's ninth novel, Lovesong, is published, Angela Meyer was asked to interview the author by the Readings website.

The interview also carries the note that Angela is now acting editor of Bookseller+Publisher magazine. On top of her excellent weblog LiteraryMinded you wonder where she finds the time to sleep.
After finishing Landscape, Miller took time off to read. Sitting by the fire with his daughter, he was on the last few pages of Edward Said's Musical Elaborations when his daughter asked him what he was going to do next. Miller had just read Said's memory of seeing Louis Malle's film Les amants, which went something like this: 'An innocuous tale of a man, an unknown unnamed stranger who comes down the road and meets an unknown unnamed woman, and they become lovers, so then he moves on and everybody's happy.' He told his daughter, 'I'm going to write a simple love story'. And she said, 'Dad, love's not simple, you should know that'.
[snip]
Miller's unadorned prose has a sneaking effect. Simple moments between characters catch you up hours, or even days, later. I relay this to Miller with the example of Landscape of Farewell. There is a scene where Max, the German character, is fetched a cane by Dougald, his Aboriginal friend and temporary housemate. I was telling my sister about how much I loved this moment -- the way Max imagines Dougald's perception of him as an old man, and accepts this -- and I searched for the moment in the book to read it to her, as I mark my favourite passages by turning the pages down. I was surprised to find I had not marked the passage at the time -- the moment in the story had only resonated much later.

Tom Keneally Watch #10

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Reviews of Australians: Origins to Eureka

australians.jpg    Marian Quartly in "The Brisbane Times": "Historians tend to argue that novelists don't write real history, but Keneally's work denies this. His detailed demonstration that the making of Australian democracy is part of world history places this work as an original contribution to Australian historiography. His knowledge of the roots of English and Scottish radicalism and Irish republicanism enables him to locate transported convicts and their crimes within networks of resistance whose significance is global."

"Boomerang Books" weblog (reprinted from "Australian Bookseller & Publisher" magazine): "Is Tom Keneally a novelist who also writes history, or a historian who also writes novels? The question is academic, but his skills as a novelist certainly explain how he can convincingly mould a cast of literally thousands of characters together into compelling social history. In the introduction to his latest offering, subtitled Origins to Eureka, Keneally pledges to tell 'the stories of a number of Australians from the Pleistocene Age to 1860'."

Interviews

Keneally in conversation with Brian Johns for SlowTV. This video was recorded at the Melbourne Writers Festival this year.

Reviews of The People's Train

James Urquhart in "The Independent": "Thomas Keneally's 26th novel shares the military fascination of his recent works while reaching as far back as his 1982 Booker Prize-winning Schindler's Ark for comparable historical weight...Keneally hints at a sequel to this impressive odyssey, taking Artem through the horrors of the civil war. That might allow more space for examining the anguished ethics of the revolutionary project, sidelined here by the bold sweep of history."

Edward McGown in "The Telegraph": "Keneally's most famous work, Schindler's Ark, made fresh the horror of the Holocaust by centring on the contained, moral crisis of one man. Here, the author consciously abstains from the pleasures of a taut narrative focus. The People's Train is a disjointed work whose digressions are sometimes frustrating. However, the novel succeeds in casting an uneasy spell."

Marcel Theroux in "The Financial Times": "The novel is pacy and packed with incident, but the welter of detail tends to overwhelm the characters. They're all rather sketchily drawn. Even the supposedly heroic Samsurov comes across as doctrinaire and one-dimensional -- a square-jawed homo sovieticus like the ones seen driving tractors on Soviet-era posters."

Lesley Chamberlain in "The New Statesman": "The People's Train combines a fluency of narrative with woodenness of thought. It is that rare thing: a novel with too much action, and too little attention paid to language and style...Reading any text is a kind of detective assignment, and I found myself scouring these pages for the reason Keneally chose this particular subject matter. I arrived at the following hypo­theses. First, that he did so in order to remind an Australian readership what was happening in their country -- as far as the workers' movement was concerned -- in the run-up to 1917. The author sees the story as one of limited worker protests, attracting sporadic middle-class sympathy (principally from spirited women) as well as a great deal of police brutality, and a let-down on the part of the Australian Socialist Party."

Other

Keneally pitches in to protest against a reality television show being filmed at on a local historic site.

Melina Marchetta Interview

pipers_son.jpg    Melina Marchetta is the author of 4 major YA novels so far: Looking for Alibrandi, Saving Francesca, On the Jellicoe Road, and Finnikin of the Rock, All of these novels have won the author major awards: she won the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award, Book of the Year: Older Readers for Alibrandi in 1993, and for Francesca in 2003; Finnikin won the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA), Australian Book of the Year for Older Children in 2009, and Jellicoe Road was the winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature in 2009. So any new work by the author is greatly anticipated.

Marchetta's next work is titled The Piper's Son and will hit Australian bookstores in March 2010. In the lead-up to that book launch, the author is interviewed by Kirsten Hubbard on the "YA Highway" weblog.
Why YA?

When I write, I don't think of audience except for myself. I'm my audience. But in saying that I love that young people read my books. I didn't realize how important it was to me until adults went around saying that Jellicoe was too complex for young people. It's not complex at all. You just can't skim read it.

I've said before that there is such a lack of pretension in novels written about young people and I love the community of writers and publishers. I'm not sure where The Piper's Son will fit in, because it's a sequel to Francesca, but they're older and it's about the next generation as well. But I think my YA readership is aged between 13 and 80 something so I have the generations well covered.

Do you believe your publishing journey has been more challenging as an Australian author?

I think all publishing journeys are challenging. Of course it takes long to have recognition overseas. I received a bit of notice with Francesca in the US and have a bit more with Jellicoe, and there is a small fan base in Germany, Italy and Indonesia, but my readership is very different here in Australia. My first novel, published seventeen years ago (Looking for Aibrandi) was studied by senior school students as part of the school curriculum and became an award winning film so I've always had a profile in Australia.

You can read more about the author and her works on her website.

David Malouf Watch #1

Reviews of Ransom
ransom.jpg

Alberto Manguel in "The Australian": "Ransom, his first novel in 10 years, it must be said at once, is (however abused the word) a masterpiece, exquisitely written, pithy and wise and overwhelmingly moving, constructed with invisible, successful craft that leaves the reader wondering how in the world it has been done... All of Malouf's books might bear the title of his early masterpiece, An Imaginary Life: in each, an individual (the poet Ovid, Frank Harland in Harland's Half-Acre, Jim Saddler in Fly Away Peter, Gemmy Fairley in Remembering Babylon) weaves together, from the bewildering tangle of the world, the strands of a self-portrait through which the reader can make sense of our inherited chaos. Every life is imaginary, in that each one of us must imagine it in order to live it out fully."

Peter Rose in "Australian Book Review": "Ever since [An Imaginary Life], Malouf's characters, mostly men, often young, have been drawn to 'the very edge of things'. Not for him the promiscuous alliances or metropolitan mires of an Iris Murdoch or Philip Roth or Alan Hollinghurst. So often, paired or alone, his characters slip away from the centre, 'relegated to the region of silence'. The effect, in Malouf's superb prose, is usually transformative. To paraphrase Ovid, these exiles will be separated from themselves and yet be alive."

"Boomerang Books" weblog: "If someone has a strong interest in classic literature, history, or is even drawn to fantasy novels (often built up from myth and history, and notions of honour) they will probably treasure this, as will anyone who enjoys literature on a sentence-level. Malouf's rendering of Ancient Greece is gorgeous, fantastical, and yet earthly, humble, and relatable."

The book was also discussed on ABC Television's "First Tuesday Book Club".

Interviews

Malouf was interviewed by Ramona Koval on ABC Radio National's "Book Show", and, while the audio is no longer available, the website does carry a transcript of the interview.

Rosemary Sorenson discovers where Malouf's love of Homer originated, for "The Australian".

Other

Malouf offered his thoughts on the 2009 Man Booker Prize, prior to the announcement of the winner, finding he couldn't choose between the Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and J.M. Coetzee's Summertime.

The Brisbane-based Expressions Dance Company used Malouf's memoir 12 Edmonstone Street as an aid for remembering childhood experiences.

The author was recently at the Sprung writers festival in Albany, Western Australia.

Tom Keneally Watch #9

Reviews of The People's Train

peoples_train.jpg    Patrick Allington in "Australian Book Review": "...Keneally builds terrific momentum by drawing on extraordinary events: the Russian Revolution and the onset of World War I.  If the scaffolding of this novel is now and again exposed, that is something historical fiction can never fully overcome."

Francesca Beddie in "The Australian": "Fortunately, it is in Paddy's stories that Keneally rescues his novel from becoming an idealised account of socialist aspirations. We experience episodes of the arbitrary violence that punctuates the history of Russian communism. These depictions are sharp, surprising and brutal. They need to be there."

Mike Crowl in "The Otago Times": "The historical sequence approach of the novel means there's little real interplay between the characters; those who get involved with each other often slide out of view without a sense of loss to other people...And the large cast becomes a welter of names for the reader to contend with, even though a few are recognisable for their later part in history."

"Readings" website: "Based on a true story, THE PEOPLE'S TRAIN brings the past alive and makes it resonate in the present. With all the empathy and storytelling skills that he brought to bear in SCHINDLER'S ARK, Tom Keneally takes us to the heart of the Russian Revolution through the dramatic life of an unknown, inspiring figure."

"Femail.com.au" website: "In The People's Train, Tom Keneally is able to effortlessly weave historical fact with fictional imaginings. His ability to capture these moments in time leave an indelible mark on the reader's consciousness. Whether it be the small town feel of sleepy Brisbane in 1911 or the passion and energy of the Russian Revolution, Tom is a master of conveying time and place. His characters are fully realised with their virtues and foibles on display. Once again the Booker Prize winning novelist, Tom Keneally has shown that he's one of Australia's leading writers."

Phil Shannon on the "Green Left Review": "... if the [promised] sequel has the historical integrity and thoughtfulness as The People's Train, it will be worth waiting for."

Interviews

Re The People's Train: Keneally discusses the novel with Margaret Throsby on ABC Radio National's Classic FM; and Rosanna Greenstreet of "The Guardian"; and Des Houghton of "The Courier-Mail".

Other

Keneally discusses The People's Train on a Random House video.

"The Coming Dark" by Angela Slatter

Angela Slatter has conducted a round-table discussion, with a number of Australian up-and-coming sf&f writers, on the following topic: "We've had the apocalypse penciled in for a while now, so how are some of us going about documenting the coming dark? How is our changing, frayed environment affecting the writing of authors on our side of the literary divide?" 

Taking part are Deborah Biancotti, Kaaron Warren, Peter Ball and Jason Fischer and the final result appears in "The Internet Review of Science Fiction".  As Angela introduces it: "Funnily enough, the day we finished this was the day the dust storms started and the sun turned red - some of Deb Biancotti's photos of the apocalypse are there too."

Gerald Murnane Interview

barley_patch.jpg    Probably best known for his haunting novella, The Plains, Gerald Murane has published rather few volumes of fiction - about 7 in a 35 year writing career - and none since Emerald Blue in 1995.

Murnane was awarded the Patrick White Award in 1999 and was given an Australia Council emeritus award in 2008.

Now he has released Barley Patch from Giramondo Publishing and he has been interviewed by Simon Caterson of "The Australian".


Murnane uses fiction to reach for a truth beyond simple storytelling. Barley Patch is a book about another, more perfect book never destined to be written, one, perhaps, that is ultimately impossible to create. It is like a big, polished stone thrown into the babbling brook of ordinary novels.

"Must I write?" is a question the author says he has pondered for decades. "I have several times, not in sadness or despair, just given up writing fiction," he says. "The main reason (is) that I didn't have anything important to say. Several times from the 1990s I would say, 'That's it, I've written enough.' "

Murnane disarmingly concedes he has had a "chequered" career, often switching publishers and producing books that attracted international and scholarly attention, especially in Sweden and Germany, but didn't make him much money.

He says his current publisher, Ivor Indyk, has revived his writing career. Indyk's imprint, Giramondo Press, republished Murnane's first book, Tamarisk Row, in 2008, together with an essay collection Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs.

Barley Patch is his first new full-length work of fiction since 1995, and he is relishing the freedom he now has with Giramondo. "Given the impossible chance to do things differently, I wouldn't have tried so hard in earlier years to write long books or short pieces; I would have allowed things to take their own shape and their own length. Of course, the publishers would not have indulged me when I was younger the way Ivor has."

Andrew McGahan Interview

wonders_godless_world.jpg    Andrew McGahan is best known for his Miles Franklin Award-winning novel The White Earth, and for Praise, which won the author the "Australian"/Vogel Award in 1991.

His latest novel, Wonders of a Godless World, has just been released and you can see a promotional trailer for the book here.

From the publisher's page: "The witch, the virgin, the archangel, the duke and an orphan meet in the extraordinary new novel from the award-winning Andrew McGahan -- an electrifying, tumultuous story of inner demons, desire and devastation, a powerful and apocalyptic tale that sweeps the reader from the beginning of time to the end of the earth."

Leading up the release of the book, Jo Case interviewed the author for the "Readings" weblog.
Wonders of a Godless World is heavily reminiscent of myth or fairytale: its population of archetypes, the element of parable, the magic realist or fantastical element. What drew you to using this form? Was it your intention to create a kind of contemporary fable?

Actually, my intention at the very beginning was just to find some way to indulge my schoolboy fascination for unusual natural disasters. Originally, I was trying to come up with a story that involved no human characters at all, instead using only the forces of nature interacting in a kind of wordless planetary drama. I couldn't make that idea work, but then the orphan and the foreigner emerged. The orphan -- a girl freakishly in tune with the planet and its processes, but so out of tune with humanity that she can't talk or even remember her own name. And the foreigner -- a man utterly out of tune with the planet and doomed time and time again to die in natural disasters, and yet whose own outrage always brings him back to life. From there, all the weird and interesting stuff about Earth that I originally wanted to explore could be played out in the relationship between these two.

But having allowed humans into the picture, I was still keen to keep them at a distance. Hence no one is allowed a name or any normal dialogue or even, when it comes to the five or six peripheral characters, much individual personality. So yes, because of that the story takes on an otherworldly or mythic or fairytale tone, and I was happy to go along with it, but it was more of a side-effect than a central purpose.

Peter Carey Watch #12

News of Parrot and Olivier in America

As seems usual these days, Carey's next novel will have a staggered publication schedule across Australia, the UK and the US, with different covers in each region.

The Australian edition will be published by Penguin on 26th October. Their description of the book:



parrot_and_oliver_aus.jpg     Olivier is a young aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer, wanted to be an artist but has ended up in middle age as a servant.

When Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid yet another revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. Through their adventures with women and money, incarceration and democracy, writing and painting, they make an unlikely pair. But where better for unlikely things to flourish than in the glorious, brand-new experiment, America?

A dazzlingly inventive reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous journey, Parrot and Olivier in America brilliantly evokes the Old World colliding with the New. Above all, it is a wildly funny, tender portrait of two men who come to form an almost impossible friendship, and a completely improbable work of art.

The UK edition will be published by Faber & Faber on 4th February 2010. The publisher's blurb from Amazon UK reads:

Olivier is a French aristocrat, the traumatized child of survivors of the Revolution. Parrot the son of an itinerant printer who always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Born on different sides of history, their lives will be brought together by their travels in America. When Olivier sets sail for the New World, ostensibly to study its prisons but in reality to save his neck from one more revolution -- Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, and their picaresque travels together and apart - in love and politics, prisons and the world of art -- Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy, in theory and in practice, with dazzling wit and inventiveness.
The US edition will be available on 20th April 2010 from Random House. The Amazon US blurb reads:
From the two-time Booker Prize-winning author: an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early-nineteenth-century America.

Olivier -- an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville -- is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English engraver. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be joined by an enigmatic one-armed marquis.

When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United States--ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolution--Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier.

As the narrative shifts between Parrot and Olivier--their adventures in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands--a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy with dazzling inventiveness, and with all the richness and surprise of characterization, story, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer.

An excerpt of this novel will be published in Granta 108: Chicago. Which seemed to amuse Victoria Lautman who asked Granta editor John Freeman how it came to be included.

Review of His Illegal Self

Although this review by Janette Turner Hospital was originally published in February 2008, it seems to have become available on The Monthly website just recently: "The strength and beauty of Carey's novel lies in the perspective of his very young protagonist. Che is bewildered, frightened, vulnerable, wise, completely loveable. His grandmother, protectively, had banned both TV and newspapers from his universe, so Che has had to assemble his history and his identity from overheard fragments and from furtively collected newspaper clippings."

Review of My Life as a Fake

The "Fantasy and SiFi Fiction" weblog is a bit in two minds about the book, calling it "a strange, multi-layered journey through a man's past, his artistic inspiration and his products, both illusory and real." And later: "Overall the pace of the book is varied and, here and there, one feels that Peter Carey has over-complicated things and thus detracted from the directness that could have achieved increased impact."

Interviews

Carey talks to John Freeman of Granta magazine but his upcoming novel in a video interview.

Other

In my last "Peter Carey Watch" I mentioned that Melbourne composer Brett Dean was working on an opera based on Carey's novel Bliss. "The Financial Times" is now reporting that Dean has premiered some of the components of that opera at the Cabrillo Music Festival, in Santa Cruz, California. And "The Age" is reporting that Opera Australia will take the opera to the Edinburgh Festival in 2010.

While not about Carey directly, this history of the Faber & Faber publishing house does mention him; referring to the author as one of the "big bankers for the publisher".

In case you keep track of these things, a signed, first-edition of The Big Bazoohley was auctioned recently on eBay for $US24, and a signed, first-edition of Tristran Smith is currently running at $56.53.

Peter Temple Interview

truth.jpg     Peter Temple's new novel, Truth, is published by Text Publishing today, and, as you might expect given the reception the author's previous novel, The Broken Shore, received, you're going to see a lot about this book over the coming weeks. I've spoken to three people who have read this novel already (one's a book reviewer, one used to work at Text and one still does) and they have all been very impressed with it.

Amazon in the UK has the book's publication there set for 7 January 2010 from Quercus, and Amazon in the US lists a date of 13 April 2010 from Random House (Canada).

Jason Steger, of "The Age" travelled up to Ballarat to interview the author on the eve of the book's publication:
Truth is not a sequel to The Broken Shore, more a companion piece. Temple was worried that readers might get the impression that it heralded another series. (Not that he's done with either Cashin or Irish. Both pop up in Truth; walk-on roles that show his affection for them. And there will be more Irish down the track.)

Temple has always been interested in power and its exercise - ''what I see as the disintegration of things, the way every step forward carries with it its own slide backwards, that all the things we try to do even with the best of intentions are doomed''. And the bleak political world he unmasks in the book? Simply the way he sees it. ''It is the perception of reality. What is the reality itself? People don't really know.''

He doesn't like to make things easy for the reader; indeed he likes to make things as complex as he can. That's largely for his own benefit - when he reads other writers of crime he finds them never as complicated as they should be. ''I hate having things spelled out to me.''
Needless to say, we're all champing at the bit to get our hands on this books here at Matilda.

Nick Cave and The Death of Bunny Munro

Nick Cave's second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro has been out for a while now. A lot of discussion about the book has revolved around the covers used in the various editions around the world. So I've included the three major English language editions below in the order of their publication. It's an interesting exercise in pitching to the respective markets, though I seriously doubt US readers will have any idea of what the book is about from their cover.



death_bunny_munro_aus.jpg  Australian edition - Text Publishing - 3 August 2009
death_bunny_munro_us.jpg  US edition - Faber and Faber - 1 September 2009
death_bunny_munro_uk.jpg  UK edition - Cannongate Books - 3 September 2009

The author is interviewed by Claire Suddath in "Time" magazine.

Did you really write the book's first chapter on your iPhone?
I actually did. I was amazed it had this little keyboard in it. I'm a techno-moron and it had this keyboard that spellchecked as you wrote. It was a good way to start writing the novel because I wasn't taking it seriously, I was just checking out my phone. The rest I wrote by hand.

There's a soundtrack that goes with the book. Why did you decide to make that?
I wanted to change the way the novel was presented. We looked at all the different formats we could do and the audio book was extremely exciting to me. I read the novel onto something like seven CDs and we scored it and put music to the whole thing. If you listen to it on headphones it's extraordinary, like a hallucination or something. It's psychedelic. It's an audio book like nothing you've ever heard. There's also a Bunny Munro app for the iPhone but I haven't worked out how to download it yet.

If I were a citizen of Warracknabeal, where Cave was born and grew up, I'd be very, very afraid.

You can read more about the book at its dedicated website and read an extract from the novel here.

Tom Keneally Interviews

peoples_train.jpg With his new novel, The People's Train already published in Australia, and due for release in the UK in October, Tom Keneally has been interviewed in both countries.

In "The Guardian", Keneally was gave short answers to questions supplied by Rosanna Greenstreet.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Intolerance of people. I no doubt dislike it because I have some of it in me, but what I'm talking about is ethnic myth-making about a group, glib but deadly regurgitations of hysteric myths. Really, really hate it.
What makes you depressed?
The sins and gaucheries of the past. Then the decay of life generally.
Who would play you in the film of your life?
Bob Hoskins or Danny DeVito.
What is your favourite smell?
The sea.
What is your favourite word?
"Illimitable."

As he was in Brisbane recently for the Writers' Festival there, Keneally spoke to a gathering at the University of Queensland in an event sponsored by the Fryer Library. And there was a good reason for that. Des Houghton was there for "The Courier-Mail".

Imagine Brisbane as a Bolshevik sanctuary, a centre for revolutionary thought - a town where reds shamelessly refuse to hide under beds.

It used to be that way.

From 1910 until the Roaring Twenties, the Marxists pedalled their poisonous ideology in their own edition of Izvestia, infiltrating the unions and scrapping with police at public rallies. Brisbane was the Zurich of the southern hemisphere, a magnet for socialist exiles fleeing Russia.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen would turn in his grave.

Now, Australia's best-loved gnome, Tom Keneally, has written a historical fiction based on the life of a leading anarchist Artem Sergeiev, who made it to Brisbane.

While in Brisbane, Keneally also took time to promote his other new book, Australians: Origins to Eureka, and made some comments which would apply equally to fiction and non-fiction.
Writing was like death or like giving birth, he said. It was something you had to do alone.

"The solitude of writing can make you a little strange," Keneally added.

It was hard to shut out dark thoughts that a book might receive negative reviews.

When he was young, Keneally said he foolishly believed "the world needs this book".

When he left the priesthood after six years he felt "useless", had trouble attracting female company and found great solace in writing.

"Now writing is a transcendental joy, a sense of the wow factor, a sense you have become more than the sum of your parts," he said.

Tom Keneally on Book Imports

Ursula Heger has interviewed Tom Keneally for "The Courier-Mail".  Keneally was in Brisbane over the weekend for the Writers' Festival there and spoke mainly about the debate regarding book imports into Australia.

"The abolition of copyrighting will not bring the cost of books down, it will only mean that there is less Australian publishing and it will be of a lower quality," he said.

"When I began writing there was no Australian copyright, and as a result, there wasn't a lot of Australian publishing - our books weren't popular."

[snip]

Mr Keneally rejected the notion that lifting the bans would reduce the cost of books in Australia.

"It used to be the case, that they were so (more expensive), but under pressure from Amazon and from the possibility that the Government might decide to abolish Australian copyright they have become much cheaper," he said.

"The people that are behind the drive to bring an end to Australian copyright are Dymocks and Big W. Now these are not people known for lowering prices. They are known for knocking off the opposition, then charging whatever they like."

Clive James Watch #14

Reviews of Revolt of the Pendulum: Essays 2005-2008

John Gardner in "The New Zealand Herald": "What unites James' approach to the disparate subjects in this collection, drawn from his essays between 2005 and 2008, is a habit of analysis that encourages you to seek out what he is writing about or, if you have already read or seen it, drives you back to the original to re-examine your own conclusions. Inevitably you may not always agree with James who is nothing if not opinionated."

David Free in Quadrant magazine: "For more than forty years now Clive James has been writing criticism in which this sort of trick is routinely worked. The essays -- of which this is the eighth volume, leaving aside a couple of best-of compilations -- have always been the spine of his achievement. And the achievement, now that the distracting matter of his television career is out of the way, is at last starting to be appreciated for its heft as well as its dazzle. The 2007 publication of Cultural Amnesia -- the book that will stand as his critical masterwork, unless in this indecently fruitful late phase of his he favours us with something still better -- has surely put the question of James's literary status beyond a doubt, at least among people capable of reading that book at the level at which it was written. There are still plenty of critics around who aren't capable of that, of course. We will get to them. But among critics who matter, there seems to have been a general coming-around to the proposition that James is one of the great essayists of our time: humane, lively, formidably intelligent, and -- to use a word that the radical like to think they have a monopoly on -- committed."

Gavin McLean in "Otago Daily Times": "Even at second-best, at his most ephemeral, James still excites envy; his wit, breadth of knowledge and his language amaze. He is seldom absent from his work, whether he is discussing old mates, art, poetry or Formula 1 drivers. He's clearly vexed about how the world will view his legacy, complaining about literary editors' reluctance to take a prime time TV performer seriously as a poet. At times Clive James the intellectual and Clive James the blokey social commentator find it difficult to inhabit an ego as big as his."

Essays by James

James's essay, "A Veil of Silence over Murder" published in the September 2009 edition of Standpoint gets stuck in early: "Of all the liberal democracies, Australia is the one where the idea is most firmly entrenched among the local intelligentsia that the culture of the West is the only criminal, all other cultures being victims no matter what atrocities they might condone even within their own families." He accuses Australian feminists and intelligensia (these are not mutually exclusive, nor is one a full sub-set of the other) of a lack of intestinal fortitude, especially when it comes to the treatment of women in non-Western societies and cultures. 

Shakira Hussein takes an opposing view in Crickey, while the "High Windows" weblog is glad that James remembers Pamela Bone in his essay, but finds the exercise a little self-centred.  

Interviews

James doesn't make it sound easy for Elizabeth Grice to interview him for "The Telegraph":

Clive James issues more warnings than a swine flu directive. He claims to be a terrible interviewee, all over the place, evasive. When he hears the doorbell go, he predicts that the photographer is about to have "the worst half-hour of his life." He is a bad subject: uneasy, and his eyes are too small. Yet he agrees that time's ravages are not as disastrous in his case as they might have been. "The smartest move I ever made in showbusiness," he says, "was to start off looking like the kind of wreck I would end up as. I was already aged in the wood."

But he settles down and becomes more revealing than he usually is:

And talk he certainly can. Thoughtful stuff, inconsequential stuff, funny, opinionated, quotable stuff. He's only once stuck for an answer - to the question: what is it he wants to leave behind? "I honestly don't know," he says, grimacing. If he's lucky, it might be one book. A fistful of poems. A few sentences. That's all a man can expect - though being James, he does hope for better than that. His first tranche of autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, may survive, he thinks (it should). His poem What Happened to Auden deserves a place in literature's time capsule. And if it's a sentence, he fears it will be the "wrong" one - the one where he describes Arnold Schwarzenegger as "a brown condom full of walnuts". Though his description of Barbara Cartland's eyes as "the corpses of two crows that had flown into a chalk cliff" must be a populist contender.

Clive James Website

On the Clive James website, Series 5 of the "Talking in the Library" video interviews is now available.  James talks to Alexei Sayle, Catherine Tate, Claire Tomalin, Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Victoria Wood, Nick Hornby, Professor John Carey and Stephen Fry.

On the audio side, the complete first 2009 series of the BBC Radio 4 "Point of View" program is also available. 

Other

Oliver Kamm warns against accusing James of Illiteracy.

Anson Cameron Interview

stealing_picasso.jpgAnson Cameron's fifth novel, Stealing Picasso, is based on the unsolved theft, and later return, of Picassso's Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria back in 1986.  It's a most peculiar case and one ripe for a speculative literary novel.  The author was interviewed by Catherine Keenan for "The Age".

There are plenty of wild, invented details in Cameron's funny, occasionally stinging work. There's a frustrated art teacher called Turton Pym, gnashing his teeth that his contemporaries Brett Whiteley and John Olsen have become famous while he can't get a single canvas finished. There's a benighted soul who loves Michael Jackson so much he gets surgery to look like him, then finds his world tipped upside down when his idol is charged with molesting kids.

And there are enough double and triple-crosses to explain why, after all these years, no one has discovered who the Australian Cultural Terrorists were and why they did what they did.

Yet some of the most outlandish-seeming details are true. Such as the fact the thieves left a sign on the wall saying the painting had been removed to the ACT. Staff assumed this meant the National Gallery in Canberra - it was nearly two days before anyone realised their $1.6 million investment had been nicked.

Cate Kennedy Interview

world_beneath.jpgBetter known as a short story writer, Australian author Cate Kennedy has ventured into longer territory with her debut novel, The World Beneath.  She is interviewed by Susan Wyndham for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

"I heard someone once say, 'You must feel different now that you've moved to the big pool from the toddler pool,' " she says of her change of form. "I quite bridled at this because I don't think the short story is a toddler pool. In a way it is more like the beautiful diving pool - it's not the shallow pool, it's the smaller pool that takes a lot of practice to do the one entry perfectly."

The novel required new techniques - more complex structuring, multiple viewpoints and more introspection from the characters. "I did feel I had all this space to swim around in," she says, "and I wanted to make sure I was as careful with each of the scenes or fragments as I am with a short story, because the amazing thing with a short story is you have nowhere to hide."

Kerryn Goldsworthy has further things to say about this book, and this quote, on her weblog "Australian Literature Diary".

J.M. Coetzee Watch #14

Reviews of Summertime

Note: the bulk of the major papers have yet to review this new novel, but some have started to appear. I suspect a "Combined Reviews" entry will be required in the next few weeks.

David Grylis in "The Times".

Who is JM Coetzee? In one sense the answer is obvious: world-famous novelist and writer, twice winner of the Man Booker, winner of the Nobel prize for literature. But in another sense "JM Coetzee" is a persona created by the author, especially in his ­volumes of "fictionalised memoir". ..

...the third volume of the ­trilogy, Summertime, focuses on his return to South Africa, covering 1972 to 1977 when he was "finding his feet as a writer". Like Boyhood and Youth, it refers to "Coetzee" in the third person ("He is the product of a damaged childhood"), thus distancing the autobiographical element. But it adds a startling new dimension of literary artifice: the deployment of a postmortem biographer.

"Dovegreyreader" thinks it "an amazingly clever book, an enduringly, circuitously fascinating novel that I will dwell on for a long time to come, perhaps even unravel much of the essence and fallibility of biography and how it can so easily become a fiction, a story, in the process."

Mark Rubbo on the "Readings" website: "I can't say that I understood Summertime, but it lingers pervasively in my mind. I would love to hear the real Coetzee talk about this book but I doubt that I ever shall ... "

Review of Life and Times of Michael K.

Sam Jordinson is reading all the winners of the Booker prize and reviewing them as he goes for "The Guardian". He finally gets to Life and Times of Michael K.:

All of [the story] is told in fewer than 200 pages. But if it's a thin book, that's not because Coetzee doesn't have a lot to say, or doesn't paint a vivid picture. It's just that his prose is as lean and spare as Michael after months of bugs, pumpkins and sunlight. At its best his writing moves like a cracking whip.

But in spite of such pleasures, I have serious doubts. My main concern is Michael K himself. He's more of a plot device than a real man, and we are constantly reminded how simple Michael is, and how little he understands . Yet he is able frequently to outwit those who would capture him, to work irrigation systems and grow crops, build shelters and -- most jarringly -- speak eloquently and ask endless searching questions.

Awards

Coetzee's latest novel Summertime has been longlisted for the 2009 man Booker Prize. You can read some of the reactions to that longlisting in "The Age", "The Australian", "The Financial Times, "The Guardian", "The Telegraph", and by James Bradley.

Coetzee was shortlisted for the Best of the Booker prize, arranged to celebrate the prize's 40th anniversary this year, for his novel Disgrace. The prize was awarded to Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children.

Other

Coetzee visited Oxford, UK, in June and gave a reading from Summertime, the upcoming third volume of his fictionalised autobiography.

You can also read extracts from Summertime in "The New York Review of Books".

Michael Duffy Interview

the_tower.jpgBack in July I posted about the serialisation of an abridged version of Michael Duffy's novel The Tower appearing in "The Sydney Morning Herald".  That novel has now been published and the author has been interviewed by Karen on the "AustCrime Fiction" weblog.

AUSTCRIME:  Good crime fiction seems always to address issues of social concern - no matter what period in history the books come from.  What issues do you think really should have a light shone on them?  Are there any particular issues you were trying to draw upon in THE TOWER?

MD: Globalisation (see above) and post-natal depression. When I decided to make Troy a pretty ordinary bloke in his early thirties, I looked around for a plausible reason why his life might become upset. Problems with marriage are pretty high on the list for many people at that age. In this case it's Anna's (his wife's) long-running post-natal depression and how it destroys the emotional and physical intimacy they once had, and how he finally responds to that.

AUSTCRIME:  Are you planning a next book featuring Troy and McIver?  What other characters do you see reoccuring from THE TOWER?

MD: I'd like to do a series in which Troy matures, which is something we don't see in a lot of crime series but which I think they're well suited for. I'd be very keen in a second book to get Susan Conti, a detective in The Tower, into the Homicide Squad where she will work closely with Troy. It was my original intention that she be a more major figure in this novel, but unfortunately it became too crowded.

Tom Keneally Watch #8

Review of Schindler's Ark

"The Guardian" has been running a series of reviews of past Booker winners and recently it became Keneally's turn.

Keneally doesn't flinch from this horror. He has, in fact, an eye for detail that will break your heart. A suitcase out of which tumble "gold teeth still smeared with blood". A 10-year-old girl who "carried her terror unsupportably, the way adults will, unable to climb on to a parental chest and transfer the fear." A female prisoner who provides weekly manicures for a camp commandant. These sessions resemble the ones that she used to give in the Hotel Cracovia before the war, right down to the polite small talk. The only major difference is that the commandant always sits with a loaded revolver at his elbow. One day she asks why it is there. "In case you ever nick me," he tells her.

I could pick out any number of similar brushstrokes that show the repulsive darkness of the Holocaust. But the triumph of this book is that it also shows the light in its masterful portrait of Oskar Schindler.

Other

After he wrote Schindler's Ark in the 1980s, Keneally sold a lot of his papers associated with the novel to a dealer.  Those papers were subsequently acquired by the State Library of NSW in 1996.  Just recently, while working her way through all the papers in the six boxes, a researcher came across a copy of the actual 13-page list compiled by Schindler.

Keneally has been mischievously been suggesting that current Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull should join the Labor Party, citing Billy Hughes as a precedent.

It should be hardly surprising that Keneally has made the list of the top 100 Irish-Australians.  He's there alongside Ned Kelly, Redmond Barry, Les Darcy and Fanny Durack.

The author has recently appeared at the Salisbury Writers Festival discussing classes for writers, amongst other things, after previously appearing at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival discussing Jane Austen, and also about sport, writing and just about anything else he could think of.

Interview

Keneally was interviewed by Luke Slattry for "The Australian" nespaper.  I reported on that interview here

Morris Gleitzman Interview

Morris Gleitzman has just published a new novel, Grace, and is interviewed in "The Age" by Michael Lallo.

Belief is the theme of his latest novel, Grace, about an 11-year-old girl whose family is torn apart by a Christian cult. Gleitzman is no longer religious - he describes himself as a humanist now - but is at pains to state his book is not an ''anti-religion'' tale.

''I'd been thinking about that stage of life when we start to think a bit for ourselves and get a sense of how the world works,'' he says. ''What we took to be true - the immutable truths of our childhood, the opinions, attitudes and beliefs of our parents and other adults - we're maybe starting to question some of them. A lot of parents welcome this, but I think they're put on the spot a bit because their authority is being challenged.''

It's tempting to believe Grace was inspired by a certain Christian sect that has been in the news lately. But it's not. Rather, Gleitzman interviewed several former members ''from a range of fundamentalist communities'' and read many books and articles to better understand their experiences.

Richard Newsome Interview

billionaires_curse.jpgFirst time author Richard Newsome, winner of the 2008 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Writing for his book The Billionaire's Curse, is interviewed by Fiona Purdon for "The Courier-Mail".

The Billionaire's Curse started more than a decade ago as a bedtime story Newsome developed for [his children] Sam and Ruby. To help him remember the ever-expanding plot Newsome started writing down the events and the book slowly evolved.

For eight years the author "fluffed around" writing "bits and pieces" and then three years ago the family, who had been living in Sydney, moved to Brisbane and Newsome quit his high-flying career in the media to write full time.

His wife Kath worked in public relations full-time and Newsome gave himself two years to write and polish the manuscript. In between school pick-ups and drop-offs and household chores Newsome would churn out about 1500 words a day.

Once he finished the manuscript he gave himself a year to get it published. He sent it to about 15 British agents and was rejected by all of them.

"The rejections all came back at the same time, every day I would go to the post box at the same time and see a rejection slip, it was very depressing," he says.

Andrew Croome Interview

Andrew Croome's novel, Document Z, won last year's "Australian"/Vogel Award and has now been published by Allen & Unwin.  The book tells the story of the Petrov Affair, the defection of a couple of Soviet agents in Australia in the 1950s. The author is interviewed by Madeline Healy for "The Courier-Mail" who finds he discovered a lot of material in the national archives.

A royal commission was ordered by Menzies and the documents, which were never publicly released, were alleged to provide evidence of an extensive Soviet spy ring in Australia.

"You go through those archives in Canberra," Croome says, "and end up finding the most amazing documents. There are newspaper articles of anything reported at the time, lists of objects in houses because ASIO had rented safe houses, and even diaries of every moment of Petrov on certain days.

"I found it all fascinating. Getting closer and closer to the original files made me realise it was a great story. I came across a person called B2 who is mentioned in the book - and that's how he was mentioned in the files."

Croome says the files revealed spy codes and ASIO monitoring activities in the 1950s.

"There is a whole lot of spy talk in the files such as 'shadowing operations' and 'reliable citizens'.

"There were code names everywhere and it was great to read all of that."

Susanna de Vries Interview

Brisbane author Susanna de Vries has a new book, Females on the Fatal Shore, just out which has a number of elements that could be taken as a re-telling of the Lady Diana Spencer story.  In this case, however, the book is set in 19th-century rural Queensland, and is just one of the stories featured.  The author spoke to Fiona Purdon of "The Courier-Mail". 

"It's an era of aristocrats, it's a very structured society, the Georgian society, and Stephen [Lamprell Spencer] did the unforgivable: He married a seamstress and he became seriously religious," de Vries says.

"He wanted to make a lot of money in Australia and then go back to England and show his family he had made good.

"But he bought too many cattle runs and then suffered depression. Australian history is full of boom and bust stories."

Clive James Watch #13

Reviews of The Revolt of the Pendulum: Essays 2005-2008

Adam Mars-Jones in "The Observer": "The arguments in Cultural Amnesia had been enriched by a long process of fermentation and filtering. The Revolt of the Pendulum is a much more ordinary book, a standard collection of reviews and oddments, though it recycles from the magnum opus in the opening essay about Karl Kraus. It's also more revealing about the civil war between cultivation and blokeishness inside Clive James, the inner aesthete and the inner mocker. Down-to-earth intellectual is not the easiest role to take on."

Lynn Barber in "The Telegraph": "Not all the essays in this book are about Clive James, though a surprisingly high proportion of them are. But the meatier offerings are book reviews written for The New York Times, the TLS, or an Australian periodical called The Monthly. (Nowadays he largely avoids "the second-rank literary editors of London" and their proclivity for 'lively copy'.) There is an excellent essay on "Kingsley and the Women" which draws on personal knowledge of the Amis family, and an affectionate portrait of Robert Hughes, again using personal knowledge. (Though James claims to despise literary gossip, he is very good at it.) But most of the time his criticism is devoted to showing off."

Sam Leith in "The Spectator": "Pendulum, eh? Well, there's certainly something swing- ing back and forth here. Two years ago, lest we forget, Cultural Amnesia came out -- all 900-odd pages of it. Now here's Clive with another fat wedge of 'essays', some of which are essays, and some of which are more recognisable as old book reviews and feature pieces for newspapers. In the section marked 'Handbills' he reproduces pieces he's written to promote his stage shows; in 'Absent Friends', addenda to obituaries...It seems rather a monumental way of presenting ephemera, but it emerges piecemeal in this book that James is starting to hear the guy with the scythe and the persistent cough. He's thinking about how he'll be remembered. He's building monuments to himself. "

James Mitchell on the "Independent News and Media" website: "Most essayists and columnists are used to their work being considered ephemeral: their timely pieces, briefly entertaining and informative, froth and disappear, deservedly...Clive James is an exception. The variety is amazing; the wit is sharp but seldom painful; the sheer enjoyment of learning something new - and communicating that knowledge and pleasure - all mark him apart."

Essay by James

"The Necessary Minimum" - James on poet Dunstan Thompson for "Poetry" magazine July/August 2009.

One-Man Show

James is taking his current one-man show to Edinburgh in mid-August and then to other parts of the UK up till November.  The full schedule is on his website.

Poetry

The August issue of the "Australian Literary Review" included James's poem "Aldeburgh Dawn", and in reply, Guy Rundle proceeded to tear it to bits on Crickey:

Why do people keep publishing this stuff? It's not as if James doesn't give us a clue -- in his unentertaining novel The Remake, he has a stocky character named 'CJ' jogging around a track. Who's that guy someone asks? Writer, someone replies, "his poetry sounds like reproduction furniture looks."

The fact that this line is exact and telling suggests James's tragedy: he's a gag writer and whatever lightning-strike gave him that skill simultaneously foreclosed the capacity to do something else. The more he strains to take the world seriously (witness his 900 page Cultural Amnesia, a self-serving book of drive-by essays, dedicated to Aung Sung Suu Kyi, among others) the more awful the result.

Stephen Romei, editor of the "Australian Literary Review" discusses it all on his weblog, "A Pair of Ragged Claws".

Interview

As James begins his one-man show at the Edinburgh Festival, he is interviewed for "The Independent" by Christina Patterson:

The problem with interviews, however, is that you don't get to write them. Well, I do, obviously, but he doesn't. "If you'll forgive me," he says, in the tone of a politician preceding a blistering attack with the phrase "with all due respect", "it's a very approximate form of getting at what someone means. And, in my case, I like to think I do it for myself. To that," he adds, "the argument is 'you're just asking to construct your own image' and the answer is, 'well, yes'." Clive James is also, clearly, a brilliant bunch of arguments. He's a brilliant bunch of questions, a brilliant bunch of answers, and soliloquies and theories and counter-theories. No need for an interviewer, really, except that I'm here and I'd quite like to do it.

So why, I ask, desperate to chip in, does he submit himself to a process he describes as "agonising"? "When I'm on the road doing a stage show," he says, "I owe something to the impresario. And I want to fill the house. And a one-man show doesn't fill itself automatically. But left to myself, I probably wouldn't do it. I find that I can write it better." Gee, thanks. Actually, I've no doubt that Clive James could write it better. This, after all, is the man whose TV reviews for The Observer were read even by people who didn't watch TV, the man whose hilarious memoirs have all been bestsellers, the man whose book of essays, Cultural Amnesia, was hailed by J M Coetzee as "a crash-course in civilization". But an interview, to state the absolute bleeding obvious, is a different thing. It's not a monologue, it's an encounter, written by somebody else. And of course it's "approximate". Isn't all journalism approximate?

Other

 James didn't actually want to be the next Oxford professor of poetry.

 

Tom Keneally Profile

As he awaits the publication of not one but two books over the coming weeks, Tom Keneally is profiled by Luke Slattery in "The Australian".

The sources for Keneally's novels are often historical, and he typically weaves fiction's thread through history's fabric. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was inspired by the true story of the mixed-race Jimmy Governor. It was "the neatness of the events as they existed in history" that appealed to the author. But he was also alert to the tale's contemporary moral resonance. Written at the time of the 1967 referendum on allowing the commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people, and published in 1972 at the height of the protest movement, Jimmie Blacksmith was as a conversation with its time.

Keneally is not, in this sense, a writer of period-piece historical fiction. It is not so much the pastness of the past as its presence that interests him. Academic historians often deride historical fiction with what Keneally believes is some justification, but he defends history as a legitimate subject for fictional treatment. "I like to choose the small, salient, marginal event that can light up history in fiction, light up the past and light up the present," he says.

He gives ex-Prime Minister John  Howard a good serve as well.

Keneally's novel The People's Train is out today.  And his new non-fiction work, Australians, will be released by Allen & Unwin on September 1st.

Morris Gleitzman Interview

Australian writer Morris Gleitzman was interviewed on the ABC TV program "Talking Heads" last night.  Gleitzman is the author of such books as Once, Then, Toad Rage, and Bumface.  If you missed it you can watch the program again via the ABC's iView (though you'll have to search for it on the main page as it seems impossible to link to a specific program), or read a transcript of the interview.   

PETER THOMPSON: So did you find with those early books that you were sort of leap-frogging about your own recognition of what was possible?

MORRIS GLEITZMAN: Yeah, absolutely, because up until then I'd always - in the back of my mind when I was having story ideas, I was having to think, "Well, what sort of budget is this going to be? Is it - if it's fitting into a TV series, I'm gonna have to tell this story using existing characters. If it's gonna be an Australian movie, up to a certain - beyond a certain budget it's gonna need an American star, so can I put an American character in this story?" Suddenly, writing books, there was none of that, because on the page no one idea costs any more to write or read than any other idea. So, my first few books included a story, Two Weeks with the Queen - a boy whose younger brother is discovered to be very seriously ill and Colin, the main character, is sent off to London so he won't have to witness his younger brother's death and he decides to borrow the Queen's family doctor to try and cure his brother and he tries to climb over the back wall of Buckingham Palace -

PETER THOMPSON: Obviously unaffordable from a film point of view.

MORRIS GLEITZMAN: Well, difficult, difficult, yeah. I think the third or fourth book I wrote, Blabbermouth, is about a girl unable to physically speak. The whole book is a kind of thought monologue by the character, and it would be a difficult thing to do on the screen. They had to use voiceover and various other techniques when they did adapt it for the screen.

 

Aravind Adiga Profile

I'm still a bit dubuous about whether or not I should be including Aravind Adiga here as an "Australian" writer.  He was educated in Sydney and his father still lives there, but the author seems to spend the bulk of his time in India these days, when he's not on a literary promotion tour.  We'll stay with him for a while. 

While I attempt to come to grips with that dilemma Adiga was interviewed by Fiona McCann in "The Irish Times".

'I've failed at just about everything I've tried," says Aravind Adiga with convincing diffidence. "Which is why I've got to be a novelist." He is sitting in a hotel bar at Dublin Airport, fresh off a flight from London where he's been promoting his new book, Between the Assassinations , less than a year after taking home the Man Booker Prize for his debut novel, The White Tiger . Yet despite the latter's international success, Adiga seems determined not to rest on his laurels. The Indian author's face is boyish, its expression earnest, and he speaks quickly in a musical accent, his sentences spilling forth as he insists that writing is his last resort. "I'm good at nothing else. What else can I do? I flopped as an academic and I don't like being a journalist, so there's not much else to do really. This is it. This is what lazy people end up doing."

For a man with the literary world at his feet, Adiga is astoundingly self-deprecating. Despite placing pieces in prestigious publications, such as Time magazine and the Financial Times during his short-lived journalistic career, he still describes it as "something to do before I did my novel". It was a career, he says, he began mainly to guard against his insecurity about returning unemployed to India after studies at Columbia University in New York and Oxford.

A novel about an Indian character's experiences in Australia would, while being topical, also tend to sway me.

Interview with Chris Andrews

Chris Andrews is one of those Australian writers that you will probably never get to hear of, and yet he has had a profound impact on the international world of letters over the past few years.  Andrews is the Australian translator of writers Roberto Bolaño and CĂ©sar Aira. He has worked on five books by Bolaño: By Night in Chile (2003), Distant Star (2004), Last Evening on Earth (2007), Amulet (2008), and Nazi Literature in the Americas (2009).  From CĂ©sar Aira, he has brought us three: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (2006), How I Became a Nun (2007), and Ghosts (2009)..  He was interviewed on "The Mooksee and the Gripes" weblog.

Q:  Mr. Andrews, I'd like to begin by asking about your pathway to your current work translating Roberto Bolaño and CĂ©sar Aira.  How long have you been translating, and why from Spanish?

I studied literature, French and Spanish, at university and started translating in the mid-1990s with travel narratives (including Ana Briongos' memoir Black on Black about living and travelling in Iran) and some short stories (including Cortázar's uncollected, early story "The Season of the Hand").  I wanted to translate longer works of fiction, but it's hard to get a contract; there's simply not much work for translators of fiction into English.  With Bolaño, I had a lucky break: I was approaching publishers in England, expressing interest in translating work, and it happened that I visited Christopher Maclehose at The Harvill Press in London shortly after he had acquired the rights to By Night in Chile.  That was in 2001.  He asked me what I had been reading and I spoke enthusiastically about Bolaño (I had just read The Wild Detectives).  Harvill already had a translator lined up for By Night in Chile, but when that fell through, they needed a replacement, so they asked me for a sample, then commissioned me to translate the book.  Barbara Epler at New Directions published By Night in Chile in the United States, and I've been working directly with her since Last Evenings on Earth (which was originally commissioned by Harvill but published first by New Directions in the United States).

Thanks to kimbofo and her "Reading Matters" weblog for this link.

The "Gothic" James Bradley

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After valiantly working his way through scads of vampire-themed literature, tv and film Australian author James Bradley published his views on the whole genre in the July issue of the "Australian Literary Review".  And then, last week, he continued with a discussion with Ramona Koval on ABC Radio National's "Book Show" about the same subject.  Maybe he's now becoming the vampire "go-to" guy in Australian letters. 

Anyway, one point he made in his discussion on the radio came after Koval asked him if the current vampire trend would continue.  Bradley pointed out that if publications such as the ALR were writing about a cultural trend then it was probably already over and done with.  The next question, of course, is: what's next?  Bradley didn't know - and I can't blame him for that as I don't think anyone else does either.  So I went to the prime source of wisdom in matters of this sort: my sixteen-year-old daughter.  She just looked at me blankly.  Stephanie Meyer is old hat now. The American television drama series True Blood is now the front-runner, and, though she hadn't yet seen anything of the British TV series Being Human, she was aware of it.  But the whole vampire thing seems to still have a fair way to go she thought.  I asked if she had any hint of the "next big thing", and it was at that point over breakfast that I was convinced, yet again, that she thinks I'm a total idiot.

Andy Griffiths Interview

In "The Sydney Morning Herald" Marc McEvoy profiles Andy Griffiths - author of such works as The Day My Bum Went Psycho, Zombie Bums From Uranus and Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict - as his new book Just Macbeth is released.

"Shakespeare was quite a challenge," he says, glancing at the meal. "He is all about language. We had to get the meaning over as clearly as possible without roadblocks or ambiguity."

Just Macbeth begins with a ghoulish concoction that would put anyone off their food. A toe of frog, an eye of newt, a tongue of dog and a toad bubble away in the three witches' cauldron but the ingredients from the original play are accompanied by Wizz Fizz and some chicken jokes - and the cauldron is really a food processor.

The book is based on a play Griffiths wrote for the Bell Shakespeare Company last year. It attracted huge crowds when it was performed in Sydney and Melbourne under the direction of Wayne Harrison.

Richard Harland Interview

Richard Harland is hoping that his latest novel, Worldshaker, will prove to be a break-through work for him.  Gary Kemble interviews the author on the "Articulate" weblog.

Q. What's the appeal of alternative history, both for writers and readers?

I suppose it appeals to the what-if side of our minds. History could so easily have taken a different turn. For me, the appeal is especially that it allows the imagination to create fantasy worlds very different to the standard Tolkien/medieval norm. (I've got nothing against Tolkien/medieval fantasy, but there are so many other possibilities to explore!) By separating off from real history only in the Napoleonic period, I can bring in a more political state of the world and alternative versions of the industrial age.

Q. Similarly, steampunk is a hugely popular subgenre (arguably a genre in and of itself). What's the appeal?

Maybe it's a nostalgia from the time when machines looked like machines, when you could watch their workings and grasp what was happening. Nowadays, on the other hand, the technology is hidden away inside bland white or silver boxes, and you can't do anything even if you open the boxes up.

I bought my first new car in 20-odd years some months ago, and got a huge shock to learn that I'm not even allowed to fiddle with the engine. Not that I was ever very good at fiddling with engines - which is probably why I like making up forms of machinery that never quite existed in real history.

 

Frank Burkett Interview

It's not often that we link to interviews with unpublished authors.  And it's not because we don't want to, it's just that there generally aren't any out there.  Kathleen Noonan has changed that with an interview with Queensland author Frank Burkett, for "The Courier-Mail". Burkett has written a crime novel, A View from the Clock Tower, which has been chosen from 700 entries from around the world to appear on the shortlist for the Debut Dagger Award from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom.

Burkett's novel follows a young man, Jack Bellamy, in his search for the truth behind his parents' mysterious murder-suicide in Moreton Bay. It takes him from an orphanage in Nudgee to the sugar paddocks around Mackay, where he explores family secrets and digs up the truth.

[snip]

Burkett, 58, started A View From the Clock Tower in 2007. During a week off work, he headed to a beach house with his computer and dogs and punched out the first draft. On retiring last year, he finished it.

"I thought, 'What next?' I contacted the Queensland Writers Centre and then a little crime-writing group in Brisbane.

"Someone there said, 'You have a week before deadline to enter it in these awards in London'." He sent off a synopsis and first chapter and forgot about it.

Six weeks later a letter arrived from Britain, announcing his nomination.

No word yet on when the novel wil be published.

M.J. Hyland Interview

M.J. Hyland, whose second novel Carry Me Down was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, has just published her third novel, This Is How.  The author will be attending the 2009 Brisbane Writers' Festival and spoke to Madeline Healy of "The Courier-Mail".

Her novel This is How tells the story of Patrick Oxtoby, a outsider struggling to find his niche in life, a place where he fits in. His fiancee breaks off his engagement so Patrick leaves home and moves to a boarding house in a seaside village. Struggling to fit in and make new friends, he cannot shake the feeling that nobody likes him.

As his disappointments in life build up, his actions lead to devastating consequences for him, his family and many of those surrounding him.

"There is an escalation in him, a swelling, a maddening," Hyland says. "I spent three years concocting this idea. I've read lots of really good serious literary fiction which has helped me write this.

"But most inspiring was an interview with Tony Parker. It was in a book called Life After Life: Interviews with 12 Murderers and after reading the third interview I decided my next novel would be based on that murderer," she says.

 

Craig Silvey Interview

With his new novel, Jasper Jones, out and about - his first since Rhubarb seven years ago - Craig Silvey speaks to the Boomerang Book blog.

What drew you to writing a "Southern Gothic"-style book set in Australia?

Initially it was no more than the fact that I wanted to have a go. I've always adored Southern Gothic fiction. There's something very warm and generous about those regional American writers like Twain and Lee and O'Connor, and it seemed to be a literary ilk that would lend itself well to the Australian condition. It was only after the themes announced themselves, and I realised where the book was headed that it seemed so apt and important to have these literary elements.

Out of Jasper, Charlie and Jeffrey - which one is most like Craig Silvey? Is there anything autobiographical about any of them, or any of your other characters for that matter?

I like to think I'm fairly evenly distributed through the three boys, though Charlie probably bears the larger share of my character, simply because we come to know him so well. Like Charlie, I was a bookish kid who was terrified of girls and insects but like Jeffrey Lu, I was also a cheeky, unflappable little antagoniser. I think, though, as I grow older, I'm evolving more and more into Jasper Jones: a little quieter, a little stronger, and a little more solitary.

Tim Winton Watch #9

Reviews of Breath

Boyd Tonkin in "The Independent: "...Winton's way with a breaking wave shows off all the springy dash of of his action-laden prose. Yet, much as "Pikelet" from a deadbeat sawmill town adores the sea, what lends Breath its buzz is the kid's rite-of-passage rendezvous with love and sex."

Angela Meyer on the "LiteraryMinded" weblog: "The calmness of the ending, the realism and matter-of-factness of Pike's experience and story means that elements of the book - the melancholy, the inevitability, the continued interior circling over the desires of the past - still resonate."

"A Progressive on the Prairie" weblog: "You could summarize Tim Winton's Breath by saying it's a novel about a two Australian teenagers who perfect their surfing skills under the tutelage of a reclusive mentor. Of course, that would be like saying Fight Club is a novel about young men in an illicit fighting club."

Tania McCartney on the "Australian Women Online" weblog: "The guts of Winton's novel is beautifully expressed, not only through his infallible ability to describe the human experience, but also through a very believable and affable storyline that skirts the edges of morality and self-respect, and even manages to conjure the ability to be downright creepy. Despite a quickly wrapped-up ending that leaps and bounds suddenly and a little disappointingly across the years, it's clear to the reader that this story wasn't meant to unravel an entire lifetime. It was instead written with dedicated focus on a small part of Pikelet's life that shaped his destiny like a tri-fin thruster. It's just too bad that I wanted a more drawn-out ending. This was all Winton wanted to give -- and it works."

Geeta Sharma Jensen on the "PopMatters" weblog: "...it's a coming-of-age tale that manages to seem fresh, for its young protagonist discovers not only the powerful lure of sex but also the powerful thrill of testing oneself against nature. The story unfolds easily, with language that bucks and flows in irresistible hallmark Winton style."

Promotion of Breath

Foyles and Picador have teamed up in the UK to promote a series of book for summer.  The first of these will be Winton's Breath.

Breath has won the 2009 Miles Franklin Award, and you can view his acceptance speech.

Other

Winton has been chosen as one of Western Australia's top citizens.

 

Brian Castro Interview

Brian Castro's latest novel, The Bath Fugues, has just been published by Giramonda and the author is interviewed in "The Australian" by Miriam Cosic.

The very act of writing, he says, is fugue-like. "I'm doing counterpoint all the time: argumentation within myself, and then flying off into animaginative fantasy and coming back to thereality." Yet he says, with hindsight: "I think this is one of my most disciplined books. I wasn't conscious of it at the time but putting it into this form is a discipline."

The idea of the fugueur tempts him as a novelist, he says, not as a man. "As a novelist, the best moment is to be in flight from the real world so that you can actually write," he says. "I like living in that moment."

[snip]

He took his undergraduate degree in French literature at the University of Sydney, his master's in American literature. Living and teaching in Paris for a year had a huge effect on him: "It changed my view of writers, of how they can be respected. You come back to Australia and they say, 'Aw, whaddya write?' 'Aw, do ya make a living out of it?"' He mimics a drawling accent. "It's so crude."

Castro's irritation with his own country's anti-intellectualism has spilled out before. When he took the manuscript of Shanghai Dancing to publishers, even those who had published him before, he was told to tone it back -- dumb it down, he would say -- and he refused. And made a fuss about it in public.

He was saved by Ivor Indyk, publisher of Giramondo Press, who is as intellectually uncompromising as he is. Shanghai Dancing was published unchanged and, vindicating writer and publisher, went on to win prizes and sell respectably enough. It's still in print, unusual in these times when unsold books are cleared out and remaindered within months of publication.

Gabrielle Carey interview

Gabrielle Carey, author of Puberty Blues with Kathy Lette, has just published a memoir, Waiting Room, and she discusses it and her sadness over the recent death of her mother, with Lissa Christopher for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

Amid all the sadness, Carey is also experiencing "this rush of things I want to write. I'm beginning to believe that maybe all my life, the way to deal with pain has been to transform it into art - if what I do is art - to transform it into something else, take it out of yourself and put it somewhere else that makes it bearable."

In Waiting Room, Carey describes the drive to write as a symptom of malfunction.

"Once, when Brigie [Carey's daughter] was about eight, I thought I noticed the kind of withdrawn behaviour that I had exhibited as a child - the kind of psychology that leads a person to go silent, to ruminate and then, finally, to write things down. I went into an immediate panic and arranged an appointment with a child psychologist."

Despite Carey's fears, however, the writing condition is not manifest in Brigid, now an adult. "She's into fashion and beauty," Carey says, seeming pleased - and yet not so pleased. "My children are much more rounded healthy individuals than I am."

Most of Waiting Room was written about seven years ago, when Joan Carey was diagnosed with a brain tumour. It describes her catastrophic memory loss and muses on her taciturn, stoic-to-a-fault approach to life; the role of the middle-aged parent caught between the needs of their own children and an ailing parent; and Carey's passionate desire to know her mother more intimately. 

Richard Harland Interview

As his new novel Worldshaker hits the stands author Richard Harland is interviewed on the "HorrorScope" weblog by Shane Jiraiya Cummings.

Your novels have ranged from horror to science fiction, young adult, and now steampunk. Is there a genre you prefer to write in?

RH: "I like hopping between genres, but the logic of marketing says you should build a brand, so that readers know what they'll be getting when they see your name on a book. I guess I've come to a stage in my career when I need to do a bit of brand building -- which luckily coincides with the fact that, of all fantasy sub-genres, steampunk/Victoriana is my most natural territory, my home ground. I have plenty of steampunk writing in me, and it'll be a long way down the track (gods willing!) before I get bored with it. I'd love to be the Steampunk King!

"I've written adult, YA and children's, but it's never a big issue for me. Although Worldshaker is marketed as YA, it's really crossover, just as good for adult reading. I wouldn't have written a single word differently if I'd planned it for an adult readership. It became YA only because of the age of the two main characters--after making that decision, I never gave another thought to YA or adult. Fantasy easily overleaps those categories anyway."

Sonya Hartnett Watch #2

Reviews of Butterfly

Cultural Gal on the "MelbArts" weblog: "It's wonderful that such a sterling writer is able to bring to such glittering life the complex, deeply felt experiences of young people. But just as youth is wasted on the young, it would be a sin if Hartnett's audience was confined to the under-16s...Hartnett's many skills are in full play in this beautifully crafted novel. There are secrets in this quiet suburban world, secrets the characters keep from each other for fear of losing everything they value most. These secrets fuel the momentum of the narrative that Hartnett so carefully builds, keeping the surprises coming...Indeed, there's almost a thriller element to the novel: until the very end we don't know exactly what will happen. At one point towards the close Hartnett plays with this mounting sense of dread, keeping us guessing as to whether she'll choose a conventional melodramatic device or a more nuanced resolution."

Sarah on the "I loved it..." weblog: "How does Sonya Hartnett know me so well? I swear that she was watching me grow up and saw every excruciating moment of my adolescence. Admittedly it was the 80s and everything was cringeworthy! She manages to capture the universal aspects of growing up and all the self doubt and casual cruelty that is so much a part of life as a teenager. I think Hartnett is a revelation. I adore her writing in a way that defies description."

Karen on the Book Bath weblog: "In some ways this book is two or three stories within one - but you never feel as though too much has been taken on by the author. Hartnett balances the characters and the story lines beautifully. This book was not at all what I expected when I started reading it but once I accepted this I enjoyed the rather uneasy storyline."

Madeline Wheatley of The Book Bag weblog gave the novel 4.5 stars: "Award winning Australian author Sonya Hartnett writes powerful, disturbing tales. This is no exception. Some of the events in this novel are extreme, yet believable, largely because of the vividly realistic character of Plum."

I.E Sawmill on The Literateur website was put off by the cover at first: "The cover is actually quite an inoffensive combination of yellows and pinks with flowers trailed all around in an attractive pattern. I was still at this point fully in the bigoted stages of reviewing and could not help a Pavlovian response to such stimuli: Yellow + Pink + Floral Decoration = book aimed for a female audience. Dare one say, chick-lit. This seemed at odds with the jacket's alliterative promise of 'deceit', 'despair' and 'desperation'. Those three words, in conjunction with the title, implied a gritty account of 'coming of age'...The novel has moments of great comedy, insight and fine descriptive inventiveness. Overall, however, Butterfly is something of a moth to its own flame. The tone and pace do not quite justify the book's ricocheting from flippancy to po-faced truisms and, at times, it feels as if it has suffered for lack of editing. As it stands, Butterfly is not a great deal more than the sum of its parts. Those parts are enjoyable enough, but one suspects that Hartnett is capable of much, much better."

Other

The production company Monkey Baa has developed a theatrical adaptation of Hartnett's novel Thursday's Child. The play features a young cast, is directed by Sandra Eldridge and will tour nationally until November 13.

Hartnett appeared at the Sydney Writers' Festival and the Boomerang Books blog went along to see her: "Girl politics features heavily in Sonya Hartnett's Butterfly, and when asked about teenage girls and their penchant for bitchery, Hartnett had some fun ("Sometimes you see it and you're just like... 'Arrghh, you little cretins.'"). She based the manuscript on the teen-girl relations she witnessed twenty years ago (when the novel is set). She gave the first draft to her fourteen-year-old neighbour, Matilda, and after finishing it, Matilda approached her and asked, "How did you know how the girls at [school's name] acted?" So, clearly, nothing's changed in the world of teen-girl relations. Hartnett joked that no-one ever admits to being the schoolyard bitch - grab one hundred middle-aged women and ask them, and they'll all say they were the girls that suffered through high school. "Where do those girls go [after high school]? Do they just disappear?""

Interviews
Sally Wahaft on Slow TV.

Ramona Koval on The Book Show on ABC Radio National.

Morris Gleitzman Interview

Australian children's and Young Adult author, Morris Gleitzman, is interviewed in Meanjin by Sophie Cunningham.  Gleitzman is the author of such novels as Wicked!, Bumface, Toad Rage, and Give Peas a Chance. The interview mainly concerns his latest book, Then.

SC: The first novel, Once has got more jokes and it's slightly more light-hearted--as much as the subject matter allows. But Then is very gothic and dark.

MG: I'd hesitate to say 'gothic' because that to me is a kind of cultural literary style. And there is humour in Then because Felix is still optimistic despite the grim circumstances. I'm trying to re-create some of the darker moments of our species' behaviour in a way that will have meaning for younger readers. I knew when I decided to write a book for my age group of readers--which is pretty much eight and up--set against the Holocaust, many or most of my readers wouldn't be familiar with the circumstances of World War Two or the Holocaust.

SC: Aren't these subjects taught?

MG: They're taught at some schools but there's a lot of freedom at primary schools for teachers to devise their own areas of curriculum. So there are some primary schools where they're doing the Holocaust, perhaps as a part of related studies or maybe as part of World War Two. But there are many students who don't touch on all this until two or three years into high school. So I couldn't count on all of my readers understanding the historical context and the social context. I didn't want to make these books a history lesson in terms of the full sweep of the information of the time, but I needed to have enough of the historical context so it would make sense to readers fresh to the whole thing. That is why I decided to structure the first book as a journey of discovery for Felix. I wanted to do it that way for some other reasons as well but I realised it would allow my younger readers to go on that journey of discovery with him and gradually encounter some of the realities of that time and that place. 

Will Elliott Interview

Will Elliott had great success with his debut novel, The Pilo Family Circus, and now has his second book about to be released.  This new one, Strange Places, is a memoir, with the main subject being Elliott's schizophrenia.  The author spoke to Owen Richardson in "The Age".

In his late teens and early 20s Elliott underwent two psychotic episodes, the second of which ended with his being diagnosed as schizophrenic. Now 30, Elliott hasn't experienced a relapse and has decided to tell the story, at some cost to his present comfort.

"To go back and immerse myself in it, and especially the first symptoms in the early days, it was embarrassing for me," Elliott says. "It was the opposite of pleasant nostalgia, to keep going back over that and checking that it was all arranged properly was the worst part for me. I don't know how it is going to be having other people reading these intimate and not exactly flattering details."

One of the things Elliott says he is uncomfortable about revealing is his conviction that various members of his family were a threat to him; at one point he was on his way to see his father and put a pair of scissors in his pocket in case he got attacked, and there was a long period when he thought the song lyrics his older brother was writing for their heavy metal band were a series of attacks on him.

Appealingly but rather unreasonably, perhaps, Elliott is worried about how this might come across: "You could argue that that was just a symptom and not a sign of ill character, but it still makes me feel a bit squeamish."

Karen Miller Interview

 Karen Miller is the author of the "Kingmaker, Kingbreaker" and "Godspeaker" series of fantasy novels.  Back in March she spoke to the "Blogging the Muse" weblog.

TH: It has been said that a writers, each time they achieve one goal, such as publication, simply trade up to a succession of new sets of problems. At this stage in your writing career, how do your concerns differ from when you were just starting out?

KM: Well, being an aspiring author is in fact quite a simple, uncomplicated thing. All your energy is focused on getting the nod. That's not to say it isn't hard, because it is. It's hard, it's often disheartening and painful. But there's a clarity of purpose to it. So before I was published, all I thought about was: Will I ever be good enough for someone to say yes?

Then someone said  yes, you're good enough, and that was  mindblowing and wonderful and actually very empowering.  As a result,  here are the things I worry about now, in no particular order:

Have I got complacent? Am I repeating myself? Can I make my next deadline? Is this book an improvement on the last one? Will I disappoint my existing readers? Will I find new readers? Am I justifying my publishers' faith in me? Can I deliver what I told them I can deliver? Should I be thinking about the next potential project? How long will it be before I can't think of anything new to say? Should I be doing more  blogging and stuff? Is there really a bias against women writers in spec fic or am I losing my mind? My new book's coming out -- is it going to bomb? Will everybody hate it? Will it finish my career? People are going through tough times, does that mean my life as a full time writer is over?

I have no idea if other writers worry about this stuff. I only know that I do, and sometimes I feel quite overwhelmed.

Peter Carey Watch #11

Regarding His Illegal Self 

Katy Guest reviewed the new paperback edition in "The Independent": "A consumate plotter, the multi-Booker-winner Peter Carey packs a lot of distance and a great deal of stuff into this teeming novel about a boy's childhood."

Matthew Condon discusses the novel with Carey at the Adelaide Writers' Week on Slow TV - Part 1 and Part 2.

Parrot and Olivier in America

Carey's next novel, Parrot and Olivier in America, will be published in Australia by Penguin in November, ahead of its international release in 2010.  There isn't much news out about it but the Penguin Books news letter has some details (see the April 29, 2009 entry). 

Australia's Review of Copyright and Territorial Publishing Rights

In January this year Carey published an essay in "The Age" arguing against any relaxation of the current copyright and territorial publishing arrangements covering the Australian publishing industry. 

You can read also Carey's submission to the government inquiry. (PDF file.)

Other

Canadian short story author Alice Munro has won the third Man Booker International Prize, for which Peter Carey was shortlisted.

In my last "Peter Carey Watch" I mentioned that the Scottish national opera company was performing an opera based on Carey's short story "Happy Story", and now "The Age" is reporting that "composer Brett Dean, who lives in Melbourne, and his librettist, Amanda Holden, who lives in London" have mostly finished a three-act opera based on Bliss.

The Australian National Portrait Gallery has made available Lewis Morley's photographic portrait of the author, dating from 1989.  

Carey's laptop, upon which he composed True History of the Kelly Gang, is part of "The Independent Type: Books and Writing in Victoria" exhibition which is currently on show at the State Library of Victoria.

Michael Gerard Bauer Interview

Last week "The Australian Writer's Marketplace"  conducted an online forum with YA author Michael Gerard Bauer and they have now posted some highlights of that session on their website.

Kate: How conscious are you of the influence of your locality when writing? 
MGB: Quite a bit. I taught at Marist Brothers in Brisbane and I based the school setting for "Don't Call me Ishmael" on that. I felt the Ashgrove location a great deal in The Running Man and made a conscious decision to use the real suburb and street names in the story because it was based on some childhood memories of growing up there.

Robyn: Do you think having been a teacher has helped you as a writer, and if it has, what have you found most valuable about it?
MGB: Yes, definitely. I think it gave me a good understanding of the people I was writing about. I certainly couldn't have written ishmael as well without drawing on my teaching years. During teaching I also read lots of YA books and loved them. Now when I visit schools to talk I feel very comfortable in that environment.

Bauer's 2006 novel Don't Call Me Ishmael won the 2007 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Ethel Turner Prize, and the 2008 Festival Awards for Literature (SA), Children's Literature Award.

 

Jennifer Mills Interview

Her first novel, The Diamond Anchor, was reviewed here yesterday and last weekend Jennifer Mills was interviewed by Steve Dow for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

She began writing her own book alternating between May and Grace's voices, but settled on writing almost entirely in May's voice; an interesting choice given Mills has more the restless soul of a Grace. Perhaps, she agrees, she was interested in getting inside the head of someone who wants to settle down where they were born. "I guess I'm trying to deal with how my generation, as very transient people, build a sense of home and belonging," she says. Her second novel, in progress, will be a dark tale about a hitchhiker; a few years ago Mills thumbed lifts while travelling through Europe, Turkey and the United States. "I came back to Australia and knew I didn't want to live on the east coast again; I wanted to do something different." That was three years ago and she has been in Alice Springs since, and "it's very much home now".

Peter Corris Interview

Since the early 1980s Peter Corris has been producing a series of crime novels featuring his PI Cliff Hardy. His latest, Deep Water, is the 35th in the series, and as it is released Marc McEvoy interviewed the author for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

Although Corris invented the character of Hardy in 1976, it took five years to find a publisher for his first novel, The Dying Trade. Once a punchy, beer-swilling philanderer, Hardy is less sexist now. His evolution during the series mirrors the changes in his creator.

"I stopped smoking about one or two books in - Cliff stopped smoking," Corris says. "I started jogging and trying to take better care of myself five or six books in - Cliff starts exercising. I try to keep alcohol consumption down - likewise, Cliff cuts down his drinking."

The changes are sometimes structural, such as when Hardy's office in Darlinghurst was renovated in real life, so he has since moved to Newtown.

Sometimes Corris even plants books he's reading in the plot, which help punctuate the action. In Deep Water Hardy reads Julian Barnes's Arthur And George and James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. "Cliff's never read anything I haven't read," Corris says.

But Corris insists Hardy is a complete fantasy figure in the way the detective can prevail against the odds. "His physical capabilities are way beyond anything I could do . . . and his sexual prowess is considerably greater than mine," Corris says with a grin. "But the sense of humour, the take on life, the take on politics and religion - these are absolutely me."

Corris invented Hardy after reading American crime fiction writers Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross Macdonald. "Hardy was a straight pinch from Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe," he says.

I seem to remember reading a piece of Corris's in an issue of the late-lamented "National Times" from the late 70s or early 80s - about the time the Hardy series started. As I recall Corris was at a crime convention somewhere in the States and told someone there that he intended to write an ongoing PI crime series set in Sydney. They just about laughed in his face. Not any longer I suspect.

Deborah Forster Interview

Deborah Forster's first novel, The Book of Emmett, has just been published, and she spoke to Jo Case from Readings about the novel, Melbourne and her previous work as a journalist.

This is a very Melbourne novel, anchored in a rich sense of place -- not just the "blasted landscape" of Footscray, but the cramped streets of North Melbourne, the Lifesaver-coloured cottages of Kensington and the perfect peaches and strong coffees of the Queen Victoria markets. How integral was the setting for you?

I see place as another character in this novel and I wanted the place and the people to reflect each other, to reflect the toughness of Footscray people as well as their sweetness. I love those places. That Footscray has gone now, it's changed as everything always changes. When I was a kid, I wasn't so crazy about it. I craved trees and flowers and pretty houses, much more like it's become. Originally the book was set more in North Melbourne and I researched the market and discovered there's a cemetery still under the big car park. A cemetery was strictly divided according to race and religion. Amazing. I lived in North Melbourne when I was young and grew to love it. The Queen Victoria Market is beloved in this city and it seems almost spiritual to me in its beauty. All that glorious fresh food.

Max Barry Interview

Max Barry, author of the novels Jennifer Government and Company, has started releasing a novel online, one page a day. You can try out page one of Machine Man for free.

Angela Meyer, of the "LiteraryMinded" weblog, was so intrigued by the concept that she asked the author about it all.

It's not like it's never been done before, but you may be one of the first Australian authors depositing installments of a novel into cyberspace day-by-day with Machine Man. What made you decide to tell this particular story this way?

I really liked the idea of each installment being short. I love the net, but never thought it was a great way to deliver novels, because novels demand long periods of undivided attention, whereas I can't read more than eight sentences of anything online before feeling the urge to check my email. And that's including when I'm reading my email.

So a novel delivered one chapter at a time via the web never seemed right to me -- particularly a novel written as a regular print book. The art and medium just didn't fit. But I heard about these tiny, bestselling Japanese novels delivered via text message, and found that intriguing. At that time I had the basic idea for Machine Man and a few hundred dull, ponderous words that sucked all life out of it: when I thought of that idea in a compressed, electronic format, it came alive again. The format changed the nature of the story.

Kristina Olsson Interview

Kristina Olsson's second novel, The China Garden, has been chosen as the April selection for the "Courier-Mail" Big Book Club. The author is interviewed in the paper by Madeline Healy.

That Olsson has written a story of an "odd or lost boy" should not surprise. Her mother Yvonne, on the run from her abusive husband, had her first child Peter snatched from her arms by his father on a train when he was one. The family did not see Peter again until he was 37. He later contracted polio and faced challenges.

"In all of the writing I've done there's been an odd boy, a boy missing someone," Olsson says. "Because there has been missing boys in my family. I guess it's a way of bringing them home for me; it's a preoccupation."

The story of her brother Peter will be told in Olsson's next book, a memoir tentatively titled Lost Boys, which traces the lives of Yvonne and her family.

But The China Garden, Olsson says, was the book she had to write before the memoir, while she gathered permission to write Lost Boys after her mother died in 2001. "I couldn't write my mother's story as fiction -- it needed to be non-fiction and I needed to talk to all of the family before I did that," Olsson says.

Garry Disher Interview

Liz Porter, of "The Age", talks to Garry Disher, Victorian-based author of the Challis and Wyatt series of crime novels.

"Social diversity creates social tension," says the writer, who has just had Blood Moon published, his fifth book in the series featuring crimes that happen on the watch of Detective Inspector Hal Challis of the Waterloo police crime investigation unit.

"There are disadvantaged housing estates a couple of kilometres away from wealthy communities. That kind of social tension leads to crime and helps me to find plots. The fallout of poverty and job loss are just as important to me as matters of police procedure.

"I don't want to beat the reader over the head with a message. But crime fiction does give you the room to explore strain in the community. Literary fiction has let us down in that regard." But is there enough crime on the peninsula for a writer whose books are gritty and realistic as Disher's?

"I reckon I have bumped up the murder rate significantly," he says. "But there have been some horrifying crimes on or near the peninsula. Just reading the local paper I get a sense of an undercurrent of small, mean and petty crimes -- muggings, thefts and bashings."

The interview also brings the excellent news that Disher has a new Wyatt novel just about finished. It is due
for release next year.

Paul Jennings Interview

"The Courier-Mail" newspaper out of Queensland continues its good work interviewing Australian authors with Christopher Bantick this week talking to Paul Jennings. The author is probably best known for such works as Wicked, Unreal!: Eight Surprising Stories, and Unbelievable!: More Surprising Stories. His latest work is The Nest, a novel for young adults.

Obsessive compulsive behaviour as a topic for a book is about as far away from toilet humour as a writer can get.

So when Melbourne-based author Paul Jennings who is well-known for his many quirky and funny children's stories, decided to write on the topic in his latest book The Nest (Penguin, $19.95) it took him four years to complete.

"I've never taken as long over a book. The Nest took me four years. The story was quite a struggle. I start most books with my reader in mind. With this book, I began with the idea that I would write about a boy who had unwanted thoughts and images that were disturbing," Jennings says.

"I knew straight away that it couldn't be for primary school children with that topic. I don't believe that you should present the world to be a dark and scary place to this age group.

"At one stage I even thought it might be an adult book. Then I came to the conclusion that the person I wanted to speak to was aged about 15."

You can also read an extract from the novel on the Penguin Books website.

Linda Jaivin Interview

Linda Jaivin's latest novel is titled A Most Immoral Woman. Deborah Bogle interviewed the author for "The Courier-Mail".

"Good writing about sex is like good writing on any subject," Jaivin says. "The words must express exactly what the author wants to express, and do it in a way that feels fresh and interesting while advancing the plot and -- or -- revealing something about character.

"Bad writing about sex is always much worse than bad writing about nearly any other subject you can name," she says.

There is a scene in her new novel, A Most Immoral Woman (Fourth Estate, $32.99), where Jaivin guesses she walked that thin line, and perhaps even teetered over the edge.

"I have a moment in here where I felt I was going for it, where all of her clothes fall to the floor in order," says Jaivin, reaching for the book. "The urgency with which furs and hats and shoes and gloves were discarded and top bodice, under-bodice, gored skirt, petticoat, corset cover, busk, corset, chemise and drawers whispered to the floor," she reads.

"How can that be urgent?" she adds, hooting with laughter. "But that's obviously from my standpoint -- done as a funny line, and maybe I'll get the bad sex award for that."

Malla Nunn Interview

Malla Nunn published A Beautiful Place to Die (a detective novel set in 1950s South Africa) last year, and has just returned to Sydney after a book tour through the US and Canada. She spoke to Winsor Dobbin for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

A new paperback edition of A Beautiful Place To Die will be released in Australia by Macmillan on April 1 and Nunn has already made a lot of progress on the second novel of what she hopes will become a series featuring Cooper, a '50s man with new-age sensibilities; and a few skeletons in his closet.

"If I'd written about a man truly of his times, I don't think we'd really like him - it's a difficult line to tread," she says. "He's a guy that I hope existed somewhere, in some form, in 1950s South Africa."

At that time, the colour of a man's or woman's skin mattered far more than guilt or innocence - and as someone who lived in the apartheid state I was amazed at how well Nunn captured the sense of malevolence and hopelessness.

"I drew heavily on the experiences of my parents and my grandmother," she says. "There is something about people who consider themselves to be above everyone else - a casual brutality about their lives.

"They may not even set out to be like that but fear, fear of the unknown, drove people to enact those laws."

David Malouf Profile

"The Weekend Australian" has published a large profile of Australian author David Malouf as his new novel, Ransom, is about to be released.

"I want books to unfold as if they were dreams and even to have the logic of dreams," Malouf says, sitting at his kitchen table in inner-suburban Sydney one recent afternoon. He rarely gives interviews, but his first novel in several years is about to appear and his publishers, presumably, have persuaded him. "I deliberately don't plan where the writing is going so that things can happen with the same unpredictability, with the same process of association rather than logical unfolding. That provides something for the reader as well: the reader has something like the same sense of discovery that the writer does. "As a writer, discipline for me is to learn more and more how to fall quickly into that state."
The publisher's page has a release date of 1 April 2009, and the following description of the book:
With learning worn lightly and in his own lyrical language, David Malouf revisits Homer's ILIAD. Focusing on the unbreakable bonds between men - Priam and Hector, Patroclus and Achilles, Priam and the cart-driver hired to retrieve Hector's body. Pride, grief, brutality, love and neighbourliness are explored. The minute you finish this novel you will want to return to the beginning and start all over again.

Wendy Harmer Interview

With her fourth novel for adults, Roadside Sisters, due out on March 30th, Wendy Harmer talks to Madeline Healy of "The Courier-Mail".

"I wouldn't trust myself to write a literary novel because I'd want to make it funny."


A veteran in radio (she spent 11 years hosting Sydney radio station 2Day FM's top-rating breakfast show), Harmer says she aims to write books all readers can enjoy.

"A lot of the time people come to me and say, I read your book in one sitting," Harmer says. "And I think, I wish I'd made it more complex or more literary, but I do love the fact that I've written a book people find easy to read. The way I write is to write books without bumps. I don't like having to go back in a book to try to work out who is who, and what's happened before."

Harmer says there is a lot of snobbery about women's fiction and that literary critics think chick lit "will rot your teeth".

"I think on most bedside tables there will be a copy of a chick lit book, a favourite classic and a magazine," Harmer says. "Chick lit sells and that's helping keep the industry going, especially at the moment."

Lee Fox Interview

Lee Fox, author of the children's book Jasper McFlea Will Not Eat His Tea (illustrated by Micth Vane) is interviewed by Fran Metcalf for "The Courier-Mail".

Apart from writing books, Fox conducts writing and reading workshops for school children.

It's an ironic outcome, she says, since she was raised in a family that didn't read much by a father who believed women were made to be wives and mothers.

"When I was a child, I wanted to be a teacher but when I asked Dad about how to become one, he said you needed to go to university but that girls didn't need to get an education so I should just forget about that," she says.

"There were no books in our house when I was growing up.

"I discovered the library when I was seven and my best friend took me there.

"I was amazed that you could take three books home and bring them back the next week and get three more."

Jennifer Fallon Interview

Jennifer Fallon, author of the The Demon Child, The Second Sons, The Hythrun Chronicles and The Tide Lords series of fantasy novels, is interviewed by Gary Kemble for the ABC's "Articulate" weblog.

Q. You're a speculative fiction writer, but I'd like you to speculate on the future of Australian speculative fiction! How will technology affect the lives of Australian writers? Is the tyranny of distance a thing of the past?

As a writer from Alice Springs who is published all over the world, I've never considered the tyranny of distance in the first place. I had an agent in Sydney for two years before I met her. I was published for three or four years before I ever met my Australian editor. I've never even spoken on the phone to my US or UK publishers, or my US or European agents. The world functions quite well on email.

As for the future of Australian spec fic, I'm probably not the person to ask. This is partly because I don't think of myself as specifically an "Australian" spec fic writer. I'm just a writer and my work is just as valid (or not, if it sucks) as any writer from the US, the UK or Outer Mongolia. I've never expected or assumed that being Australian makes a difference.

Marshall Browne Profile

Marshall Browne's new novel, The Iron Heart, features his German auditor Franz Schmidt, who first appeared in The Eye of the Abyss in 2002. Browne now has three series running: Italian Inspector Anders (see my review of Inspector Anders and the Blood Vendetta), Japanese Hideo Aoki, and the German Franz Schmidt.

The author talked to Jason Steger for "The West Australian".

Browne says he is interested in damaged heroes: Schmidt has only one eye; Anders only one leg; and he says that while Aoki is "intact physically, he's not intact psychologically. He's got a lot of things missing from his make-up in that respect."

But he writes from an image, not the character. Anders he saw in his mind's eye getting off a train in Italy and walking in a funny way. "I thought he's got an artificial leg and he was coming to this southern Italian town where there was a lot of trouble and there was a woman and she was going to take him further into this trouble. All this came in the first 30 seconds of thinking about it in bed one morning."

Schmidt was different, but not much. An image of him walking with a woman and a child to catch a tram in what looked like a German city in the 1930s. The eye problems came from Browne's father, who had just lost one.

Some writers plot their crime fiction to the nth degree; not Browne. He says he doesn't know where he's going when he starts a novel. "I set off and hope for the best. There's a lot of false starts, a lot of revision, but I'm not planning the end at all. I don't think I'd find it too interesting if I knew what was going to happen at the end."

Marion Halligan Interview

Marion Halligan, winner of the Nita Kibble Literary Award and Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction, has a new novel, Valley of Grace, in the bookshops. The author is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Christopher Bantick.

Given that Valley of Grace began as a short story, the development of the characters is patiently paced and methodical. This is a marker of how Halligan works. She wants her readers to know her characters well before she introduces the thematic concerns.

"All my novels are really a set of short stories. This was very evident in Lovers' Knots, which was a family saga with all the boring bits left out. I can see this in Valley of Grace, where we have a set of characters. We all live our lives like this. We are the heroes of our own stories but we're the small players in others stories as well.

"The way I had structured the novel, there are a set of characters with their own roles, and yet roles in other peoples' lives. They are all knotted together. It is a technique that I love.

"There is a linear narrative movement in Valley of Grace where there is a beginning and resolution at the end. But it is essentially the knotting up in the middle that really interests me.

"There are several kinds of relationships here and one of the things strongly evoked, besides the desire to have babies, is the importance of sex in the story."

Steven Amsterdam Interview and Review

Steven Amsterdam, author of Things We Didn't See Coming, is interviewed by Kevin Rabalais for the "Readings" weblog.

Things We Didn't See Coming, Amsterdam's debut novel, is that all-too-rare book that will incite a cult following, while simultaneously welcoming popular appeal. This is fiction of high order, and in it Amsterdam establishes himself as a writer of great vision and compassion.

The novel begins on New Year's Eve 1999. As Y2K fears escalate, the nameless narrator, aged ten in the first chapter, flees an anonymous city with his parents to hole up at his grandparents' house in the country. In the ensuing chapters, Amsterdam tracks his narrator through an unspecified country that has been ravaged by plague, drought, fires and floods. There are barricades and quarantines.Wars rage across the country's desolate landscape. Amsterdam invents horses that are bred to ride on water after the melting of the ice caps and throws in a fair share of sex, drugs and guns. This is the Wild West without cowboy hats, science fiction without the science, some kind of radical and daring offspring of Cormac McCarthy and Philip K. Dick.

The first review of the book I've seen is by Angela Meyer on the "LiteraryMinded" weblog, who says:
Things We Didn't See Coming is a series of vignettes, from different stages of the unnamed protagonist's life in a dystopian alterno-present/future. It is a post-apocalyptic story, but told in a hard-boiled, yet highly resonant literary style. The sentences are sharp, the character is hard and the environment is one of rapid change and ruin -- but throughout there is also deep resistance. The book acts to massage you at your core, and every secondary character met along the way (no matter how fleeting) leaves a poignant stain on character and reader. They are examples from all of humanity's shredded social standings -- how different people would deal with natural disasters, segregation (between urban and land environments), political situations (and radical politics), survival against disease, and more.

Eva Hornung Interview

Eva Hornung, under the name Eva Sallis, published Hiam, which won the Australian/Vogel Literary award in 1997, and The Marsh Birds, which was shortlisted for a number of Australian literary awards in 2006. Now the author has a new novel, Dog Boy, about to be published. She spoke to Jane Sullivan of "The Age".

She's always written, but never thought of herself as a writer until her first novel, Hiam, won the Vogel award. That affirmation sparked an intense six-week creative period. She wrote during all her waking hours and produced drafts of two novels, though it then took seven years to get them into print.

In Hornung's latest story, Romochka, a four-year-old boy living in Moscow, is abandoned by his parents. He finds refuge with a mother dog he calls Mamochka, who gives him milk, and he begins a difficult and dangerous new life in the mother's lair with her offspring. Most of the story is told from Romochka's point of view: a boy who, fighting daily for survival, identifies far more with dogs than with humans.

"I hope it's a disturbing book," Hornung says. "I don't think there are any easy answers about our relationship with animals, except that animals are perhaps closer to us than we think."

She expects readers will see the novel as a departure from her previous fiction -- written under the name of Eva Sallis -- which is mostly about the experiences of migrants and refugees, particularly from the Arab world. "But for me, it's really harping on the same old things. The notion of where the self resides, and under what pressure the self expands or contracts. What it means to belong, whether in family, community, nation -- or species."

Margo Lanagan Watch #2

Reviews of Tender Morsels

Ken on the "Neth Space" weblog: "The underlying reality of humanity lies at the heart of this story. It's a world of overwhelming cruelty interspersed with acts of incredible kindness and everything in between."

Deirdre Baker in "The Toronto Star": "Based on the tale Snow White and Rose Red and a Catalonian bear ritual, this powerfully imaginative, compelling novel explores trauma and desire, transformation and healing. Lanagan's vivid language and masterful use of mythic imagery give it extraordinary depth and beauty."

"BookLoons" weblog: "Though her story begins in darkness and abuse, Margo Lanagan moves it steadily and assuredly into the light, with strong (mainly female) characters, intriguing magics, and beautiful writing. Tender Morsels will stay with you long after you turn the last page."

"The Celebrity Cafe" weblog: "The plot moves like a leaf caught in the river's grasp, sometimes speeding along over white water and other times floating aimlessly. There are bright moments when the course is clear and well written here and there, but the uneven narrative and disconcerting point of view changes make Tender Morsels a thorny story to follow."

Review of Red Spikes

"Needs More Demons?" weblog: "Lanagan isn't one for big dumps of exposition. She demands a willingness to read a few pages before you're quite sure what's going on, and perhaps to re-read as your understanding grows. Her prose and structure are fiercely economical."

Review of short fiction

"Chasing Ray" weblog on "The Goosle": "It's hard to simply recommend "The Goosle" because it is upsetting -- it disturbs as much as it enlightens. But some stories are supposed to scare the crap out of us; some stories are supposed to make us wary for what might come or thankful for what we have."

Interviews

Lynne Jamneck on Suite101.com:

You deal with a number of dark themes in your latest novel, Tender Morsels, including rape and sexual abuse. How do you respond to those who would object that this is not a book suitable for young readers?

I'd agree that it isn't a book that's suitable for all young readers. I'd agree that it shouldn't be compulsory reading on a school curriculum. However, I think young readers generally have a pretty clear idea what they're ready for and what they can't handle yet, and I'd say, 'How about we put it out there where they can find it, and trust them to walk away from it if it's too much for them?' I would also point out that it's not the best book for adults to read if they're in any kind of fragile state. It's a very intense book; it kicks you around emotionally. You need to be feeling resilient to take on the first part, particularly.

Margo was also a part of my Australian LitBlog Snapshot in December 2008 (the link isn't working for this at present).

Other

"Publisher's Weekly" chose Tender Morsels as one of its best children's books of the year for 2008, stating: "Dense, atmospheric prose holds readers to a cautious pace in an often dark fantasy that explores the savage and gentlest sides of human nature and how they coexist."

In addition, Tender Morsels appeared on the "best of 2008" or "recommended reading for 2008" lists from the following: "Locus" magazine, "School Library Journal", and Amazon.

In early February 2009, Margo Lanagan was "blogger-in-residence" at the State Library's Reading Victoria program. You can read the introductory post here.

This continued a busy schedule for the author in the early part of 2009 as she had previously appeared as one of the tutors at the 2009 Clarion South writer's workshop in January.

Clive James Watch #12

Review of Angels over Elsinore: Collected Verse 2003-2008

Bill Greenwell in "The Independent": "Much of the verse collected here (from 2003-2008) is very funny. James can write slow-fuse poems as well as George Burns told jokes. They develop, do a little hoofing along the way, arrive at a well-timed, laconic conclusion. James being James, there is a casually rich mix of cultural allusions, but the most important quality is complete clarity. Sometimes he can be sonorous, and achieve only a slightly artificial note of grandeur, as in a poem about a painting: 'Art must choose/ What truly merits perpetuity/ From everything that we are bound to lose.' This is that fatal thing, not-quite-Larkin."

You can read the title poem of this collection here.

Essay by James
"Getting rich quick - and having much more money than you ever need - will look as pointless as taking bodybuilding too seriously, says Clive James", on the BBC News website.

In "Poetry" magazine, James has a second look at Stephen Edgar's poem, "Man on the Moon", and comes to realise why he thought it was so good on the first look.

Interviews
James is interviewed about his musical interests by Paul Mardles for "The Guardian".

Unquestionably, James knows how songwriting works, having made six albums in the 70s with Pete Atkin, who wrote the folky music to his sidekick's pointed words. Now, three decades after being "blown away by punk", their back catalogue is to be reissued, encouraging James to begin writing lyrics anew. "And I think I've improved," he says, referring to his new-found uncomplicated style. "Maybe a 30-year layoff is about right."

If James has improved with age, he is hardly unique. James Taylor has grown more interesting, he says. Ditto Leonard Cohen, whom he used to find "boring". "But then I caught on that he had the secret because even then he would produce a couple of lines that were lovely, like, 'There's a funeral in the mirror and it's stopping at your face.'" He exhales, dramatically, and pulls a startled face. "I was like, 'Wow! How did he do that?'" Some of Dylan's lyrics, too, he says, invite the same response. "Yes, I'm a huge admirer." He pauses. "Well, with qualifications. I believe I'm notorious for saying that there is no stanza in a Dylan song that is all as good as its best line, and that there's no song that's all as good as its best stanza. And I think that's largely true."

In the "Haringey Independent", James wonders: "I sometimes look at my row of books and TV programmes and think, 'How did I manage to fit that all in?'"


Video
Clive James and Robert Hughes discuss Jack Kerouac, in 1959 (!).

Other
James recently delivered the give the first Lord Forte Memorial Lecture, under the heading "Writers on Cities". The author took Florence as his subject and Sarah Sands of "The Financial Times" was there to listen.

James will be appearing at the Cheltenham Town Hall in Gloucestershire later this year.

On February 1st, the South Bank Show was broadcast on ITV1 in the UK. It carried the following description: "Beyond the Footlights. The arts show returns with a look through the register of those students of the comedic arts who learnt their trade among the Footlights at Cambridge University. Stephen Fry, Griff Rhys Jones, John Fortune, Clive James and David Mitchell top the bill as pontificators on the influence of the Footlights on mainstream and alternative comedy. Plus a plethora of comic clips featuring alumni of this ultimate school of comedy. Presented by Melvyn Bragg."

Kate Grenville Watch #5

Reviews of The Lieutenant

Jay Parini in "The Guardian": "Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness. The focus of The Secret River was the highly circumscribed mind of Thornhill. In The Lieutenant, Rooke's thoughts and perceptions take centre stage; the whole world unfurls from his viewpoint, and little escapes his capacious intellect. He revels in everything from mathematical problems to Latin declensions...Grenville explores the natural rifts that arise between settlers and native people with a deep understanding of the ambiguities inherent in such conflicts."
Melissa McClements in "The Financial Times": "Sydney-born author Kate Grenville tackled the evils of colonialism in her previous novel, The Secret River, about a London thief who is deported to Australia. His desire for private land leads to violent clashes with the Aborigines, who are bewildered by the very concept of possession. In Grenville's latest book, she again examines the colliding worlds of the Georgians and the Aborigines, at a time when Australia was a dumping ground for Britain's overcrowded penal system. The Lieutenant, however, is a story of burgeoning comprehension, rather than mutual miscomprehension...In less capable hands, this could make The Lieutenant either mawkishly sentimental or rigidly polemical, but Grenville manages to avoid both. Genuinely affecting, her new novel is another capable tranche of character-based, historical fiction and a worthy foil to its predecessor."
Lucy Atkins in "The Times": "Initially, the novel is hard-going. There is plenty of information about Rooke -- his interest in mathematical constructs or rocks or the mechanism of a rifle, his mum's oatmeal, his little sister. But he seems documented rather than felt, perpetually once removed. This may be a deliberate strategy, but it makes the early part of the book feel distinctly flat. Then, about halfway through, Rooke's emotional journey really kicks in...Inevitably, 200-odd years of retrospective guilt hang over this book. But Grenville's touch is light here, too. There are occasional nods to history (Tagaran's language, observes Rooke, has 'the very cadence of forgiveness') but no self-indulgence."
Marg on the "Reading Adventures" weblog: "Not long before I started blogging back in 2005, I read The Secret River by Kate Grenville. Set at the time of the First Fleet it looked at the relationship between white settlers and the native Australian Aborigines who were already here. Grenville returns to this same setting in The Lieutenant...Whilst the setting is similar, there are significant differences between the two stories. In this novel, Grenville has pared the narrative right back to the basics of the story. We are very much focussed on Rooke's life, and his interactions. For me, this made The Lieutenant a much stronger, more interesting book."

Review of The Secret River

Wendy on "The List - Books for the Obsessive Reader" weblog: "Grenville shows the wide gap between English and Aboriginal cultures...and the tremendous misunderstanding fueled by an inability to adequately communicate. Her prose is magnificent as she describes the land of Australia and gradually builds the tension between the characters, before bringing the novel to its inevitable and devastating conclusion. I was completely absorbed by this historical piece of work which is evocative, poetic and pulsing with the life of a time far in the past."

Essays by the Author

Grenville discusses the origins of The Secret River for "The Guardian" Book Club. You can also read John Mullan's piece about the same book for the same Book Club.

Author appearances

The author will be appearing at the Perth Writers' Festival at the end of February
2009.

Interview with Katherine Scholes

Tasmanian author Kathreine Scholes has a new novel out, The Hunter's Wife. As it is released she is interviewed by Christopher Bantick for "The Courier-Mail".

Scholes had finished the manuscript for The Hunter's Wife before she returned to Tanzania last year. What readers will find is a novel written by someone who knows the country intimately. She says that even after more than three decades, there was a profound sense of belonging.

"I really felt incredibly strongly connected to the landscape," she says. "This was interesting as we landed in Zanzibar on the coast which is tropical and nothing like where we grew up. Just as Tasmania has become such a part of me, I was often puzzled how this far inland area of East Africa on a flat dusty plain, how that could feel like home to me. It did; right down to the smell of the dust."

So notwithstanding her evocative return to the land of her childhood, does Scholes feel more African than anything else?

"I do," she says without hesitation. "I actually came home to Tasmania feeling I was a born-again Tanzanian. When I went back, I was welcomed as a Tanzanian. I was referred to as a child of the land. It felt very special."

Interview with Kate Morton

Kate Morton is the author of two novels, The Shifting Fog and The Forgotten Garden. The second of these has been selected for Queensland's Big Book Club, and, as Morton gets ready the tour the state for the Club, she is interviewed for "The Courier-Mail" by Madeline Healy about her upcoming novel.

Set in 1940s England in the Kentish countryside, The Distant Hours looks at a time in World War II when the English were convinced a German invasion was not far off.

"And of course there's a bit of the future in there as well," Morton says.

She likes to mix up the past and present, taking readers on a journey back into the last century where secrets are uncovered and questions answered.

"But I wouldn't call myself a historical novelist," Morton says.

"I pick periods I'm interested in but wouldn't say I write historical fiction. I don't think that way because my interest in the past is always in relation to the future.

"The 20th century is a gift for me as a novelist."

J.M. Coetzee Watch #13

Reviews of Disgrace

Sowmya on the "Shallow Thoughts to profound Insights" weblog: "The entire book is from the protagonists perspective. Only his thoughts, view points and philosophy is projected. As one reads the book, one understands the other characters only from the conversation that the protagonist has with them. Nothing is explained. One also feels the frustrations the protagonist feels because he cannot understand the people around him. The reader cannot too. In course of reading the book, the reader experiences only the protagonists world because that is the only 'truth' that is projected. It is like living life without feedback. Uni-dimensional."

Spudz on the "Eclectic Indulgence" weblog: "I found myself lacking any interest in the characters, and the African landscape was not shown as beautiful or hideous... it was simply not shown. If I wasn't continually reminded the story took place in Africa, I wouldn't have noticed a difference. The prose was poor and the plot simply had trouble developing."

Reviews of Waiting for the Barbarians

"Book Club Classics" weblog: "Coetzee does create a 3-dimensional character in the narrator and his journey from a position of power to imprisonment to humility was reluctantly engaging. I also enjoyed contemplating what 'freedom' means when one is imprisioned -- freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of belief."

Other

The Harvard Crimson magazine names Coetzee as one of its "Five Melancholy Elderly Literary Men": "On this list, J. M. Coetzee is the youngest -- and the most melancholy. In his famous 1999 novel Disgrace, he showed the late-life education of a literature professor forced, in a post-literate age, to teach 'Communications'. He returned to the
theme in his more recent novel -- it was released on Dec. 27, 2007, to avoid end-of-the-year-list mania on the blogs -- Diary of a Bad Year. More humane and generous than Disgrace, less tightly controlled, the book nonetheless argues that no one reads books anymore." The others on the list are John Updike, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

"The Existence Machine" weblog posts a quote from Youth.

"The Visual Wikipedia" has produced a kind of mind map based on Coetzee which allows you to navigate his career and works using visual cues. It looks like the text is taken from the standard Wikpedia entry on the author.

Upcoming

A new book, Summertime, is due out in the UK in early September. Can't find any mention of it on the Text Publishing website, the author's most recent Australian publisher.

Sonya Hartnett Watch #1

Reviews of Butterfly

Sophie Masson in "The Australian":

The first novel of Sonya Hartnett's that I read was the haunting Wilful Blue (1994). Hartnett's lush yet fresh prose, spiced with gothic, her novel's combination of intense observation, sensual detail, pervasive melancholy, sensational events and characters with unusual, fin-de-race names, had for me more the feel of, say, American southern literature, or the work of writers such as Wilkie Collins, than what we were accustomed to in Australian literature... ...Hartnett's interest is in the way families work -- especially unhappy ones, of course, following Tolstoy's dictum -- and most especially in sibling relationships, whether it's the twisted sibling relations of Sleeping Dogs or Princes, or the more positive ones of Butterfly. The way in which family relations, especially between siblings, can alleviate or worsen the loneliness of the individual is important in most of her books, but especially so in this one.
Owen Richardson in "The Age": "When Sonya Hartnett published Landscape with Animals under a pseudonym, it was for fear this novel might end up falling into the hands of her younger audience: it was definitely not a book for kids. This one isn't either but it's not R-rated, though illicit love is here, and teenage dread and cruelty, and the kinds of ghosts haunting the suburbs that perhaps can only be seen by adolescents, just as dogs can pick vampires...While Hartnett doesn't overcook the ordinary miseries of childhood, nor does she lacquer them and protect us with nostalgic humour, and even if you had nicer friends when you were 13, you'll squirm in recognition."

Kristy on the "Books in Print" weblog: "Sonya Hartnett's novels are read by adults and young adults alike, and her first novel since being awarded the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (March 2008) will no doubt appeal to an audience well beyond the age of the protagonist...Butterfly is beautifully written and cleverly expresses the trials of early adolescence..".

Bookman Beattie on "Beattie's Book Blog": "Hartnett is a demanding author, she leaves much to the reader's interpretation; that is one of her hallmarks. So another impressive work of literary fiction from her but not one that worked for me."

Reviews of The Ghost's Child

Linda Newberry in "The Guardian": "It's a story that seems bigger than its generously spaced 192 pages, and the stylised illustrations by Jon McNaught -- waders silhouetted on a shore, dolphins thronging in a yacht's wake, a cloud of butterflies -- add to the sense of travelling through a world both familiar and strange."
Celia Keenan in the Irish "Independent": the book "is a poetic and beautifully written story in which an old woman is visited by a ghost child on the opening pages. Love and loss are both sensitively evoked against the backdrop of inevitable death."
Mrs. D. on the "Daniel Boone Regional Libray" weblog: "Such a lovely little book! Mrs. D. is so grateful that every once in awhile a fine writer will attempt to make us think about important things and give us a chance to learn some wisdom rather than merely entertaining us!"
Allison on the "Thumbs Up" weblog: "In the end I don't think this is thumbs up material. For such a short book it is still slow and I don't see it as having wide teen appeal."

Reviews of The Silver Donkey

Angela Youngman on the "Monsters and Critics" website: "Beautifully written with simple shadowy illustrations; this is a book to treasure. It is imaginative, and thoughtful. War is not shown as glorious -- it is shown as sad and useless. You can really feel the tension, the way in which the children strive to understand and help."

Reviews of Surrender

Lisa May on the "Look at that Book" weblog: "Hands down, Surrender is a fantastic book...I wouldn't recommend it for younger readers, though.. the story is bleak and heartbreaking."
quippe on "LiveJournal": "Despite some well executed tense moments, this book is overwritten in a prose that's sometimes a rich shade of indigo. Lacking the action and pace to be the thriller that it advertises itself as, the twist ending so cliche that I almost threw the book at the wall on reading it."

Interviews

Jo Case on "Readings.com".
Christopher Bantick in "The Courier Mail".
Margaret Throsby on "Life is Beautiful", ABC Classic FM.

Other
Hartnett will be appearing at the 2009 Perth Writers' Festival.

Peter Porter Interview

An interview I missed when I was interstate over the Australia Day long weekend is Darleen Bungey's with poet Peter Porter published in "The Australian" newspaper.

Porter's dreams, he let slip in an earlier conversation, are still apocalyptic and continue every night. By day, he hunts them back down and fashions them into intricate works. "Poetry has to be made, it doesn't lie around waiting for you to pick it up; words are its material," he says. Porter doesn't use these images from what he calls "the alternative world" directly, but tries to capture their strange atmosphere. "The waking life is constantly under control but produces all the material the sleeping life uses," he says. "Things that are only reportage in life come alive in the experience of the dream world. A poet has to have invention, like a novelist, you don't just sit there and pour a bucket of blood over the page."


Porter's invention is broad. He employs all manner of rhyme, meter and form, with a rich variety of stage and cast, from the interior of a quiet English church to a war-waging Greek god; from felines to contemporary fat cats; from a Renaissance painter to a serial killer; from the shores of the Shoalhaven River on the NSW south coast to the mouth of the Deben Estuary in Suffolk, England.

While he often uses colloquialisms, he freely quotes German and Latin and some of the most obscure words in the English language. "Poetry," he says, "is language at its most concentrated form."

Sonya Hartnett Interview

A new Sonya Hartnett novel is always a treat in our house, as it is one of the few novels that my wife, my teenage daughter and I will all be guaranteed to read. Her latest, Butterfly, is out and about in the bookshops and she is interviewed by Christopher Bantick in "The Courier Mail".

Hartnett makes tea and with Shiloh at her feet reflects on her own teenage years.

"I can't remember particularly having an extremely difficult teenage-hood," she says. "I had an older sister who did the extreme things on behalf of all of us. I used to watch her and her behaviour and say that it was really stupid and embarrassing. I wanted to keep a lid on it as a teenager.

"I certainly had my moments. I had feelings of such frustration and rage and self-hatred; all the kinds of things that you go through. I was not a wild kind of kid. If anything, I just became more withdrawn and sullen. I guess I came through my teenage years relatively unscathed."

Even with Hartnett as an emerging writer as a teenager, it comes as a surprise when she says being an author was not an aim.

"I never knew when I was an adolescent that I was going to be a writer, I still don't. Adolescence was when I started to write. Back then was when I was really absolutely in love with doing it.

"It was a feeling that was to last until I got to my early 30s. That sustained me for a long time. But back in those days, this was the time when I really used to fall in love with my characters. That's long in the past."

Sonia Orchard Interview

Jacinta Halloran, of Readings bookshop, interviews Sonia Orchard, whose new novel The Virtuoso has just been released. The novel draws on the life of Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood, who committed suicide in London, in 1953, at the age of 31.

When writing fiction about a real person, the border between fact and fantasy can sometimes become problematic for the novelist. The creation of a fictional narrator relieved Orchard of some of her concerns in this regard. "I initially struggled with the notion of how much I should stick to the facts [of Mewton-Wood's life] but, once I had decided to write from the point of view of a fictional and very unreliable narrator, I felt the problem was solved. I also follow the postmodern idea that there is no one absolute truth and that every viewpoint has its own agenda." However, she coloured The Virtuoso with anecdotes from Mewton-Wood's friends, and stayed true to factual details concerning his concert dates and programming details. "These things gave me something to work with."

The narrator of The Virtuoso is a remarkable creation. Through him, the intriguing life of Mewton-Wood is chronicled with meticulous detail, and yet there is much about Mewton-Wood -- his deeper thoughts and feelings about his art and his talent -- that the narrator does not know or understand. By creating this obsessed and somewhat deluded narrator, Orchard has intentionally left us with a sense of mystery surrounding Mewton-Wood's true self. "I fell in love with Mewton-Wood during my researching of his life, so I wanted to write about him from the perspective of an obsessed fan or lover. There remains something elusive about him. People I interviewed had contradictory ideas about his personality and no-one really understood why he committed suicide."

Christos Tsiolkas Interview

In addition to the "Combined Reviews" post, of a few weeks back, regarding The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, we can now add Angela Meyer, of the "LiteraryMinded" weblog interviewing the author.

One of the main themes through the book, to me, seems to be the notion that we live now, in Australia, in an age of new conservatism and over-the-top political correctness. Is this something you wanted readers to think about?

At one point while working on the second draft of the novel I was tempted to put a prologue and an epilogue, the prologue being just before the "Tampa" election and the epilogue being just after Rudd wins the most recent election. I'm glad I didn't do that as it is obvious that readers can do that work for themselves and that it might have been misread as an end-of-an-era critique which is not how I imagine the world and communities the characters in The Slap live in. It is too simplistic and facile to place all that is unsettling or ugly or uncomfortable in contemporary Australia on John Howard's shoulders and not to see the continuity in politics and practices between Keating, Howard and Rudd, for example. It seemed to me that a significant change occurred in Australian society over the last twenty years that has seen a withering away of traditional notions of Australian class and of a supposed ethos of egalitarianism. That was a very conscious decision to set the novel in the backyards and bars and coffee shops of a new middle-class which does not necessarily look or sound anything like the middle-class that usually inhabits the pages of Australian fiction or is on our cinema and television screens. This is a middle-class as much wog as it is anglo, a middle-class that emerges as much from the working class as it does from the world of universities and the eastern suburbs. This shift in the cultural landscape of urban Australia is about money, the global economic boom of the nineties and early twenty-first century, and because it is about capital and status the values embodied in this shift are conservative and materialistic. In a strange way the book may turn out to be an end-of-an-era work not because of the electoral shift from Liberal to Labor but because of the consequences of the contemporary economic crisis.

And that statement makes it even more imperative that I pick up a copy and read it.

Shaun Tan Watch #1

Note: this will probably be a long one. I'm way behind on checking out Shaun Tan's links.

Reviews of The Arrival

David Mathews on the "express buzz" website: "Straddling the divide between children's picture book and adult graphic novel to splendid effect, The Arrival, by Australian illustrator Shaun Tan, is one of those rare beasts: a wholly graphic fiction that dispenses with the use of words entirely. Rare, because it is so remarkably difficult -- when attempting to tell an engaging and comprehensible story solely in pictures -- to avoid a descent into monotonous exposition."
Douglas on the "Hell in a Kiss" weblog: "The photorealistic drawing precision of the known, devoid of any identification, is in constant interaction with the imaginative plane of the new and the strange. They playfully mix into landscapes of the mind where history and the future blend effortlessly and everyday objects are enveloped with the magical aura of an archetype nostalgia and an imprecise shape of things to come. If nevertheless, this is a measure of the things to come from Shaun Tan, then we are in for some pleasant surprises in the future."
The "From Word to Word" weblog: "I was at the library with my two sons, and I happened to see Shaun Tan's The Arrival out on a table as I was following my youngest on his energetically random path. I read as I followed, and I was soon utterly immersed in the story, in its blending of the fantastic and the familiar, in its almost tactile sense of intimacy."

Reviews of Tales from Outer Suburbia

"Publisher's Weekly" gave it a starred review (it's a fair way down the page): "The term 'suburbia' may conjure visions of vast and generic sameness, but in his hypnotic collection of 15 short stories and meditations, Tan does for the sprawling landscape what he did for the metropolis in The Arrival...Ideas and imagery both beautiful and disturbing will linger."
Neel Mukherjee in "Time" magazine: "Deploying pen and ink, pencil, woodcuts, crayons and oils, the drawings in the book are exalting, filling you with joy and revelation. But crucially, Tan can also write: his stories effortlessly rearrange the pattern of reality in prose that is evocative and supple."
Barbara Taylor in "The London Free Press": "Tales From Outer Suburbia demands an alert reader accepting of a fresh approach to life and literature. Within, you'll discover 15 wonderfully wacky, yet poignant stories in 96 unusually illustrated pages. The artwork is a feast for your eyes ranging from watercolours to hand-written notes to the table of contents neatly recorded on separate postage stamps. I resisted the temptation to first thumb through the colourful pages, and was later rewarded by many an abrupt, surprise ending."
Letha Colleen on the "...pursuit of happiness" weblog: "It's a collection of short stories that introduces off kilter characters and elements into neighborhoods and towns that otherwise might be perceived of as mundane. As each story is different so too are the illustration styles."
Amanda Growe and John Lucas on the "straight.com" website from Vancouver: "Tales From Outer Suburbia is more than a kids' book but not quite a graphic novel. If this latest work from Shaun Tan -- the acclaimed Australian author and illustrator behind The Arrival and The Red Tree -- is hard to categorize, that's only fitting, since the book is filled with stories that aren't quite stories. Rather, they're descriptions of the weird denizens and absurd happenings of a seemingly mundane anyplace called Outer Suburbia, where things tend to turn up in unexpected places."
JK on the "The Keepin' It Real Book Club" weblog: "Tales from Outer Suburbia is a collection of stories that whimsically tap into the imaginative potential of suburbia - often considered a sort of sterile, mass-produced cultural wasteland (a judgment not far from the truth, says this former suburbanite). Yet tales from outer suburbia challenges this stereotype, transforming suburbia into a portal to another fantastical world (literally in one story, in which a family discovers they have a secret inner courtyard in their home). Suburbia is no longer drab and dull, but rather a
departure point for any number of possible adventures."

Excerpts

"New York Magazine" has published a seven-page excerpt from Tales from Outer Suburbia.

Adaptations

A theatrical adaptation of The Arrival by Kate Parker and Julie Nolan will play at the upcoming Auckland Festival, 5-22 March 2009.
Tan is working on an animated version of his book The Lost Thing, scheduled for release in late 2009, according to Tor.com. The webpage also includes a link to a 5 minute documentary on the adaptation.

Interviews/Videos

The "inframe.tv" website films Australian artist and writer Shaun Tan introducing and discussing his work.
Lia Graigner on the "Walrus Magazine" blog.
Bernie Goedhart in "The Montreal Gazette".
Irene Gallo on "Tor.com".
Michael Shirrefs on "The Book Show", ABC Radio National.

Other

Tan has supplied the interior illustrations for Kelly Link's new short-story collection Pretty Monsters. You can get more information about that here.
There's an illustration from The Red Tree here.
And lastly, don't forget that Shaun Tan will be a Guest of Honour at Aussiecon 4, the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention being held in Melbourne in September 2010.

Tim Winton Watch #8

Reviews of Breath

Bradley Winterton in the "Tapei Times": "Winton is clearly pushing the boundaries of the dangerous sports genre to include, despite the everywhere laconic style, some questioning thoughts. His conclusions are usually ambivalent, and indeed ambiguity characterizes his attitudes in other spheres as well...So -- pro or anti surfing in possibly lethal situations? Pro or anti teenage drug use? Pro or anti the outer reaches of sexual experimentation? Winton offers a sphinx-like stare, and his final position on all these issues remains a fascinating, but to the last undivulged, secret."
Tom Sutcliffe, in an article about surprises in the world of the arts in 2008, is amazed that the Winton's book didn't make the Booker long list.
According to Nielsen BookScan, Breath sold 126,000 copies in Australia in 2008.

Short Notices

"Meeting in the aisle" weblog: "I am the first to admit I am not a member of the Tim Winton Fan Club, though I do read his stuff and even like it when I do and seem to tear through them with alarming speed for someone who tries desperately to make books last longer. The four hours it took me to make it from cover to cover for this book is a case in point - I still had 7 HOURS on a bus to go -- and would have loved to have taken longer. I think I read Winton's books so quickly because I am one, in a sense." I'm not sure how that works.
"Words and Flavours weblog: "Can breathing be more than a requirement for life and become an addiction? In Breath, Tim Winton plays on our attachment to that fundamental action to explore his characters' addictions to the extreme and the dangerous."
The novel made "Seth's Notable List" for 2008: "The more time that goes by since my reading this book -- back in July-- the more I realize that it's really staying with me."

Review of The Turning

The "into the quiet" weblog: "The Turning is a mind-blowing read. Truly. It's actually a collection of short stories, but it transcends this form and slowly and strikingly becomes a novel. As soon as I finished it I wanted to read it again."

Review of An Open Swimmer

"Tall in the land of stories" weblog: "Winton's style is sparse, and his prose stripped, pared, bordering on brutal. Language and words serve inadequately his task of bringing to paper the feelings and emotions of people, the sweeping grandeur and irresistible, immutable forces of nature. The land he lives in, the world his characters inhabit, is ancient, an overpoweringly forceful existence that pre-dates man. Perhaps, in a primordial land, about an ancient earth, one can only speak in stunted words, half-sentences, broken thoughts. Perhaps, with those long-buried memories of humans at the mercy of the elements, the half-remembered/half-forgotten terrors of existence haunting like the distant sounds of the sea, one can only write like Tim Winton. His humour is sardonic, and often oblique. In his world, in our world, emotions are simple."

Review of Dirt Music

"Flourless chocolate cake" weblog: "Unlike Cloud Street, which is difficult to engage in initially, Dirt Music is easy to immerse yourself into immediately...Personally I am not a great fan of metaphorical writing and tend to prefer a rollicking read. Winton provides both in this novel. While the plot was thin in some spots, this did not take away any of the suspense and I found that I did not want to put it down."

Film Adaptation of Dirt Music

The current rumour is that Russell Crowe will replace Heath Ledger in the cast. The Internet Movie DataBase still has Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz signed up.
The director, Phillip Noyce, has told "The Australian" newspaper that production won't start until at least 2010. Something to do with a certain Baz Luhrmann film hogging all the Outback air it seems.

Alexandra Adornetto Interview

As the third book in her Strangest Adventures series, Von Gobstopper's Arcade, is about to be published Alexandra Adornetto is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Amanda Horswill. (You may recall that Adornetto received a two-book contract from HarperCollins a few years back when she was only 13.)

"Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it but I loved it. Then I went on to write poems and short stories. On holidays I would just write about anything and describe it - like a tree if that was all I could find.

"I never thought about writing a novel until I was 13 and that happened by chance. I was on school holidays and I was bored and I thought I just wanted to do something to occupy myself, instead of asking 'What can I do mum, entertain me'.

"I started and it really just took over, and I realised, 'Wow, this is an amazing experience'. I loved doing it."

Peter Carey Watch #10

Review of True History of the Kelly Gang

Lubna Ahmed on the "Wooden Trunk" weblog: "Contrary to the title, the story is a work of fiction on Ned Kelly's life and his rise (or is it fall?) to becoming an outlaw. Told in first person by the leader of the Kelly Gang, the story starts with his childhood and family history and moves on to his later years. The book is divided in 13 sections, called parcels, each with a small summary of its contents, giving it a very authentic air. So much so that I had to keep reading the actual version of the incidents and remind myself that it is fiction, not biography that I am reading."

Review of My Life as a Fake

"Mindful Pleasures" weblog: "Carey's My Life As A Fake is surprisingly good, considering the lukewarm-at-best reviews it received upon publication. It's a very enjoyable, original, quite clever literary novel--perhaps too clever for its own good, since it apparently flew over the heads of most reviewers. They failed to appreciate Carey's deliberate, often subtle, sometimes intertextual, provocations of disbelief, his many signals that the text we're reading is, like all the other narratives and texts it contains, a 'fake,' a fiction the validity of which must be questioned and the motives of its teller examined. It's a delicious book, delightful, maybe the most purely enjoyable thing Carey has yet written."

Other

In a review of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Prof Mike compares the book to Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang: "Perhaps most striking is McCarthy's use of nineteenth century vernacular. In this sense it is slightly redolent of Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang (or should it be the other way round?)."
Winnipeg's "Uptown Magazine" gets a bit over-stretched in attempting a linking phrase: "And speaking of Nobel Prize winners, Peter Carey never disappoints. Latest proof: His Illegal Self (Random House Canada), a novel concerning a maternal love story between the child of domestic terrorists and an unwilling nursemaid."
Well before he left Bacchus Marsh to become the writer that he is today, Peter Carey was mentioned in "The Adventure of Black Peter", a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle: "In this memorable year '95, a curious and incongruous succession of cases had engaged his attention, ranging from his famous investigation of the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca--an inquiry which was carried out by him at the express desire of His Holiness the Pope--down to his arrest of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East End of London. Close on the heels of these two famous cases came the tragedy of Woodman's Lee, and the very obscure circumstances which surrounded the death of Captain Peter Carey. No record of the doings of Mr. Sherlock Holmes would be complete which did not include some account of this very unusual affair."
Peter Carey will be appearing at the New York State Writers Institute on April 7th.
Scotland's national opera company will be performing a number of new operas this year, one of which will be titled "Happy Story" written by David Fennessy and Nicholas Bone, and based on a short story by Peter Carey.
The Australian National Portrait Gallery has made available Peter Carey in Kelly Country (2000) by Bruce Armstrong.

Helen Garner Watch #7

Reviews of The Spare Room

"Publisher's Weekly": "Garner (Monkey Grip) employs her signature realism in this stunted novel about the infuriating and eye-opening experience of caring for a terminally ill loved one."
Madeleine Keane, who is literary editor of "The Sunday Independent" chose the book as one of her books of the year: "The Spare Room by Helen Garner (Cangonate) was an exquisitely-crafted novel which dealt with death -- and the indignities and injustices of cancer -- delicately and unflinchingly with humour and humanity. An overlooked gem."
Natasha on "The Book Crowd" weblog: "I read this book in one night, do I need to say anymore?...I loved this book, the emotions and frustrations seemed quite real, it was a brilliant read that opened my mind to new ways of thinking, living, feeling and understanding."
Harriet Klausner on the "Genre Go Round" weblog: "Although Helen's eternal squabbling and lecturing become irritating as she either needs to support her friend's dying wishes, which centers on miracle treatments that probably will fail or toss her out, readers will relish this poignant character study as the reactions to how to behave when pending death seems shortly."
Keri on the "bloody_keri" weblog: "This is a beautiful, haunting novel that feels like a rare jewel in that way some books do. It's too brief, and that's the first compliment I give it, a rare one given the simple yet devastating subject matter: a woman caring for a friend who is dying in the last stages of cancer. Not something I would normally want to dig into for too long and generally, the more abbreviated the better. Death is easy; the process of dying is one of those unspeakable things; the enormous white elephant in the room. Many writers have touched it, some with more success than others, but I don't think any book I've read on the subject captures the jarring mix of comedy, love and grief this one does."
Simon Savidge on the "Savidge Reads" weblog: "Well to say that I agree with all the praise from the other book bloggers have been giving this would be an understatement, in fact to say that I was blown away by it would be a complete understatement. Like many others I don't know how this didn't get onto the Man Booker long or short list." Simon also prints both the UK hardback and paperback covers for this book. The hardback is a realistic interpretation of the Text Publishing cover but the paperback has taken a different tack, one that I think is rather boring. As Simon asks, "why have they given it a new cover that simply doesn't make sense for a spare room and I can't see a single man reading on the tube etc."

Review of The Children's Bach

"The Resident Judge of Port Phillip": "I think that brevity is an intrinsic feature of this book. Like a small Bach piece, it is short and self contained, simple and yet complex. It takes a slice of life in 1980s Melbourne, and in this regard, Garner's keen observations almost provide an ethnographic (and now historical!) artefact...This is not the stuff of crashing drama: it's lived-in life, with fallible and flawed human people, mess, and making do."

Review of The Feel of Steel

Anne-Marie on the "Archives Tragic" weblog: "Helen Garner's essay collection The Feel of Steel has been republished by Picador this year and it brings forth again her lovely piece 'Woman in a green mantle'. Garner's work holds appeal for archives tragics in something like the way that Janet Malcolm's does. Wide and acute observation is bound to bring out, somewhere along the line, insights about the records and record-creation parts of our lives."

Interviews

Video of the author being interviewed by Richard Fidler, on "The Conversation Hour", ABC Radio, dated 8 December 2008.

Other

Suse recounts an anecdote from a friend about the origins of a character's name in Monkey Grip.

Clive James Watch #11

Reviews of Opal Sunset: Selected Poems, 1958-2008

Benjamin Lytal in "The LA Times": "Opal Sunset contains poems of compact grace and steady, modest emotion. James' lines, anchored by memorable phrases and obviously the production of a serious verbal talent, more than fulfill James' meager definition of poetry, that it be sayable."

Articles by James

What we need is thinking action heroes, but less swearing.
Under the title "Terror Chic", James looks at a film adaptation of the events surrounding the Baader Meinhof terrorists in Germany in the mid-late 70s. Trouble is, he hasn't seen the film. This is never a good idea. He also criticises Spielberg's film Schindler's List as it "left some of us wondering just how useful a contribution it was, to make a movie about how some of the Jews had survived, when the real story was about all the Jews who hadn't": thereby criticising a film for what it isn't, rather than commenting on what it is. Two major critical faults in the one essay, which is a bit disappointing. I'm afraid there might be more, but I had to stop there.
In "World famous. Within our borders" James concludes that there "is no Australian national identity crisis and never has been."
And, in an essay that I can relate to, he ponders "The brilliance of creative chaos". Though, in my case, it's not too brilliant and not very creative. I just make do with the chaos.

Poetry by James

"The Guardian" published the author's poem "Under the Jacarandas".
And "The New Yorker" has made "Signing Ceremony" available.

Other

James picks his best books of the year for the "Times Literary Supplement".
"The New York Times" chose Opal Sunset as one of its best books of the year for 2008.
The blogger on the "Nigel Beale Nota Bene Books" weblog, posts six fun things about Clive James.
Lastly, be aware that Revolt of the Pendulum, the next instalment in James's multi-volume autobiography, will be out in July 2009.

Katherine Johnson Interview

Katherine Johnson's first novel, Pescador's Wake, has just been published by HarperCollins. It concerns Patagonian toothfish and a real-life chase of an illegal fishing boat in the treacherous high seas near Antarctica. The author is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Fiona Purdun.

"The conditions are so extreme, with the storms and icebergs, the Southern Ocean is one of the most dangerous spots in the world," she says.

"It's like another world down there and people are risking their lives for the sake of fishing. I was wondering what personal dramas prompted them and this played on my mind.

"What motivates Australians to go to such lengths to protect the seas and be prepared to take on such danger? What's it like to be on board one of these boats, what's it like to be back on shore.

"It's such a dangerous way of making a living especially when many people on these illegal vessels are poorly paid."

Johnson looked over an apprehended fishing boat,Taruman, which was docked at Hobart as part of her research. She also interviewed long-time fisherman Martin Exel because even though it is a fictional story she "felt an obligation to make sure it was credible and accurate with what it's like to fish on the Southern Ocean".

Eddie Campbell Interview

Comics writer and artist Eddie Campbell, who now lives in Australia, is interviewed by Tom Spurgeon on "The Comics Reporter" website.

TOM SPURGEON: I don't think it fully registered with me before, but you have a massive collection of your autobiographical work coming out in 2009. I always thought that this was a natural for a book at some point and I look forward to it with a not insignificant smile on my face. Is there a reason this seemed attractive to you right now?
EDDIE CAMPBELL: The evolution of our medium has made this the right time. If you think back, at first we'd publish serial comics because that was what the economics permitted (all those "mini" and "maxi" series). Then we would gather the material into a book. The medium developed to the stage where a publisher could pay an author an advance to take himself away and make the whole book before showing any of it. We now find ourselves at an even more advanced stage, where several of a veteran author's books are gathered into a huge compendium. Thus Will Eisner's Life in Pictures, which collected his various books that had an autobiographical element, Gaiman's Absolute Sandman, Gilbert Hernandez' Palomar, etc.
Campbell is probably best known as the artist on the graphic novel From Hell, which was written by Alan Moore.

Tom Keneally Watch #7

Reviews of Searching for Schindler

Dwight Garner in "The New York Times": "The book was published as fiction, Mr. Keneally writes, because: 'I felt that in Schindler I had written as a novelist, with a novelist's narrative pace and graphicness, though not in the sense of a fictionalizer. If three or four people told me that Schindler had more or less said certain things, I certainly put them in quotation marks, but otherwise the manuscript was largely innocent of dialogue.' He adds: 'For both commercial reasons and reasons of passion, I didn't want this book stuck in that section against the back wall of most American bookstores labeled JUDAICA.'"
Laura L. Hutchison in "The Free-Lance Star" considers the book "one to put on your 'list'".
"Lighthouse Patriot Journal": "you enjoyed the original story, you will also enjoy this follow up. Stephen Spielberg stated that he would have added film time if Keneally had written this book before the film was created."

Interview

Nicholas Wroe in "The Guardian".

Keneally has written about relations between Aboriginal and white settlers in Australia as well as European dealings with white Australia. He has produced novels and non-fiction books about the American civil war and the Irish diaspora. He has written about the fight for independence in Eritrea and repeatedly circled the events and implications of the second world war.

It is a fascination he traces back to childhood. "The town where I grew up had two Aboriginal settlements. Questions of the balance between races and, when two races don't get on particularly well, how they behave towards each other were everywhere. This was wartime, and the notion that Catholics couldn't be trusted if it came to the crunch, because they would side with the Pope not the Queen, was very strong. It is essentially the same rhetoric that is currently used against Muslims, and even at the time that fascinated me as much as it scared and affronted me. This stuff has always been my bag. It's what I'm interested in."

Other

The DVDTimes website from the UK provides a review of The Devil's Playground, a film by Fred Schepisi that featured Keneally in an acting role.
The same website reviews the film adaptation of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.
The National Library of Australia has recently acquired an extensive selection of Tom Keneally's papers.

Richard Flanagan Watch #2

Reviews of Wanting

"Publisher's Weekly": "The interlaced stories focus on conquering the yearning that exists both in the Aboriginals and the noble English gentlemen, and though Flanagan has a tendency to hammer home his ideas, his prose is strong and precise, and the depiction of desire's effects is sublime."
[Note: the novel won't be released in the USA until May.]
Magdalena Ball on The Compulsive Reader website: "One of the key objections I had to Richard Flanagan's last novel, The Unknown Terrorist was that it put the ideology first: making a political point at the expense of the characters and the plot. This isn't at all the case in Wanting. Indeed, in Wanting, as in Gould's Book of Fish, the whole notion of historical fact becomes subservient to the greater truth -- that of human nature -- the most fundamental of emotional responses and how they underpin the making of history. Wanting is a novel that traces the trajectory of desire...Like good poetry, the novel is full of correspondences, connections, and vivid imagery."
Sandra Hogan on the "M/C Reviews" website: "Wanting is a sad, vivid book in which Flanagan expresses his very strong feelings about the painfulness and uncertainty of life through powerful, compact prose. This artfully constructed novel, with its variety of astonishing characters and stories, is introduced deftly in short, contrasting chapters, bringing the reader back in small climaxes to the central theme of conflict between reason and wanting. A good deal of craft has gone into this book with its clear, spare writing style and --ironically, given the theme -- deep, but controlled emotions."

Other mentions of the novel

ABC television gardening legend Peter Cundall launched the novel in Launceston, Tasmania.

Screenplay for Australia

A lot of coverage has been given to Baz Luhrmann's new film Australia but the bulk of it has concerned itself with Nicole Kidman and her acting abilities. Rarely has there been much in the way of critical thought applied to the screenplay. In "The Australian" David Stratton states: "With considerable help from computer-generated material, Luhrmann creates a genuinely spectacular saga with this often impressive film; a cattle stampede towards a precipice and a Japanese bombing attack on Darwin are among the highlights. Still, given the status of his distinguished collaborators on the film's screenplay -- Ronald Harwood, Richard Flanagan and Stuart Beattie -- it's surprising so many cliches have found their way into the story. Given Luhrmann's fondness for old movies and popular songs, it's not surprising he manages to make frequent reference to The Wizard of Oz (which was released in 1939) and its famous song, 'Over the Rainbow', unlikely as this channelling may seem at first."

Review of The Sound of One Hand Clapping

kimbofo listed this novel as one of her favourites of 2008. She reviewed the book back in March: "The Sound of One Hand Clapping is a book about new beginnings that shatters the myth of Australia as the 'lucky country'. It does not shy away from presenting white Australians as uncouth, uncultured and racist at a period in the country's history at which immigration was running at an all-time high. For that reason alone, it is a refreshing -- and challenging -- read."

Interviews

Sally Warhaft interviews the author on Slow TV.
Ramona Koval spoke to Flanagan on "The Book Show" on ABC Radio National in November.

Kate Grenville Watch #4

Reviews of The Lieutenant

"New Zealand Listener": "Grenville's great victory in this book is to show us that language is so much more than vocabulary or even grammar and syntax -- for this unlikely pair, it was 'not just the words and not just the meaning, but the way in which two people had found common ground and begun to discover the true names of things'. In short, she concludes, you can't learn a language without entering into a relationship and, in a sense, making a map of it."
"Bookbath" weblog: "I loved this seemingly simple but powerful book -- even though this is a fictionalised account based on the life of a real person, William Dawes, I think it can still possibly inform us of some of the events and feelings of this traumatic and often violent part of this countries past -- obviously still from the perspective of a white person which needs to be taken into account in our reading of this book."

Review of The Secret River

"Book Awards Reading Challenge" weblog: "Grenville's account of the struggles between the colonists and aboriginal people was eye-opening and compelling. In a modern context, we know what happened of this struggle, but it was mesmerizing and suspenseful to see this story play out in an early 19th century setting."

Other

"The Canberra Times" sent Gia Metherell along to see Grenville discuss The Lieutenant at a literary lunch.

Tim Winton Watch #7

Reviews of Breath

"HeraldTribune": "The book's central metaphor of breathing, that most essential function for life, works its way through many aspects of the novel and the characters who people it. Although the beauty and danger of surfing stand at its center, Breath expands far beyond the sea to the base instincts and involuntary actions that keep us alive. What it means to go beyond the involuntary, to challenge one's very soul, is at the heart of the matter."
"the simplest game" weblog: "It's a great book, a beautiful book, a book to be inhaled in a single lung-bursting gulp."
1morechapter" weblog: "Ugh. I thought this was about a teen boy surfing in Australia. I wanted it to be about a teen boy surfing in Australia. And it was, for about 150 pages, then it goes off into a weird and extreme area that I will not mention here. I feel ripped off because I enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book, but then to have to be subjected to...blech." The problem with this review lies in the second sentence: don't go into a book expecting one thing and, if you don't get it, criticise the book for it. Read it for what it is, not what you wanted it to be.
Notes on the cover rather than the words.

Reviews of Cloudstreet

The BookFreaks featured the novel at a recent book group meeting.

Film adaptation of Dirt Music

Director Philip Noyce is worried that "The rise in popularity of internet blogs and gossip sites means a film's chances of success can be ruined before it is even finished.." He puts the point that every screening of a film will be reviewed by someone and that review will find its way around the world in no time. Which is true. It just points to a need to get things right before allowing any test screenings.

Theatre adaptation of Cloudstreet

A recent adaptation in Perth: "The WA Academy of Performing Arts production of the [novel]... under the direction of Kate Cherry, the newly appointed Black Swan Theatre Company artistic director, it will be the first WAAPA production of the play."

Other

Winton's short story "The Water Was Dark" has been adapted into an eight-minute short film by ScreenWest.

Interview with Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury

"Publisher's Weekly" interviews Australian author Mem Fox, and her England-based illustrator Helen Oxenbury, as the two set out on a publicity tour of the US in October.

Surely your collective fan base is wondering, What took so long? Had teaming up ever been suggested before?

MF: Needless to say, because Helen is the grande dame of picture books, Allyn had previously sent her several manuscripts by me and by other authors, but Helen turned them all down until Ten Little Fingers moved her to say yes. I think it was the simplicity of the text that she liked.
HO: I suppose living at opposite sides of the world doesn't help, as proved to be the case as I am so computer illiterate, hate the telephone and am lazy at letter writing. Allyn Johnston had sent me picture book texts by different authors for some years but nothing had taken my fancy, until that is, she sent me Ten Little Fingers.

Tom Keneally Watch #6

Reviews of Searching for Schindler

Elaine Feinstein in "The Times": "This is not a sentimental book. Keneally has to accept that Schindler came into Poland in the first place largely to make money. It was an ambition soon jeopardised by his horror at the brutality he witnessed...it is Poldek who is the star of this memoir. Ingenious and fearless, he knows exactly how to flatter men with a sense of importance, and women of all ages with their beauty."
Ed King in "The Sunday Times": "Though much here is quite familiar, this is such a fascinating story, surrounded by so many enigmas that it is well worth another visit."
Anne Applebaum on "American Enterprise Institute": "Descriptions of the process by which novelists come to create their works are invariably far less interesting than the works themselves. And that, unfortunately, also proves to be the case with Schindler's Ark, the book which became the movie, Schindler's List, and which has now inspired the memoir, Searching for Schindler. In this not entirely necessary work of non-fiction, the Australian novelist, Thomas Keneally, recounts, in breathless detail, the amazing coincidence (an encounter in a Beverly Hills leather-goods shop) which led him to the Schindler story; the travels around the world (to Israel, Poland, Germany) during which he put together the manuscript; the various legal and publishing squabbles which preceded the book's publication; and, of course, the serendipitous set of circumstances which led the director, Steven Spielberg, to make the film which made Keneally famous."
Don Oldenburg in "USA Today": "Keneally engages the reader with tales about himself as well. He writes about becoming a novelist, his creative anxieties that fueled the writing process, his experiences with publishers and the toll writing the book took on him and his family."
Claire Allfree in "Metrolife": "Oddly for such a story, this book is only intermittently fascinating: Keneally's companionable tone rambles; the history of the Polish ghettos has been told before; while too much personal detail is given at the expense of real insight into the novel's artistic and ethical challenges."
Doug Childers in inRich.com: "Searching for Schindler is a memoir with a narrow focus, and it doesn't attempt to achieve the emotional depth of Schindler's List. Instead, Keneally offers an enjoyably languid, loosely structured account of how a book -- one of Keneally's 40-some publications -- came to be written and filmed."
Michael Harris in the "Los Angeles Times": "Searching for Schindler is really two books. One is Keneally's own story, which might be subtitled 'Working-Class Boy From the Outback Makes Good'. It describes how he began his novelistic career at a time when Australians still felt culturally inferior to England and Europe. Used to keeping his expectations low, suspicious of glamour and pretense, Keneally tried not to be overwhelmed when good fortune -- the Man Booker, a big Hollywood contract, lucrative lecture tours, a chance to hobnob with Bill and Hillary Clinton at the movie's premiere -- descended on him like a ton of gold ingots...The second book, the story of Schindler's List, is a bit of a hodgepodge. Keneally explains once again the roles his various interviewees played in history, but the original novel is a much clearer reference. He relays a few movie-star anecdotes, speculates no more successfully than the rest of us on how 'High Europe' could have been capable of genocide and grumps that, despite the film's success, he remains 'fundamentally unimpressed by cinema as compared to writing.'"
Julia Pascal in "The Independent": "Keneally could have shared a disturbing voyage into the ethics of profiting from so much horror. Instead, he gives a tedious description of his journeys, banal domestic details and moments of homespun philosophy. His style is sometimes clumsy, often superficial and occasionally cliché-ridden. Keneally admits his lack of experience of the European Jewish world and of Holocaust history when he first meets Poldek. This book shows how little progress has been made. Keneally writes of the Jews as 'a race'. If he had read the Nuremberg Laws he would know that this is how Hitler saw the Jews and that such categorisation led to the Final Solution."
"The New York Times" has made the first chapter of the book available.

Review of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

"The Devil Drives" weblog: "In the novel, Jimmie Blacksmith hopes to earn respect by following the ambitions of the white man. Instead he endures repeated insults and degradations. Finally, he snaps...Where does the responsibility for these crimes lie? What is the place of Indigenous peoples in (post-)colonial societies and how should they live? These questions resonate across time, cultures, and societies. This is a great book."

Other

Keneally organised a meeting between a class of students and Steven Spielberg, the director of Schindler's List.

Dorothy Porter Notes

Newspaper and mainstream media reports regarding the death of Dorothy Porter are
starting to appear with the following of interest:
ABC Online
"The Advertiser"
"The Australian"
"The Canberra Times"
"The Herald-Sun"
Readings bookshop
"The Sydney Morning Herald"

And while these reports deal with the facts, it's the weblogs where the personal and literary interactions between the author and reader can be best understood. Here are a few - there will be others.

Tom Cho only met the poet once or twice. "Whether I met Dorothy in person or not barely matters anyway; the flesh and blood author is usually incapable of living up to our image of them."

Richard Watts felt himself privileged to have worked alongside Porter once or twice.

Andrew Wilkins writes of reading The Monkey's Mask for the first time in manuscript and deciding on the spot to persuade his publishing partners to take on the book. I'm glad he did. Karen Chisholm was the first to alert me about the news yesterday morning, promting me to contact a friend for confirmation.

Karen had just finished answering a series of questions for an upcoming issue of "Deadly Pleasures" magazine in which she related her feelings of surprise on reading El Dorado.

I never met Dorothy Porter but did have contact with her at one time. Back in 2000 I was updating a webpage I was maintaining on the Miles Franklin Award. In adding the shortlisted works for that year I inadvertently listed her verse novel What a Piece of Work as having been written by "Dorothy Parker" - as I'd never heard of Dorothy Porter before I just had a major brain slip. Anyway, the correct Dorothy emailed me to point out the typo and was very gracious about it, stating that she was rather flattered by the comparison. She could have really let rip over the error; she didn't. I don't know how long it took me to change the listing but I think you could have measured it in nanoseconds.

The one thing this interaction did do was to send me out looking for her work. I came across The Monkey's Mask first off, and experienced a reaction similar to Karen's above; I'd never read anything like it before. I wasn't so enamoured by her other verse novels as I felt the books needed a strong plot to drive the work through the verse. But I persisted, as did she, and was rewarded by the publication of El Dorado last year. This seemed to be where Porter did her best work in the verse novel form: a strong story-line backed by brilliant poetry.

She had made this little backwater of literature her own. There aren't many authors you can say that about.

Dorothy Porter (1954-2008)

"The Age" newspaper has announced, and I've had it confirmed by a reliable source, that Australian poet Dorothy Porter passed away this morning, aged 54.

Porter will be best known for her verse novel, The Monkey's Mask, which was made into a film of the same name in 2000. Her verse novels What a Piece of Work and Wild Surmise were both shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, and her most recent work, El Dorado, was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award and Prime Minister's Literary Award.

John A. Flanagan Interview

John A. Flanagn is best known for his series of "Ranger's Apprentice" books for children. He has now turned his hand to adult crime novels and was interviewed recently by Leonie Jordan on the "Boomerang Books"
weblog.

You are best-known for your "Ranger's Apprentice" children's fantasy series. What prompted you to branch out into adult crime and what appeals to you most about this genre?
I've always chosen to write the sort of books I enjoy reading. Typically, over the years, this has meant fantasy and crime fiction. And Storm Peak isn't a branching out. In fact, I was developing it at the same time I was working on the "Rangers" series. It's just that "Rangers" found a place in the market first. As to the crime genre, I'm more concerned with character interaction against a crime and/or action background than in creating a "whodunnit?" type of book. There's obviously a mystery to be solved in Storm Peak but personally, I think it's secondary to the action and the interaction of the main characters.

Your prose style in Storm Peak is at times reminiscent of "hardboiled" crime writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett: laconic, wry, punctuated by terse, deadpan remarks. Which authors were you most influenced by when writing the novel?
Thank you for the reference to Raymond Chandler. He was one of my earliest influences and I loved his style. Then I followed the English author Gavin Lyall, who had a wonderfully wry style in his earlier novels. Since then, I've loved the work of Ed McBain -- the master of dialogue, Michael Connelly, Nelson de Mille and James Lee Burke. All of these writers excel in character-driven stories. They all create characters the reader cares about.

Peter Carey Watch #9

Review of The Fat Man in History

"Aussie Reads" weblog: "Overall, these stories are a little odd (some are just downright weird) but they each have an important message to impart. Most importantly they are all enjoyable to read."

Review of Wrong About Japan

Kelly McClintock on "Student Travel Blog": "The book is an engaging mix of observations, history, anecdotes, and description in which the author comes to re-examine his own preconceived ideas about Japan. Peter Carey exposes a startlingly modern view of Japan while pursuing his son's love of anime and manga -- Japanese comic books. Carey reveals a country where the past is becoming as forgotten as the museums that house it."

Other

Contemporary Australian composer, Brett Dean, is writing an opera based on Carey's first novel Bliss. A selection of songs from that piece, titled "Songs of Joy", premiered in Liverpool, UK, recently. "The Times" reports that the complete work will debut in 2010. Doesn't say where, however.
Carey appeared on a panel, at the New Yorker Festival, along with Hari Kunzru, and Gary Shteyngart, on the subject of "Outlaws."
Patrick Ness, author of The Knife of Never Letting Go, discusses his literary influences: "The author I admire most is Peter Carey, who I think is amazing, particularly in how his books seem to be just a smaller slice of a larger imagined world. I love that, the way you can pick up all kinds of richness in his books just by inference, so I'm huge fan of that."
Ross Raisin is a bit of a fan as well.

Jill Roe Interview

Jill Roe, author of Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography, the new biography of the author that took some 26 years to finish, is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Christopher Bantick.

After the publication of My Brilliant Career in 1901, Franklin was compared in the Glasgow Herald with the Brontes. She left Australia in 1906 for America with several unpublished works in her luggage. She was a feminist and for a decade she worked for the women's labour movement in Chicago. For Roe, Franklin's independence and feminism underscored something else.

"What I find most admirable about her is her resilience. She just kept going. Writing is a disease and she did this while being fiercely independent. She was in the foreground of the first wave of feminism and she didn't take a step back as a person in anything.

"She left Australia for a long time and she did this for literary reasons. Miles wanted to see how she would be regarded abroad. She had the belief that she'd pull through but, even so, she took a risk leaving Australia and she wondered if she had made the right choices."

J.M. Coetzee Watch #12

Review of Waiting for the Barbarians

Zach Hitchcock on the "Floggin' and Bloggin'" weblog: "After reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for a few weeks, one would generally not be extremely excited to explore yet another short colonization novel that takes place around the turn of the century; however, after only reading three chapters, I can honestly say I am surprised to find I thoroughly enjoy J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. Given the long, tedious, and often tangential narration of Conrad's novel and considering the fact the curriculum intends for us to compare the two books, I found myself not at all apprehensive about reading Coetzee's story and constantly procrastinating on the completion of the assignment. Yet, as I began reading, I honestly could not put it down. One of the first things that jumped out at me is simply the style in
which Coetzee writes. Using prose, colloquial language and a vivid present tense, the style of the book's narration creates a very captivating discussion effect, as if the Magistrate is actually with you face-to-face, telling you his story."

Review of Life and Times of Michael K.

Michael Cheney, whose "The Mumpsimus" weblog is one of the best litblogs around, has been teaching Life and Times of Michael K. for his course on Outsiders, considers what appeals to him about Coetzee: "As I read Michael K. this time, I tried to think about what it is in Coetzee's work that so appeals to me. It's no individual quality, really, because there are people who have particular skills that exceed Coetzee's. There are many writers who are more eloquent, writers with more complex and evocative structures, writers of greater imagination...And then I realized that I was marking up my teaching copy of Michael K. as if I were marking up a poem. I looked, then, at my teaching copy of Disgrace, from when I used it in a class a few years ago. The same thing. Lots of circled words, lots of 'cf.'s referring me to words and phrases in other parts of the book. Lots of sounds building on sounds, rhythms on rhythms in a way that isn't particularly meaningful in itself, but that contributes to an overall tone-structure, a scaffold of utterance to hold up the shifting meanings of the story and characters."

Review of Disgrace

The "Among the Tumbled Heap" weblog ponders "The Tao of Coetzee": "Against the sometimes brutal backdrop of rural South Africa, Coetzee's story illumines the complexities of disgrace and what it means to be disgraced, spiraling deeper and deeper into both our personal and corporate conceptions of guilt and justice...There is no dualism for Coetzee. An act of 'disgrace' is simultaneously [an] act of 'redemption.'..There is nothing but dualism for Coetzee. There is disgrace and redemption. There is justice and injustice. Good and evil."

Review of Diary of a Bad Year

"Irish Times": "This is a novel for our times in its content and in the exacting way it may be read -- the essays first or in parallel? It ranges in tone from news-stand fiction to Joyce's artistic distance of a writer sitting on a cloud. It's full of surprises but not for the slothful."

Article by Coetzee

Coetzee reviews David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair by Irìne Nímirovsky, for "The New York Review of Books": "The problem for Nímirovsky as a budding writer in the 1920s was that aside from her facility in the French language, the capital she commanded on the French literary market consisted in a corpus of experience that branded her as foreign: daily life in pre-revolutionary Russia, pogroms and Cossack raids, the Revolution and the Civil War, plus to a lesser extent the shady world of international finance. In the course of her career she would thus alternate, according to her sense of the temper of the times, between two authorial selves, one pur sang French, one exotic. As a French authoress she would compose books about 'real' French families written with an irreproachably French sensibility, books with no whiff of foreignness about them. The French self took over entirely after 1940, as publishers became more and more nervous about the presence of Jewish writers on their lists."

The Nobel Prize

Apparently Coetzee had two very different reactions to winning the prize. Doris Lessing is friends with Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer and so was forewarned about what to expect in her Nobel year.

Other

Coetzee was recently a member of the jury for the Estoril film festival in Portugal.

James Cowan Interview

James Cowan, who won the Australian Literary Society's Gold Medal back in 1998 for his novel A Mapmaker's Dream, is interviewed in the "Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times".

James has returned to Australia with a swag of new manuscripts which he is now preparing to publish with planned visits to agents in America and the UK. "The novel The Deposition was published in Argentina before I left. It's a novel set in Palestine 6 months after the death of Christ. It looks at the doubts in the mind of one of the Jewish high priests on the Sanhedrin that convicted Christ, and his doubts about the good sense of that decision. I've written a book of four essays called Quartet on the nature of power. I've just finished my first modern novel in 20 years called The Shores of Philae, set in Egypt. It's a modern love story.
[snip]
James Cowan commented on his astonishing range of literary interests and at 66, where he is headed as a writer. "I've never wanted to be pigeon-holed. I think I have come from that old tradition of literature where writers should not just be writing good novels or poetry, but should also try to take on big themes. For example, in my latest book (The Deposition) I am looking again at the story of those who survived the death of Christ. At first I thought, you can't write about Christ, it's been done to death. But, as a writer, you've got to take on some of the big subjects to see if there's anything new to say about them. So I am constantly looking for ways of re-expressing old virtualities; seeing whether or not you can extract new flecks of gold out of old stories. A writer can't afford to just sit there and write about realities as they are. He has to dig deeply into the great issues of all time.

Margo Lanagan Watch #1

Reviews of Tender Morsels

Van Ikin, in "The Sydney Morning Herald": "Proclaimed as Lanagan's first novel 'for adults', Tender Morsels is far more than that: it is a towering work of imagination in which a supremely talented writer opens rich new frontiers."
"Eva's Book Addiction" weblog shows the cover of the US edition, with the note that the book is aimed at grades 9 and up. I assume that means 14+: "From its truly horrifying and brutal beginning to its satisfying but bittersweet end, this novel is mesmerizing. Language (characters speak in a country dialect that sounds both fantastical and utterly authentic) and tone remain consistent, whether the story is being told from Liga's damaged but sweet perspective, from the perspective of one of the Bears who ends up in Liga's heaven, or from those of any number of other carefully drawn characters. No one is perfect -- all have flaws, some much more than others -- but we can understand, if not sympathize with, each person. Often wrenching, at heart this is a truly tender story of healing, growing, and redemption."
Sarah Miller, on her "Reading, Writing, Musing..." weblog: "Once upon a time, the skeleton of this story was called Snow-White and Rose-Red. Like all fairy tales, it left much unexplained. Too much. Well, Margo Lanagan took those bones and added muscle and guts, bracing the loose joints of the plot with her characters' emotions, motivations, and histories. That's the secret of successful retellings: fleshing out the gaps that relied almost entirely on the readers' willful ignorance or suspension of belief, yet still leaving room for the existence of magic. And Lanagan knows how to handle magic delicately enough to make it believable: Tender Morsels revolves around magical doings, but never degrades enchantment to the level of coincidence." Miller concludes that this was "quite possibly THE best reading experience" she had had all year (her caps).
Lucas Klaus goes all zombie on us in his short note, stating that "Bottom line, I envy Margo Lanagan's brain and want to steal it."
The "Chicago Tribune" newspaper: "This dark, medieval fairy tale is as complex and brilliant as it is disturbing...The prose in this extraordinary fantasy is exquisite."

Interviews

David Larsen in "The New Zealand Herald".

Lanagan has been writing all her life, ever since she and her older sisters began competing to get stories and poems published in the local Catholic weekly as children. She continued writing poetry through her teens and 20s. "But I really wanted to have an audience, a bigger audience than poetry was probably ever going to reach, and I also wanted to write more generously. I wanted to write big flowing things, rather than just fill up one page with very intense language and thought."
[snip]
The particular thing she needed to clear her mind in order to write was, literally, "tender morsels'." She was working full time at this point, as a technical writer for a food packaging manufacturer, commuting 90 minutes every day. This, and bad memories of her previous crash and burn novel experience, made her decide she needed to break her intended novel down into bite-size pieces - into tender morsels. "I made a deal with myself that I would produce one short story every week, while I was commuting, and that every story would jump off from one central story. So that at the end, at the worst, I'd have a bunch of connected short stories, and at the most I might have something that could eventually turn into a novel."
I have linked previously to Jeff Vandermeer's interview for "Clarkesworld" magazine, and to Gavin J. Grant's interview on "Blog of a Bookslut", but it's worth repeating those links here.

Other

Lanagan launched her book once at "Conflux", an sf convention held in Canberra in early October. Sarina Talip, of "The Canberra Times", spoke to her there: "I moved over into fantasy partly because my ideas were just getting odder and odder and I thought I would see what fantasy writing was like," the author said.

The other book launch was at Berkelouw Books in Leichhardt, Sydney, and Judith Ridge was there with her camera.

On Stephanie Campisi's eponymous weblog, Lanagan lists her favourite bookshops.

Other works

Lanagan has a short story, "The Goosle", in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow. Richard Larson reviewed the book on the "Strange Horizons" website: "There are plenty of other brave choices by Ellen Datlow in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Most notable is the inclusion of Margo Lanagan's 'The Goosle', an update to the Hansel and Gretel story which has generated a fair amount of controversy..The subject here is child abuse, and the power dynamics of abuse in general, during an apparent sequel to what is already a retelling of the Hansel and Gretel story, one in which Hansel has escaped the witch's evil intentions but his sister (Kirtle, not Gretel, in Lanagan's telling) has, alas, been consumed...'The Goosle' is not an easy story, and Margo Lanagan is not a writer who makes easy choices. Aversions to certain pieces of fiction, however, should be based on the quality of the writing and the effectiveness of the storytelling rather than knee-jerk reactions to particularities of troublesome content.."

Larson points us to another review of the same book and the same story, by Dave Truesdale on the SF Site website, who sees the story in an entirely different light: "I really don't know where to begin in describing 'The Goosle' by Margo Lanagan, except to say it is a retelling of the Hansel and Gretel story. Lanagan turns this traditionally gruesome fairy tale into one of child porn (depending on your point of view) and repeated homosexual rape of a child (Hansel)...With several other stories in this collection aimed at juveniles or teenagers (the Ballingrud and the Cadigan), I find this story highly inappropriate." He criticises the story for its "shock value", using that word-set no less that six times in his short review. I think I got the impression he wasn't keen on it.

Amanda Lohrey Interview

As her new novella, Vertigo is released by Black Inc., Amanda Lohrey is interviewed by Christpher Bantick for "The Courier-Mail".

Lohrey, who lived for a while in Brisbane, has based the book on a place that is not identifiably set in Tasmania. It is far more like Queensland, with its warmer temperatures.

"Landscape affects people," she says. "I think there is a great love for your country. For me, it is more intense as I get older. D.H. Lawrence writes in Kangaroo that there is a strange beauty about Australia. I do think, though, that with sea-changers, the change takes place before you actually make the move.

"This might be partly to do with age. As you get older, many people become jaded. Australians have a great love of the open spaces and this is what many sea-changers look for. Still, while men may exhale a great sigh of relief, women may miss the social contact more."

Clive James Watch #10

Reviews of Opal Sunset: Selected Poems, 1958-2008

Abigail Deutsch reviews the collection for "The Village Voice": "James's artistry lies in his ability to seem both casual and careful: He observes an imperfect world with acerbic off-handedness, often setting his informal voice within formal verse. His ambling iambics snap into regularity right when they should, just when they become, as James writes, 'Scared into neatness by the wild sublime'...For all the piercing confession that marks these pages, James's is a roving sympathy, landing on the handicapped child, the inspired vagabond, the fellow poet. And, being James, he's occasionally less than sympathetic."
David Orr in "The New York Times": "What James wants to do here, of course, is establish that one may be a full-fledged, divinely inspired Romantic poet without doing the things that full-fledged, divinely inspired Romantic poets supposedly do. (You know, striding across darkling moors, engaging in passionate and poisonous affairs, swooning, judging the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin Award, etc.) This is both touching and unnecessary. As he rightly notes, the only thing that actually matters is the poetry itself, and while the politics of the literary world can sometimes obscure that fact in the short term, the truth will generally out -- if only because readers eventually stop caring who had coffee with Robert Lowell or slept with Lorine Niedecker."
In "Newsweek", Katie Baker takes a brief look: "Part anthology of his best, part showcase for his new verse, the book displays the same formidable erudition and giddy love of pop culture that infuses James's prose: in his stanzas, Hamlet and Plato get equal play with Elle Macpherson."

Articles by James

Interviewing Secrets - "The Australian broadcaster gets far better results webcasting in his own home than making television studio interviews".
Salman Rushdie talks to Clive James.
"A Point of View: The name's Bond, Clive James Bond".
James ponders elections, especially in the light of the recent US Presidential version.
James pays tribute to Pat Kavanagh, the UK literary agent, who died recently.

Video Interviews by James

James interviews Barry Humphries

Short Notices of Other Things

The "Christmas Reading List" weblog on Cultural Amnesia: "...at the heart of the book is something that I often brood over, the pursuit of knowledge and the way in which knowledge and talent are drained by death. Where do memories go when the vessel that carries them ceases to be? And perhaps, more importantly, is there a responsibility in reading. Is it increasingly a revolutionary act."
"The Guardian" looks at James's poem "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered" in an essay about remaindered books.

Ivan Southall (1921-2008)

Ivan Southall, Australian writer of children's books and memoirs, has died at the age of 87. Southall won the CBCA Australian Children's Book of the Year on four occasions: Ash Road in 1966, To the Wild Sky in 1968, Bread and Honey in 1971 and Fly West in 1976. His novel Josh won the Carnegie Medal (UK) in 1971, becoming the first Australian book to do so.

A retrospective of his work was held by the State Library of Victoria in 1998 and is still available online.

Notices about the author can be found at:
ABC News
"The Age"

Adrian Hyland Interview

Adrian Hyland, author of Diamond Dove which has just been published in the UK, is interviewed by Stuart MacBride for "Shots Magazine".

SM: Diamond Dove is one of those wonderful novels that really envelops the reader in a culture that they probably never get to experience first hand. What made you decide to set the story in the world of the outback?

AH: I lived for many years in the outback -- went there straight after Uni, and the place kind of crept -- well, roared like a wildfire into my soul. I did a bit of mining and station work, then ended up working in Aboriginal community development -- which sounds impressive, but in fact meant bouncing around the Tanami Desert with a Toyota full of Aboriginal people -- sometimes taking them back to places they'd walked out of thirty years before. I've travelled pretty well everywhere, lived in a lot of far-flung places, but Central Australia remains the most fascinating place I've ever seen. All of the big questions -- development vs. environment, the spiritual vs. the material, toast vs. cereal or fry-up -- are there, in your face. The human comedy unravels before your eyes: you've got hippies and rednecks, superannuated commies, grey nomads, miners, pastoralists, boozers, bruisers, substance-abusers and some really weird people -- have you seen Wolf Creek? - living cheek by jowl. Most importantly, of course, there were the Aboriginal people: they were the touchstone for me.

SM: Well, it certainly comes across. Emily Tempest is a great central character, someone who's got a foot in both camps -- the settler and the aboriginal -- but as a middle-aged white bloke did you get any stick for writing from the point of view of a young black girl?

AH: Not yet, but there's still plenty of time, if anybody's interested. I was writing about people I knew and loved. I've never met anyone quite like em. They're beautiful people, rich in spirit of place and the funniest buggers you could ever hope to meet -- I spent many a night by a camp fire rocking with laughter. I wanted to bring that world to life, and I'd like to think that my intentions were honourable.


[Thanks to Aust Crime Fiction for the link.]

Susan Johnson Interview

Susan Johnson, author of Life in Seven Mistakes, has reprinted an interview she gave with "The European English Messenger" journal.

Q: The idea of a writer struggling to combine the demands of creation with a child and husband is a common floor in some of your books such as A Better Woman, The Broken Book and Life in Seven Mistakes. Can it be seen as a gleam of your own life?

A:
Most definitely. I read an article by the Irish writer and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright recently in which she said that she didn't understand writers who felt children were the enemies of promise, and she felt that the pram in the hall was a fine thing for a writer. Well, yes, I agree emotionally -- having children is the ultimate way of engaging with the world in a very hands-on, visceral way, and it stretches you emotionally in very challenging ways (Fay Weldon says you can believe you are a nice person until you have children!) However, it is also exhausting, time-consuming, expensive and very, very hard. I have discovered that, deep-down, I believe in a very unreconstructed, antediluvian way that a "real" artist gives her life over to art, and doesn't compromise her art by having children! In some ways I DO think that having children slowed me up, and profoundly compromised me for all times. And yet having children also engaged me with life on the deepest level, and who knows if my writing might be a more sterile, impoverished thing if I hadn't had them? I think all writers are quite good at giving reasons why they are as never as brilliant as they might have been, and perhaps the having/not having of children argument is simply another version of that! (Arguably the world's deepest, richest, most wonderful books have been written by childless women, so having a child is therefore not a passport into a "better" or deeper emotional state, or resonance: having a child does not automatically make you a "better" person, or indeed a better writer). I do know my life is enriched by my children, but I am not entirely sure my art is...it is very, very hard for me to combine writing with running a household, having children, and a marriage. Most of the world's greatest women writers did not have children. This is not an accidental fact.

Markus Zusak

Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief amongst other works, is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Kathleen Noonan, and he's quite candid about the luck he's had.

Early on in Zusak's writing life, living at home in Sydney's western suburbs, he scratches away at stories when not at school or playing football.

He sends them off to various publishers.

"Usually you hear nothing. But one day, I get this letter back saying, 'No thanks, but you do have promise'."

That is enough to fire his passion and make him decide to be a writer.

Later he rings the publisher to talk to the letter-writer to get more advice, believing she is an editor. No. She doesn't work there. She never did.

She was just a work-experience student who was given the rejection letter to write.

Zusak laughs. "So you see, I based my entire career path on a work-experience girl's advice. How random is that?"

Christos Tsiolkas Interview

Christos Tsiolkas's new novel is titled The Slap, which seems vaguely appropriate when I see a photo of the author - he always seems like he has been, or is about to be, slapped. Just me, I guess. I always look like I have a very bad case of gas in all my photos. Anyway, the author is interviewed for the "Readings" weblog by Belinda Monypenny and Jo
Case.

What was your inspiration for writing such a grounded, earthy novel in a domestic, suburban setting after the globetrotting sprawl of Dead Europe?

Dead Europe was a very difficult novel to write. It took time for it to find its form; it also took me, in the writing of it, into dark and fearful places. As a writer you take on aspects of your characters and if you are not careful the world you are creating begins to blend with the world you actually inhabit. That's not only a problem for yourself, but more importantly, for the people around you.

So I started working on notes for The Slap towards the end of writing Dead Europe as a way of escaping the bleak world of racist Europa and also as a return to just the pure joy of writing. To use a musical metaphor, which I am prone to, I wanted to just "riff", create characters and scenarios and stories and see where they took me. I think suburbia, such a part of the Australian experience, has always interested me; the push-pull of it. Suburbia tends to be viewed as static in our cultural and literary representation and I think that's simply not true. What does the new "wog", aspirational suburbia look like? That seemed a good jumping-off point for a novel.

Richard Flanagan Watch #1

Reviews of Wanting

Don Anderson in "The Australian".

Without doubt a main subject of Wanting is what its author calls the "catastrophe of colonialism". Notions of the "savage", the "other", warp all sorts of notions and arguments. Thus, one-third into the novel, a propos allegations of Franklin's crew's cannibalism, Dickens asserts: "We all have appetites and desires. But only the savage agrees to sate them with all the attendant horrors that ensue." Almost at the novel's end, however, Dickens, his cheek pressed on stage against Ellen's "uncorsetted belly", notes that "he, a man who had spent a life believing that giving in to desire was the mark of a savage, realised that he could no longer deny wanting".
Short Notices

Boomerang Books: "Flanagan treads a fine line. He doesn't imply that the British were all cruel, or that the Aborigines were entirely victims or 'noble savages'. There is a spectrum of perspectives, from the brutal to the misguided-and even the supportive. It must be difficult to write a novel like this without judging, excusing or idealising."
Readings: "Wanting is a powerful piece of writing that affects in many ways. Above all, it's about unbridled desire and its tragic consequences."

Video clips relating to the novel

Book trailer
Interview: Part 1 - What led you to write WANTING?
Interview: Part 2 - Who are the main characters in WANTING?
Interview: Part 3 - What would you consider to be the themes of WANTING?
Interview: Part 4 - How are the lives of Charles Dickens and Mathinna connected?
Interview: Part 5 - There are fictional and historical characters in the story. How much licence did you take with the facts?
Interview: Part 6 - How different was it writing the script for Baz Luhrmann.

Interviews

I've previously linked to this interview with the author by Jason Steger, which was published in "The Age" at the start of November.
Flanagan is also interviewed in "The Mercury" by Simon Bevilacqua.

Webpage

The publisher has created a webpage for the novel which includes details of the book as well as where Flanagan is appearing this week in Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Other

Flanagan has received a writing credit on the new Baz Luhrmann film Australia, and "The Weekend Australian" magazine provides some details about how the collaboration came about.
In a piece in "The West Australian", Flanagan reveals the real-life inspiration for the character played by Hugh Jackman in the film.
The author was featured recently on ABC TV's "Australian Story". You can still watch that program on the show's website.
And related to that television program is a report from "The Mercury" newspaper detailing some comments Flanagan made about retired Tasmanian premier Paul Lennon.

Juliet Marillier Interview

Juliet Marillier, New Zealand born and Australian resident, writer of historical fantasy, (The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Saga of the Light Isles, and The Bridei Chronicles) is interviewed by Therese Walsh on the "Writer Unboxed" weblog, as her new novel, Heir to Sevenwaters is published.

What would you like people to know about the story itself?

HEIR TO SEVENWATERS is a stand-alone novel but shares the same setting as my first series, the Sevenwaters Trilogy. In other words, it's set in Ireland in early Christian times. It's a blend of romantic historical novel and folkloric fantasy. People need not have read those earlier books to enjoy this one. The first person narrator is the daughter of an Irish chieftain, whose world is turned upside down when a devastating event befalls her family at the birth of a long-awaited son. Clodagh's main skill lies in household management. She likes her world orderly and calm. Now she must undertake a desperate journey into an unknown realm in an attempt to put things right for her family. Her companion on this quest is not the highly suitable young man she likes, but a more mysterious character who has far too many secrets to be trusted.

Helen Garner Watch #6

Reviews of The Spare Room

Raffaella Barker in "The Independent": "It is difficult to get excited about this book. Helen Garner is a good writer. This is her first novel in 15 years and she has a gift for creating a scene and illustrating character that is airy and enduring and essentially Australian. No one who gets through this book would deny that Garner is skilful. Given that the central character is a woman writer in her sixties called Helen, it is probable that this is a cathartic exercise for her following a traumatic life experience of her own, but I am not convinced that it needs to be inflicted up on the reading public. It is just too depressing. It is the business of a novel to transform experience, not just for the sake of it but to illuminate our minds and to touch our hearts. If we want veritas we read non fiction, and there are numerous moving memoirs about cancer which may well provide comfort through the solidarity of shared experience and which could perhaps show us how to grieve."
David Pullar on PopMatters: "On first appearances, The Spare Room should be a difficult read. This is not for the words and sentences therein: it's a short book and written in clear, simple prose. It's more that the content appears heavy and rather bleak. The story goes something like this: an older woman provides her spare room to a friend with terminal cancer who is in town for treatment. 'Not a barrel of laughs,' you would think...Humour is not just an occasional relief in The Spare Room, it's actually the lifeblood of the book. The old cliché that 'you've got to laugh' in the face of tragedy is given new meaning by Garner. For all the sickness and suffering and thankless service involved in the story, it's only an acute sense of the absurdity of the situation that keeps the heroine (also named Helen) sane."

Other

Garner's novel, The Spare Room, won the top prize at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and at the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, in September.
At the National Library in Canberra in October "Helen Garner, Alex Miller, Robert Drewe, Frank Moorhouse and Alexis Wright were among the authors who spoke at a colloquium in honour of Bruce Bennett, emeritus professor at the University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy."

Ten Years Ago

Don Anderson on Garner's My Hard Heart: Selected Fictions, in "Australian Book Review".

What do we talk about when we talk about Helen Garner? About her writing, that is, about such a consummate novella as The Children's Bach, about extraordinary stories such as "A Vigil", in Cosmo Cosmolino, about the eponymous "Postcards from Surfers", and a dozen others? We talk about domestic realism, we talk about fiction that encompasses not merely the present supposedly self-obsessed Baby Boomer generation but children and grandparents also, we talk about discipline, control, and the assurance that more is less. We talk, despite her 'despair of feeling trapped inside [my] own style' (in True Stories: Selected Non-Fiction, 1996, from which my epigraph also is taken), of a virtuoso who hit her distinctive style early -- in Honour, say -- and has progressively refined it to more and more subtle effect. We think of a connoisseur of the moral and emotional life who renders these with unflinching honesty, whatever the cost, whatever the pain, to herself and others. We -- or, rather, I -- talk about her modesty, while not assuming patriarchally that woman ought to be modest, but with Jane Austen's letter of 1805 in mind: 'If [s]he were less modest, [s]he would be more agreeable, speak louder & look Impudenter; -- and is it not a fine Character of which Modesty is the only defect?'

Peter Goldsworthy Profile

Peter Goldsworthy's seventh novel, Everything I Knew, has just been published and is bound to cause a bit of a stir. The author was interviewed by "The Age".

Based on elements of his own childhood - including teenage crushes on teachers - Everything I Knew is about growing up, friendship, forbidden desires and what happens when boundaries are crossed. It's set in the 1960s in Penola, a small-time country town in South Australia's Coonawarra region, where Goldsworthy lived as a child and where he experienced his "first sexual stirrings". Goldsworthy says he has long been interested in "the eros between teacher and student" and wanted to explore it in his book.

Richard Flanagan Profile

Richard Flanagan's new novel Wanting is now in the shops and the author is interviewed in "The Age" by Jason Steger.

Richard Flanagan knows that some people will read his new novel, Wanting, as a historical novel and pillory him for that. But he has been a historian in another life and knows it is not for him.

"History, like journalism, is ever a journey outwards and you must report back what you find and no more. But a novel is a journey into your own soul and you seek there to discover those things that you share with all others. In reading you sense the divine, the things that are larger and greater and more mysterious than yourself."

Wanting is 19th century in location and characters: polar explorer and governor of Van Diemen's Land, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane; Mathinna, the Aboriginal girl they adopt and later abandon; and the great literary voice of the time, Charles Dickens.

But Flanagan is adamant it is not a historical novel. What's wrong, he asks, with writers using history; they have been doing it forever. What about Shakespeare's use of Holinshed's Chronicles? "Shakespeare was completely fictionalising the people who were then the great celebrities of English."

You have to think that all Australian novelists will need to develop a similar response given the way Kate Grenville was criticised for The Secret River. It would be nice to be able to read novels in isolation without the need for some sort of framing mechanism to separate them from other literary, social and political considerations. But we can't. Novels exist and live in the real world and the better ones have an effect beyond the boundaries of their covers. We can't expect the forces at work to only act in one direction.

Graeme Base Profile

Graeme Base, author and illustrator of such works as Animalia, The Eleventh Hour and Uno's Garden is interviewed by Sherrill Nixon for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

In Animalia he successfully fought against his publisher's attempt to simplify the vultures' language on the V page (words such as "vociferous verbosity" and "vexatiously vocalising"). A decade later he waged a battle over Uno's Garden when the American marketing gurus wanted to declare it a "fun math book" on the cover, rather than leave it to the reader to discover the clever maths component of this book, primarily about the balance between civilisation and nature.

"Maybe I will be brave enough to say this: the problem is more evident in America, where there's the need, it seems to me, to spoonfeed," Base says. "You can't leave something slightly ambiguous or not show the solution ... they needed explanation for something where my inclination was to not explain but to ask the reader to work it out or to slowly realise there's something else going on here."

The author's latest work, Enigma, is now out from Penguin.

Bryce Courtenay

Australian author Bryce Courtenay was recently recruited by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu "for the book, film and travelling exhibition by the American photographer Andrew Zuckerman, all titled Wisdom. Zuckerman travelled the world, filming, photographing and interviewing luminaries such as Nelson Mandela, Clint Eastwood, Malcolm Fraser and Henry Kissinger." In a talk the author gave at the State Library of New South Wales to mark the opening of the exhibition, "The Sydney Morning Herald" reported: "I thought it was a gag," he says. "None of us believes we have wisdom. Wisdom isn't a commodity that many of us particularly like to have anyway, because it sounds presumptuous and it sounds precocious." The exhibition runs at the State Library of NSW until November 16.

Margo Lanagan Interview

As her latest novel, Tender Morsels, is released in the US Margo Lanagan is interviewed on the "Bookslut" weblog by Gavin J. Grant.

Is the reader a tender morsel you chew over as you write?

The reader is not exactly the farthest thing from my mind as I write a story, but they're some distance off. I've found that it just gets in the way of the writing if I think of any reader bar myself, until quite a way along in the process.

That said, the reactions I get make me think that, yes, people can feel a bit chewed up and spat out after having read a Lanagan story. And Tender Morsels is no different; it really puts you through the mill before the good stuff starts. All the way along, though, I scatter pretty things, sparkly things, so that you'll have a hard time resisting being drawn into my lair. And afterwards, you'll be so glad you visited!

Kate Grenville Watch #3

Reviews of The Lieutenant

Stella Clarke in "The Australian Literary Review": "You have to admire Kate Grenville, not only because she is among Australia's elite novelists, but also because of her tenacity. Here she is again, with The Lieutenant, daring to dabble in Australia's fraught, and still unsettled, British settler history...Arguably, ethical commitment is what characterises Grenville's fictional harrowings of Australia's violent past. It is evident in this new novel, and might be understood to validate her fictional embellishments of a handful of facts...Previously, however, Grenville hasn't just remade mainstream history. Her 1988 novel Joan Makes History was a lively, irreverent burlesque that subversively caught up the sort of female experience that traditional accounts let fall. Though The Lieutenant is edging her into the standard historical novelist box, her most successful earlier novels (Lilian's Story, 1994, Dark Places, 1995, and The Idea of Perfection, 2003) were original, darkly comic, profoundly probing explorations of vulnerable, odd or deviant people trying to make their stories prevail. Obliquely, they dealt with the extent to which power and authority dictate which accounts of events achieve currency...Grenville's novel suggests a laudable determination to guard storytellers' jittery claims on history, but at the price of truly startling inspiration. The historians' high dudgeon has apparently succeeded."
Genevieve Barlow in "The Weekly Times": "Were there doubters among the early white settlers to Australia who did not agree with the British way of settling another people's country? Perhaps it is Grenville merely recasting the scene and imbuing it with 21st century sentiments and regrets...This easy-to-read book set this reader thinking about the attitudes of many of our earliest settlers towards Aborigines."
Nigel Krauth in "The Australian": "At school I learned that the first 50 years of non-indigenous Australian history was a period of exploration, part of a grand project of European discovery. In my textbook, contact with 'the natives' was presented as marginalia, mere notes to the main narrative. There was no suggestion that the processes of indigenous and non-indigenous connection might involve opening up territory vaster than the interior of the wide brown land stretching before the explorers. There was no hint that the most challenging region to explore was the interior of the explorer himself...Grenville hasn't written a historical novel. She has written astutely about dark hearts today."

Short Notices

"BookBath" weblog: "I loved this seemingly simple but powerful book - even though this is a fictionalised account based on the life of a real person, William Dawes, I think it can still possibly inform us of some of the events and feelings of this traumatic and often violent part of this countries past - obviously still from the perspective of a white person which needs to be taken into account in our reading of this book."
Mark Rubbo from "Readings": "As in her masterful previous novel, The Secret River, Kate Grenville uses the early history of European settlement of Australia as a means to provoke and confront us. The reader is forced to reflect upon what she or he would do when faced with the choice between the 'intention of evil' and the intention of good, when the choice of good will almost certainly result in catastrophic personal consequences...From the slimmest items of history, Kate Grenville has constructed a tale that will delight and move you."

Interviews

Ramona Kaval on ABC Radio National's "The Book Show".

Other

"Caribousmom" weblog on The Secret River: "Grenville shows the wide gap between English and Aboriginal cultures...and the tremendous misunderstanding fueled by an inability to adequately communicate. Her prose is magnificent as she describes the land of Australia and gradually builds the tension between the characters, before bringing the novel to its inevitable and devastating conclusion. I was completely absorbed by this historical piece of work which is evocative, poetic and pulsing with the life of a time far in the past."
"Musings" weblog on The Idea of Perfection: "This book had a surprisingly strong impact on me. I loved the slow reveal of the characters, and their ultimate depth. And while the book moved quickly, Grenville suggests plot in the same way she does her characters. There were many times in this novel where she made a subtle point that connected several other events in a way that literally left me wide-eyed, astonished, and saying 'OH ... !!' out loud. "

Richard Flanagan Interview

Lachlan Jobbins, on the "Boomerang Books" weblog, interviews Richard Flanagan, whose new novel, Wanting, is
released at the beginning of November.

The novel touches on a very contentious subject - the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines at the hands of the Van Diemen's Land colonists. Whether this was a deliberate program of genocide or perhaps ill-intentioned experiment in "civilising" them is still debated. How conscious were you of trying to balance the perspectives of the colonists with contemporary feelings about history?

I was a historian before I was a novelist. No one can read the primary sources of Van Diemonian history without seeing that a war, often pitiless, was waged against Tasmanian Aborigines. Documents of the period are clear about what was happening: at the time it was referred to as a war of "extermination". I wasn't trying to balance past or contemporary feelings about what happened, because I have no doubt what went on. There will forever be a debate about the particular nature of the evil that befell the Tasmanian Aborigines, its causes, its particular nature, its consequences, and such a discussion, such questioning, is a good thing. But only in the distortions of those pursuing ideological vendettas is it possible to claim it did not happen.


EXTENDED BODY:

Matthew Reilly Interview

Matthew Reilly, author of The Six Sacred Stones, is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Samela Harris.

He attributes much of his name recognition to plain hard work.

"In the early days, I said 'yes' to everything," he says.

"Schools, radio or TV interviews, I said 'yes' and I did them all, so it came to a point in the last couple of years that a lot of people know who Matthew Reilly is -- and it is always a surprise.

"You know, you spend so long climbing the mountain that you don't actually realise you might be near the top. But now, when you say 'Matthew Reilly', they say 'you mean the author?'. And that has always been my goal, that people know Matthew Reilly is the guy who tells these stories."

Reilly continues to love interacting with his readers. He says book clubs are a favourite thing. And he sustains a lively dialogue on his website through a blog and a Frequently Asked Questions section in which he more or less interviews himself.

William Kostakis Interview

William Kostakis, author of the novel Loathing Lola, is interviewed by Angela Meyer on the "LiteraryMinded" weblog.

How long all up have you worked on Loathing Lola, and what compelled you to begin it?

I remember sitting in the back seat of my car, with my worn copy of Worry Warts on my lap, the back cover facing up. I'd imagine my face there instead of Morris Gleitzman's. The caption would read "11-year-old author William Kostakis", that was my dream... and then I turned 12, so that daydream became "12-year-old author William Kostakis'...That's when I realised I should probably start writing something.

I finished a novel featuring Courtney and Co. by the end of Year 7, and my computer congratulated me with a terminal virus. It was the age of the floppy disk, and I hadn't learned the importance of backing up the file, so, from memory, I restarted it in Year 8. I must've remembered more than was there, because the word count doubled (think: just falling shy of Harry Potter 5's grand total). I left it for a few years, came back to it in Year 10, and after one more rewrite, I was content with it, so I started thinking about a sequel. What if they had a camera crew following them around? How would that change the way they acted, what they said, who they were nice to, who they weren't? What would they hide? What parts of their characters would they accentuate? It didn't take me long to realise that this would be a far more compelling read than the original novel I'd written, so, after my bajillionth rejection letter, I decided to restart from scratch. By the end of Year 12, I had Pan Macmillan on board. And now, in my second year of uni, I have a book out.

So, to answer your question in a non-round-about way, it took seven-eight years to write, and I started it because I wanted to be Morris Gleitzman. Only 11.

Colleen McCullough Interview

Colleen McCullough's new novel, The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet , is a sequel of sorts to Pride and Prejudice, shifting "the action 20 years on and remaking the neglected middle Bennet sister, Mary, into a heroine." As the book is published the author is interviewed by Rosalie Higson for "The Australian".

"It's the perils of Pauline," McCullough says with her trademark boisterous laugh. Now 71, she is always looking for something new. Her CV includes romances, histories, cookbooks, mysteries and biography. "The trouble with living long enough to write 20 novels is that you start to get a bit short of genre," she says.

It was a televised version of Pride and Prejudice that reminded her of some things she'd wondered about "for donkey's years".

"First of all, why Jane Austen didn't like Mary, to whom she devoted a whole eight sentences. The other question was whatever happened to Mary? Then I saw this film and I thought that writing about that will really get under the skins of the literati. That will really, really irritate them," she says with another roaring laugh. "And I love irritating the literati.

"So I thought, I will write about what happened to Mary Bennet." Reading between the lines, in many ways the "pig-headed" Mary resembles McCullough: the plain girl with the brain, pursuing knowledge, then breaking out into the world, stubbornly independent, full of ideas, ultimately successful, admired by people in high places and finding love in middle age as a bonus.

J.M. Coetzee Watch #11

Review of Diary of a Bad Year

"News Blaze": "Diary of a Bad Year remains a good reading experience only for the first few chapters when Coetzee's political commentary intrigues the reader toward some grand unfolding in the coming pages. However, it never arrives; instead, the book underwhelms for more than one reason. "First of all, the desultoriness with which the author hops from one topic to another -- thematically unrelated -- topic destroys the book's coherence. Few of the topics are developed to a thought-arousing level and the author's person continues to overshadow his views. That also holds for the story in which the characters feel like 'voice generators' for communicating the author's mind and not as palpable human figures. There is no climax and the book remains as plain at the end as at the very beginning."

Short Notices

"Underthought" weblog: "Short, thought-provoking, intermittently brilliant and strangely captivating, Diary of a Bad Year is one of the most bizarre novels (if you can even call it a novel) I've ever read. But it's also a little irritating -- for its brevity and for its staccato rhythm, as Coetzee hops from one political bugbear to the next."
"Joan's Book Nook" weblog: "Voted in 2006 as 'the greatest novel of the last 25 years', Disgrace is not a book you hurriedly skim over, as each of Coetzee's words is bold, potent and very deserving of the readers' attention that it commands. His exemplary craftsmanship, partly stems from the fact that he doesn't shy away from the full exploration of the emotional core and psyche of his characters, never once allowing his concern for the exterior to eclipse his attention to the interior by hiding underneath layers upon layers of descriptive detail, as some authors do."

Film Adaptation of Disgrace

The Internet Movie Data Base has a page devoted to the film, but does not, as yet, indicate any general release dates. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in early September, and picked up an international critics' award (the FIPRESCI Prize for Special Presentations). Reviews have been trickling out: Screen Daily ("...a disturbing insight into the soul of modern South Africa..."); "The Dewey Divas and the Dudes" weblog ("It's a gutsy film and while it's difficult to 'enjoy', it certainly leaves you with lots to think about."); and "exclaim.ca" ("The film certainly presents some interesting ideas about the complex nature of forgiveness and reconciliation in the wake of monumental brutality, and can be taken as a metaphor for the larger political situation.").

Other

"sne" weblog on Life & Times of Michael K: "Coetzee is distinctly highly inventive and a man with translucent conviction. Like in his other novel Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee describes the landscapes of suffering little by little with the art of moral disclosure. His stories are universal because they can take place anywhere and to anyone. He does not use abstractions in his stories; his stories are engrossed in the minute and the concrete. Through the minute details in his stories, it is possible to learn how to sow, how to plough, how to use a pump, or how to make a house of earth. His sentences are simple, direct and pure. They are so acute that the readers get the effect deep in their minds."

Susan Duncan Profile

Susan Duncan, author of the memoir Salvation Creek: An Unexpected Life and its upcoming sequel The House At Salvation Creek, is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald".

If you catch the ferry across Pittwater from Church Point on Sydney's northern peninsula, you'll probably notice a house on the hill at Lovett Bay. It is a striking, rather grand classical-revival home among the gum trees, with fat columns and a deep wraparound veranda and it stands above, and slightly aloof from, the dwellings that cluster around the shore. It looks like a house with a story -- and Susan Duncan has written it.

...

Up close, Tarrangaua is beautiful, with lovely proportions and a sense of grace and grandeur. "I think the veranda is the key to the whole house," Duncan says. "We live on it in summer; sleep on it in summer." The house was built in 1925 for Dorothea Mackellar, who wrote the poem "My Country" 100 years ago. But its story doesn't end there.

Duncan's new book is a kind of whodunit about the house. Word-of-mouth had always said that Tarrangaua's architect was the classical-revival master Hardy Wilson, but when experts pooh-poohed that, Duncan went looking for evidence. The unfolding mystery of the house is the thread that pulls the reader through anecdotes about life in Lovett Bay, of neighbours, nature, dogs, boats, ageing, good food, friends, fun, mothers and daughters, cancer and cake.

Kate Grenville Watch #2

In the post "Kate Grenville Watch #1" which appeared here yesterday I included the line: "A British author takes exception to the implication that Grenville's novel is the first to tackle this subject matter." The passage from "The Canberra Times" which instigated my note is as follows:

British author Jane Rogers has accused Grenville of implying on her website that the novel, The Lieutenant, is the first to cover this ground. Rogers' 1995 novel, Promised Lands, which won the Writers' Guild Best Fiction Book award in Britain, is also based on the life of the amateur scientist and astronomer Dawes. In an email to a Canberra acquaintance which was forwarded to The Canberra Times, Rogers said Grenville "has based her novel on exactly the research that I did for Promised Lands, although she seems to imply that hers is the first novel ever to cover this ground".
There is more, which you should read, but this was the part that caught my eye. I didn't make any comment on this at the time for a few reasons, mostly to do with time. And then last night I received a comment from Kerryn Goldsworthy on the original post that made me go back and have a look at the full newspaper piece, and also at Grenville's discussion of how she came to write the novel, from her website.

"The Canberra Times" includes the paragraph (On her website she says, "When I came across the germ of this story in historical sources, I knew I had to try to tell it: I wanted others to feel the hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck excitement I was feeling about these two people and what happened to them.") which, I assume, they feel supports Rogers' case. It is a statement taken from an interview Grenville has also posted on her website.

The question is: does this lead you to think that Grenville believes she is the first to see the literary possibilities with this material? I don't think so, and I'm with Kerryn here; I just can't see anywhere in Grenville's piece where she implies anything, and if the interview answer is all they have to base their accusations on, well...it's bit thin. Maybe the thought is that because Grenville doesn't explicitly acknowledge Rogers' novel then she implies, I don't know - maybe it's "non-existence". It's a real stretch.

Grenville, herself, has stated that she was aware of Rogers' novel but only skimmed it enough to ascertain that her approach to the story would be different to her own; a wise move in my view. But I can't see how this can lead to anything. As Kerryn says, it's a beat-up. And to top things off, how about this last sentence from "The Canberra Times": "Grenville has been at pains in recent interviews to make it clear that The Lieutenant 'is not history', preferring to refer to the book as a novel about 'the past'." I just love the quoted words 'the past'. It's an historical novel. Let's leave it at that.

Interviews

Readings and ABC Radio's The Book Show.

Margo Lanagan Interview

Jeff Vandermeer interviews Margo Lanagan for "Clarkesworld" magazine as her new novel, Tender Morsels, hits the bookshops.

To what extent does living in Australia influence your fiction? Some would claim that when you write fantasy the place in which you live is at best expressed in your fiction indirectly...

This is a big, rich question. In terms of Tender Morsels...Well, I was just about to say, this is not Australia, this is some kind of fairytale Eastern Europe, but in fact you don't have to look very hard at this book to find the kind of boofhead male behaviour Australia has something of a reputation for, so maybe my homeland is making itself felt that way. Then you could start drawing all sorts of parallels about St Olafred's being the centre of commerce and politics and power and Liga's cottage being all isolated and remote down there in the valley -- but then you'd be getting silly. I don't know that this is a question that can be answered from the inside. There are some US readers who say they can see a characteristic 'Australian-ness' in my stories, but I don't really know what they're talking about. People tend to fixate a little on this, and spot Australianisms where they don't exist; for example, assuming that any strange turn of phrase they encounter is something characteristically Australian, when in fact, you know, I'm a writer, I make things up. Or that any dark-skinned person in a story is Aboriginal; generally my dark-skinned people are just dark-skinned people.

Tender Morsels
publisher's page.

Robert Drewe Interview

Robert Drewe's new collection of short stories, The Rip is in the shops, and Jo Case on the Readings" weblog spoke to him about his new book and other things:

You write across a range of forms: short stories, novels, memoir. Do you have a favourite? What draws you to short stories as a form?

I don't favour any particular form, other than preferring to write fiction. No contest: fiction is more fun to do. After writing a long novel -- most recently, Grace -- I find it pleasurable to write stories next. A book is such a long haul and you have to keep yourself diverted and entertained. It's like painting your house: after painting three blue walls you can't wait to switch to a yellow wall. Short stories have an immediacy and power, and speak to us personally more than a novel does. Apart from its sharper focus, what the good story has over the novel is that it sets up a need in us that we weren't aware of -- and then fulfils it. I appreciate that small miracle.

The stories in The Rip are loosely linked by their setting on the Australian coast, and many of the characters you write about have a deep affinity to the water. Is that an affinity you share? If so, how does it inform your writing?

The Swan River estuary, the lunar West Australian landscape and the Indian Ocean coast were set in my consciousness as a child, and clearly affect my writing, especially my story collections such as The Rip and The Bodysurfers. Like most Australians I prefer to live near it, but in my work I'm not a hostage to the coast. My most successful novels, like The Drowner or Our Sunshine or The Savage Crows, reach a bit further inland. My characters aren't always going swimming or applying suntan oil.

Kate Grenville Watch #1

Reviews of The Lieutenant

Kerryn Goldsworthy in "The Age": "The Lieutenant, set before and during the first few years of the colony of NSW, recreates recorded historical relationships and events, and several of its characters are closely based on
real people. It also deals in detail with the first contact between Europeans and the Aboriginal population. It is, says Kate Grenville firmly, fiction. At least one of those things might get her into strife, as did her last novel, The Secret River, and there are certainly a number of complex issues to be addressed.
[snip]
This novel's dark materials prevent it from 'sparkling', but it glows with life: imaginative in its re-creations, respectful of what cannot be imagined, and thoughtful in its interrogation of the past."
Andrew Rimmer in "The Sydney Morning Herald": "...as in The Secret River, The Lieutenant comes to an end with an epilogue of a kind, set decades after the main events of the novel. "There are, nevertheless, striking differences. This novel is much more compact, with fewer characters and leaner prose. Grenville's restraint will not please everyone. No doubt some readers will miss the greater amplitude and richness of atmosphere of the earlier work. To my mind, though, Grenville's approach is entirely valid, appropriate to the ambitions of this essay in forging a fictional narrative from well-documented history."
A British author takes exception to the implication that Grenville's novel is the first to tackle this subject matter.

Short Notices

"Reading, Writing and Retirement" weblog on The Idea of Perfection which "is filled with quirky characters, mostly people who are uncomfortable in their own skin and who question their own every move and every word that comes out of their mouth (or not, as the case may be)."
"Vulpes Libris" weblog on The Idea of Perfection: "It's very tempting not to summarise the book at all, because there's no way a summary could do this gem any justice. It is a story about some fairly low-key romances that happen in an obscure, oppressively hot, mostly barren part of the world -- doesn't sound very good so far, does it? But somehow Grenville manages to say so much about relationships and love and life that the book has a secretly broad reach and counts as the most satisfying novel I've read in a long time."
"Nikky's Journal" compares Conrad's Heart of Darkness with The Secret River: "...as Marlow and his crew were flowing in their boat down the river, I couldn't help but contrast it to the aboriginals, even the way Conrad has described these beasts. The emotive language he uses to describe their very existence is fabulous and so like the aboriginals - even the way they were used for labor - and then left to die..."

Other

"Historians neglecting storyteller's role" by Justine Ferrari in "The Australian":

History has been "dulled down" by focusing exclusively on analysing evidence and argument, with historians neglecting their role as storytellers. Award-winning historian Peter Cochrane is urging his colleagues to look to the narrative techniques of literature to recreate the past in a vivid and lively way. Cochrane, an inaugural winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History, said historians should be able to cross freely into the territory of novelists and poets to use their techniques of plot, character, and imagination.
...
"We should be crossing boundaries and borrowing what we can from fiction, or at least from fiction writers ... in terms of structuring and vivifying a story."
Cochrane wants historians to use the techniques of novelists, and while he doesn't come right out and say it, it seems only reasonable that novelists should use the subject matter of historians.

Tim Winton Watch #6

Reviews of Breath

Robert Wiersema in "The Ottawa Citizen": "We book reviewers, as a rule, like to keep some professional distance in our writing. Sometimes, though, with certain books or authors, one wants to simply rave, the way one might in a bar or a coffee-shop, sitting with fellow book-lovers. In that spirit, reader to reader, let me say this: you've gotta read Tim Winton...An Australian export, Winton is, without exaggeration, one of the most formidable voices in contemporary writing. Twice nominated for the Booker Prize, with a world-wide readership and almost universal critical acclaim, Winton has 20 books to his credit, every one of them unique and surprising...Winton writes with a stunning, simple clarity. Largely plain-spoken and emotionally direct, the novel shifts into an elevated prose during moments of risk and beauty, and particularly those times when the two combine. The characters are carefully drawn, and reveal themselves slowly over the course of the novel...Breath is powerful and enthralling. It will make many readers uncomfortable, but that, in some ways, is its greatest strength."
"The Free Lance-Star": "Winton's descriptions are almost always sure-handed, but his grasp and description of the surfing scenes in the book give a scary feel to catching waves or for waves catching the surfers...Breath is a slender little novel but a good introduction into Winton, though not nearly as nuanced or ambitious as his best-known Cloudstreet. Breath shows off what Winton does best -- he doesn't bore, he doesn't philosophize, he just digs deep enough to expose the people he has created, who bear a striking resemblance to the humanity around us."
"Blogcritics" magazine: "Long ago, Freud introduced the concept of thanatos, the so-called death instinct. Many have dismissed or even ridiculed this notion, so un-Darwinian in its nature. How can we have a death instinct, when all instinctual drives seem based on preserving and extending life? Yet Winton shows even more persuasively in story form what Freud tried to outline in theory. Winton's characters reveal a barely hidden passion for non-existence, and death lingers at the fringes of almost every scene in this penetrating novel."
"booklovers.gather.com": "This reader was awed by Winton's ability to craft the written word, and his fierce desire to explore human nature. I was certainly not feeling a need to visit the place that Winton took me, but I am changed for the better. Breath, a metaphor for life itself. So simple it seems, but so fragile it remains, so easily stopped."

Short notices

"Jenny's Reading Blog": "I couldn't understand why this book hadn't been marketed to teenagers until I got to the last few chapters. It was a teenage rites of passage novel with a very dark and out of their depth twist. I suddenly thought I really would not like my 15 year old reading this, but I couldn't put it down myself."
The "Bookwookey" weblog: "Winton's writing can make the most overworked of themes - adolescent angst - live again. One of the reasons I keep coming back to him as a writer, even when I quake in my boots after reading some scenes of abuse in his short stories that I have never gotten out of my mind, is because his musicianship with my language can make me hear and see things as if for the first time."
"The Houseboat of Decadence" weblog: "I have now finished Breath by Tim Winton. I enjoyed it and it has retained a place on my bookshelf. It captured things as beautifully as all his other writing has but my writer/editing alarm rang when right towards the end of the book it lost the gentle rhythm he'd created. I suspected that either he or his editor had put the pedal to the metal in some regard towards the end and the story sort of rushed into the conclusion. His books don't usually trip over and land in a heap like this so I suspect that the whisper I'd heard that he hadn't written a book for some years perhaps had put some pressure on."
"The Real Bookish" weblog :"Reading Tim Winton's Breath is as if plunging into the water, having a good swim, and then re-immerge, feeling refreshed. This is one of the most beautifully written books I have read. Winton's writing is magical; I finished it in two sittings despite the limited time I have for reading."
"Otago Daily Times": "I read less Australian fiction than I should, but this 40-something chap once again had me spellbound, reading Breath over the breakfast table, on the bus, way too late at night, finishing it on the second day...Winton writes with a sense of passion and authenticity that even a non-surfer like me can appreciate, bringing to the page the redemptive beauty of the sport."

Interview

"The Age:

Surfing, says Tim Winton, is not the sort of activity that's an easy fit with a literary readership. "Adultery might be," he muses. So he's been surprised and delighted by the extraordinarily rapid success of his latest novel, Breath. The risky adventures of teenage boys surfing off the Western Australian coast, the thrill and the compulsion and the damage done, have struck a mysterious chord with readers and reviewers in London, New York, Toronto and Holland.

Other

Winton is patron of the Australian Marine Conservation Society, and he recently joined forces with a number of other artists to participate in an auction to raise funds for "the marine charity's campaign to stop targeted shark fishing on the Great Barrier Reef."

Robert Dessaix Interview

Robert Dessaix, author of such works as Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev and the novels Night Letters and Corfu, returns with a new work, Arabesques: A Tale Of Double Lives. As the book is due for release on October 1st, the author is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Helen Greenwood. He describes the book as:

"A conversation about travels and reveries", as he says in his introduction, might do. Less pithy but more accurate would be: "Travels with some friends in the footsteps of famous French author Andre Gide."

"The publisher likes the word memoir," Dessaix says, "because sales and marketing know how to spell it. So they call it travel memoir and I suppose it is. [But] I'm really travelling in my head as much as through the world."

[snip]

Dessaix doesn't go on the road with Gide as a biographer or as the kind of cultural tourist who tracks down plaques on buildings. "I travel in order to experiment with who I am," says Dessaix, who lives in a large house near Hobart. As he moves around, from Portugal and France to Algeria and Morocco, he muses, questions and imagines. Love, eros, intimacy, friendship and marriage are in his sights - and he stalks his quarries like a man making a nature documentary about a rare and exquisite beast. Dessaix, like Christopher Isherwood, is the camera.

Kathy Lette Profile

Kathy Lette, author of Puberty Blues, Mad Cows, How to Kill Your Husband and the upcoming To Love, Honour and Betray (Till Divorce Do Us Part), is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Lucy Cavendish.

But while thousands of women love Lette's books and the endless punning (she is the mistress of "tongue-fu", as she calls it), she has her critics.

Years ago she got mauled by the broadcaster Melvyn Bragg on the Radio 4 program Start The Week. One theory often bandied around about Lette is that she is a feisty, ballsy broad who talks about sex incessantly and loudly because she has an inferiority complex and, consequently, is always trying to shock.

Lette rolls her eyes when I tell her this. "Oh, yeah," she says. "When I came over from Australia with Geoffrey it caused such a stir that everything pales in comparison. I'm used to the fact that the English upper class have a degree in condescension."

Kate Grenville Interview

Kate Grenville was interviewed by Kerry O'Brien on ABC1 last night, and the video of that interview is available on the programs's website. Be aware, though, that it may not remain there for very long.

Kate Grenville Profile

With her new novel, The Lieutenant, about to be published, Kate Grenville is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Matthew Condon.

Despite her enviable backlist, including Lilian's Story, Dark Places, Joan Makes History and The Idea of Perfection (winner of the Orange Prize), the novel about convict William Thornhill and his family scratching out a new life in the earliest days of white Australia carried her into a new literary stratosphere.

However, it also altered her view of herself and her work.

"The more important transformation was the inner journey that I went through which gave me a sense that I belong here in Australia," she says by phone from her home in Canberra.

"That my obligation, as well as my desire, was to understand more, to find out more, to open myself up to its past.

"I think before, like many Australians, and at some deep level, I was looking overseas, thinking of myself as some sort of European.

"I really don't any more."

The Lieutenant is Grenville's second window into the origins of NSW settlement, and is as positive and touching as The Secret River is sad and brutal. Grenville said the two books formed a mirror image, are "kind of yin and yang".

Clive James Watch #9

Cultural Amnesia

In "The New York Sun", Allen Barra brings the book by James into his musings on Tony Curtis: "Many a highbrow raised a brow high last year when the critic Clive James, in his book Cultural Amnesia, included just three movie actors among his selections of the most significant cultural figures of the century. They were Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, and ... Tony Curtis...That's right. Not Brando or Olivier or even John Wayne, but the Jewish kid from the Bronx, Bernie Schwartz -- the guy who wore a dress in his most popular movie and whose most famous line in a film can't be recited without inciting snickers: 'Yonder lies the castle of my fad-dah.'"

In Edinburgh

Alan Chadwick has a chat with James before "Clive James in Conversation" and "Clive James in The Evening" featured at the Edinburgh Festival.
The "Broadway Baby" website did a review "...In Conversation": "..if you want to spend an hour drawn into a space where you feel that you would like to pull up a chair, sit down with a cuppa and join in with a pair of erudite and intelligent speakers and laugh along with them, you cannot go wrong here."

Essay by James

In "Poetry" magazine, James writes about poems that sparkle: "Any poem that does not just slide past us like all those thousands of others usually has an ignition point for our attention." Touching on Gerald Manley Hopkins, Shakespeare, Amy Clampitt, Larkin, and Auden along the way.

Review by James

James reviews Artists in Exile by Joseph Horowitz for "The Times": "Imagine Balanchine watching a bunch of cheerleaders and you've got this book in a flash. Vignettes are its basic strength, as was bound to be true. The subject of the twentieth-century European artists in exile is too big for one book...Joseph Horowitz gets the story into a single volume, Artists in Exile, by concentrating on a single destination, America, and even then he trims the field. His subtitle 'How refugees from twentieth-century war and revolution transformed the American performing arts' leaves out the writers, painters, photographers and architects, which means we aren't going to hear much about any of the Mann clan, and nothing at all about Mondrian, Ernst, LĂ©ger, Moholy-Nagy, Mies, Gropius, Andreas Feininger, Lyonel Feininger ... but let's stop."

In Sydney

James has been in Sydney, of late, hosting the Sydney Symphony's "Movie Music: Crime Time", featuring the scores of many of Hollywood's greatest composers. Helen Barry reviewed the show for "Australian Stage". As did the "allrite rite" weblog, who thought that James "wasn't in good form tonight, stumbling over his words at times and appearing quite tired. He only truly came alive for political quips." And while he is in Sydney, James will be Guest Editor of "Time Out (Sydney)". The magazine runs a small editorial from the author along with a reading list of recent James material.

Other

You might recall that James used to write the lyrics for Pete Atkin songs. If you stumble across "Midnight Voices" - the Pete Atkin web forum - you'll find that Rob Spence recently delivered a paper on James's lyrics to an academic conference in Denmark. Seems to have gone down rather well.

Susan Johnson Interview

Susan Johnson, author of Life in Seven Mistakes, is interviewed by Jane Sullivan for "The Age".

Her work has been acclaimed, shortlisted for many awards, published in Australia, the US, Europe and Britain. Yet she feels underappreciated, especially in her own country [snip] The problem, as Johnson sees it, is that she writes the kind of book (literary but also accessible) that is not recognised or rewarded by the Australian literary community.

"In the US, there's a greater community of writers like me: Anne Tyler, Ann Patchett, Geraldine Brooks, even Jonathan Franzen. But here, there isn't the critical support for my kind of writing, it's almost not taken seriously, and I'm becoming very aware of that at my age."

So she's relieved and delighted that her new novel, Life in Seven Mistakes, has had a good reception in Australia. "I'm really thrilled that this time I've had new young reviewers who seem to get it."

Peter Carey Watch #8

Review of His Illegal Self

Gavin McLean in "Otago Daily Times": "Carey jumps around with flashbacks and changes of narrative voice, but although there is some masterful dialogue and a couple of good scenes, he somehow doesn't quite pull it all together."

Other

Carey features in the second Faber podcast. The "News from the Boston Becks" weblog picks Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang as one of its top 25 novels of the 21st century. Seems a little early for such lists.
Wesley Stace picks the same novel for his "top 10 ventriloquism books" in the "Guardian". I don't think he's talking about stuffed puppets here.
And Colum McCann picks My Life as a Fake as one of "Top 10 novels on poets" for the same newspaper. The operatic version of Bliss will premiere in 2010, from Opera Australia.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize, the "Guardian" asked a judge from each year to discuss the inside story of how the winner was decided. Blake Morrison writes about 1988, and Philip Hensher contemplates 2001.

Ten Years Ago

Caryn Jones reviewed Jack Maggs for "The New York Times".
Carey published an essay in the Travel section of "New York Magazine", titled "Sydney Side Up".

Twenty Years Ago

Berryl Bainbridge reviewed Oscar and Lucinda for "The New York Times".
And the author was awarded the Booker Prize for this same novel.

Stefan Laszczuk Profile

Christopher Bantick interviews Stefan Laszczuk for "The Courier-Mail".

Laszczuk says that the genesis for the story, understandably, came from some of his experiences. Still, he makes the point, that it is not an autobiography.

"Originally, it was going to be the story of one person who worked in a bowling alley. This is not heavily autobiographical, but I guess after over 250,000 words cut down to 70,000 words, there was a lot of shifting of the scenes," he says. "It's a book which is imaginative but with some elements of my life recalled. The novel was written to a predetermined structure as part of a PhD thesis."

The tone of the novel is often comic, with some moments of pensive reflection. By writing about two characters, which are suggestive of being basically dysfunctional people, Laszczuk says that he was influenced by writers who know how to hook readers.

Laszczuk's latest novel is the Vogel Award winning I Dream of Magda

Robert Gray Profile

Robert Gray, winner of the Patrick White Award in 1990 and author of an autobiography titled The Land I Came Through Last, is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Valerie Lawson.

Patrick White once accused Gray of writing too much about trees. But it was Gray's instinctive, early connection to the natural world that led to his eventual success as a poet. As well, that helped him survive the burden of his home life.

His father was a drunk and his mother a devout Jehovah's Witness, a religion Gray describes as "dolorous, dreary and puritanical". With those parents and an accompanying posse of eccentric aunts and uncles, "people expect me to be neurotic", Gray says, but "I think I'm very normal".

We meet at his Rose Bay apartment, which is light and white and scattered with delicate sculptures of female nudes, the work of his partner, Dee Jones. The stylish interior is hers, Gray says. If it were up to him, he would live in a spartan room, such as the philosopher, Wittgenstein, preferred - minimum furniture, card tables, shadeless light bulbs.

Wittgenstein. Now that's a name that doesn't usually bob up in an interview but Gray's conversation is a compendium of references, quotations, allusions, and similes. Within the first few minutes, he quotes Siegfried Sassoon and Wallace Simpson and goes on to Dr Johnson, Baudelaire, Sartre, Chekhov, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Hemingway, a roll-call of writers, reflecting a life spent with his nose in a book, not only at home, but during 20 years of working in bookshops.

J.M. Coetzee Watch #10

Various Web Notes

The reviews of the Philip Glass opera Waiting for the Barbarians, based on Coetzee's novel of the same name, continue with this Steven Ritter piece in "Audiophile Audition".
In "The Guardian", Tim Parks picks the top 10 20th century political novels, which includes Life and Times of Michael K., but nothing by Orwell, which seems a little strange.
Back in 2005, in the same paper, Segun Afolabi picked the same novel as one of the top 10 "on the move" books.
In an essay about the business of book blurbs in "The New York Times", Rachel Dinadio notes that Coetzee may not talk to the media but he is rather keen on providing quotes for bookcovers.
Coetzee has paid tribute to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died on August 3rd, calling him "a colossus of our times" and "a great Russian patriot".
In a review of The Pages by Murray Bail in "The Guardian", Hermoine Lee finds "The tone of Bail's oblique, demanding, intelligent, sardonic work reminds me of JM Coetzee's cryptic narratives, where the reader is never sure how far to invest in the characters."

Five Years Ago

David Lodge reviewed Elizabeth Costello in "The New York Review of Books".

This novel (as one must call it for want of a better word) requires, and rewards, at least a second reading, but even then its import remains ambiguous, partly because of the way it mixes and transgresses generic conventions. Elizabeth Costello consists of eight chapters and a postscript, though the chapters are called "Lessons" (whether they are lessons for the central character or for the reader is not made clear -- perhaps both). Six of the Lessons have appeared in print before, which is not in itself remarkable, but two of them have been published previously as an independent work, which is unusual. These were the Tanner Lectures, a series dedicated to the discussion of ethical and philosophical topics, which Coetzee gave at Princeton University in 1997-1998, under the title "The Lives of Animals."
[snip]
Coetzee has never sought popularity or celebrity. His books are always unsettling, unexpected, and uncomforting. He seems a rather aloof figure in the contemporary literary world, who seldom gives interviews, and often declines to collect his prizes in person. But he is one of the few living writers routinely described as "great."
Also in the same magazine, a month or so previously, Coetzee reviewed The Pickup and Loot and Other Stories, both by Nadine Gordimer.
At the heart of the novel of realism is the theme of disillusionment. At the end of Don Quixote, Alonso Quixana, who had set out to right the wrongs of the world, comes home sadly aware not only that he is no hero but that there are no more heroes. As stripper-away of convenient illusions and unmasker of colonial bad faith, Gordimer is an heir of the tradition of realism that Cervantes inaugurated.
[snip]
With the end of apartheid and the relaxation of the ideological imperatives that under apartheid had overshadowed all cultural affairs, Gordimer was liberated from such self-laceration. Her latest fiction shows a welcome readiness to pursue new avenues and a new sense of the world.

Clive James Watch #8

Short Notices

Steve in Brisbane writes about Unreliable Memoirs (the first volume) on his weblog "Opinion Dominion", and finds it to be "laugh out loud funny".

Five Years Ago

James reviews Aldous Huxley by Nicholas Murray in "The New Yorker".

Shining a light in [Huxley's] eyes is a good way to start, because his eyesight, or lack of it, ruled his life more than he was willing to let on. He could talk about a wall-size Veronese as if he could see it in a single glance. Actually, he had to look at it a few square inches at a time. Chief among the many merits of Nicholas Murray's new biography, "Aldous Huxley" (St. Martin's; $29.95), is that it appreciates the full weight of his early tragedies without overdoing the retroactive prediction of their effects on his future behavior. But underdoing it would have been a grievous fault. One of the tragedies was the early loss of his beloved mother, another was the loss of a beloved brother; but those were merely devastating. What happened to his eyes changed the way he saw the world. Later on, as a grown man, he had to read about the discovery of antibiotics by holding his face very close to the page. Had they arrived earlier, his disease, an inflammation of the cornea, would have been cured instantly. As things were, he was left at the age of sixteen with only one eye functioning, and that only partly. He was one of Eton's star pupils, but from then on nothing was effortless.

Clive James on YouTube

James was interviewed leading up to the announcement of the Orwell prize earlier this year. Part 1 runs for 10 minutes, and part 2 for a touch over 7. And James's acceptance speech is also available.

Other

Clive James's book Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time has been shortlisted for the non-fiction category of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

Helen Garner Watch #5

Reviews of The Spare Room

Susie Boyt in "The Financial Times" : "Delivered in an almost conversational tone, this is an unsettling and skilled work that raises important questions about the process of dying and what caring well for the dying requires. Is the etiquette of death yet to be devised - and ought there to be one? We sometimes behave differently with those facing death - perhaps being economical with the truth orplacating at every turn. Maybe something in us alters or we lower our standards when it comes to caring for the terminally ill. Do we create new rules for ourselves - and is this kindness or cowardice? The Spare Room doesn't shirk from such awful enquiries."

Kate Bateman in "The Irish Times": "The book itself is a little beauty, nice to hold with beautiful end-papers and a silk marker to hold your place...A most appealing feature of this novel is the elegance and taut style of the narrative voice as she gives expression to large and small questions - friendship, death, tolerance, truthfulness, and the work of the day. The authentic, down-under voice sustains the work through thoughtful and dialogue sequences."

Short Notices

"The Resident Judge of Port Phillip" weblog: "I loved the embeddedness of this book within Melbourne suburbia, and her confidential and warm tone --like a good, satisfying talk with an old friend."

"Dovegreyreader" : "Susan Hill suggested I read this one and also told me to look carefully at the very clever ending, which I did and yes, how very clever it is. I won't divulge because then you can watch out for it too, it's more about style than plot but such a clever way for a writer to preserve for posterity a moment of utter guilt, trapped like the insect in the amber. Regardless of what may happen next, nothing will assuage Helen's agony over her decision, one that tests her innermost feelings about the bonds of friendship to the very limits and Helen Garner has captured it with utter precision."

The "Nice Lady Doctor" weblog: "In the few hours I was reading it, I learnt more about the psychological effects of a terminal diagnosis on the patient and on his or her carer, than I have in some years as a doctor. It's such a human piece of writing, and so full of affection and humour."

Other

You'll know by now that The Spare Room did not make the Booker longlist. Jamie Byng, publisher of Canongate who released the book in the UK, was not at all impressed by the omission and had a few things to say about it - about 7th comment down. In particular he took a shot at a thriller that had been included. Needless to say, some reaction ensued. Byng followed this up on another site.

Andy Griffiths Interview

Jo Case interviews Andy Griffiths on the Readings bookshop weblog. Griffiths is the author of those modern classics, The Day My Bum Went Psycho, and The Big Fat Cow That Went Kapow!.

My son pointed that out to me recently, that in your books, bad behaviour never turns out well. I wonder if the kids get the morality of the tale more than the grown-ups.

He must be very perceptive. Because most radio hosts, I've been doing interviews with over the past few weeks start with "there's no educational value and no morality in these books, they're just wild".

Very early on I realised that if Andy's playing all these pranks on people and succeeding, he'd actually be a very unlikable character. So, I've said he can play any joke no matter how horrible, as long he's the one who ultimately suffers. And I think we know, on a subconscious level, that that's fair game, that we can enjoy that. Because nobody's getting hurt, except the person who deserves it. Whereas if you push a little old lady over and make her slip on a banana skin, it's funny to a degree, but it's Funniest Home Videos. It's funny until the bit where you cut the tape and show them in pain. I wrote a story about that actually. "Unfunniest Home Videos" [in the latest Just Shocking]. I thought Andy would be the kind of kid who would film his friend Danny having an accident to win the money. And then the formula is, how is this going to backfire so he's the one who ends up getting hurt?

Sofie Laguna Interview

Sofie Laguna, best known for the children's books Too Loud Lily and Bird and Sugar Boy, has just published her first novel for adults, One Foot Wrong. As that book hits the bookshops she is interviewed by Sherril Nixon for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

"What is satisfying is the fact that adult fiction gets a lot more attention in the media and, whether we're conscious of it or not, children's fiction gets dismissed as less important and less sophisticated and it requires less talent," Laguna says. "I am a person who just doesn't see the division so clearly." Her latest offering has certainly received instant accolades - local reviews have described it as masterful, absorbing and authentic, and it has sold into overseas markets including the US, Italy, Russia, Germany and Spain. The film rights were also sold before Laguna had put the finishing touches on One Foot Wrong and a team of producers connected with the horror movies Saw and Wolf Creek are working to bring it to the pre-production stage next year. Laguna wrote the screenplay earlier this year while simultaneously completing her book, a process that allowed her to sharpen the novel and ratchet up the tension. She is thrilled at comparisons with Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time and Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, and even wonders if there's a little of Stephen King's Carrie or Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit unconsciously influencing her child narrator.

Jack Heath Profile

As his third young adult novel Money Run is published, Jack Heath is interviewed for "The Courier-Mail" by Nathan Sauer.

With Heath's ability to conquer the best-selling list of Australian authors, and to write three books in only a few years, it is easy to forget this novelist's youth.

But when he talks about being intimidated by a room full of teenage girls, you are reminded just what a young talent he really is.

Heath says that, at his age, researching his books is one part of the writing process he really enjoys.

"I get to do all sorts of training, which is always fun," he says. "I recently did firearm training which is something most people don't get to do. But that's part of my job, so I'm very lucky."

While he has been on the Australian literary scene for years, Heath is quick to deny that he's a veteran. He says that all you need to become a novelist is pen, paper and ideas.

Tom Keneally Watch #5

Short Notices

The reading group based around the Blue Mountains City Library weren't overly impressed with The Widow and Her Hero, finding it "is not a great book to read. Thin characterization and an obsession with biography not story."

Philip Squires is disappointed with Towards Asmara: "As a process, the experience was strewn with beauty, vivid images and arresting phrases. The author, for instance, described desert vegetation ready to burst into life at the first 'rumour' of moisture. The writing style has a quirky inventiveness that regularly surprises. Where Towards Asmara eventually breaks down, however, is its inability to take the reader past the credibility hurdle that spans observer and participant."

Other

Timberlake Wertenbaker's play, "Our Country's Good", based on Keneally's novel The Playmaker, was recently revived in Sydney's Darlinghurst Theatre. Mark Hopkins reviewed the production for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

Lisa Hannett has come across a new book, Ancestral Narratives by Chad Habel, which "explores how ancestral connections are narrated in both history and fiction written by Irish-Australian authors Thomas Keneally and Christopher Koch. It argues that ancestry allows people to imaginatively inhabit the historical period their ancestor lived in, but more importantly, to identify with their ancestor(s). Keneally focuses on the development of national identity through ancestry, while Koch is more concerned with the inheritance of particular constructions of masculinity."

And don't forget that Keneally's novel The Widow and Her Hero, has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award in the fiction category.

Five Years Ago

Keneally was involved in demonstrations against the then Australian government's refugee policies.
Office of Innocence was named a notable book of 2003 by "The New York Times".
Keneally wrote that writing about other cultures is a risky business, especially if you attempt it from their perspective.

Sean Williams Interview

Gary Reynolds interviews
Adelaide author Sean Williams on the "Concept Sci-fi" website.

How do you approach the art of writing a novel? What techniques do you use in novel design/planning and editing/ revising?

The birth of a novel is marked with fireworks, but that's not the real miracle. Ideas are cheap, just like conceptions: it's what happens next that really matters. Every now and again an idea comes along that's so dense with possibility it has its own gravity. Other, lesser ideas are drawn to it, one by one, and pretty soon the agglomeration hits critical, unstoppable mass. Once the boulder starts rolling down the hill (to careen wildly to another metaphor) I know it's time to start taking some serious notes. Not to start writing the actual story, because I don't really know what the story is yet; I just think I do, like those mornings you wake up sure you have an entire dream in your head, but the moment you try to put it into words, it evaporates forever. Putting pen to paper at this point almost certainly guarantees an unhappy result, as the untamed thing blunders its way downhill, through power lines and unsuspecting villages, leaving a trail of devastation and dead-ends in its wake. I need to understand it better before even considering taking a ride on its back. I need, first, to be sure I can direct it where I want to go.

Murray Bail Interview

Was it just me or did Murray Bail's new novel, The Pages, not receive the attention it was probably due? Maybe the timing of the release was poor, given this seems to be award season: Man Booker, Victorian Premier's, Prime Minister's, Queensland Premier's, Age Book of the Year. Anyway, the "Entertainment" weblog, from "The Sydney Morning Herald", interviews the author about the new book.

"It's an awful era in a sense because it's the age of narcissism. It's probably worse than global warming," says Murray Bail, leaning over his macchiato with theatrical gloom.

"It must have something to do with the flood through every part of society of popular culture, of film, photography, television and performance. All this 'look at me' stuff. People don't read as much, they can't write; you get film stars giving their views on everything. It's quite serious but nothing can be done about it. As soon as you complain you look like an antique."

...

Ten years sounds a long time between books but Bail has not been idle.

"This seems to be a ghastly pattern: I started another novel and spent 18 months, maybe two years on it, then I put it aside. It's not to say I won't go back to it. It was nothing but a man and woman talking and I thought, aside from the difficulty, I was sick of men and women talking anyway but there had to be more underneath. The same thing happened with Eucalyptus. I spent a couple of years mucking around with a book that I wasn't comfortable with. I chucked that one out."

The aborted film adaptation of Eucalyptus - which was to feature Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman - is also mentioned. And that reminds me that I have read reports that Kidman is interested in this new novel. Well, she is reported to have met the author a few times. Which might be as much about the previous as The Pages.

And just before you start thinking I trawl the "Actress Archives" on a regular basis looking for snippets like this, it was the Murray Bail reference that brought it to my attention.

Phillip Gwynne Profile

Phillip Gwynne, author of Deadly, Unna? which was adapted for the screen under the title Australian Rules, is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Keith Austin. The writer's new novel is a crime thriller set in Darwin.

The plot of the new book concerns a body found in a billabong and the main protagonist is Dusty Buchanon, a female Northern Territory Police Force detective who has two dogs and drives a beaten-up ute. Interestingly, one of Gwynne's sisters, Colleen Gwynne, is a cop in the Northern Territory Police Force who has two dogs and drives a beaten-up ute. "Yes," he says, "my sister is a detective in Darwin. Well, she's a commander now. She was in charge of the [Peter] Falconio case, so she's not just a PC Plod, she's fairly high up.

Susan Johnson Interview

Matthew Condon has interviewed author Susan Johnson, for "The Courier-Mail", as her new novel, Life in Seven Mistakes, becomes available.

"As I went along I realised I was going to be writing a whole life virtually from birth to death in various guises with members of this family," Johnson says. "I started to think about the whole notion of the seven ages of man and around the idea of life as a big mistake.

(The novel has, as one of its epigraphs, the quote from Shakespeare's As You Like It: "And one man in his time plays many parts, His act being seven ages.")

"I had a notion very early that we all go through life and we make these choices and decisions and we're acting in a rational mode, but in fact my experience of existence is that our choices and how we live are acted out on a deeply irrational level and we don't know how we live.

"I kept the idea that life, in essence, is like one long series of mistakes in the sense that we bumble through and we really don't know what we're doing."

Geraldine Brooks Watch #7

Short Notices

"The Hindu Literary Review" on People of the Book: "A gripping, intricate account by Geraldine Brooks of how a very rare, ancient prayer book was restored."
The "A Life in Books" weblog on Year of Wonders: "Anna's story doesn't end with the plague, and where she ends her journey is both surprising and satisfying, especially since it doesn't always appear that the story will take the turns it does."
The "Garish & Tweed" weblog enjoyed People of the Book, but wish it had been written by someone else. Which is a review point that you don't come across very often.
The "endomental" weblog found March "fascinating, if overblown".
Rebecca Adler, on the "The Inside Cover" weblog, seems to have really enjoyed Year of Wonders: "When I first saw this book I knew it was going to be an easy read, merely because of its length (only 336 pages!). What I didn't know was how much I'd enjoy reading it. This book packed in a ton of information, along with many vivid scenes. Time and again I found myself being shocked by how much I learned from this book and how many different places/people were described in so few pages. Brooks is an amazing writer for both her economy of words and her ability to tell a story well."
"The life domestic" weblog went on a bit of a Brooks-reading spree after "reading and loving March."
The "A Book a Week" weblog has a look at Year of Wonders.
Megan Michelle on Year of Wonders: "This is one of my all time favourite books, by an author whose work I enjoy every time. Obviously I love this book. Except for the epilogue that is. I find it completely incongruous with the rest of the book. Every time I reread this book I declare that I'm going to stop before the epilogue. I never actually do though, and always end up annoyed that I didn't stop."
RabbitReader on March: "It is hard to believe the horror that must have been the Civil War, but Brooks does a masterful job of telling this story in a 19th century voice complete with semi-colons. March compares favorably with the tone provided by Ken Burns' quoting of letters and diaries in his marvelous documentary on the Civil War."

Other

If you're looking for more information about the author and her books you can find it on her website.

David Brooks Profile

After his novel The Fern Tattoo was shortlisted for this year's Miles Franklin Award, author David Brooks returns to poetry with the release of his new collection, The Balcony. The author is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald".

"I have been struggling, trying to shift myself out of some very old and deeply lodged ideas about how I should write poems. I have been trying to find a new voice - I mean, I didn't know that I was trying to find a new voice, I didn't even know I was lodged in some old ideas of the poem - but now with what has happened with these poems, I at last know that I am speaking as myself.

"I also realise now that at last, after all this time, I am not afraid of speaking as myself. I realise that I hadn't before. But now I know that there is nothing else you can do: you come to a point in your life where you don't worry about how you seem to other people. That is where I am now. That really is a huge relief, getting over yourself. And I am getting over myself at last."

Tim Winton Watch #5

Reviews of Breath

John Repp in "The St Petersburg Times": "Despite its flaws, Breath should enhance Winton's American reputation. It's a fast read that digs deep, proving once again that in the hands of a skilled writer, the metamorphosis from child to adult can yield fresh discoveries."

Stephanie Johnson in "The New Zealand Herald": "Breath's characters and story hang in the reader's mind for days after finishing. Strangely and beautifully, it resonates more as a lengthy poem rather than a novel, perhaps because the notion behind it is so metaphorical and profound: breath and the fear of losing it. This is despite the voice not being particularly poetic and the sometimes heavy-handed Australianisms."

Ian Mcgillis in "The Calgary Herald": "In a novel whose characters are compelled to test the limits of the flesh, much depends on Winton being able to convey some of that rush, and he does."

Darryl Whetter in "The Vancouver Sun": "For all its mid-sized accuracies, Breath doesn't fully transcend surfing or its protagonist to make a lasting, universal statement...One consequence is the mixed blessing of the
novel's close, a slippery dénouement in which intelligent emotional confessions are made but too many years and crises slide by too quickly. In short, we see little connection between the adolescent surfer who risks his life in one spot but not another, who is loyal in some ways but not others, and the articulate but distant adult he becomes."

Short Notices

MetroSantaCruz.com on Breath: "Despite the potential richness of this kind of material, most surfers write novels about as well as most novelists surf. Here's the exception."
"The New Yorker" on Breath:"Winton's latest novel is both a hymn to the beauty of flying on water and a sober assessment of the costs of losing one's balance, in every sense of the word."
"Word Lily" weblog on Cloudstreet: "I loved the setting and all the book's interactions with it. It's a novel place for me, and I love 'visiting' new places. I really was drawn in by the novel's place...This book seemed a bit crass to me. It talks about sex in low ways. Not titillating, just a little bit disturbing."

Interview

Lisa Wrenn in "PopMatters".

The west coasts of Australia and the United States have much in common, says Tim Winton. In fact, that's an international phenomenon that includes left coasts from Africa to Ireland. "Everyone on the east coasts look at the westerners as a bit more wild, a bit more gauche," explains the Perth-based writer, over tea in San Francisco. "Sometimes, it's more romantic, much more of a frontier." And, as in the U.S., more politically progressive? "And that's where the analogy falls down," he says with a laugh. "In the Australian sense, the West can be more like the American South."
Other

Tim Winton talks about The Tree of Man by Patrick White.

Helen Garner Watch #4

Reviews of The Spare Room

Neel Mukherjee in "The Times": "Only great fiction demands us to reset our moral compass and look at our value coordinates all over again. The Spare Room achieves this by relentlessly working out the dimensions behind the simple words: 'Death will not be denied. To try is grandiose. It drives madness into the soul. It leaches out virtue. It injects poison into friendship, and makes a mockery of love.'"

Olivia Laing in "The Observer": "How we die and how we stand to be with those who are dying are serious questions, but even at the most painful moments Garner maintains a characteristic lightness of touch, a combination of wit and lyricism that is immensely alluring." She concludes that this is an "extraordinary, exhilarating novel".

Stevie Davies in "The Independent": "In Australia, Helen Garner has a controversial reputation for writing fiction as if it were memoir. This compulsively readable, searing novel narrates the author's own nursing of a close friend through terminal cancer. Author and narrator are called Helen. So is this a fictionalised memoir? Not really. It's a fiction about truth; about witnessing to truth -- and, disturbingly, about enforcing it upon the dying. A hymn to friendship tested to its limits, the novel is also a manifesto and a confession."

Claire Allfree in "MetroLife": "Garner tackles what could be a dangerously mawkish subject with a cool head and a piercing eye, cutting through the sentimental clutter to the bones of what matters: the selfishness of grief and suffering; the denial and courage that death inspires; and the power of love to keep on going."

Short Notices

Jane Shilling in "The Telegraph": "Garner writes with the cool authority of personal experience, and apprehends Helen and Nicola's loving and warring worlds in such fine and sensuous detail that pain itself is rendered beautiful."

Other

After going to see "the Children's Bach" performed by the ChamberMade Opera, fibee71 wonders if Garner has any joy in her life. And Jack Teiwes reviews the performance for "Australian Stage Online".

Clive James Watch #7

Five Years Ago
Clive James on "The Good of a Bad Review" in "The New York Times" (7 Sept, 2003): "Adverse book reviews there have always been, and always should be, lest a tide of good intentions rise to drown us all in worthy sludge. At their best, they are written in defense of a value, and in the tacit hope that the author, having had his transgressions pointed out, might secretly agree that his book is indeed lousy. All they attack, or seem to attack, is the book. But a snark blatantly attacks the author -- not simply to retard his career but to advance the reviewer's, either by proving how clever he is or simply by injuring a competitor. Since a good book can certainly be injured by a bad review, especially if the critic is in a position of influence, the distinction between the snark and the legitimately destructive review is well worth having."

Ten Years Ago
James spends 200,000 UKP to build himself a ballroom in his London apartment - "Sunday Mirror, 11 Oct 1998.

Other
It is possible to get inspiration for poetry from the most unlikely sources.
James will be at the Edinburgh Festival with his show "Clive James in the Evening", Aug 19-24, Assembly @ Queen's Hall. "The Times" newspaper lists it as one of the 50 "Shows It Would be a Crime to Miss".
Adrian Bregazzi gets stuck into James, on the weblog "Suddenness May Happen", concerning his treatment of Borges in Cultural Amnesia. "The Spotsyltuckian" weblog sees James's latest book as a means to an end: "In Cultural Amnesia, Clive James presents a hundred short biographies, which are anything but compendiums of births, degrees earned, accomplishments made; they are, instead, ruminations which compel a reader to follow the most intriguing clues -"

Alison Goodman Interview

Alison Goodman, author of Singing the Dogstar Blues, which won the Best Young Adult Novel Award in the Aurelais Awards in 1998, is interviewed by Jason Nahrung in "The Courier-Mail". The author's new fantasy novel, The Two Pearls of Wisdom, has just been published by HarperCollins.

The society of Two Pearls is drawn from numerous influences, with Goodman having had a Japanese aunt whose influence is plain in (Killing the Rabbit, the author's crime novel from 2007), and also drawing on Goodman's travel experiences in Asia. It's not surprising that her book is being compared to Lian Hearn's widely successful Tale of the Otori, set in a mythic Japanese-style universe.

"It's an imagined Asian country which has many sources feeding into it," says Goodman of her universe. "I like not being tied to a specific period. It was fun mixing the cultures and etiquettes.

"I did a lot of reading about China and I've been to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and done a lot of research.

"I love getting a feeling space and how people use it, to see and touch artefacts that people have been using for hundreds of years.

"You can't beat the feeling of holding something in your hand. Sensory detail is very important to me when I'm writing. I like to get sensory specificity.

"I had some lessons with a practice Chinese sword, learnt some moves so I knew what the heft was like. It's very long and curved, I couldn't move my wrists for days.

"But I wanted to know what happens when something stops a sword. My teacher kindly wrapped himself up and allowed me to whack him to get that feeling of hitting something."

The sequel, The Necklace of the Gods is due to be published in 2010.

Tim Winton Watch #4

Reviews of Breath

Carolyn See in "The Washington Post": "Breath, Winton's latest novel, is stunning in the depth of its audacity. Because, when you think about it, breath is our relationship to the cosmos. We breathe in an iota of the universe, we breathe it out; without it, we die. But then why is there something in us that makes us want to hold our breath as kids until we pass out, or makes us just stop breathing while we're sleeping until our rattled partners shake us
awake?"

Jennifer Schuessler in "The International Herald Tribune": "What is it about surfing that inclines so steeply toward the mystical? To the Polynesians who first rode the waves on heavy wooden boards, surfing was a spiritual practice aimed at connecting with the gods of the sea while cementing the power of the nobility, who jealously protected their breaks against incursions by commoners and rivals. The Australian surf legend Nat Young, author of the imposing Complete History of Surfing (along with the more usefully prophylactic Surf Rage), reportedly once tried to register surfing as a religion...Winton's novel succeeds as a tautly gorgeous meditation on the inescapable human addiction to 'the monotony of drawing breath,' whether you want to or not." It's the same review in "The New York Times".

The "Herald Sun" has links to Winton reading extracts from the novel.

The "Book & Reading Discussions Forum" weblog has posted a video of Winton promoting Breath at the Brisbane Town Hall in May.

Short Notices

Chazz W on Breath: "Winton writes with a vivid love and respect for the ocean that is remarkable. Anyone who has ever surfed needs to read this book. But it's not a surfer book, or just a surfer book, by any means. It's a book about breath and breathing: the breath of life and how fragile it is, the thin barrier that separates us in our lives from death. And it's not just a coming of age novel, though it is a heartbreaking and tender one of those. It's a novel of yearning and fear and coping and acceptance and finding
one's place. It's a novel of lost hopes, the loss of innocence, middle age and of coming to terms with the parents we thought we'd never want to become."

Hebdomeros: "In Breath, the eighth novel by two-time Booker nominee, Winton transforms the dangers of surfing and thrill seeking into a powerful metaphor for the transition from childhood to adulthood."

Interviews

Aida Edemariam in "The Guardian":

"Writing a book is a bit like surfing," he said. "Most of the time you're waiting. And it's quite pleasant, sitting in the water waiting. But you are expecting that the result of a storm over the horizon, in another time zone, usually, days old, will radiate out in the form of waves. And eventually, when they show up, you turn around and ride that energy to the shore. It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace. As a writer, you roll up to the desk every day, and then you sit there, waiting, in the hope that something will come over the horizon. And then you turn around and ride it, in the form of a story."
HotPress:
"It can sometimes be a bit of a struggle if you are passionate about story and you like to write about things where something happens," says Winton, a rangy, ponytailed figure who seems a tad constrained by the Dublin hotel conference room he's been corralled in for the day.

"The legacy of modernism," he continues, "is that the more serious you are, the less will happen in the book. There'll be waves of energy, in that sort of Wolfian, Joycean sense, but essentially the less that happens, the better off we'd all be, that's the understanding. And what turned me onto reading as a kid was momentum, the fact that something was going to happen, Robert Louis Stephenson and Mark Twain. It was exciting, and story was really important. You get that from Tolstoy and Dickens.

"But somehow it's as though two world wars was enough to disqualify story forever. Everything had to be this endless pristine interiority. And that's okay, but if you've had a certain kind of a life where you live in a vivid natural environment, then you want to write about that and not feel like you've got to apologise for the fact that you're not essentially writing for some pure, aesthetic, endlessly embellished series of rhetorical questions."

Other

A new portrait of Winton is on display at the Kidogo Gallery in Fremantle: "The oil-painting by local artist Michael Legge-Wilkinson depicts the acclaimed WA author standing with arms folded in front of the turquoise blue coastline of southern Ningaloo Reef."

The "Lockie Leonard" and "Dogstar" television series, based on stories by Winton, have received funding for a second series of each.

Peter Carey Watch #7

Short Notices

In Winnipeg's "UpTown Magazine", Quentin Mills-Fenn provides a short review of His Illegal Self and concludes: "It's a suspenseful story, but at its heart is the beautiful, tortured relationship of Che and Dial. Carey not only masterfully creates a precocious eight-year-old boy, he also describes how two people, even with all the love in the world, can't always say what they know."

The "Complete Review" provides a full round-up of reviews of the novel. Their conclusion: a B+, "Not quite a consensus, but most at least impressed by his dazzle."

Meg, on the "A Snippet a Day" weblog decides that "Jack Maggs is a colonial reimagining I can dig...I prefer it to Great Expectations, the novel that inspired Carey. Not by a lot, but really, Dickens's novel sags at the end. Carey's books don't have that problem (except his first, Bliss)."

We don't see many reviews of Carey's short stories these days, but Leah Cave has a look at The Fat Man in History, the author's first collection, which "operates on the same paradox as that of Shakespeare's wise fool, the only character speaking the truth. To seek reality, you must depart from it. Opting for the absurd and the comical, the eerie coincidence and the flight of fancy, Carey carefully stages each element of the story in order to provide comment on modern society while also reflecting it's elusive nature."

Other

In attempting to answer the question "What makes a good writer?", the "Insightwards" weblog finds that, with Carey, it's the voices: "...doing the various character voices properly takes you more than half the way to being a good writer. Truth is, he does that wonderfully well. His characters are almost real people, I wouldn't be surprised to come across one of them in the flesh in the nearest café around the corner."

In "The Boston Globe" we learn that Geraldine Brooks is reading His Illegal Self, while Carey is reading Helen Garner's The Spare Room. For a second there I thought they were doing a swap.

Alan Wearne Profile

Alan Wearne is one of those Australian poets who, like Les Murray and Dorothy Porter, has tackled the demanding strictures of a verse novel. Wearne took seven years to write The Nightmarkets, his tale of Melbourne, which won a Banjo Award and an Australian Literature Society Gold Medal back in 1987. As his new collection of poetry, The Australian Popular Songbook is published by Giramondo Publishing, the poet is profiled by Caroline Baum in "The Sydney Morning Herald".

He has orchestrated his love of music into The Australian Popular Songbook, a collection with a soundtrack that captures the era of his adult life - popular songs from the charts, refrains and choruses providing a counterpoint to snatches of his own life and the lives of friends and a cast of imagined characters. Pop songs are not what Wearne listens to at home - his "uber hobby" as he calls it, is classical music. His normally diffident demeanour evaporates on the subject of Bob Dylan. "The most overrated person of the 20th century!" he pronounces, screwing his eyes tightly shut, as he often does when making a point.

He has the acute ear of the cultural anthropologist who specialises in urban tribes. Some of the lines in Wearne's latest collection may belong just as well in an episode of Kath & Kim (which he says he has never seen). Words such as "swatvac" and "ridgey didge" may not be normally associated with sonnets but they're there, as are references to Ikea and Target. He peppers the lot with political figures from both sides: Billy McMahon, Don Dunstan, Gough Whitlam, Harold Holt, positively bristling at the suggestion that he is some kind of unofficial poet laureate of the left. "I know where the bullshit stops and starts and it's on the right but I'm not of the left, I'm an individualist, a radical. Sure, on social issues, I am left of centre but I don't like the left's preachy side," he says.

J.M. Coetzee Watch #9

Review of Disgrace

Sam Jordison, of "The Guardian" books blog, found Disgrace to be "didactic, thinly characterised and melodramatic". He concludes that "It's unconvincing, humourless and not at all challenging. In common with too many of these later Booker winners, it provides literature for people who don't really want to put any work in. Everything is spelled out slowly, obviously and at the most basic level."

Other

Tim Ashley of "The Guardian", wasn't overly impressed with Philip Glass's operatic version of Waiting for the Barbarians: "The fundamental problem is that Glass's style sits awkwardly with his subject. His lulling, repetitive phrases assert spiritual and emotional certainty, but preclude the articulation of rage or pain."

On the other hand, Robert Maycock gave the opera four stars (out of five) in "The Independent". And Geoff Brown gave it three stars in "The Times".

On the online "Granta" site, Simon Willis writes about "J.M. Coetzee and His Censors".

Writing under the threat of censorship, Coetzee has said, is 'like being intimate with someone who does not love you', someone waiting for you to slip up, someone who measures your mistakes and then runs to tell their friends. Censorship has long been an obsession of his, but his attitudes have always been marked by subtlety. His essays on the subject, collected in Giving Offense (1996), 'do not,' he wrote, 'constitute an attack on censorship'. Coetzee's tone is always investigative and probing. With humility he wrote that 'I cannot find it in myself to align myself with the censor... the dark-suited, bald-headed figure, with his pursed lips and his red pen'.
"The Times" of South africa has published an extract from Diary of a Bad Year.

In late June, Coetzee appeared at the University of East Anglia in Norwich for the New Writing Worlds festival, and spoke about the "late-apartheid mindset" of South Africa. Boyd Tonkin reports in "The Independent".

The film version of Disgrace, directed by Steve Jacobs and featuring John Malkovich in the lead role, will have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, which runs from September 4 to 13.

Michael MacConnell Interview

With his first novel, Maelstrom, currently on the longlist in the Best First Novel catgeory of the 2008 Ned Kelly Awards, Michael MacConnell, has a new novel titled
Splinter out this week, and is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Keith Austin.

Sitting in a Thai restaurant on the Terrigal beachfront just minutes from his home, MacConnell says the new book begins with his female protagonist dealing with post-traumatic stress caused by the violent denouement of her first outing: "I wanted to work that into the novel because I got a bit tired of characters who can get into a stoush with criminals or terrorists or whatever, throw in a snappy line and then walk away into the sunset and everything's peachy.

"It's not like that, it's nothing like that at all. I tried to insert some of my own experience in there because I had some post-traumatic stress after some incidents at work [working security for RailCorp], some attacks, arrests, that sort of thing. I wanted to show what you go through just as a biological creature, not because you are weak or because you aren't tough or whatever, it just happens, it's unavoidable. So she's suffering a bit from that. And the story's different because it's a kidnapping, or rather a failed kidnapping."

Tom Keneally Watch #4

Short Notices

Juhana Pettersson on Victim of the Aurora: "The interesting thing about Victim of the Aurora is that it talks about sex and sexuality, a topic completely missing from all the period accounts of polar travel in the early 20th century. The book's sense of a historical period is impeccable and the 'uncensored' vibe you get is refreshing."

The "Panorama of the Mountains" weblog reviews Woman of the Inner Sea: "The novel ... is strongly Australian. At once it is personal and as large as the continent. The gleaming cities of the coast are contrasted with the rugged towns of the outback."

"50 Book Challenge" on Schindler's List: "A stunning novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and prison camp Direktor Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden -- Schindler's Jews -- to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil."

Other

A new exhibition in Frankfurt celebrates the 100th anniversary of
Oscar Schindler's birth. Keneally has sold his house of thirty years, and also his vast library of books.

Murray Bail Profile

As Murray Bail's first novel in ten years, The Pages, is about to be published, he is interviewed by Susan Wyndham for "The Age".

Ten years sounds like a long time between books but Bail has not been idle.

"This seems to be a ghastly pattern: I started another novel and spent 18 months, maybe two years on it, then I put it aside. It's not to say I won't go back to it. It was nothing but a man and woman talking and I thought, aside from the difficulty, I was sick of men and women talking anyway but there had to be more underneath.

"The same thing happened with Eucalyptus. I spent a couple of years mucking around with a book that I wasn't comfortable with. I chucked that one out."

Chloe Hooper Interview

Chloe Hooper hit the big time back in 2002 with her debut novel A Child's Book of True Crime, which was shortlisted for a number of awards, including the Orange Prize. Now she returns with The Tall Man, a non-fiction account of the death of Cameron Doomadgee on Palm Island in Queensland. In "The Courier-Mail" she is interviewed by Benjamin Law.

Hooper was on Palm Island at the invitation of Andrew Boe, the lawyer who flew out to represent the Palm Island community pro bono. She'd given Boe her word that if she were invited in by the community, she would stick with the story. "I didn't know it would take so long, (but) I got hooked," she says. "What made me immediately so angry was that such a low price was put on Cameron Doomadgee's life. You can't help thinking: 'What if this were my family?'"
And "The Age" has published an extract from the new book.

Helen Garner Watch #3

Reviews of The Spare Room

Kerryn Goldsworthy writes a long piece about the novel, concentrating on the concept of "Friendship". She has indicated she intends a follow-up posting about "Faith".

Marion McLeod in the "New Zealand Listener".

Helen Garner came to Writers and Readers Week at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington in 2006. She arrived late because a friend in Sydney had died. The Spare Room is the story of that friend's dying, or rather of the time she spent staying with "Helen" in Melbourne while undergoing treatment for advanced cancer. The Spare Room is billed as Garner's first novel in 15 years. So I'm wrong to make this assumption, though the dates certainly fit. And for all I know, much of the detail is invented, though I don't believe that for a minute: this prose has the ring of "reality fiction". Let's just note that similarities between author and narrator abound. Let's call it autobiographical fiction.
Interviews

Kerry O'Brien spoke to the author for ABC TV's "7:30 Report".

KERRY OBRIEN: With everything that you now have behind you and with what you still have to look ahead to, are you content? Has yours been a life not wasted?

HELEN GARNER: I hope. I tell you one thing that makes me feel I haven't wasted my life and that is I've got some grandchildren. You can't overestimate the kind of opening to the future that gives a person, I think. You sometimes think, "Well, OK, that's something I've done and they're walking around over there and when I die they're going to be still walking around over there, God willing" and that's a wonderful feeling of freedom.

Diana Symonds on the Stage Noise website.
Q: When you write "The end" -- or the equivalent -- are you happy?elieved? Sad? Disbelieving?

A: First, disbelieving. When you're writing a book you can get lost in your struggle to make it work. You think you'll never fight your way out. The day I realized I'd finished The Spare Room I sat there staring at the screen. Then I started bawling. Then I felt as light as a feather. I jumped on my bike and rode home. All the way I thought I was going to take off, I was so free. I mean free of duty. It was glorious. It lasted twenty minutes, till I hopped off my bike on the front veranda. Then I felt ordinary again.

Other The ... between bourke 'n' elizabeth ..." website reports on Garner's discussion with Caroline Baum at the Sydney Writers' Festival.

Garner is interviewed as she watches rehearsals of a stage adaptation of her short novel, The Children's Bach.

Garner has no involvement with the project except having given the group her permission to adapt the book and her blessing. "When I walked in there this morning, I suppose I wasn't really expecting to feel anything particular," she says. "I thought that it would be an intellectual experience, but when (one of the main characters) Dexter stood up and sang, this rush of emotion came over me and it plunged me into the past. "Because people that you've written about die. The idea that Dexter, that character that I wrote, that a young man who's young enough to be the real Dexter's son, is now getting up and singing ... that's very thrilling to me."
Slow TV has a streaming video of Helen Garner's talk about
her influences and inspirations from the 2008 Sydney Writers' Festival.

"Crikey" reports on ASIO's loss of focus during the 1970s. As an example there is a copy of part of Helen Garner's file.

Morris Gleitzman Profile

The second volume of a trilogy by Morris Gleitzman, Then, is about to be published and the author is interviewed by Jane Barry for "The Courier-Mail".

"I've always been lucky. I found out early what I was meant to do and it is never a chore," he says. Initially a screenwriter for television, Gleitzman evolved into writing for children more than 20 years ago and hasn't looked back. He says he became conscious a few years ago of needing to "write a book about two fictitious children who were representative of Jewish kids who died in the second world war". "I wanted to record what was the reality for so many of them at that time," he says. Beginning his trilogy with the publication of Once in 2005 and most recently Then, the third and final book Now is planned, though is currently on hold while the author hatches another Cane Toad saga from its larvae. Then and its counterparts are stories, he says, "that are primarily about friendship, which can transcend death and the situations people find themselves in".

Nam Le Profile

Following the attention Australian author Nam Le has been receiving overseas, he is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Michael Williams.

When we talk about his literary influences and the many things he loves to read, he cites poets first of all: Auden and Rilke, Tennyson and Eliot. In fiction, he cites Moby Dick, almost sheepishly confessing that he hadn't read Melville's classic before moving to the US. "I read it when I was living in Provincetown on the Cape [Cod]. There was a motel down the street called Moby Dick; another one around the corner called The White Whale. It felt like the proper place to read it." This awareness of the relationship between place and the act of reading or writing seems appropriate given the peripatetic nature of The Boat. After all, this is a collection that takes its readers from Iowa to Tehran, Hiroshima to small-town Australia. The playful shifting through different geographical settings came about largely by chance, as each story dictated. Setting, Le says, "depended on what happened to be squatting or taking up real estate in my head at the time".

Tara Moss Interview

The "CTV.ca" website interviews Australian crime writer Tara Moss ahead of her next release Siren - out later this year.

"Publishing my first book was so exciting. But no one believed that a model had penned it, let alone cram it with details about forensics," says Moss, who moved to Australia in 1996 after "falling in and out of love." Teeming with slashers, sex and sickos, "Makedde Vanderwall," Moss' hot, crime-solving alter ego, had fans smitten. Critics and Australian newspapers, however, challenged Moss to take a polygraph test to confirm her story and her talent. "I gladly took the test and passed," says Moss. "Now I can say, unlike other authors, that I am a scientifically-proven writer."

Tim Winton Watch #3

Reviews of Breath

Rónán McDonald in the "Times Literary Supplement": "Like Hardy's Wessex or Faulkner's Mississippi, the Western Australian landscape has been consecrated by Tim Winton's fiction. He has been garlanded with literary awards and acclaim in his native Australia, and has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His work is preoccupied with wounded or troubled characters, often haunted by their past, who set out on actual or psychological journeys in search of purpose, meaning and redemption. Dirt Music (2002) depicts a vast, hostile outback in which the individual self is tiny and threatened. In Death, the sea takes on a comparable role as an immense elemental force that simultaneously compels and controls the protagonists...While Breath deals with primal, mythic conflicts -- the clash of wilderness and civilization, self and society, youth and age -- it does not strain for epic effect."

Brian Doyle in "The Oregonian": "...he has actually Written a Masterpiece, the epic 1992 novel Cloudstreet, and if you have Written a Masterpiece, you get to be called a Master...Breath, his first novel since the linked stories that composed The Turning, is not a masterpiece, though it is a wonderfully evocative and believable story of struggle, a coming-of-age story, a tale of a boy who grows up too fast and has to put the shards of himself together again to make a man. A surfing story, a story of sexual awakening, a story of how so often so many of us are so lonely even while so jostled together, it's a powerful book -- sad and hard, in a sense, but filled with a sensory immediacy and deep understanding of how boys, especially, can be both terrified and arrogant at once, frightened and loud, attracted to danger and repelled by order."

Andy Martin in "The Independent": "Unlike just about everyone else, I thought Winton's early work wildly over-written. Like a Dylan Thomas
poem transported to Western Australia and doing hard labour: lots of great vocabulary, but nothing much happening. In Breath, he has finally found an objective correlative, surfing, to carry his tough, visceral lyricism. Winton on a wave is irresistible."

Stephen Abell in "The Telegraph": "Reading Winton's latest novel, Breath, one begins to recognise that his prose is a small-town songline: the dirty, droning music of life in working-class Western Australia; the hum within the lives of people stranded in that 'strange and tough' part of the world."

Kathryn Crim in the "Los Angeles Times": "Winton often locates a transcendent wisdom in nature, letting it guide his analogies to time, space, longing and the sort of existential entrapment that comes from being born into a particular place and culture. This is the recipe for his soaring popularity in his native Australia and also the reason he has garnered an international audience. In his best moments of controlled, evocative storytelling, though, Winton's descriptions eschew metaphor altogether and instead masterfully balance visual imagery with colloquial language. In Breath, the waves underpin the episodic narrative, whose most vivid moments occur at sea. It achieves that essential quality of a short novel: Its poetry becomes its imperative, its motivating and most risky venture."

Tim Winton reads from his novel.

Short Notices

BookOffers website: "With Breath, Tim Winton's writing has attained a new level of mastery. This book confirms his standing alongside Ian McEwan and Philip Roth as one of the major chroniclers of the human condition, a writer of novels that are at the same time simple and profound, relentlessly gripping and deeply moving."

Connie Ogle in "The Miami Herald": "Breath dives deeply into the dangers of addiction to thrills and the nature of fear, friendship, sexual awakening and guilt. Winton, author of Dirt Music and Cloudstreet, eloquently describes the allure of surfing -- even if you have to share the cove with a great white shark -- and the risk of challenging
an unforgiving ocean..."

J.M. Coetzee Watch #8

Reviews of Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005

V.V. in "Business Standard": "What is important to bear in mind is that Coetzee's focus is on particular novels rather than on the authors' lives: we read these essays not as retrospective appreciations but as engagements with contemporary concerns. Coetzee expects fiction to be judged by its relevance to our lives today, not by abstract notions of 'good' and 'bad'. To this extent, these essays would make us go back to writers we haven't read or to re-read them if we have in a new light."

Reviews of Disgrace

Scot McKnight on the "Jesus Creed" weblog: "...the absence of hope that we find in Cry, the Beloved Country, the almost apocalyptic shift in times from Alan Paton's days to J.M. Coetzee's, and the fuller, bolder, balder presence of dark crime created for me a sense of powerlessness and a grim acceptance of harsh realities. The violence against his daughter Lucy is unbelievably accepted into fatalism, a stance that for me betrayed any sense of justice and morality."

The "Redhead Ramble" weblog wasn't too happy with it: "Now, I can see that the writing is very good, that Coetzee is making a comment on life in post-aparteid South Africa. But I found it very cold, everything seemed so sort of mean. What is with all the stuff about dogs? There is not a single person in the novel [whose] actions made any sense to me -- why was everyone just sort of letting stuff happen to them passively. I didn't care at all about David's Byron Operetta. The character of Petrus, annoyed me as much as he did David. Frustratingly, I wanted to know more of the female characters thoughts, so much is left unexplained. The only positive is the novel is short.."

But the "C'est la vie" weblog found it a "fascinating novel with dark undertones".

Reviews of Waiting for the Barbarians

Zakes Mda in the "Boston Review": "Waiting for the Barbarians upset the expectations of many readers and critics who had grown accustomed to documentary representations of South Africa from the country's interpreters. The novel was seen as the height of self-indulgence: life under apartheid demanded that writers create a translucent window through which the outside world could see authentic oppression. Some critics claimed that Coetzee's use of allegory was an escape from South African reality because the novel, set in a nameless empire and lacking specificity of locale and period, was susceptible to an ahistorical and apolitical reading. The question of the author's political commitment was raised not only in response to this novel but all his subsequent ones. Even Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer weighed in that Coetzee's work, and indeed Coetzee himself, abhorred all political and revolutionary solutions. While acknowledging that Coetzee's work was magnificent, and commending his superb and fearless creative energy, she rapped him on the knuckles for a mode of storytelling that kept him aloof from the grubby and tragic events of South Africa."

Other

Gvwr wonders if the author is related to an uncle by the name of Llewellyn Coetzee, who lives in Namibia.
The film version of Disgrace is due for release later this year, and now John Malkovich - who plays the lead in this film - has suggested to award-winning filmmaker Santosh Sivan that he
direct a film adaptation of Waiting for the Barbarians.
Coetzee has been nominated for the South African "Sunday Times" Fiction Literary Prize. Not sure for what, however.

Shirley Hazzard the Greatest?

Bryan Appleyard, of "The Independent", wants to know if Shirley Hazzard is the greatest novelist of the
20th century?

One of her novels, The Transit of Venus, was described to me by a man who knows as "the greatest novel written in the past 100 years". Having read it, I can see his point. Another, The Great Fire, so overwhelmed me that I came close to being unable to read the last three pages. If the last sentence doesn't make you gasp and weep, you are not fully conscious. Yet she is underappreciated. Oh, she has won awards here and there, but somehow she is not routinely listed among the greats of the contemporary novel. It is time to put this right.

Germaine Greer Interview

Elizabeth Renzetti of "The Globe and Mail" interviewed Germaine Greer about her new book, Shakespeare's Wife.

"Someone will say to me, 'Do you know how much you frighten people?' " she says, settling into a wooden bench in the farmhouse's shade. "The only thing I can say is, 'Not enough. Nowhere near enough.' "

This brings us to Shakespeare's Wife, which is in many ways the continuation of a feminist recipe that began simmering with The Female Eunuch, reached a rolling boil in Sex and Destiny, and blew its menopausal lid with The Change. The new book is Greer's attempt to stitch together a portrait of Hathaway from history's crumbling threads, to challenge the "Shakespeare wallahs," who seemed to think that "wife is a four-letter word."

Not surprisingly, she has a theory about why great men's wives are vilified or ignored through history, and it has to do with the keepers of the great men's flames: "They want to believe that wives are menial and don't occupy the psychic space of their subject because they're jealous, I think. "They want to think that if they'd been around drinking in the Mermaid Tavern, Shakespeare would have found them very interesting and then they would have been best buddies. But Shakespeare was tough on sycophants. He would have disliked them to a man."

Clive James Watch #6

Short notices

Peter Robins in "The Telegraph" calls Cultural Amnesia "a great lavatory book". Nice one.

Articles by James

James writes about people behaving badly - people who happen to be famous for one reason or another, in this case Snoop Dogg and Amy Winehouse. And on intervention, and media gaffes.

He also discusses his own website and what he intends to do with it.

Interviews

CBC Radio interviews James about his latest work, Cultural Amnesia.

Other

James will be appearing in a chat show at this year's Edinburgh Comedy festival - it's on the very last line.

Clive James has been presented a Special Award for Writing and Broadcasting at the annual Orwell Prize ceremony.

Andrew Motion, current Poet Laureate, is standing down next year, and Johann Hari, in "The Independent", would like to nominate James for the role. Trouble is, the job's remuneration includes a butt of sherry - which equates to about 700 bottles of the stuff - and James has been off the grog for years.

Nam Le

Every now and then, in the literary field, a writer seems to come from nowhere to be, suddenly, everywhere. The latest example of this is Nam Le, a writer born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, and currently writer-in-residence at Philips Exeter Academy in the US. His first collection of short stories, The Boat, is now on the shelves in Australia. Michael Williams interviewed the author for "The Age".

Vietnam-born, Melbourne-raised Le is warm, direct and frankly surprised at the enthusiasm of his reception. On the phone from New Hampshire, where he is taking part in a fellowship at the Phillips Exeter Academy, he reflects on the trajectory that led him to this point.

"I didn't really start reading and writing short stories in earnest until I came to America. I'd been working on a novel back home and had applied to the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program here with chunks of that novel."

The novel has now been abandoned -- in one interview he described it as "a 700-page spectacular, multi-dimensional failure" -- and I press him to find out what went wrong with it.

He laughs: "You name it mate . . . more than anything it was a structural problem. What happened was I sat down one day, drew up a 20-chapter outline and somehow never gave myself permission to deviate from it. Before long each chapter had swelled to 10,000 words and the whole thing just ended up being cumbersome and clumsy."

Michiko Kakutani reviewed the book for "The New York Times": "Whether it's the prospect of dying at sea or being shot by a drug kingpin or losing family members in a war, Nam Le's people are individuals trapped in the crosshairs of fate, forced to choose whether they will react like deer caught in the headlights, or whether they will find a way to confront or disarm the
situation."

In "The New York Sun", Benjamin Lytal found that "All sincere works of the imagination, these stories yet bear a self-conscious riposte to conventional wisdom. If ethnic writers are doomed to exploit their own heritage, the Vietnamese-Australian author seems to say, then let them exploit other, totally alien heritages as well." The "LA Times" also talked to Le.

If there's a common thread to your stories, it's the ocean. Judging from "Halflead Bay," you're a fisherman. I'm what they call a spiritual fisherman, who knows nothing about it, but if I had to fill out a questionnaire in heaven and list an occupation, I might list that. I'm enthralled and terrified and awe-struck by and in love with the ocean. One of my dreams has always been, and I'm still working on it, to get a berth on cargo ships that go to Antarctica. You go through these stretches of ocean that have waves from 50 to 100 feet or more high. It utterly overwhelms metaphor. And I think back to some of my heroes, Melville or Conrad, who actually were out there for months, on the stupendously high seas in dangerous conditions -- that romance really comes through in their words.

Geraldine Brooks Watch #6

Short Reviews of People of the Book

Paul on "The Journal of a Good Life" weblog: "This book gets really tedious; fast. There is just so much I (or you) want to know about the history of this Haggadah and book making."
Tracey O'Shaughnessy on the "The Republican-American" weblog: "What makes this book so riveting is the same revivification of history that Brooks managed in March and Year of Wonders. She conveys not only the historical atmosphere of 19th-century Vienna, but also creates deeply flawed, and yet heroic individuals."
On the "las risas" weblog: " I'm not sure why, but I just couldn't get very involved in this novel at all. There was a lot of publicity for it, and I saw it in basically every bookstore I passed until I bought a copy in Borders. It just couldn't keep my attention -- I finished several other books while in the middle of reading this one."
"The Daily Grin" weblog: "Librarians, of course, are one particular type of 'people of the book.' If you are one of the 'people of the book,' in whatever sense you take that to mean, then you will certainly enjoy this latest novel..."

Interviews

Shona Crabtree on the "Religion Writer" website considers People of the Book to be "A sweeping narrative set in multiple locations with a myriad cast of characters". The interview follows.

Crabtree: What is your religious background and how did that inform your tackling of religion in the novel? Brooks: Such a long story! I was raised in an Irish Catholic tradition. My mother's family were pretty recent Irish immigrant stock, and our neighborhood was predominantly Catholic. So it was Catholicism of a very traditional, baroque kind with incense and lace mantillas and Children of Mary in blue cloaks. You know, the whole shmear. And then I kind of, as a teenager, fell out of love with the church over the role of women. At that point, I felt the whole thing was a big plot to deny women's autonomy and to keep people contented with a pretty unjust social system because they were going to get their rewards in the afterlife. So I just kind of washed my hands of the whole thing, cruised through about a decade and a half as a happy atheist. But then when I was about to get married to a Jew, the whole business of Jewish history that had so absorbed me all my life started to impose its imperative on me. That I didn't want to be the end of the line for his family's long heritage that had survived the sack by the Romans and the Inquisition and the pogroms of Russia and the shoah. So I converted to Judaism at that point more as an act of historical solidarity than perhaps religious belief. Crabtree: Once you converted, has that changed your spirituality in any way? Brooks: I'm a praying atheist if that makes any sense. (laughs)
Ellen Birkett Morris on Authorlink.
"I honestly can't say why I saw a novel in it when others before me hadn't," said Brooks, whose earlier works of historical fiction explored the effects of the bubonic plague on a small English village in the seventeenth century and the devastation and moral complexities of the Civil War as seen though the eyes of a fictional chaplain. "For me fact based fiction gives me a scaffolding for imagination to rest on. I let the story drive the research rather than the other way around. First I research to hear voices of the period I'm writing about, until one starts speaking clearly to me. The voice tells me who the character is, and that tells me what she'll do. That drives the plot, and then I know what I need to know...," said Brooks. She believes her background as a journalist aids her as a writer. "As a journalist you learn to write under almost any circumstances,and you don't have the luxury of waiting on the muse. Even though fiction is very different, it helps to be able to bang out a draft of something even on your worst days. Then at least you've got something to come back to and work on," noted Brooks.
Madeleine Coorey on France 24.
"I heard about the haggadah when it was missing and its fate was completely uncertain," she told AFP on the sidelines of Australia's premier literary festival in Adelaide last month.

"And it kind of, I guess, was banging around in my head and then when it was revealed it had been saved from the bombing by a Muslim librarian it kind of meshed with something else I had been thinking about for a long time which was the place of illuminators in the medieval period.

"The illuminator of the Sarajevo haggadah was my starting point of telling the story. And it all just went from there." But she says there's no temptation to combine the real-life accuracy of the journalist with the imagination of the novelist and package it as non-fiction. "I don't like faction," she said.

Other

A reprint of the Sarajevo Haggadah, the subject of Brooks's latest novel, has been unveiled in the Bosnian's capital's national theatre. You can read an essay by Brooks about the historical background to her novel published in "The New Yorker". It deals with the "Chronicles about Muslim librarian Dervis Korkut's heroism in Sarajevo during World War II."
"A Novel Woman" reviews Year of Wonders: "Now, I love historical novels as a rule, but I wasn't sure I would be able to get into one subtitled 'A Novel of the Plague' however well written it was rumoured to be. Well, I started it early one Saturday morning, and spent the day in my nightgown, unwilling and unable to put the book down long enough to get dressed. That's how good it is. It's not a big book - I finished it that evening -- but it is like a Faberge egg, tiny and perfect. It is exquisitely written, and Brooks has a knack for language that draws you into the time and suspends you there."

Gail Jones Interview

Gail Jones, author of Sixty Lights, Dreams of Speaking and Sorry, is interviewed by Summer Block for "January" magazine.

Summer Block: Let's start with some questions about your most recent novel, Sorry. The novel is about forgetting and remembering, and the ways that people and nations can choose to eradicate difficult memories of the past. What is the balance between acknowledging the past, and not letting it dictate your present? Is there a way to truly atone for past national sins? Is it ever possible to really move on and say, OK, now we can put this behind us?

Gail Jones: There is no single response to these complex issues. Each country negotiates its own highly specific history; however the issue of remembering or forgetting is central to all. I am reminded of Milan Kundera's famous statement: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." The first responsibility is to remember what it serves the state to repress; the second to recall, to tell and to consider the recovered history through the lens of justice. My novel allegorizes the "forgetting" of the so-called Stolen Generations in Australia, those Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families by order of state policy from about 1900 to 1970. The anguish and suffering of these people is the basis for a collection of heart-rending testimonies delivered to the Australian Parliament in May 1997. One of the recommendations of the report was that the government of the day offer a formal apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs done to them. The [Howard Liberal] government refused to say "sorry," a matter that was rectified [recently] when the new Labour government in Australia, under the leadership of Kevin Rudd, issued an apology at the opening of parliament. This did not necessarily atone or repair the hurt, but it did signal a new initiative for reconciliation and dialogue between Aboriginal and other Australians.

John Flangan Profile

John Flanagan, author of the "Ranger's Apprentice" series of YA novels, is interviewed on the "Reuters India" website by Belinda Goldsmith.

Q: What is the appeal of the "Ranger's Apprentice?"

A: "I think the books are exciting. They are adventure stories that I initially wrote for my son Michael when he was 12 and not interested in reading. I made them short stories as I thought that would keep him going and those stories helped me identify a set of characters."

Q: Did it get him reading?

A: "It got him interested in it. There is a scene where the lead character breaks into an office at midnight to find a paper about himself and out of the darkness shoots a hand to grab his wrist. Michael said that really frightened him and that is actually the best compliment I ever had."

Shaun Tan Profile

Much was made of Shaun Tan's book The Arrival, and rightly so. It picked up awards all over the place and is still in line for a few more. Tan's new book, Tales from Outer Suburbia, will be released in June by Allen and Unwin, and as a prelude, the artist/author is interviewed by Rosemary Neill in "The Australian".

"Suburbia," Tan reflects, "is often represented as a banal, quotidian, even boring place that escapes much notice. Yet I think it is also a fine substitute for the medieval forests of fairytale lore, a place of subconscious imaginings. I've always found the idea of suburban fantasy very appealing."

Tan argues that a double reality attends suburbia: it is highly visible but, at the same time, unseen. On the one hand, it's so familiar it's taken for granted; on the other, this familiarity means it is overlooked or ridiculed.

"I guess that's what happens in an urban-centric society," he shrugs. Nevertheless, he thinks "there is something unsettling about (life in the suburbs) from an aesthetic point of view, and also from a cultural point of view".

He feels new, fringe suburbs lend themselves to surreality because they lack a settled identity. For this Chinese-Australian author and painter, outer suburbia is as much a state of mind as a place: as he puts it, "somewhere close and familiar but also on the edge of consciousness (and not unlike outer space)".

Rhyll McMaster Profile

Rhyll McMaster, author of Feather Man - winner of the inaugural Barabara Jefferis Award - is target=new>interviewed by Lauren Wilson in "The Australian".

McMaster's novel is certainly confronting: in the first chapter the young heroine is sexually assaulted by a trusted family friend in a chook pen. By the novel's close, she is still grappling with the psychological toll of the abuse. But McMaster is unapologetic for writing about issues deemed unpalatable by society. "I think writers by and large are interested in the dark side," she says, "in what's not acknowledged, what's under the surface; and the dark places we know exist but (that) are not polite to talk about."

Consequently, she says, she knew she wasn't receiving the run-of-the-mill rejection letters from publishers, but that they found her manuscript genuinely scary. "So when I found a publisher (small publishing house Brandl & Schlesinger), that was really a great day."

Wendy James Profile

Wendy James, author of The Steele Diaries and resident of Armidale in New South Wales, is interviewed in "The Armidale Express" by Matt McLennan.

Ms James began writing short stories in 1992, most of which were published in journals and anthologies. She said her second novel took considerably less than her first. "It's like asking how long is a piece of string. The first one took a long time, maybe five years, and this one took just over two," she said. "When you add in all the stuff after publishing, it was probably about two and a half."

Tim Winton Watch #2

Reviews of Breath

"The Economist": "Richly Australian, Breath is a classic coming-of-age novel, which is not to pigeonhole the work as small or pat. Thomas Wolfe and James Joyce among many other literary greats have employed the form. Readers who are, like the narrator, adolescent might well enjoy Tim Winton's surf-and-turf tale. But this is also a book for grown-ups...Yet what may most distinguish this coming-of-age fiction is its perfect balance of teenage romanticism and disillusion."

Matthew Condon in "The Courier-Mail": "Breath -- in turns delicate and brutal, beautiful and shocking -- gestures at the very least towards a notion, obvious in its declaration but more plausible with the passage of time and the emergence of each new book, that Winton has steadily created a fictional universe much in the way that William Faulkner mined again and again his imagined Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi...On the evidence of this novel, his books, to this reader, are no longer separate entities, but instalments in a large narrative schema. Breath is a piece of the Winton tapestry that, from the air, might appear recognisable, limited and repetitive in pattern. But if you get down close to the rug and allow yourself to be dizzied by the detail, it's there you understand that Winton is, in effect, writing over and over about all of us, and his very concentration on the parochial gives his work a
universal punch."

Russell Celyn Jones in "The Times": "This is a very good book marred by occasional empty posturing and a poor finish, where everything Winton has set up so well folds into itself. The outward-looking characters become suddenly self-absorbed...But don't let this quibble put you off. As with music, surfing is difficult to
translate into language. On that level, Winton's first novel since the Booker shortlisted Dirt Music is as good as it gets."

Melissa Katsoulis in "The Telegraph" finds "this is a wonderfully uplifting novel. Winton's sensitivity to the effects of the physical environment on a growing mind is acute, and his rapturous love of the sea is a thing to behold. He sings the transformative splendour of the natural world like a true Romantic."

Patrick Ness in "The Guardian": "Like jumping into a cool brook on a hot day, his prose is clear and refreshing, and surprising in its sharpness. Breath lacks some of the sweep of his previous two novels -- there are moments when things feel a little rushed -- but it has the urgent clarity of a story that needed to be told."

Helen Gordon in "The Observer": "Winton is one of contemporary Australia's most acclaimed novelists. Here, he revisits some of his past preoccupations: masculinity, self-discovery through a journey into extremes and, most strikingly, the landscape of Australia: yellow acacias, the peppery smell of the heath, the nip and dash of honey eaters. At his best, Winton writes with an unsentimental lyricism that remains rooted in the Australian vernacular; rough, choked dialogue clashing against passages of great beauty."

Other

I just love the photos of Winton accompanying the reviews and interviews in the
mainstream media. They all have him looking off into the distance - a classic thousand-yard stare - never looking directly at the camera. Odd. I can understand one or two, but all of them?

Profiles

And as soon as I write the previous paragraph comes this profile in "The Independent". Winton stares at the camera in this
one. Actually he looks like he's trying to bore holes through the camera, the photographer, the webpage and the reader. Looks cold too.

Mark Rubbo, of Readings bookshops, interviews the author.

For better or worse, writers nowadays are quite public figures, you make very few public appearances; I'm sure it's not for want of invitations and I'm sure you have much to contribute -- is this a conscious decision or something you've drifted into?

I don't think it's any secret that I don't much like the public stuff. I find being in front of people a bit well ... corrosive. It doesn't give me anything good. Good luck to writers who like the performative side of things, in a way I probably envy them their ease. But I'm happier on the page. I've done a fair bit of public advocacy in the past decade, mostly environmental work and I don't regret it, but it does create an appetite and an expectation that can't be met. I have to remind people that I write stories. That's my area of expertise. Why should anyone need to hear my sound-bite opinion on every ephemeral political and social issue?

Lisa Forrest Profile

Most Australians, if they recognise the name, will remember Lisa Forrest as a gold medal winner in swimming in the 1982 Commonwealth Games, but she was also captain of the women's swimming team that went to the 1980 Moscow Olympics. That was the time of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent attempt by the Fraser Coalition Government to force the Australian Olympic Federation to boycott the games. To their credit the AOF did not cave into the pressure, but the split in public opinion in Australia made the whole experience very stressful for all concerned. Now Lisa Forrest, previously the writer of a number of YA novels, has written her account of the attempted boycott of the games, Boycott: The Story Behind Australia's Controversial Involvement in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and she is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Kathleen Noonan.

Peter Carey Watch #6

Reviews of His Illegal Self

Gordon Houser in "The Wichita Eagle": "One of the best things about the novel is the language, which is often poetic: 'The Boeings spinning their white contrails across the cold blue sky -- loneliness and hope, expanding like paper flowers in water.' Or this: 'The foreign sky, bruised like cheekbones, heavy rain streaming in a distant fringe.'...Beautifully told, it will leave you aching for the completion denied this innocent victim."

Garth Risk Hallberg, on "The Millions" weblog, compares Carey to another, American, writer and concludes that the author doesn't quite reach the heights he was aiming for: "A kind of antipodean counterpart to E.L. Doctorow (and now, like Doctorow, a resident of New York), the Australian novelist Peter Carey seems able to do virtually anything on the page. A master of plot, character, setting, phrasing, point-of-view, description, and dialogue (among other things), Carey has published sprawling bildungsromans and swift-moving capers, real travelogues and fake confessions, books for children and books for adults...However breathtaking the writing, His Illegal Self, falls short of a goal attainable to Peter Carey and to few other novelists: the creation of consciousness."

Review of My Life as a Fake

On the Blogcritics website, Philip Spires finds that "The book is packed with literary references, but is in no way academic. There is a strong sense of place, with the sights, sounds and smells of Kuala Lumpur oozing from the page. The only aspect missing is the taste, and in Malaysia food is much more pervasive an influence in the culture than we encounter via Chubb's adoption of it. It's a minor point...Overall the pace of the book is varied and, here and there, one feels that Peter Carey has over-complicated things and thus detracted from the directness that could have achieved increased impact. But then poetry is like that, isn't it?"

Short Notices

The "3000 Books" weblog looks at Illywhacker by Peter Carey: "How to describe the experience of reading my first Peter Carey novel (for I'm sure I will read another)? I carried on, fond-eyed as a lover, I read every page with exigent attention. Carey is a radical storyteller, and his precise evocation of detail is the alchemical complement to his fulsome imagination. From the cutaneous to the vehicular, the historical to the magical, Illywhacker traverses the rich journeys taken by blood that is fatally flawed; blood which is, after all, but finest filigree of the strongest steel."

Other

Vivien Cuttle examines some of the minutiae around the film version of Oscar and Lucinda. The list of actors who wanted to play Lucinda is rather interesting. But I'm glad director Gillian Armstong stuck with Cate Blanchett.

As revealed on ABC TV a few weeks back, Carey is contemplating going back to his earliest stories and line-editing them. Not rewriting you understand, just cleaning them up a bit so he can read them at literary festivals without gagging. His peers have warned him against it - the editing that is, not the gagging.

Debra Adelaide Interview

There has been a bit of a buzz around the traps regarding Debra Adelaide's third novel, The Household Guide To Dying, specifically about the advance it received and the foreign sales it generated. Susan Wyndham talks to the author for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

A small research grant enabled Adelaide to offload some of her teaching last year and meet a self-imposed deadline. "I felt convinced that a book I'd written to amuse myself in snatched time in a little corner of my bedroom - a novel I had to fit into the cracks of my life - couldn't possibly work." When she handed it over to her agent, Lyn Tranter, she said, "You'll probably tell me to go away and give it a decent burial." Tranter, however, decided to auction the book.

On the day of the auction, Adelaide nervously lunched with a friend while taking Tranter's calls about the rising bids; she was thrilled at $50,000 and stunned when they reached more than $100,000. While one publisher's offer gave the book undiluted praise, the response from the Picador Australia publisher, Rod Morrison, said they loved the book but thought it needed some rewriting. He got the deal.

The novel will be launched on Friday at the Sydney Writers' Festival where Adelaide is a guest.

Helen Garner Watch #2

Reviews of The Spare Room

Darlene on "Larvatus Prodeo":

After finding Garner an intrusive and maddening presence in journalistic efforts such as Joe Cinque's Consolation, it's a relief to discover that "fictional" Helen, with all her flaws, fury and brutal honesty, is on the side of the good guys.

Right from the start of the book the disparate worldviews of the two main characters are detailed, with Helen's sister declaring during a telephone conversation that Nicola shouldn't be told about the mirror that shattered in the room she's to sleep in during her Melbourne stay.

While neither western medicine nor nutty Vitamin C therapy can save Nicola, whose cancer has progressed to stage four, it's the conventional medicos who know what they're doing and don't peddle false hope. There's a time, The Spare Room argues, to accept your fate.

In "The Monthly" Robert Dessaix has some problems with how to tackle the new work.
Monkey Grip is called a novel, The Children's Bach and Cosmo Cosmolino short novels, and now The Spare Room (Text, 208pp; $29.95) is declared "a perfect novel" by Peter Carey on the back cover. But they are not novels. They are all of them fine works of art and innovative explorations of literary approaches to non-fiction, every one of them an outstanding example of stylish reportage, but none of them is a novel. So why does Helen Garner at the very least collude in having them called novels? And why does it matter? (Aren't signifiers meant to be floating these days?)

Perhaps she believes that with all that shaping, leaping, trimming and sharpening, her notebooks and diaries actually become novels. Perhaps she still (quite understandably) feels a need to cock a snook at those early critics of her work, such as Peter Corris, who attacked her for publishing her "private journals" rather than writing a novel. Random jottings, they seemed to be saying, about emotional entanglements in dreary suburbs with the odd thought about the meaning of life thrown in don't make you a writer. A real writer, it was implied, writes novels, and a novel is something more sustained, more imagined, more intricately patterned, more whole than the sort of thing Garner writes, however much she trims and transcribes. Just throwing in a bit of "purple prose", as she does in Cosmo Cosmolino, won't do the trick, either.

And a response. I actually don't know what all the fuss is about. If Garner calls it a novel then it is a novel. It's not like she's saying it's a memoir, to which she's added some fictional elements. If she'd done that then there might have been room for discussion. But here? I don't think so.

Interviews

Deborah Bogle in "The Advertiser":

After the gruelling, 6 1/2-year effort to write Joe Cinque's Constellation -- the project stalled when Anu Singh, who was later convicted of manslaughter, refused to speak to her -- Garner was exhilarated by the sense of freedom she felt in writing The Spare Room.

Unshackled from the ethical responsibilities of writing non-fiction, she found a sense of calm purpose, and completed the book in a little over a year.

"It's quite thrilling," she says. "Even if the story that you're writing has its origins in real experience, in fiction you're free to pull in material from the rest of your life and especially as you get older you've got this stash of experience and it sort of springs to life in your imagination. It's as if the story that you're telling is porous and all this other kind of material can come surging in to enrich it as you go. And that's how I would define the word imagination with this book, that I felt I had a great richness to draw on." Still, she confesses to some anxiety about the response to The Spare Room.

"I've got some old itching scars from what happened to me after The First Stone," she says, "when the feminists came at me with the thumbscrews and the baseball bats.

"So every time a book comes out now, I am anxious, because you don't get over a thrashing like that." What interested her particularly about the experience of caring for the dying -- and "not for a minute" would she pretend that there wasn't a real Nicola -- was the conflicting feelings of anger and resentment, of tenderness, intimacy and grief.

J.M. Coetzee Watch #7

Short Reviews Julia Leigh, author of the new novel, Disquiet, calls Life and Times of Michael K. a Book of a Lifetime: "The ending left me in tears: here was something! This is what books were for! Looking back, I think I responded to Michael K's resolve, to his steadiness, his modest and determined way of being. And since that reading experience I've tried to read as much of Coetzee's oeuvre as I can." The "There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one" weblog looks at Foe, which "is not one of the novels to have brought him any of these prizes, and as far as I can see, it's lesser known though considered by many critics as the archetypal post-modern novel. Basically, the story is the reinvention of the classic Robinson Crusoe, with a woman as the central character...I wasn't exactly touched by it, though I'm not sure that this is what it's intended to do. There are a lot of issues to be discussed in reference to the novel -- colonialism, a woman's position in society, slavery and the art of writing in itself -- but what I did find overwhelming was Friday, not his character in particular, but the story of his mutilation." Ana Shirin Razi Rabi, on "In a Pineapple Under the Vast Sea" weblog finds a sense of the universal in Coetzee's work. "I've just finished reading Boyhood by J.M Coetzee and still couldn't believe that someone can write such a true representation of childhood. True enough, it was a story about a boy who grew up in South Africa in the 1940s and on the surface, that hardly creates any connection to myself. But as I dwelt further into the story, I realised that childood could easily be the most arrogant, selfish yet naive state of our lives, no matter when or where you've lived." On the "Glue and Scissors" weblog, discovers that "...Diary of a Bad Year was actually nothing like I expected. Was it disturbingly well written? Yes. Compelling and thought provoking? Absolutely. But a grab-you-by-the-stomach, heart-wrenching, can't-get-out-of-the-chair read? No." Interviews Coetzee is interviewed by The Humane Society of the United States about the ongoing Canadian Seal Hunt.
HSUS: Societal oppression of both people and animals has been a recurring theme in your novels. Do you see a connection between violence towards people and violence towards animals? JMC: That is not a connection I care to make. In the first place, quite pacific societies slaughter animals on a large scale. In the second place, if we are going to reform our behavior toward animals we should not be doing so for some ulterior motive, e.g. reforming our behavior toward members of our own species.
Festivals Coetzee will attend the New Writing literary festival in Norwich, UK, from June 15 to June 20 this year. Other You can read Coetzee's English translation of Ten Ways of Looking at PB Shelley by Dutch poet Hugo Claus. A J.M. Coetzee bibliography is maintained by the Swedish academy.

James Doig Interview

James Doig, editor of Australian Gothic and Australian Nightmares, is interviewed on the "Articulate" weblog by Gary Kemble.

Q. How important is it, do you think, for Australian horror writers to connect with their forebears?

It's important for any writer to read widely, and not just their chosen field (especially not in their chosen field!). Sometimes I get the impression that most horror writers, not just Australian, see themselves as part of a tradition that goes back only as far as Stephen King. That's a pity because there is a lot they can learn from earlier writers of supernatural fiction - there is a craft that has developed over the last 150 years that, I think, would repay close study. I'm not sure that there is anything in the early Australian material that rates with the best British and American supernatural fiction of the same period, but writers like Ernest Favenc, Marcus Clarke, and Louis Becke come pretty close. There is definitely an Australian tradition that goes back to colonial times, and that should be acknowledged.

Tom Keneally Watch #3

Reviews

Colin Giesbrecht, on the "Multroneous" weblog, on the role of the narrator in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith: "Thomas Keneally's novel, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, like Marguerite Duras' The Lover, has a problematic narrator, but it is still a good story, and there are a few things which exonerate it to some extent. The problem is whether Keneally, who is white, has the right to tell a story from the point of view of, or on behalf of, an Aborigine, as he does in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Addressing this problem is not a straightforward task. It is apparent that any non-Aborigine, especially a white person, who criticises Keneally risks hypocrisy, because in doing so that person also presumes to speak on behalf of Aborigines."

Short Notices

The Bored and Loud weblog on Schindler's Ark: "...it was only a few weeks ago when I finally got a copy of the book from a friend...I started it immediately and found it oddly easy to read -- I expected complicated vocabulary and structure, but it was very easy to follow. I cannot remember how it compares to the movie, but the book is fantastic in it's own right and I can see how well it converted to a movie."

Other

A Schindler list survivor recalls Oskar Schindler. And it appears that Schindler's factory is to be turned into a museum.
Kyle Martinak discovers the film version of "Schindler's List" in the "Western Oregon Journal".
The "Wet Casements" weblog looks at General Daniel Sickles, subject of American Scoundrel.
Anne Hopper reviews a production of "Our Country's Good", the play by Timberlake Wertenbaker, based on Keneally's novel The Playmaker.

Virginia Duigan Profile

In "The Sydney Morning Herald" Sacha Molitorisz profiles Virginia Duigan, author of the new Australian novel The Biographer.

The original idea for The Biographer came not from a nostalgic viewing of The Leading Man but when Duigan was clearing out a cupboard and stumbled upon diaries she had written during her time in London. "The diaries began to bring back to mind times that were particularly thrilling, exciting and exhilarating," she says. "I did a lot of travelling in that time, despite not having much money, by hitching and so on, and went through a part of Tuscany which I found extraordinarily beautiful and romantic. So when I came to write the book I went back there to research it and I did find it the most amazing place.

"I was researching for three or four weeks and it was the kind of place I could imagine artists would be very much drawn to, as of course artists are. Particularly in Tuscany, they're all over the place."

The Leading Man is a film from 1996, written by Virginia Duigan and directed by her brother John. The film featured Jon Bon Jovi and Barry Humphries.

Tim Winton Watch #1

I go away for a week and a "big" Australian book is published. Breath is Tim Winton's first novel in seven years, and was always going to be a big publishing event.

Reviews of Breath

Kerryn Goldsworthy, in "The Australian": "Winton is so accomplished and experienced a writer by now that his finely honed technical skills are practically invisible...The allegorical level of the story does not intrude on, or protrude from, the literal level, and you subconsciously absorb the rich haul of ideas about parenthood, friendship, breathing and damage, rather than having them spelled out for you. Nothing is oversimplified; even the unbearably sad notion of growing up as the loss or withdrawal of grace, however much it might underlie this book, isn't the last or the only word." Kerryn followed up this review with a post on her weblog which also refers to a review of the novel by James Ley in "Australian Book Review". Unfortunately the Ley review isn't up on the "ABR" website but Kerryn says enough about it that you really should go out and buy a copy.

The "ABR" issue also includes an excerpt from a James Ley review of TheTurning from 2004. Further discussion between Kerryn and Genevieve Tucker ensues on the "reeling and writing" weblog.

Andrew Reimer in "The Sydney Morning Herald": "This short novel may prove to be the best thing Tim Winton has done. He made a name for himself with three generously paced and intricate novels: Cloudstreet, The Riders and Dirt Music. Nevertheless, his finest accomplishments seem to me to reside in more compressed structures: his earlier novels and the loosely linked stories in The Turning. There, as in this marvellously atmospheric work, Winton's particular gifts come into their own...The novel's complexity is poetic, psychological and ethical. Winton's descriptions of changing seas and changing seasons are outstanding...There is nothing frivolous or superficial here."

James Bradley in "The Age": "I often suspect Tim Winton is sometimes misunderstood as a sort of poet of the beach, a creator of sprawling epics inflected by the grandeur of the landscape they inhabit. I say misunderstood because Winton's subject is darker and more troubling...For, in many ways, it is the idea of damage - personal, psychic, physical - that Winton returns to time and again and it is this undercurrent of pain that lends his often fractured narratives their urgency and brooding power...It's unlikely Winton has ever written as well as he writes in Breath, a book that marries the lyricism of work such as Cloudstreet to the adamantine hardness of the stories in The Turning. Time and again his descriptions of the ocean and the littoral break free of the page, revealing this landscape with a clarity and an intimacy that lets us see it anew. Yet simultaneously this lyric imagination is given heft by the darkness behind it."

Profiles/Interviews

Philip Adams interviewed Winton on his ABC Radio National program "Late Night Live". You can listen to the interview off the site but you'd best be quick - they don't stay around for very long.
Kerry O'Brien interviewed the author on last night's "7.30 Report" on ABC1. This is a longer interview than was shown live, but again you'll need to be quick.
Jason Steger in "The Age".

So what is it about risk? Winton reckons it's so prevalent among the young because Western culture has such safety and domesticity. "You can understand a residual appetite for wildness," he says. "But I think there's also a physical, psychological and erotic correlative to all that." He knows all about it. He had that hunger for wildness that he gives the boys. When he was still quite young he moved from the Perth suburbs to Albany with his parents.

"Growing up in a small country town, there was this palpable compulsion towards risk, and that had to do with somehow defeating the empire of boredom and the empire of domesticity and the empire of the occupation . . . youth often feel they're living under occupation; the occupation of the old and the occupation of the ratepayer.

"From that occupied territory, we'd go out on these pointlessly insurgent actions of risk-taking, which simply involved fast cars, drugs, sexual misadventure and, where we were, firearms. And for my tiny coterie of fellow travellers, water sports."

Other

There is also a website dedicated to the book which contains a wealth of material.

Bob Carr Profile

Bob Carr, long-time premier of New South Wales until he retired in 2005, is profiled in "The Australian" by Rosemary Neill as his new book,
My Reading Life: Adventures in the World of Books, is published.

Carr has little time for most contemporary fiction. Much of it, he writes, "seems trivial, gimmicky, forced". Sipping a flat white, he tells Review: "I can't understand why anyone would want to read from the Booker prize list if they haven't read The Brothers Karamazov or The Illiad or every word of Tolstoy ... I think one chapter of War and Peace is worth everything at the front end of a modern bookshop; every contemporary work of fiction propped up in the window of a modern bookshop."

As if still attuned to how this will play in hard-core Labor electorates, he adds: "People might say that's snobbery." But Carr declares it's those who "look down and dismiss as weird or eccentric any focus on enduring culture, I think they're the snobs". Still, it's odd that someone who took such pleasure in presiding over the NSW Premier's Literary Awards should be so dismissive of modern fiction.

Some of his choices of "best" author in a genre will raise some eyebrows.

Catherine Cole Profile

Catherine Cole's latest work, The Poet Who Forgot, is a memoir about her professional relationship with the late Australian poet A.D. Hope. She was profiled in "The Australian" by Victoria Laurie.

One day, when in her 20s, the undergraduate felt compelled to express her gratitude for all the beautiful words. Slessor was dead but Hope was not. So Cole sent the famous literary figure a note thanking him for the pleasure of his verse.

"It seemed a way of honouring people just to drop them a line and say, 'I studied your poetry and thank you very much'," Cole explains. She thought little more about it until, to her surprise, a reply came in Hope's handwriting.

"He reacted very kindly. He said, 'If ever you're in Canberra, look us up."' Some months later she did, knocking hesitantly on his office door in the Australian National University's A.D. Hope building. "I was nervous because Alec was already Australia's most famous living poet; he'd written very sexualised poems and people said he had a roguish reputation."

Clive James Watch #5

Reviews of Cultural Amnesia

Nicholas Lezard in "The Guardian".

This book, says James in his introduction, has been 40 years in the making - that is, from when he became well-off enough not to have to sell books in order to eat, and could make notes in the margins instead. (Hence the subtitle.) As he reminds us, this is how Montaigne's essays started. And Montaigne's essays themselves, we may recall, can enter areas not immediately suggested by their titles. "This might well be", asserts James in his "Note on the Text", "the only serious book to explore the relationship between Hitler's campaign on the eastern front and Richard Burton's pageboy hairstyle in Where Eagles Dare." Well, none other springs to mind, but then maybe I just haven't read enough.
Articles by James

James laments the decision to allow the use of mobile phones on planes. I can only agree.
And he also writes about change for change's sake.
And he tackles dilemmas, moral and otherwise.

Poems

Jane, on the "What the Thunder Said" blog, provides the full text of James's poem "After the Storm". Best read it before it gets taken down.

Peter Carey Watch #5

Reviews of His Illegal Self

Theo Tait in the "London Review of Books": "Carey writes fiction on the grand, nation-building scale: by his own admission, nearly everything he has ever written has 'been concerned with questions of national identity'. As a rule, he presents Australia, if not Australians, in a very unflattering light. The country comes across as a rough, small-minded, land-grabbing settler culture, based on self-serving fictions and violence, forever dogged by feelings of inferiority towards Europe and America. As one of the characters in his last novel, Theft (2006), concisely puts it, 'We Australians are really shit. We know nothing. We are so bloody ugly.' Carey likes to blow the whistle on his country's hidden historical crimes (Ned Kelly begins his account by announcing that he knows 'what it is to be raised on lies and silence', and intends to defy them). He has specialised in creating disreputable Australian heroes -- convicts made good, bushrangers, self-inventing fraudsters -- who tend both to embody and to transcend the small, bigoted towns and 'hateful and life-denying' suburbs they come from. To quote from My Life as a Fake, he sings 'the song of the autodidact, the colonial, the damaged beast of the antipodes'."

Corey Redekop on his weblog, "Shelf Monkey", and previously in the "Winnipeg Free Press": "His Illegal Self is a wonderful novel, Carey's best since The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith. If, as hinted throughout the pages, there is more to tell about Che's life, Carey had best take his time on the sequel. His Illegal Self is too good to soil with a lesser follow-up."

Terry Pender in "Guelph
Mercury"
: "The social ferment of the 1960s produced the peace movement, second wave feminism and the environmental movement. Almost all of the underground militants had surfaced by the 1980s and most were quickly integrated into mainstream America. Not a bad legacy by any measure...So it shouldn't be too much to ask of a writer such as Carey to have more sympathetic characters from the New Left. After all, these people didn't carpet bomb Vietnam and kill millions of civilians."

Reviews of The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

Gillian Fulcher in "Eureka Street": "Throughout the novel Carey uses language which could offend people with disabilities. Neither Australian nor British reviewers of The Unusual Life, which was published in 1994, appeared to ponder these matters. It was not, said the London Review of Books, a novel about disability. Maybe not, but disability is the vehicle for something else ... By writing the central character as disabled, the broader world is starkly shown as increasingly oppressive of those whom Tristan, as archetype, represents. But as archetype he also represents the increasing scrutiny we are all under. This world exacerbates earlier oppressions of conformity, appearance, image, and performance."

Interviews

Jon Weiner in "Dissent" magazine.

Jon Wiener: In His Illegal Self, the year is 1972 and the characters are set in motion by the Weather Underground. I'm reluctant to talk about the plot because one of the pleasures of the book, especially at the beginning, is figuring out the plot--told mostly from the perspective of a seven-year-old boy. Could you explain what you want people to know about it?
B>Peter Carey: This is the number one issue for me at the moment. I spent two years building this book, which really depends on withholding information. It delivers a whole series of surprises and thrills for the reader, I hope, which was not easy to achieve. But we live in a culture where people confuse "story" and "art," and where reviewers are called upon by their editors to report the story. So while they are praising this book, they are sort of destroying it -- by giving away all these things.
Others

Jim H. uses his reading of True History of the Kelly Gang to riff on a number of novels, from Nabakov to Lasdun, which he puts into a "psychological realism X" (for X-treme) genre.

Sam de Brito Profile

Sam de Brito's novel, The Lost Boys, will be published next month. As a lead-in the author is interviewed by Andrew Taylor in "The Sydney Morning Herald".

De Brito began writing The Lost Boys after he "ran screaming in horror from 'The Sunday Telegraph' social pages", which he had edited for less than six months. De Brito says it was an unhappy time. He was fed up with journalism, and found writing for television series like Water Rats and White Collar Blue equally as unsatisfying.

"I guess I wrote myself out of the place I was in and to do that I dumped a lot of stuff into the book," he says. "It is a sad book but it was written from a sad place."

Pamela Freeman Interview

Mainly known as a writer for children and young adults - at least that's how her books are labelled - Pamela Freeman released Blood Ties, the first book in a trilogy, in 2007, and has the second, Deep Water, coming out later this year. Peta McCartney interviewed the author for "The Courier-Mail".

Thanks to the librarian, the young Freeman spent her days home from school lost in fiction, classics, fantasy and adventure. Those days founded her love of reading - today she favours New Scientist, history, sociology and anthropology - and led to her becoming a a successful author with 17 children's books and a recent foray into adult fiction to her name. "I have always read a lot of non-fiction," she says. "It's been a big influence."

Geraldine Brooks Watch #5

Reviews of People of the Book

Nancy Wigston in "The Toronto Star": "Brooks's major challenge remains the existence of a book that ought not to exist but stubbornly does. She allows herself considerable leeway -- rooted in history and logic, it must be said -- when it comes to her account of its creation: extraordinary storytelling meets extraordinary reality...In our world, 'no one expects the Spanish Inquisition' evokes the famous Monty Python sketch. But Brooks shows that for considerable chunks of time in Europe, many did expect the torturers...Brooks opens windows onto forgotten worlds, matching her stories to historical truths. Throughout, the survival of the Sarajevo Haggadah speaks with its own thunderous eloquence."

On the "Green Chair Press" weblog: "I am amazed by the amount of research that Brooks must have done to write her book. There's lots of information about bookbinding and conservation, as well as an incredible amount of historical detail. The adventures of the main, present-day narrator, Hanna, are awfully contrived, but the interspersed stories imagining the history of the Haggadah are much better. Certainly reading it was a fine way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon!"

Interviews

Jessica Yadegaran on the "PopMatters" website.

The reader can't help but try to compare Brooks to her heroine, Heath, who is a feisty and ambitious Australian, but sexually reckless and estranged from family. Save for nationality and passion for their work, however, the women have nothing in common, Brooks says. The author struggled with the character's cultural identity, and originally wanted the conservator to be Bosnian, because she loves the way Sarajevans express themselves - with a kind of "world-weary, mordant wit."

But the Aussie in Heath eventually spoke to Brooks. "It was a voice that I was completely confident with," she says. "She immediately turned up in my imagination and compelled the story. Her character told me how she would act, and that was much more take-charge than perhaps my Bosnian conservator would have been."

Kelly Hewitt on the "Loaded Questions" weblog.
Kelly Hewitt:Are there other instances from your career as a reporter in which you found inspiration for a fictional novel amidst such a tumultuous reality?

Geraldine Brooks:All of my novels, one way or another, relate to my years as a reporter. Sometimes it's an idea that I came across while on assignment, as is the case with the Sarajevo Haggadah and People of the Book. But both People of the Book and March contain episodes that draw on my experiences covering the news. For instance, the scene where Isak and Ina fall through the ice is a fictional translation of a tragic event that happened to two refugees during the flight of the Kurds from Iraq when their uprising was crushed. More broadly,witnessing individuals who have to undergo real change during a time of catastrophe -- particularly women who find themselves forced to assume huge burdens and responsibilities that their earlier life hadn't prepared them for -- has inspired the way I invent characters who change a great deal in the course of the narrative.

You can also listen to a radio interview with the author from station KCRW, and watch a video interview on Australia's Channel Nine.

Julia Leigh Profile

As her long-awaited second novel, Disquiet, is published, Julia Leigh is profiled by Deborah Snow in "The Sydney Morning Herald".

We begin fencing over a mystery: the long hiatus since her extraordinary literary debut in 1999. That first multi-award-winning novel, The Hunter, led to a Rolex scholarship which teamed her with revered American writer and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison for a year's mentoring in the US. But then, nothing. Or, at least, no other published novel until this month's release of Disquiet, a slim work of 121 pages. Despite intense speculation, Leigh is not about to gratify anyone with a detailed explanation.

"Let me think, about the long wait ... [pause] ... First of all, I don't think an author is under any obligation to produce a novel or a work of literature as if there's some sort of industrial process about it."

Then later, "There is a nice quote I like from poet Elizabeth Bishop, something like scientists and artists are alike in that they are prepared to waste effort ... When I am
exploring things, when I set out, I can't be guaranteed of a result."

Helen Garner Watch #1

Reviews and Commentary

Libby Brooks, in "The Guardian", looks at the attention Helen Garner has received and the perceptions that her latest novel, The Spare Room, is based on her own life. She puts the whole idea into perfect context.

It's a beautiful work: the prose is clean and the probing of the duties of friendship subtle. But I also know that a version of Nicola existed in reality - Helen did have a sick friend who came to stay with her, and subsequently died. But Helen's fictional rendering of these sharp realities has now left her exposed, as interviewers and reviewers hint at something underhand, attempting to drag the story back to where they perceive its origins ought to be. There is, of course, an obvious transformation that occurs when a book is written as fiction. It distinguishes this writer from Frey, and from Margaret Seltzer and Misha Defonseca, whose memoirs about growing up in gangland Los Angeles and the Warsaw ghetto, respectively, were exposed as fraudulent this month. Offering a story in novel form alerts the reader that they would be wrong to assume events happened that way, because the writer has taken all the liberties of compression and conflation and invention that fiction permits.
Sean O'Beirne, of the "Readings" book group, thinks that The Spare Room is a continuance of the author's previous work: "If you've read Monkey Grip or The First Stone, or Joe Cinque's Consolation, you'll know some of the Helen in The Spare Room. She's good company, good in a book. She's clever and fierce and she laughs; she's anxious and busy; she does her jobs; she rides her bike, she cooks and cleans and writes; she slogs on. She makes feelings very fast and strong, and she's often shocked that what she wants is violence. She makes lots of mistakes, and that keeps her in pain; but it also keeps her where she can see -- where she's painfully interested in -- the mistakes of others. She'll tell you things that more cautious, nicer writers wouldn't say. She'll tell you that, a lot of the time, she's thinks her dear dying friend is an idiot."

Dean, of the "Happy Antipodean" weblog has a long look at The First Stone, "Helen Garner's 1995 look at a sexual harrassment case that took place following events at an elite Melbourne university college (Ormond)...The 'fundamentalist' label she uses is to be expected, if we agree (as one reviewer states) that women are still 'an oppressed people'. It is necessary to ask 'what is the alternative?' when blaming committed feminists for their sharp views...On the other hand, recent changes in fashion and the relentless 'democratisation' of culture demonstrate a greater ease, among young women, with responsibilities vis a vis their rights as equal citizens as well as sexual animals. In Garner's subtitle ('some questions about sex and power') lie avenues that recent adults could profitably explore.".

Interviews

Susan Wyndham, of "The Sydney Morning Herald", interviewed Garner and found her rather wary.

Helen Garner can sniff a storm coming. She has been drenched by earlier storms that broke over some of her books and so she is wary, keeping journalists at a distance. No interviews at her home: she doesn't want us describing her fridge magnets or, no doubt, the spare room that features in her novel The Spare Room.
And even when she is talking about the writing process you can practically see the furrowed brow, not that I blame her for that.
"I don't know where people think writing comes from. People talk as if a story is something lying on the ground that you pick up and dust off and put in a book. But material isn't a story, it's a mess, a cloudy series of events or experiences. On every page there's a thousand tiny decisions about how you're going to tell it. And once you've written something, you can't even remember which bits 'really happened' and which bits you made up."
On the "Readings" website, Michael Williams talks to the author and gathers some insight into her view of character.
It is somehow unsurprising that Helen Garner describes herself as "in favour of very tough eulogies." As a writer she's always been one for uncomfortable truths and avoiding the easy platitudes. "If you've got the nerve to describe the dark side of a person, the maddening side, then people seem to find this enormously relieving. If I go to a funeral and the person is described purely in glowing terms, I come away feeling very sad and cheated, feeling the person hasn't been honoured properly. Everybody's selfish and thoughtless and unkind. To pretend that somebody wasn't is just awful." This world-view seems typical of Garner's writing, as does the ability to confront the "dark side" and still ultimately write about love and friendship (albeit, as she puts it, "when the chips are down"). Through directness and candour, through tough love, she pays tribute to the friends and strangers whose stories she tells.
Christopher Bantick, of "the Courier-Mail", met up with Garner in Carlton, which led him to thinking about her first novel, Monkey Grip, and about her subsequent work.
What has distinguished Garner's work -- whether it be fiction, non-fiction or journalism -- is her acute powers of observation. Garner sees much as a soothsayer does into hearts and minds, the secrets of the past and the insecurities of the present moment. More than this, she is unremitting in peeling back the protective counterpane of image and manner. Her characters in fiction, her subjects in non-fiction and figures in journalism are all pared back to their essentials. In this she does not overlook herself. Her new and clean-lined book, The Spare Room, is likely to prompt discussion as much about its form as well as content. Can it be a novel where the central character, Helen, is Garner herself? And what about the pellucid style where we read with almost forensic detachment the recounting of a relationship over a three-week period? Is this fiction or non-fiction, autobiography masquerading as fiction or at least a hybrid where elements of fiction diffuse with an almost reportage of reality?

J.M. Coetzee Watch #6

Re: Life and Times of Michael K.

Lori, on the "She Treads Softly" weblog: "I would characterize Michael K as novel about freedom. However, it does not depict an exhilarating fight for freedom, but rather how the surrounding civil war effects the actions of a man who has no understanding of his life and times. Michael K is a simple man who would have lived a contented life in a kinder society but was not given that opportunity. This is a relentlessly sad novel written in spare, unadorned language. There are not any long, descriptive passages. It's as if Coetzee wanted to limit and simplify our understanding of Michael's surroundings in order to help us better understand Michael K, who is one of the powerless people caught up in the surrounding strife."

Re: Disgrace

Tony D'Souza looks back at the novel for "Critical Mass", the blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors: "J.M Coetzee's Disgrace is about a lot of things, but at its heart it is an anatomy of racial hierarchy change in contemporary South Africa. A very quiet side note to this is its analysis of man's disgraceful treatment of animals. Disgrace is a pitiless and errorless book about the condition of the human experience at the end of the twentieth century; while not altogether without hope, the book and its title is a condemnation of the basic state of modern humanity. "

In "The Michigan Daily", Kimberly Chou discusses the upcoming film adaptation. "The potential problems of this version of Disgrace, then, don't really lie in casting actors as sexier, more physically attractive than the author describes -- something I've often noticed in other films. (I imagine John Malkovich is fantastic in this role, although the character Lurie --- not exactly a silver fox but obviously once handsome -- is supposed to start out with a rather nice head of hair.) But placing a farm in the Western Cape while still suggesting it to be in a completely different part of the country compromises the film's cultural context. The core act of violence in Disgrace is Coetzee's addressing of 'farm attacks' during the 1990s in South Africa. Although only a slight majority of victims were white, the attacks or robberies were often perpetrated by young, unemployed black men, and seen as acts of vengeance against white Afrikaners by black Africans in a post-apartheid state."

Marieke Hardy Profile

Marieke Hardy seem to be everywhere at the moment. She writes a her own blog, Reasons You Will Hate Me, and a weekly television column for "The Age", she has a monthly role as part of the panel on ABC TV's "The First Tuesday Book Club", and now has a new job in Sydney co-hosting the breakfast show on Triple J radio. Elicia Murray profiles Hardy for "The Sydney Morning Herald".

As career trajectories go, it seems like a meteoric rise for the 31-year-old blogger from Melbourne who describes herself as a milky-skinned girl who wears short skirts and flowers in her hair. But the path of blog ownership has not been smooth.

Her profanity-laden online musings have also drawn lashings of vitriol from critics, most notably a bollocking in print from the right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt after an incident she refers to as Pandagate. More on that later.

Writing is in Hardy's blood. Her parents are Alan and Galia Hardy, whose television writing, producing and editing credits include All The Rivers Run and The Sullivans. Her grandfather was the left-wing author and communist, Frank Hardy, whose 1950 novel Power Without Glory has been hailed as the most influential novel published in Australia in the 20th century. A fictionalised version of the life of the Australian Labor Party powerbroker John Wren, it delved into crime, gambling and political corruption and landed the young author in prison on a criminal libel charge. He was acquitted on the grounds that the work was a mixture of fact and fiction.

Joan London Profile

Jane Sullivan interviews author Joan London for "The Age" as her new novel, The Good Parents, is released.

London's much-acclaimed first novel, Gilgamesh, was about journeys. The Good Parents is a rich, multi-faceted novel about escapes: the running away we all have to do from our parents, however good or bad they were to us. It might be an odd theme to choose at a time when, largely for economic reasons, children are choosing to live with their parents way beyond adolescence. But one way or another, London says, the escape must be made.

"Each generation has to make itself anew," she says on the phone from her home in Fremantle. "We're absolutely formed by the parenting generation, but we have to break away." And that applies whether the parents are old-school authoritarians or the new breed of mums and dads who respect their children as individuals with their own rights.

I can certainly recommend her previous novel, Gilgamesh, which was shortlisted for the 2002 Miles Franklin Award.

Clive James Watch #4

Articles by James

Clive James has been presenting the BB4 "Point of View" program in the UK, the transcripts of which appear each week on the BBC News magazine website. His latest entries concern:

He has now been nominated for the Orwell Prize for this journalism.

Poetry

You can read the full text of James's poem "The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered".

Lyrics by James, Music by Atkin

Back in the 1970s, James hooked up with musician Pete Atkin to produce six albums of songs. Copies of these albums are now selling for quite decent sums on eBay, so James and Atkin have got together to re-record some of the songs. The new release will be titled "Midnight Voices, the Clive James-Pete Atkin Songbook Vol 1".
James provides some extra background to the story in "The Guardian". You can also listen to one of the songs here.

Notes on Cultural Amnesia

The "reprising lothlorien" weblog has a look at James's essay on Sophie Scholl, who was executed by the Nazis in Munich in 1943 for being part of a resistance movement.

James makes the point that it is a great pity that Sophie Scholl is not as famous as Anne Frank, another miraculous young woman. He writes: "In addition to an image of how life can be affirmed by a helpless victim, we would have an image of how life can be affirmed by someone who didn't have to be a victim at all, but chose to be one because others were."
Other

On the occasion of the 300th issue of "Australian Book Review", James writes an appreciation of the magazine. His piece is the third or fourth one down, after Kerryn Goldsworthy's.
Clive James's Wikipedia page is continually being added to and is starting to become quite comprehensive.

Virginia Duigan Interview

As her new novel, The Biographer, is out in the bookshops, Virginia Duigan is interviewed in "The Australian" by Rosemary Sorenson.

The most Duigan will concede is that the characters in The Biographer are "faintly, just a touch, inspired by" people in her life. "It would be exceptionally misleading to say they are based on anyone I know, as even if it's there at the start, they very quickly race off in their own directions," Duigan says. "One doesn't really know where these things come from, and all aspects of your life throw things up, but yes, I guess people would think that all these (her life and the novel she's written) are connected."

The Biographer is Duigan's second novel. Her first, Days Like These, just released in paperback, is a novel about a heart-sore journalist who flees to London, where Duigan began her career as a writer at the end of the 1960s. ... "I wanted to leave the question about biography and ethics deliberately open," Duigan says. "One could say biography has reached an intrusive point, and I'm looking at one particular case. In the past, the problem might never have arisen. ... "I think we wonder, is this legitimate, are there still boundaries, and where are they? The biographer's approach is calibrated the whole way through. He knows what he wants to happen in the end and I think a writer might not think about the kinds of intrusions made into people's lives, the unsuspected areas they might go into.

"I'm not talking from any personal experience," Duigan hastens to add.

Helen Garner Profile

Jason Steger, of "The Age", talks to Helen Garner on the eve of the publication of her first novel in 15 years, The Spare Room.

"The ideal thing for me would be to write and say, here's a book, it's a story, read it anyway you would like. But these days people are always thinking about categories and wanting to put things in them. So people do want to know what will be expected of them if they open a book or what they can expect of the writer."

But surely by calling her narrator Helen and giving her many elements familiar from the life that Garner has written frequently about in books, film scripts, articles and columns, she is inviting readers to identify the narrator as the author?

"What if it was me or wasn't me? What difference would it make to the meaning or worth of the story?"

She says she doesn't understand the concern readers have about whether a thing is literally true. It happens with everything she writes. "People say to me, 'You did this and you did that'. And I've just got used to that and I just basically ignore it because it's just not interesting to me."

She doesn't want to define fiction, and the notion that it should be entirely made up is, of course, absurd.

"It's much more interesting for me to think that taking a chunk of experience and mushing it up together with other things that are inventable, remembered from some other time or stolen from other people's stories . . . and see if I can make it into something that works, an object, a little machine that runs."

You can also read an extract from the novel in "The Australian". Publication date is set for April 7.

Peter Carey Watch #4

Reviews of His Illegal Self

Wendy Smith in "The Los Angeles Times": "Peter Carey won his two Booker Prizes for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang, epic novels steeped in the history of his native Australia. But he's a thoroughly modern writer, smashing genre boundaries, ranging in tone from wild comedy to grim tragedy, viewing the past with a decidedly contemporary eye and firmly placing late 20th century adventures like My Life as a Fake and Theft: A Love Story in social and cultural context...Carey's fiction doesn't offer definite answers or easy consolations but something much richer".

William Sutcliffe in "The Independent": "It is a truism that the best novels stem in some way from personal experience. Peter Carey, born in the wonderfully named Bacchus Marsh in Australia, now resident in New York, has come up with a curious imaginative inversion of his own biography in his new novel, which takes its characters on a life-altering journey from Manhattan to a commune in tropical Queensland...For much of the book, the boy is unsure whether the woman who is looking after him, and who slowly grows to love him, is his real mother. This question seems to work as a metaphor for the main concern of the novel, which posits that we are nurtured and created as much by our surroundings as by our parents -- and many of us, in the course of our lives, choose whether we want to
be mothered by the city or the wilderness. Carey presents a convincing case that we would be better off with the latter."

Darryl Whetter in "The Vancouver Sun": "The title of Peter Carey's new novel, His Illegal Self, exemplifies his career obsession with double lives, fakery and the breaking of rules legal, moral and personal. Here, as in novels such as My Life as a Fake, Illywhacker and the achingly romantic Theft, he tests his characters with the pressures of hiding, lying and their own costly desires...Carey has a keen eye for hypocrisy. He exposes comrades preaching the brotherhood of man while knowingly passing on venereal diseases. This attention to personal contradiction recurs throughout the novel and fuels its lasting insights."

John Marshall in "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer" :"Carey -- an Australian writer who has twice won Britain's Booker Prize -- has penned a problematic novel in which flashes of narrative brilliance alternate with confusing chronology and trippy plot developments. Perhaps those excesses reflect the times they re-create, but the result is a sometimes enthralling, sometimes maddening work that ends up being the literary equivalent of a towering fly ball caught at the warning track."

Cathleen Schine in "The New York Review of Books": "His Illegal Self is a little book in the way that raspberries or bees or nuggets of uranium are little...One of the wonders of Carey's work is that his great, urgent narratives, so turbulent, so dark, so grand, are at the same time animated by such conscious and playful craft, as well as by a profound comic awareness. The lightness of Carey's touch, the poetic attraction to tender detail, give to the magnificent weight of his tales an unexpected sense of life, of wild, galloping physical movement and growth."

Other:

The "Literature Map" entry on Peter Carey plots his position in literature as he relates to other writers in the field. His closest fellow practitioners are Beryl Bainbridge and Tim Winton.

Christopher Bray briefly reviews 30 Days in Sydney in "The Financial Times": "This is a meditation on the writer's sense of place. There are passages in this book -- on the Aboriginal remains on which Sydney's Opera House was built, on the suburban drudge that is the city away from the harbour, on the murderous seas -- which are as good as anything Carey has written."

David Malouf Video

The Boomerang Books blog is featuring a talk on video by David Malouf, from the 2008 Adelaide Writers' Festival.

Poem by Les Murray

Les Murray has a poem, with the title "Science Fiction", published in the January 28th issue of "The New Yorker".

I wonder what sort of sf Murray would read? I reckon he'd be a 1960s New Wave sort of bloke - Ballard, Phil Dick, Aldiss, Ellison and Delany. Don't know why - it just seems to fit. But not Le Guin. I don't see that at all.

Tom Keneally Watch #2

Scott, on his "Axis Two" weblog, wasn't entirely engaged by Keneally's The Commonwealth of Thieves: "His strength and his devil lie in the details. Almost all of this book is an inclusive re-telling of the Australian saga, replete with names and motivations and sordid affairs. Frankly, it draws on the patience of the reader. Not enough thought goes into the implications of the Australian experiment for British social policy or even for the Empire itself." Which reads to me like he was looking for something in the book that Keneally never intended to include.

Megan, in Pennsylvannia, has a look at Schindler's List, which is part of her Man Booker Prize reading challenge. "While at times physically painful to read, Keneally's narration lays bare the Holocaust for readers and leaves no doubt as to Schindler's heroism despite his moral failings. Schindler's List is a slow and difficult read, with countless heart-breaking stories and more names and titles to keep track of than one can reasonably retain."

amNY.com lists The Great Shame by Tom Keneally as one of the "Top 10 Books about Ireland and the Irish". Keneally finds himself in the company of Shaw, Joyce, Yeats and Flann O'Brien.

Geraldine Brooks Watch #4

Profiles/Interviews

Bob Thompson in "newindpress on Sunday".

When she'd first launched herself on a newspaper career, she says, she'd overcome her shyness in part "because it wasn't me making the call, it was the Sydney Morning Herald." She'd won a scholarship to the graduate school of journalism at Columbia, where she'd met her future husband, Tony Horwitz. She'd been hired by the Journal's Cleveland bureau, quit to return to Australia when her father became ill, and been hired back when the paper decided it needed someone to cover Australasia. But the Middle East was terrifying on a whole new scale. "I was completely unqualified," she says. She'd never been a real foreign correspondent, certainly not one whose to-pack checklist would include both a chador and a bulletproof vest -- not to mention the "big pile of State Department briefing books on my lap, you know: crash course in Yemen."
Reviews of People of the Book

Those in favour:

Linda Fields in "The Pasadena Star-News": "Geraldine Brooks was born in Australia. She was a correspondent for 'The Wall Street Journal' in Bosnia, Somalia, and the Middle East. She is able to bring a first-hand knowledge of the horror of war and how people react in those circumstances to this hypnotic book. Even when the story was its most excruciating, there was never any doubt that I wanted -- no, needed -- to know what would happen next."
Danielle Torres on the "Work in Progress" weblog: "The chapters alternate and with each chapter we discover what actually happened to the manuscript -- the hands it passed through to those who created it. It's all very creatively presented, and it seems that Brooks has certainly done her research well. Oftentimes in novels like these one period or plotline will dominate the other, but I was quite content with both the story set in the present and the individual pieces of the story in the past. I found it all interesting -- not ever wishing I could hurry on to a more exciting part of the story."
Susan G. Cole in "Now" magazine: "Book conservation sounds like a snore as a fiction theme, but Geraldine Brooks makes it totally fascinating in People Of The Book...But the minutiae of the art of conservation, conveyed in ways that make you want to take up the trade yourself, are what set this book apart. Who knew those people holed up in national archives were this interesting?"
The "Bantering Biblocrat" weblog: "Some have called this a erudite DaVinci Code, and while that case can certainly be made, this is first and foremost a work of literature, albeit one that's also a page-turner. Its portrayal of communities and setting is evocative, whether in the Seville of 1480 or in the late 20th century Australian outback, and the character development is extraordinary. People of the Book is a beautifully-told, captivating literary work that reveals much about the power of the written word."

And those not so sure:

Felicity Plunkett in "The Age": "Hannah's Australianness felt, to me, slightly anachronistic, or confected, or perhaps made with an eye to the international audience the Australian-born, US-based Brooks no doubt commands...In other respects, Brooks' characterisation is remarkable. Her ability to evoke the conflicts that tear at an otherwise-devout Rabbi, or the altruism of resistance in, for example, a young Muslim wife in Sarajevo in the 1940s, is exceptional...Brooks' ability to take an initial inspiration and weave from fact a vibrant fiction situates it within the rich seams of 'faction', increasingly frequent in contemporary writing."
Michael Upchurch in "The Seattle Times": "Brooks may be spelling out her message a little too explicitly here, and the way her imagined histories interlock can be a tad too schematic. But she does a sterling job of reminding readers how art objects -- no matter how damaged or fragile -- link epoch to epoch and world to world, putting the conflicts and follies of our own time into context."

Related material:

Philologos, in "The Jewish Daily", discusses the roots of the word "Haggadah", using Brooks's novel as a starting point.

Peter Carey Watch #3

Profiles/Interviews

ABC TV's Kerry O'Brien, from the "7.30 Report", interviewed Carey on 4th March. The video of the interview, plus a full transcipt, are available. Carey seemed to be in a very happy place - serious (as he usually is), but much more amused by life than I had seen him for a while.

"The Guardian" books page has an audio podcast of Carey reading from and talking about his new novel.

"The Sunday Herald", out of Scotland, has an interview with the author, conducted by Alan Taylor.

His mother was the daughter of a country teacher and his father, having left school at an early age, was determined to do the best by his son. Thus, in 1954, he was sent to Geelong Grammar, Australia's equivalent of Eton, which a decade later would feature on the CV of Prince Charles. For Carey, the change in circumstances was dramatic and traumatic. Everyone, it seemed, had double-barrelled names and could pronounce "castle" correctly. Interviewed by the Paris Review, Carey recalled that it cost ÂŁ600 a year to send him to Geelong, an "unbelievable" amount of money in those days, adding: "I suppose it did solve a few child-care problems. I never felt I was being exiled or sent away ... No-one could have guessed that the experience would finally produce an endless string of orphan characters in my books." That thought occurred to Carey while he was writing His Illegal Self, another novel about a boy who is, to all intents and purposes, orphaned. In the past, Carey has described Australia as a country of orphans, people who for whatever reason have been separated from their parents and their homelands. "Our First Fleet was cast out from home'." The older he's got, the more he has come to appreciate why he does some things repetitively.
Reviews of His Illegal Self

Elizabeth Lowry in "The Times Literary Supplement": "Carey reopens the question of the fragile nature of identity in his new novel, His Illegal Self. The book may not have the im-mediate, eccentric appeal of Oscar and Lucinda, the imaginative brio that infuses The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith and My Life as a Fake, or the ability to shock of The Tax Inspector, but it is still unsettling, and it has a main character as original as any Carey has ever created."

"The complete review": "It feels somewhat thin in places, with a few holes and some of the behaviour seeming rather unlikely, but on the whole it's quite enjoyable. And there are parts when Carey gets going that completely sweep the reader along." This review follows a round-up of other reviews of the novel. "The complete review" gives it a B+.

Caroline Moore in "The Spectator": "With a less good writer this would be intensely annoying. Carey runs through many of the tricks of post-modernism -- the tricksy shifts, the dislocations of chronology and viewpoint, the refusal to allow the reader the common courtesy of speech-marks, which might make it altogether too easy to know what is going on -- yet, time after brilliant time, he carries it off (sometimes better than others; but this is one of his best). His tricks move beyond mere trickiness." She rates it a "triumph".

James Woods in "The New Yorker" in a double review with My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru: "Carey's often beautiful novel, one of his best recent works, has the bruising tang of all his fiction, in which crooked colloquialism (frequently Australian vernacular), and poetic formality combine. The result is brilliantly vital: the world bulges out of the sentences." He concludes that it is "fleeting and photographic".

Mark Sarvas, of "The Elegant Variation" weblog, was looking forward to reviewing this book but its "failings kept me from falling into the book the way I have with Carey's other novels." The review he's talking about appeared in "The Dallas Morning News": " But unlike Kelly Gang or Theft, in which fantastically stylized voice is key to understanding some remarkable characters, in His Illegal Self the effect is merely disorienting. Events are fitfully played and replayed from multiple perspectives, and clarifying details are withheld, resulting in an uneasy, unclear view of the landscape."

Michelle de Kretser Profile

Michelle de Kretser is profiled in "The Australian" by Rosemary Neill. De Kretser's latest novel, The Lost Dog, has been shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

De Kretser says the praise and prizes her novels have attracted "increase un-confidence, if that is the word". When her second novel was released, she was worried it wouldn't live up to the success of the first. Now she is uneasy that The Lost Dog -- to be published in Australia, the US, Britain and Italy -- won't match the achievements of The Hamilton Case. "The only thing I know at the end of a novel is how to write that novel; that knowledge doesn't transfer across to the next one," she says soberly.

Another reason for de Kretser's trepidation is that The Lost Dog is her first contemporary novel and her first to be set in Australia: "That was scary. That was profoundly scary because I hadn't done it before and with my two previous novels, set in France and Ceylon, the main readers were not going to come from these countries. I was haunted by my own literary past in the writing of this novel, in a funny way." Funny, because being haunted by the past is one of The Lost Dog's principal themes.

Shane Maloney Profile

Shane Maloney is profiled in "The Courier-Mail", as his Murray Whelan Trilogy, a compilation of the first three books in the series, is selected as the latest work to feature in the paper's Big Book Club reading group.

The success of the novels and the telemovies means Maloney's literary hero now has a life of his own. "It is quite extraordinary to have an imaginary friend who is better known that you are," he says. Maloney once received an invite, from one of Tony Blair's political advisers, for Murray Whelan to go to No. 10 Downing Street. And, after the telemovies were made, Murray Whelan Pty Ltd sent the author a royalty cheque. "I made this guy up and now he's sending me money in the mail," Maloney says.

J.M. Coetzee Watch #5

Reviews of Diary of a Bad Year

William Deresiewicz, in "The Nation", is impressed with the novel on a number of levels. "There are surprising parallels here with Philip Roth's latest novel. Exit Ghost also gives us a love triangle of sapless old writer, beautiful temptress and snorting young bull. Both books announce an exhaustion with the making of fiction, at least on the part of their protagonists. Both allude, in connection with questions of finality, to Hamlet, Roth's novel in its title, Coetzee's in its last lines. Together, the two books point to larger parallels between their authors' work. Both writers have devoted much attention, especially of late, to the experience of age. The literature of old age is a slender one before the nineteenth century, even before the twentieth. King Lear, Oedipus at Colonus and a few other works stand against the vast literatures of youth and adulthood. But now that writers are living longer and staying stronger, we seem to be entering a golden age of the literature of age, and Roth and Coetzee are perhaps its greatest exponents."

In "The Kansas City Star" Joseph Peschel isn't quite so sure: "Despite its weaknesses, Diary is a thought-provoking book, but it seems more of an experiment, like Coetzee's 2003 Elizabeth Costello, that tries to meld essay and fiction. I prefer his more traditional narrative, 1987's Foe."

On his "Fire When Ready" weblog, Bob Mustin realises the difficulty of reading this book but finds a lot to like anyway. "I've always considered Coetzee an adventurous novelist, adventurous in subject matter and style. In Diary Of A Bad Year, he proves no less adventurous as he enters his eighth decade. The book is largely an unwinding series of opinions on nearly everything in modern life, from George Bush to his new homeland of Australia. Each page begins with such an opinion, followed by a narrative of his 'story,' which concerns Coetzee himself as he writes the book."

Review by Coetzee:

Coetzee reviews Lost Paradise by Cees Nooteboom, translated from the Dutch by Susan Massotty: "The chief trouble with Nooteboom's Lost Paradise is that it is hard to reconcile the skeptical, relativistic spirit of the book as a whole, particularly its prologue and epilogue, with the story of the girl from Brazil who exorcises her demon by absorbing traditional Aboriginal beliefs. It is also hard to make sense of her grounds for excluding the troubled Dutchman from the paradise he seeks in her arms, namely that angels cannot consort with human beings. The gods and goddesses of Greece were not shy of bestowing their favors on mortals. Why should angels be different?"

Clive James Watch #3

Reviews of Cultural Amnesia

Ted Burke titles his review "Memoirs of an Amnesiac", which isn't bad. "Memoirs of an Insomniac" might work just as well. "His range is impressive, though some of his views are questionable, given to subjectively defined absolutes, such as his long essay on jazz composer and band leader Duke Ellington; James does an insightful reading of the master's body of work, but goes beyond his kiln expressing his dislike of the modernism that caught up with jazz improvisation, claiming, in effect, that the faster, more bracing innovations of Charlie Parker, Coltrane and Miles Davis destroyed the form. Rather than admit that any vibrant art changes with the younger stalwarts who take up it's practice, James would rather that his beloved idea of jazz, rhythmic, melodic, and danceable, was "dead". This is rather typical of the book, where one enters what they think is a discussion of an intriguing personality only to find that James has a grievance he wants to address, a score to settle. He goes off topic with the topic he selects."

Hans finds one major problem with the book - plus a few minor ones as well: "One huge problem with "Cultural Amnesia"? The typos...I don't think I've ever seen a big serious book with so many of them - seriously, some proofreader at Norton books was hitting the juice during lunchtime, because there's one every other page, which is a problem in a book that specifically criticizes OTHER books for misusing commas and semicolons and the such - (book-kettle calling the book-pot black much?)"

Interview

Dwight Garner runs a few quick questions past James on "Paper Cuts": "What are you working on? I'm working on the fifth volume of my memoirs. This volume is provisionally called Prelude to the Aftermath and covers my time in
British mainstream television from 1982-2000, so it will have a star-studded cast in which Luciano Pavarotti, if I may say so, bulks large. I am also finalizing the proofs of my upcoming book of selected poems, Opal Sunset, which will be published in America late this year."

James on Television

Clive James recently appeared on BBC Television's "Question Time" and Neil Skinner was in the audience to report on the filming. He rated James's performance a 9/10: "A typically robust performance from the ever popular Australian writer/broadcaster, a pleasing mix of well made political comment and razor sharp satire from a man of enormous intellect." And a last note from the man himself: "My feeling that I would have been a happier man if I had been a painter and indeed a happier man if I had been a gravedigger - a very useful occupation, in my view, as it was in the view of the gravedigger who met Hamlet, himself a gloomy fellow - that feeling might have something to do with a disposition towards melancholy. From the inside I don't actually feel like a wet weekend. But apparently I strike other people that
way."

Geraldine Brooks Watch #3

Profiles/Interviews

Bron Sibree in "The Courier-Mail":

Despite having written three historical novels, Brooks says she cannot fully explain her fascination with the past..."I liked history in school, but I was much more animated by politics, by the things that were really happening in society around me," she says...She likes too, to joke about her on-the-page attraction to men of the cloth -- "vicars, rabbis, imams, I don't know why" -- but insists she is not religious herself...She adopted the Jewish faith when she married fellow Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author Tony Horwitz -- more, she says, out of a sense of obligation to history than to faith..."I'm very interested in all those big life-and-death questions, but haven't found answers to them in any spirit in the sky."
With each interview you read, a little more is exposed. Jessica Yadegaran talks to the author for "The Mercury News".
Geraldine Brooks wasn't born Jewish, but by age 14, she was obsessed with the religion, its people and plight...In fact, it was during the Six-Day War in 1967 that Brooks, who would go on to become a renowned foreign correspondent, first paid attention to the news. In high school, the Australian started wearing a Star of David on her Catholic school uniform. She schlepped around dog-eared copies of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. She penned a play about the Warsaw ghetto.
[See Update note below.] And beginnings are explained:
Geraldine Brooks knew she wanted to be a journalist when she encountered firsthand the meaning of the phrase "hot off the press" as a young girl in Sydney, Australia. But becoming a novelist -- a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, nonetheless -- happened more on a whim...Brooks' father was a proofreader for a newspaper and sometimes brought her to work with him. She said she still remembers feeling the building shake as deadline approached and touching the hot pages of the day's newspaper minutes before it was shipped throughout the city...Her father was a human rights advocate as well, always defending the underdog, Brooks said. Her mother nurtured and encouraged her imagination. Her whole family had a profound appreciation for books, she said..."For us," Brooks said, "books were in a special class of things, like food and school uniforms -- something we somehow found money
for."
Brooks was also interviewed by "The BookGuys" for their radio program, and the interview is available for download for audio streaming.

[Update: checking back over this entry I noticed that one particular interview, that I quote from, contained no link, and it appears that the original is now no longer freely available on the web. At least I can't find it anywhere. So, I've removed the empty link, but will leave the quote as it stands. I didn't make it up, honest. Just wasn't as complete in my checking as I would have liked.]

Elizabeth Jolley Documentary

Elizabeth Jolley is the subject of "Artscape" screening on ABC 1 at 10pm this evening.

The half-hour documentary examines the writer's life and work and looks at her legacy through the eyes of three former students. [...] When Jolley died in February 2007, some of her most insightful tributes came from her former students. Having taught creative writing for almost 30 years, her teaching legacy has combined with her published works to make her a surprisingly influential figure across Australian television, theatre and fiction writing.
If you miss it, the program will be repeated on ABC 2 on Sunday, March 2 at 7pm.

Alexandra Adornetto Interview

Alexandro Adornetto, the Melbourne author of The Shadow Thief, caused a bit of a sensation in Australian publishing circles a year or so back by signing a two-book deal with HarperCollins - it wasn't so much the deal itself, but that the author was only 14 at the time. The first book was out last year and now Adornetto is nearly finished the second. As that progresses she is interviewed by Alisa Gould-Simon on the "psychoPEDIA" website.

Do some people not take you seriously as a writer as a result of your age?

Nowadays this isn't a problem anymore, because I have established a profile of sorts; but when I was trying to get published and contacting different people for advice it was a little frustrating. I have a mature sounding phone-voice so people thought I was eighteen to twenty. When I told them I was thirteen their tone changed very quickly! I got told on so many occasions how brutal the publishing industry is - I think they were trying to protect me from heartbreak! I am very grateful to the team at Harper Collins who did not see my age as a barrier but rather as a positive. They have always treated me like an adult.

The title of the second book is The Lampo Circus.

Alex Miller Profile

Corrie Perkin interviews Alex Miller, for "The Australian", about a book that
took 50 years to write.

Alex Miller first heard the story as a 16-year-old British migrant working on a central highlands cattle station. Miller had hitchhiked from Sydney to Queensland in search of the outback, which had fired his young imagination and encouraged him to leave his family and a grim post-war London. As he recalls, "The dramatic escarpments of the central Queensland ranges and the fast-flowing streams and open ironbark forests were not Nolan's outback, but I fell in love with the country."

The Cullin-la-Ringo story added to Miller's fascination with his new homeland and it has stayed with him for more than 50 years. In Landscape of Farewell, the 70-year-old writer has finally found the right setting and characters around which to tell the
tale.

Anne Gracie Interview

Anne Gracie, author of the recent Regency historical novel The Stolen Princess, is interviewed by the Word Wenches.

Mary Jo Putney: You're our first Australian guest. Why do you think we independent, republican colonials, whether Australian, Canadian, or Americans, love Regency historicals so much? Despite the glut of Regencies, predictions of the death of historicals, and now an expanding range of settings, the Regency historical subgenre is still doing just fine. Do you think this will continue?

Anne Gracie: I think "our" Regency era is, in a way, a fictional world loosely created from history by a whole body of marvelous fiction. And the more good books and movies set in that era are published, the more that world becomes real and beloved and familiar to more people, so it's very easy to step into it. I suspect the subgenre faltered when that world became too rigid and limited, but once people stepped outside of Almacks etc, it got a whole new lease of life. The actual Regency era has everything any novelist could want -- glamour, war, lords and ladies, rituals, poverty, social climbing, great art and architecture, exclusivity, technological innovation, revolutions -- there's no end to the fodder -- and we can approach it as an insular society or in the wider world context. I believe that as long as people bring their own unique take on it and write fabulous new stories, the subgenre will continue to flourish. I certainly hope so.

The interview also includes the news that Gracie has written a novelization of the first six episodes of the first season of the television drama, "The Tudors" - this was released in the US last November.

Anne Gracie's website

Peter Carey Watch #2

Reviews of His Illegal Self

Those in favour:
Dovegreyreader has had problems with Carey's novels in the past and "cynical old me wasn't going to be impressed by a name, or browbeaten by a reputation, or even charmed by a cover bearing a beatific child fixing me with a penetratingly angelic gaze, just daring me to dislike the book...go on, just you dare...is he about to cry?

"I've heard wind of the reviews, and there would seem to be slapdown mutterings and chunnerings afoot and the ones I've skimmed are not favourable and give away just about every plot detail, but really I might just as well say Booker and His Illegal Self in the same sentence and get that bit over with first. You don't need to be Einstein to come up with the formula, Carey + New Novel = Booker. Except that I think, in fact I'm going to be brave and say it, if this book makes it through it will deserve to be there.

"There's no doubt about it, Peter Carey writes well and truly out of the box.."

Richard Eder in "The Boston Globe: "A jigsaw puzzle's compulsion lies not just or even mainly in the pieces, but in the gaps to be filled. Peter Carey's magnificent novel about the burnishing ordeals of three waifs is told as an
intricate series of missing pieces...His Illegal Self is a novel of narrative complexity and blindingly direct emotion not so much bestowed upon its readers as won by them. The effort we make is not really effortful, though. Carey's writing is a series of insights that incite and arrest. Above all he has created three alluring, unexpected, and intensely moving characters who do not so much reveal themselves as transform themselves into revelation."

Those not so sure:

Abigail Deutsch in "The Village Voice": "At its best, this curious novel is a study of disorientation, of knowing neither where nor who one is...By the end, we feel a bit unsure of who Carey's characters really are - making it fitting, if not satisfying, that they bear so many names."

Those against:

Lionel Shriver in "The Telegraph": "Peter Carey's last novel, Theft, was a big, brave bastard of a book, its characters so outsized that they should barely have been able to button their shirts. It's hardly fair to reproach an author with his own achievements, but in the reviewing tradition of doing just that, His Illegal Self is not as good...Somehow this story from 1973 doesn't quite convince as period fiction, yet feels a little stale; there's a thin line between a-while-ago and dated...Carey's prose is uneven...The biggest problem with His Illegal Self is that it's hard to read. Not impossible to read - it's no Joycean tossed salad - but more difficult than need be."

Now, here's a surprise - Michiko Kakautani in "The New York Times": "Peter Carey's novels - from the Booker Prize winners Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang through recent ones like My Life as a Fake and Theft - tend to feature improbable undertakings, sudden reversals of fortune and elaborately manufactured or forged identities. Most of his characters inhabit a boldly colored limbo land somewhere on the great fiction map between Dickens's world of improbable coincidences and the old-fashioned world of the picaresque, where odd happenings and even odder people are strung together willy-nilly into rollicking, improvisatory tales...Mr. Carey's latest novel, His Illegal Self, is very much a distillation of these proclivities, and the book, like many of his earlier efforts, turns out to be a herky-jerky affair that lurches between the compelling and the lackadaisical, the intriguing and the preposterous." And that's just the first two paragraphs.

Profiles/Interviews etc:

Mike Doherty in "National Post": "Perhaps one secret to becoming a writer of Carey's stature is a mixture of self-belief and humility. His website lists five unpublished novels and scads of short stories he wrote as a young man in Australia in the '60s and '70s, when, he recalls with a laugh, 'I thought I was a genius! The second novel I wrote was accepted by an Australian publisher. I was 24. That seemed reasonable to me! In the end, all that fell through, and I was furious, but I was so lucky. It never occurred to me I had anything to learn. I'd read very little, and I pushed blindly and enthusiastically onwards.'"

Jackie McGlone in "The Scotsman": "'What really fascinates me, though, is the power of the imagination. I believe that writers should write about what they don't know, not about what they do know. Some of my students become trapped in their own lives, churning over the crimes of parents and siblings, which stops them discovering the incredible joys of invention'...'Perhaps it was writing True History of the Ned Kelly Gang that really freed me up - maybe it was being brave enough to abandon all punctuation in that book that did it. Getting rid of punctuation means you have to get rid of all sorts of sloppiness in your writing, you have to be really, really exact. And it allowed me to be playful with language, which is what I'd admired in serious literature when I first started to read it when I was about 18.'"

Channel 4 has a video interview with Carey on their website, which is certainly worth watching (runs about 20-or-so minutes) and which mentions "The New York Times" review.
[Thanks, Kim.]

Steve Toltz Interview

Malcolm Knox interviews Steve Toltz, author of the upcoming A Fraction of the Whole, in "The Sydney Morning Herald".

As a schoolboy, when he didn't know the answers to questions in biology tests, Steve Toltz would write down some silly invention for his own amusement. The moral challenge came when he did know the correct answer and still wanted to make something up. "I struggled with that," he says, "but the impulse against seriousness eventually won out." Given extravagant free reign, Toltz's lifelong battle with seriousness has resulted in more than a decade of wandering the earth and A Fraction Of The Whole, his comical, philosophical, picaresque, hugely enjoyable first novel.
You can read extracts from the novel on the Penguin href="http://www.afractionofthewhole.com/" target=new>website.

J.M. Coetzee Watch #4

Michael Gorra reviews Diary of a Bad Year on the "Truthdig" website and, in the process, provides a good background on Coetzee's other works. Of The Life and Times of Michael K.: "Coetzee has a deeply political mind, yet he prefers to use a moral language instead - to couch his book's questions not in terms of justice so as much as in those of guilt and shame and conscience. Most of his characters would be happy to avoid politics all together, to be left alone in their gardens, and the conflict between that desire and the demands of their world is reflected in the obliquity with which the author himself approaches such issues."
Of Disgrace: "...its picture of post-apartheid South Africa was far from celebratory. Indeed it suggested a world of spreading disorder, and the book was sharply criticized at home, a criticism given extra fuel by the book's international success."
And Diary of a Bad Year "is the most rigorously planned of Coetzee's novels, right down to the design of the page. Most of its bits are end-stopped, though there is an occasional missing period, a bit of grammatical drama, that tempts you to turn before you should. Yet it all feels as casual as a sweater tossed across one's shoulders, a book seemingly made out of nothing at all, and two central novels of the 20th century
came repeatedly to mind as I read, even across vast distances of style and temperament." And you'll have to read the piece to find out which novels they are.

Kirk Lapointe, in "The Gazette" out of Vancouver, finds the structure of Coetzee's latest novel rather intriguing: "It is hard to imagine a more challenging, intriguing and frustrating book in recent times than Diary of a Bad Year by two-time Booker Prize winner
J.M. Coetzee...[the novel] redesigns the shape of a novel: Coetzee presents three books in one -- or, to be more frank, three somewhat incomplete books in one, offered not sequentially but horizontally across each page." Lapointe sees Diary as a return to form for the author and "a clear sign that, at age 68, Coetzee is far from finished."

As one of the best new critics in the sf field, it's always interesting to read what Matthew Cheney has to say. And the first couple of sentences of his notes on Diary show he doesn't like to rush to judgment: "This is a book that will need to be reread. Until then, some notes." And he concludes that this "is an extraordinary book, and even if I think it offers less than some of Coetzee's best work, that is very light criticism: few living writers possess Coetzee's mix of intelligence and skill, and he is one of the few writers I can think of where I can't imagine ever calling any book his 'worst', even though, as with any writer, he has books that are better than others."

Geraldine Brooks Watch #2

Reviews of People of the Book

Those in favour:
Terri Schlichenmeyer in "The Eagle-Tribune": "People of the Book starts out slow; so slow, that I wasn't sure I could make it through almost 400 pages. There's a lot of setup to make the story work, and not much happens for the first couple segments. In the end, I was glad I stuck it out...With time-framing reminiscent of Pulp Fiction, some factual history, the existence of a real book and a fictional character who is increasingly easy to like, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Brooks takes you on a five-century trip from Bosnia to Venice, Vienna to Spain, and inside mosques, churches and torture chambers...If you like historical mysteries, antique-hunting or The Da Vinci Code, pick up People of the Book. This book about a book is a double delight for anyone who craves the
written word."
Lena on "The Reading Obsession" weblog: "I loved the book! The writer really caught the essence of the struggles of the Jewish people throughout history and really drew me into the story. It is not an 'on the edge of your seat' kind of book, but if the reader is looking for a wonderfully engaging story with a bit of a historical feel to it this book is a perfect fit for that type of reading."
Briefly noted in "The New Yorker": "...the final, multilayered effect is complex and moving."

Those against:
Polly Shuman in newsday.com: "...perhaps because Brooks covers so much temporal ground in People of the Book, the historical voices never sound true to their periods. The further back she goes in time, the more contrived the stories get and the more the characters seem like parodies of politically correct cliches. The Haggadah is a mystical magnet for people with secret Jewish ancestry and anachronistically literate girls, a rainbow coalition of the feisty but disempowered. The equally contrived framing story - a journey of self-discovery involving a car crash, cancer, a family secret, forgery and betrayal - brandishes the same lessons. Even though I share Brooks' liberal values, I found the novel's cloying yet aggressive sanctimoniousness hard to take."
Susan Comninos in "The Philadelphia Inquirer": "the novel, in its proselytizing zeal for universality, sometimes puts anachronistic lingo in the mouths of its medieval characters. For instance, the refusal of a Moorish slave girl to humiliate a Christian woman - by painting her naked likeness for their Muslim captor - is explained by a self-help declaration: " 'No ... I can't do this. I know what it is to be raped. You can't ask me to assist your rapist.'"...People of the Book shouldn't have to rely on such heavy-handed prose or pointed making of points. A simple explication of the real-life story of the Sarajevo haggadah - one of individual bravery in the face of a larger brutality - would have sufficed."
Lisa Fugard in "The New York Times": "We are left wishing Brooks had found a less obtrusive way to gather up the many strands of her narrative. While peering through a microscope at a rime of salt crystals on the manuscript of the Haggadah, Hanna reflects that "the gold beaters, the stone grinders, the scribes, the binders" are "the people I feel most comfortable with. Sometimes in the quiet these people speak to me." Though the reader's sense of Hanna's relationship with the Haggadah rarely deepens to such a level, Geraldine Brooks's certainly has."
Miriam Shaviv in "The Jewish Chronicles": "It is a brilliant concept and, although most of the stories are based on a factual nugget - a Catholic priest did sign the Haggadah in Venice and one illumination includes a picture of a black woman at the Seder table - they are a triumph of imagination...But it is let down by some flat writing.Brooks gives Hanna Heath a love interest, a rocky relationship with her mother, a celebrity father and a voyage of self-discovery. It is all too much, and detracts from the absorbing historical narratives - though a couple of these, as well, are overloaded with historical and technical detail."

And if the reviews are all getting a bit much, you can listen to the author talking about her book on All Things Considered, from Minnesota Public Radio.

Bill Congreve Interview

Bill Congreve is one of the major editors and small publishers within the Australian sf&f field, but he wears other hats as well. He is interviewed on the "OzHorrorScope" weblog.

Do you see yourself more as an editor, a publisher, a bookseller, or a writer?

Or critic? I think I've published more book reviews/criticism of Australian speculative fiction at a professional level than anybody else. Don't quote me on that. (This is entirely different to the kind of academic criticism published by Van Ikin and Bruce Gillespie. I don't have that skill.) I miss bookselling and love the rare opportunities I get on the MirrorDanse dealer's table at conventions. Unfortunately, bookselling isn't a career which pays a mortgage in Sydney. At work I seem to be doing more editing, but that's technical editing of non-fiction. In terms of testing a non-fiction document to make sure it all adds up and how it can be improved, that isn't unlike fiction editing. These days I'd have to think of myself as publisher, then editor, then writer. Why? Because that's what I'm actually doing. I do wish the writing was taking a greater role.

Peter Carey Watch #1

Yes, it's Peter Carey all-day, every-day this week. Hardly surprising really, given his two Man Booker prizes, his position as one of the better-known authors in the English-speaking world, and the publication of a new novel. Though I hadn't expected that I would still be posting his bookcovers up till this week, nor that the physical production of the novel would demand a note. The interviews could have been predicted, along with the following reviews, if I'd thought about it long enough. But I didn't.

In case you're wondering what the new Carey novel is all about "The Guardian" had John Crace summarise it for their digested read series.

"The Telegraph" refers to Carey as the "outback Dickens", in John Preston's review of His Illegal Self: "Carey has always been a great Dickens admirer and there are times when his ability to empathise with a small child recalls, and comes close to matching, David Copperfield. There is, however, none of Dickens's sentimentality on show -- this despite Che's relationship with his pet kitten. Instead, Carey manages to get right to the heart of his desperation without it ever feeling forced or cloying."

In "The Guardian", Christopher Tayler isn't as impressed as others with the book: "In practice, though, [the novel's] angles aren't fully explored, and Carey's emotional choreography isn't sure-footed enough to make Che's story live up to its dramatic opening. As you'd expect, he does a good job of creating a lively -- and carefully Americanised -- idiom for his central characters. And having lived in one himself, he clearly knows a lot about alternative communities in Queensland. Yet, coming as it does on the heels of such books as True History of the Kelly Gang, the new novel seems badly paced and weirdly dull."

Dennis Lythgoe in "The Deseret Morning News" out of Salt Lake City tends to agree: "Billed by the publisher as 'the best fictional work to explore the militant radical underground of the late 1960s and early '70s,' it is instead a misguided, failed attempt to either comprehend or explain that period. Some readers are apt to keep reading simply because of curiosity, but continued reading will not satisfy...The novel just doesn't work." I always like it when reviewers make these sort of statements but make no attempt to explain
why. It really leaves me with the sense that it was worth my while reading it.

In other items: Carey goes out to eat. Just thought you'd want to know that he actually does that.

Alexis Wright in India

Alexis Wright has been travelling in India to promote her Miles Franklin Award winning novel Carpentaria, and to deliver a lecture at Jadavpur University department of English, in Calcutta.

The book, she admits, is no easy read. "I wanted to take Australian literature and throw it over the boundary... I always credit my own people for teaching me how to read and write in the first place, and not the universities I have been to." Carpentaria is very much about "giving something back to my own people", in as authentic a way as possible, without giving away that which is sacred to the Aboriginal peoples.

Peter Carey Interviews

I'm not sure when Peter Carey's new novel His Illegal Self, was due to hit the bookshelves here in Australia, but I saw it over the weekend and purchased a copy today. Not surprisingly the reviews are rolling in thick and fast, and there are a couple of interviews out there as well - expect more to follow.

In "The Canberra Times", Gillian Lord discusses Heath Ledger, New York, his children, Australian politics, his niece, his new book, and literary styles with the author:

The language Carey uses in this book is different. "As I've got older, specially from the [True History of the] Kelly Gang on, I've started to do the things I've really wanted to do. It's not just the voices, but looking at sentences and trying to join words together in ways that are at once true and together, that makes it a poetry of sorts, that are true to character. I think I managed to do it in [Illegal Self], and in the next one I hope to do it better.

"It's about the texture of words, you make all these choices about how you will thread these little lumps of things made up of 26 letters."

He's quiet for a minute.

"I used to think people who talked about sentences were a lot of wankers actually," he adds cheerfully.

In "The Times" from London, Erica Wagner gets straight to the point:
Peter Carey, your new book is entitled His Illegal Self. Before that there was My Life as a Fake; and then, three years later, Theft: A Love Story. What's that all about?

Carey's usual ebullience suddenly seems muted. "I know, it's a shame," he says, not exactly joking. Sitting across from him in the cosy environs of Lupa, a trendy Italian place in Greenwich Village, New York, I persist. Are the books a kind of trilogy?

"No." There's a pause. "I don't know. I don't think it's something I want to address, I think it's kind of unfortunate..." Another, very long pause. "What are we going to put that down to? The convict system? I don't know. The illegal thing comes from a subject, a very personal thing between my youngest son and I, being in the country and Charley being worried about 'illegal' drivers... there were the rednecks and the illegal drivers, so it's some kind of tribute to Charley, a little joke."

Just an accident, then? "Yes, and it's why I was very clear about the jacket and why it had to be a little kid's face, because it makes sense of the understanding of illegality, his illegal self. But the repetition of theft, fake, illegal is rather unfortunate ... in the sense that it suggests something much stronger than I feel. On the other hand who's making these patterns, Doctor? It's me." And he grins, at last, the wicked Carey grin, its slight goofiness an effective screen for the remarkable perception and imagination that hallmarks his work.

At first glance I can see how you can make a connection between his latest three novels, but Carey has been writing about lying and fakery since the beginning. Take the first couple of sentences of Illywhacker (1985): "My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. They come and look at me and wonder how I do it...I am a terrible liar and I have always been a liar. I say that early to set things straight. Caveat emptor."

All novelists are "liars", it's the nature of the beast. Carey is just a bit more up-front about it.

The Indigo Girls by Penni Russon

Penni Russon, author of Undine, Breathe and Drift, has stepped into the unknown territory of the three-word title with her new book The Indigo Girls. Russon has a reproduction of the cover and a link to the first three chapters of her new book on her weblog.

I've come to the conclusion this is an excellent idea for novel promotion. In fact, I've seen it suggested - by Cory Doctorow I think - that even making the full text of the novel available online helps book sales. Russon also links to an interview she gave in which she details the books she used to read as a teenager. And, no Penni, it isn't embarrassing.

Author Interviews in "The Atlantic"

"The Atlantic.com" has recently opened its virtual doors to the world and made all its content - current and archived - available for perusal to non-subscribers. This is a fantastic resource and you should certainly have a good look through the list of author interviews, if nothing else. The only Australian writer I can find on the list is Peter Carey, who was interviewed in 2003, around the time of the publication of My Life as a Fake.

Estelle Pinney Profile

Estelle Pinney, author of 4 previous novels, is profiled by Lou Robson in "The Courier Mail" as her fifth, Burnt Sunshine, is about to be published by Penguin.

As a 38-year-old divorcee selling cosmetics at David Jones, she decided she wanted another career change -- to be a writer. She joined a writers' group, which would later become the Fellowship of Australian Writers, and surrounded herself with authors. "I wanted to write the great Australian novel and needed a suitable subject," she said. "I decided Frank Jardine was worth researching and set about to do just that." In 1864 the explorer Frank Jardine and his brother Alexander had travelled from Rockhampton to Somerset, north of Bamaga on Cape York. Jardine completed the 1930km journey with a reputation as a tyrant and killer who reportedly shot more than 100 Aborigines. He later married a Samoan princess and went on to become Somerset police magistrate, before dying of leprosy in 1919.
If marrying a Samoan princess wasn't enough, surely the death from leprosy tops it all.

C.J. Dennis Examined

On the "BookStove" weblog, Barry Carozzi digs into CJ Dennis's poem "The Play", which forms a chapter of his verse novel The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. In the process he breaks down the first two stanzas of the poem to examine the rhyming beats, and discovers that Dennis didn't use iambic pentameter: "C J Dennis introduces a variation: the fourth line in the stanza has only two beats or feet. The rhyming pattern is AABBCC. There's probably a name for this metre, but I've not been able to locate it, so I'm calling it The Larrikin Metre or The CJ Dennis form."

I wonder if Dennis knew that. He probably did. He may not have been able to articulate it in exactly this manner, but he knew the rules and how and when to break them. "The Play" is one of my all-time favourites. My daughter is studying Romeo and Juliet at school this year but I doubt she'll see the same things in this poem that I do - if she ever gets round to reading it, which I also doubt.

Clive James Watch #2

Review of Cultural Amnesia

On the "illiterarty.com" weblog, Bridget is very taken with the book: "Probably the best thing I can say about Cultural Amnesia is that it covers a thousand topics, many of formidable intellectual density, and yet, at a prose level it is never less than intensely, immediately readable. The author demonstrates on every page that the latter is the result of the former. James is extremely intelligent and formidably self educated -- he can read in six languages, for a start -- and his measured wisdom is apparent on every page. However, as a child of, and internal participant in, the television age, he is also wholly aware of that the medium is the message. Here, the medium is a great big thick book full of interesting ideas from and concerning intriguing people, written in a style which allows ingress to almost any reader, and presupposes nothing more than a common desire for enlightenment. And it's really good fun."

Interviews by Clive James

Now that Michael Parkinson has hung up the microphone we are left with very few, if any, intelligent conversationalists on television. In Australia we are lucky enough to have Andrew Denton, who appears to have found the perfect niche for himself with his program "Enough Rope". But what about the UK? In "The Independent" Mary
Kenny wonders the same thing: "But you very seldom get, on contemporary talk shows, seriously good conversation or a genuinely gifted raconteur. It may be a mistake even to look for high-flown conversation. Clive James, who hosted
chat shows during the 1980s and '90s, tried time and again to bring together a group of people who would be brilliant at conversational discourse: he had some success, and he himself was no slouch as the egotistical TV host. But he ran out of steam -- and of commissions. The TV bosses informed him, as the century neared its end, that brilliant talk was not what the public wanted."

Just when we thought James had given up the idea of interviewing comes the following note: "An early highlight of this week's Sundance Film Festival, Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired is a riveting and expertly researched documentary about the 1977 court case in which the director was convicted of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor...Bookended by a candid BBC interview between Polanski and Clive James, the film not only dispels many myths about Polanski's flight but could well be the galvanizing key to his return to US soil -- should he so wish."

Garry Disher Profile

Lucinda Schmidt profiles Garry Disher in "The Sydney Morning Herald" (and also in "The Age").

In 2008, Garry Disher will celebrate 20 years as a full-time author but he still describes his career as a work in progress.

"You become a writer and that can take years," says the quietly spoken Disher, 57, who is one of Australia's top crime writers. "I still feel I'm undertaking an apprenticeship in some ways. I'm a bit restless, always wanting to improve."

Winning the 2007 Ned Kelly award for best crime novel (for Chain of Evidence) was a big confidence booster for Disher and he is now working on a follow-up tentatively titled Blood Moon.

I'm not sure if this is the Wyatt novel due to be published by Text later this year or a new Challis/Destry book.

[Thanks to Sarah Weinman for the link.]

Famous Dead Authors

In a piece titled "They're All Write, Mate" in "The Courier Mail", Alexander McRobbie - for Australia Day - gives a brief overview of "major Australian writers prominent in the 20th century before becoming members of the Society of Dead Authors -- rarely a keenly anticipated honour."

Authors mentioned: Alan Yates (aka Carter Brown), Thea Astley, Charmian Clift, George Johnston, Alan Marshall, Eleanor Dark, Alfred Jackson (Xavier Herbert), Arthur Upfield, Ernestine Hill, Pamela Travers, May Gibbs, Norman Lindsay, Joan Lindsay, D'Arcy Niland, John O'Grady, Kylie Tennant, Christina Stead, Miles Franklin, Patrick White, and Ion Idriess.

Toni Jordan Profile

With her debut novel, Addition, due out from Text Publishing with the next fortnight, Toni Jordan is interviewed by Fiona Gruber in "The Sydney Morning Herald". (Be aware though, especially if you are an aspiring author, that Jordan's story of her success might just evince feelings of overwhelming jealousy).

She had absolutely no pretensions as a novelist, she continues, coming from a background where "it seems so self-indulgent [to imagine] that anyone should be interested in the ramblings of your head". She claims to be devoid of all creativity except a modest amount of literary skill. Yet her debut novel Addition, a witty and sexy romp about a woman obsessed with numbers and a hunky stranger, is due out with much fanfare in Australia next month and has been sold in nine countries.
Then again, her innate sense of enjoyment in the whole process tends to disarm any bad feelings you might have about her.

Geraldine Brooks Watch #1

Geraldine Brooks has just published her new novel, People of the Book - her first since her 2005 novel March won the Pulitzer Prize. Naturally she is receiving a lot of attention. To provide some background on the novel here is the blurb from the publisher's page.

"When Hanna Heath gets a call in the middle of the night in her Sydney home about a precious medieval manuscript which has been recovered from the smouldering ruins of war-torn Sarajevo, she knows she is on the brink of the experience of a lifetime. A renowned book conservator, she must now make her way to Bosnia to start work on restoring The Sarajevo Haggadah, a Jewish prayer book -- to discover its secrets and piece together the story of its miraculous survival. But the trip will also set in motion a series of events that threaten to rock Hanna's orderly life, including her encounter with Ozren Karamen, the young librarian who risked his life to save the book.

"As meticulously researched as all of Brooks' previous work, People of the Book is a gripping and moving novel about war, art, love and survival."

Clare McHugh, in "The New York Sun", does compare the novel to The Da Vinci Code, as seems inevitable, and finds it much more enjoyable. "In reality, People of the Book is of much more substance than Dan Brown's overwrought, silly, and ultimately distasteful thriller could ever hope to be -- yet Ms. Brooks's work is just as entertaining. She has accomplished something remarkable, fashioning a story that is compelling and eminently readable, even as she maintains high intentions and an earnest purpose."

In "The Guardian", Ursula Le Guin isn't quite so enthusiastic: "Her performance will satisfy many readers. The tale is full of complex twists and turns, with even a bit of mystery plot towards the end; there's sex, a rather tenuous love story and the obligatory descriptions of acts of violence...The story sprawls, but it is all firmly planned and plotted -- possibly too firmly...Full of action but with no leavening of humour, no psychological revelations, no vivid language to focus
description, the chapters grind on. Most unhappily for a historical novel, there is little sensitivity to the local colour of thought and emotion, that openness to human difference which brings the past alive."

"Publisher's Weekly" concludes: "Brooks is too good a novelist to belabor her political messages, but her depiction of the Haggadah bringing together Jews, Christians and Muslims could not be more timely. Her gift for storytelling, happily, is timeless."

Janet Maslin in "The New York Times" finds that "the intense bibliographic appeal of People of the Book turns out to be a mixed blessing. It lands Ms. Brooks neck-deep in research. It overburdens her tale in ways that make it more admirable than gripping."

And finally, Ami Sands Brodoff, in "The Globe and Mail" considers it an "epic": "'Haggadah' stems from the Hebrew root hgd, 'to tell,' and the rescue and preservation of the Sarajevo Haggadah dramatized in People of the Book brings home with fearsome clarity how inextricably linked are words and human life: the people who created the book, owned it and later rescued and preserved it endured pogroms, the Inquisition, exile, genocide and war."

Peter Carey Profile

Peter Carey, who has a new novel titled His Illegal Self out next month, is profiled in "The Guardian" by Nicolas Wroe.

In His Illegal Self there are mentions of both Jack London's White Fang and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, but he "didn't officially get" Huck Finn until he heard Garrison Keillor read it on tape. "It can come over quite corny on the page, but Keillor's is a lovely performance that gets through all that and actually unlocked something for me, which is a real gift. It would have been a shame to go through life not getting Huck Finn."

And this ad-hoc negotiation between cultures seems to have been the guiding spirit of his career. Although he set out on this latest novel with the new approach of his vision of the woman and a boy, he says that, in hindsight, "all my books somehow come back to the colonial situation of one country and another country. It is true of Illywhacker, of Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs. Tristan Smith is absolutely about that and so is The Kelly Gang, which throws in Ireland as well."

Judy Nunn Profile

Samela Harris profiles actor/author Judy Nunn in "The Courier-Mail". Nunn's latest novel, Floodtide, her ninth, has just been published. She previously appeared on the television soap "Home and Away" for 13 years and wrote in the dressing room while waiting for her time in front of the camera.

"Home and Away was a very good soap. I am very proud of it and I don't believe in biting the hand that feeds you, but if you are in a soap for any length of time, even a year, you can lose your identity." Things have changed. "Now people stop me in the street and say, 'Aren't you the author Judy Nunn? I just love your books'. And, you, know, I just want to marry them. I just love it. It's such a change from 'G'day Ailsa' or 'Look, that's that bird from television'."

Shaun Tan Interview

Shaun Tan is interviewed by Nicolas
Verstappen on the "du9" weblog.

I almost never start with a theme in mind, so while the story has something to do with feelings of belonging (or not belonging), that emerged as an almost unconscious preoccupation, while I was busy focusing on more specific things like characters or landscapes. In the case of The Arrival, many ideas for the book were inspired by old photographs of people and places than have long since passed away, and these have often been triggers for other paintings of mine. There is a sense of mystery already in historical records that has something to do with their distance and silence, so I need to work my imagination to build a lost world around these little fragments of memory. It's almost as though the absence of information demands the creation of fiction to fill the void.
Thanks to Jessa Crispin for the link.]

Tom Keneally Watch #1

Danna Sue Walker reports on Tom Keneally's visit to Tulsa to receive the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award.

The Mosman Municipal Council gives notice of an author evening, Wednesday 27 February, featuring Keneally discussing his book, Searching for Schindler. Pre-paid bookings are essential.

Review of Victim of the Aurora
On her weblog, "The Indextrious Reader", Melanie reviews the novel and sees comparisons elsewhere: "Although all of the gentlemanly Edwardian explorers give no hint of conflict in their journals, Keneally wanted to approach a situation rife with it. This idea meshes well with another book I've been slowly reading, Francis Spufford's I May Be Some Time. In that book, Spufford examines the Idea of ice in the Edwardian imagination. In this novel, Keneally takes that sublime appeal of the icy wilderness and peoples it with prosaic Edwardian men. It succeeds admirably,
even with a few loose ends left dangling."

Searching for Schindler
Keneally pays tribute to Poldek, "the man behind the man behind" Schindler's List in "Jewish News Weekly" : '"Poldek was the spark plug, and I was just one piston in the machine," Keneally, 70, says modestly, speaking at his home in Sydney's northern beaches. "I see myself as a mere catalyst. I was not the great heroic instigator."

J.M. Coetzee Watch #3

Judith Shulevitz, writing in "Slate" finds Coetzee's work to be, well, hard work: "In novel after novel, his protagonists are, to put it nicely, unattractive: men and women in late middle age or old, their bodies in breakdown, their manners chilly, their self-pity in full bloom. Plots he doles out in pinches, like salt. His settings are as barren as deserts, even if they're in cities."

Rachel Donadio ponders the question, in "The New York Times", of why Coetzee left South Africa for Australia: "Why would a novelist who has written so powerfully about the land of his birth pack up and leave? Were his 2002 move and his taking of Australian citizenship last year a betrayal of his homeland, or a rejoinder to a country whose new government had denounced one of his most important novels as racist? Was it just another example of the 'white flight' that has sent hundreds of thousands of generally affluent South Africans to other Anglophone countries since the end of apartheid? Or was it a tacit acknowledgment that Coetzee had exhausted his South African material, that the next chapter in the country's history was the rise of the black middle class, and what did an old resistance writer, with his aloof, middle-aged white narrators, know about that?" She comes up with a possible answer involving T.S. Eliot and an essay Coetzee wrote in 1991.

Review of Disgrace

On the "Stains of Blue" weblog: "Its a really enjoyable read, not very long and beautifully written, but I think its one of these books that I'll have to read again because it has so many layers. Its a lot about politics about the situation of the white minority in South Africa after the Apartheid was abolished, about how to deal with a past like that. How different generations deal with it incredibly differently because of their respective experiences. I must say that this part of the story touched me deeply, because my country, too, has a horrible history and I, too, know how the different generations (my grandparents who have actually lived in the war, my parents, who lived with the guilt of their parents, and my generation, who still find it hard to have a real emotional bond to their country) experience these things differently. There is a lot about how to deal with that accumulated guilt and how that affects every relationship."

Review of Inner Workings - Literary Essays, 2000-2005

Bob Mustin, on the "Fire When Ready" weblog: "In the end, Coetzee manages to sketch literary, social, and political impulses into an imaginative rendering of the twentieth century. All collections have their limitations, and Inner Workings has its own. Coetzee's commentary is largely drawn from novel and short story prose, barely touching poetry and the relevance of essays such as his here."

Reviews of Diary of a Bad Year

In "The New Yorker", James Woods warns us not to be taken in by the surface chill of his work, there much greater depth than first appears to be the case. "Coetzee's chaste, exact, ashen prose may look like the very embers of restraint, but it is drawn, again and again, to passionate extremity: an uneducated gardener forced to live like an animal off the South African earth (Life & Times of Michael K); a white woman dying of cancer while a black township burns, and writing, in her last days, a letter of brutal truths to her daughter (Age of Iron); a white woman raped on her farm by a gang of black men, and impregnated (Disgrace); a recent amputee, the victim of a road accident that mangled a leg, helpless in his Adelaide apartment, and awkwardly in love with his Croatian nurse (Slow Man). Coetzee seems compelled to test his celebrated restraint against subjects and ideas whose extremity challenges novelistic representation."

Marco Roth in "The New York Sun": "Diary departs from his earlier work only by inverting the terms of who
suffers and who can offer consolation. Usually, it's the voice of civilization, in the form of a (usually) male narrator, who comes to recognize that he is not alone in the world of his desires. Here, it's the old, bachelor writer, at the mercy of strangers, who resembles the stray dogs in Disgrace. He cannot depend on common humanity, nor does he ever appeal to it."

Allen Barra, in "The Houston Chronicle": "Diary of a Bad Year is so compelling, in fact, that it's not easy to pin down precisely why it doesn't work. Coetzee's technique isn't a gimmick, but the way it is used here sometimes seems gimmicky, a self-consciously Postmodernist presentation of obviously anti-Postmodernist ideas, particularly about the relentless coarsening of language and music in the modern world."

Hilary Mantel in "The New York Review of Books": "In the days of naive photo-tourism, travelers in torrid zones could show us a near-naked and sexually null human being, as wrinkled as a blob of tar on a scorching road, and then surprisingly reveal that he or she was only twenty-seven. Something the same happens with Coetzee's characters: they seem on the brink of extinction, but there's life in the old dogs yet. The strong opinions never flag. Al-Qaeda. Pedophilia. Harold Pinter. Avian influenza, intelligent design, Guantánamo Bay. We are aware that they are edging us from the stock-in-trade of the finely pessimistic yet liberal commentator, and toward Coetzee's familiar and haunted and powerful preoccupations: disgust, disgrace, shame, the painful lives of animals. The arguments above the line are ariously persuasive, invariably robust. Sometimes the opinion offered above the line is slyly taken apart by the characters below it. The miracle of the book is that it is deeply involving, wryly funny, and perfectly easy to read, even when the bifurcated narrative splits into three."

Kathryn Harrison in "The New York Times": "Coetzee's fiction -- and, Diary of a Bad Year suggests, his psyche -- has always manifested a fault line. On one side of the divide is reason, moral and sober, charged with the responsible stewardship of human society. On the other lie the passions, especially lust, that undermine and sometimes trump intellect."

Harry Siegel in the "New York Post": "...while Coetzee is a tremendously gifted craftsman, the material he's assembling is mostly too flimsy for the structure he's attempting to shape."

Christopher Koch Interview

Christopher Koch is interviewed by Claire Allfree for "The Metro", a daily tabloid newspaper given away free in London. The interview concerns his latest novel, The Memory Room, which has just been published in the UK:

Setting human dramas against pivotal moments in history is a Koch speciality. He is best known for The Year Of Living Dangerously, about an Australian journalist caught up in the attempted overthrow of Indonesia's president Sukarno in 1965, which was turned into a film starring Mel Gibson. 'That book was my lucky break,' he grins. 'I've never done an honest day's work since.'

[Thanks to kimbofo for the link.]

Ben Peek Interview

Ben Peek, author of Black Sheep, is interviewed by Charlene Brusso in "Publisher's Weekly".

When you wrote Black Sheep, were you addressing issues in Australian politics specifically?

Black Sheep was born out of Australian society, but only because this is where I live. I've always been the kind of writer who reacts to what is in front of him. The book was a response to racist politicians who said anyone not white was bad. It was a response to the vibe that seemed to say that people ought to resent and be afraid of people that didn't look and speak the same as they. Unfortunately, that's not exclusive to Australia. Every country has those lines drawn.

Is that why Black Sheep was published by an American press rather than an Australian publisher?

Most publishers in Australia - the publishers I could get to - gave me the form "no thanks." One had published a short story of mine in a collection earlier, so they knew who I was and gave me a bit more of their time. But they read the book and told me that it was too intense for them and could do with some humor. Then the rejection closed with the comment, "Not that 1984 or Darkness at Noon were very funny books, I suppose."

Trudi Canavan Interview

Australian fantasy writer Trudi Canavan, author of the Black Magician trilogy of novels, is interviewed in the Fantastic Women series by Karen Miller.

What drew you to writing speculative fiction?

I've always been attracted to stories that contained a supernatural element. As a child it was fairy tales, myths and bible stories. As a teenager I was one of the first generations to enjoy books written for the 'young adult' market. The first Star Wars trilogy came out during those years, and later the BBC radio show of the Lord of the Rings led me to discover Tolkein's books. I can remember waiting impatiently for the release of each book of David Edding's Belgariad, which was so refreshingly light and funny compared to what had been done before, and the revelation that Feist's Magician was at the time.

J.M. Coetzee Watch #2

In "Bookforum" magazine Siddhartha Deb reviews Diary of a Bad Year and notes that the author's change of country of residence, from South Africa to Australia, has not dimmed the writer's focus: "The move to Australia, then, was only a respite for Coetzee. His adopted nation might not be quite as crude as apartheid South Africa in its ideas of power and governance, but it is implicated in other falsehoods, from its disingenuous treatment of its aboriginal people and its devotion to neoliberal dogma right down to its eagerness to sign on to the 'coalition of the willing' led by Washington.

"Coetzee's latest novel, Diary of a Bad Year, has much to say about the West and its shapeless war on terror, taking as its starting point the idea that the liberal democratic state, for all its valorization of representative politics, is as authoritarian a system as any..."

"The complete review" finds that although Diary of a Bad Year is much better than the bulk of modern fiction it might well have been better yet: "Diary of a Bad Year is (somewhat surprisingly) a gripping read. The three-part presentation isn't an undue burden on the reader; the book can't be read like your usual novel, but it doesn't require that much more concentration or contortions to keep track of everything. Diary of a Bad Year is a novel of ideas, and the fictional threads running below the essays keep Coetzee's opinions from coming across as too much in-your-face, or forced onto the reader. And there is some overlap: the underlying story does add to the essay-opinions, even when Coetzee uses it to point out their weaknesses. He is not entirely successful, but it is one technique for trying to turn a writer's usual
monologue into a dialogue.

"If anything, Coetzee could have been more daring about it, pushing all parts of the novel harder than he does. Still, even as is Diary of a Bad Year stands easily above most of the fiction of the day, thought-provoking and entertaining both."

Continuing with Diary of a Bad Year: Mitali Saran in "Tehelka" out of India says that "like all of Coetzee's work, it is well worth reading"; and Minu Ittyipe, in "Newindpress on Sunday", is of the view that "The mixing of non-fiction and fiction, the prurient thoughts and the intellectual engagement on a single page proves to be an interesting and taxing exercise for the reader. "

In "The Capital Times" from Madison, Wisconsin, Jacob Stockinger contrasts Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005 with Milan Kundera's The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts, and concludes: "If you want a quick, more suggestive read with a more philosophical bent that might spark your own grand theories about literature, culture or art, Kundera is probably for you.

"If, on the other hand, you want to hone your skills at close reading and textual analysis, if you want to learn how to use biographical context and how to assess aesthetic execution of specific writers and works, Coetzee's book holds many more modest insights and serves as a better role model"

Fiona McIntosh Interview

South Australian author Fiona McIntosh has written 9 fantasy novels under her own name, as well as a crime novel under the pseudonym Lauren Crow, and is interviewed this week in "The Courier-Mail" by Jason Nahrung.

McIntosh, who moved from her native England to Australia in 1980, mined the medieval-style fantasy setting for her first two trilogies, Trinity and The Quickening, both of which earned her overseas sales and an avid following. "I was a little unnerved when The Quickening went well.

"I didn't want to trade off it, I wanted to do something different and go to a different place." She chose the Mediterranean and Middle East.

"I love the exotic feel of Percheron [her new fantasy trilogy], the minarets and slippers that curl up at the toes and all that Ali Baba-type stuff.

"The new book is set in a European-style world similar to The Quickening, but more English. I've got that in my soul. Growing up in England, you're surrounded by castles, so it's easy to put myself there.

"But for Percheron, I had to go there -- Rhodes, Istanbul -- so I understood it. It was the best thing I ever did for the story -- to do it justice, I had to do it. In Istanbul, once you scratch the surface, medieval Constantinople is there, staring you in the face.

"You can only do so much out of your imagination. My fantasies are based on historical cultures and landscapes; there's only so much you can get through reading and research. When I walked in the Grand Bazaar, the book fell into place for me. Looking at the patterned tiles, tasting the apple tea and smelling the spices, watching the carpet sellers; the story just bounces into life from there.

"I kept the story fantastical, I didn't want it to appear to be a guide to the Middle East, or having someone there read it and say that's not how it is."

Charlotte Wood Profile

Charlotte Wood was shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin award for her second novel, The Submerged Cathedral. Her third, The Children, has just been published and she is interviewed in "the Age" by Jane Sullivan:

For a long time she thought she could not be a writer because she didn't have a story to tell: "The idea you could actually discover what to say by doing it was so liberating for me." So she began "writing properly" in her late 20s, supporting herself with journalism and other jobs.

"I feel the life I have now is the life I've always wanted. It kind of amazes me I have got it. I can write, and I'm allowed to keep doing it." Writing a novel, she once said, is "about stepping inside that moment when your voice goes wobbly and you don't know why, and you don't want to know why, because it scares you".

Profile of Michelle de Kretser

As her latest novel, The Lost Dog, is published, Michelle de Kretser is href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/my-life-and-a-dog/2007/11/23/1195753287438.html">profiled in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Fiona Gruber. [This is a reprint of the same profile in "The Age" last week. Seems I missed that one.]

Alongside the exploration of a man's relationship with his dog, a more general animality pervades the novel, from the musky aroma of its main female character, the mysterious artist Nellie Zhang, to the daily confrontation old and arthritic Iris de Souza has with her own excrement. It is, in part, a commentary on the sanitised world in which we live, where the old, the sick and the imperfect are made to feel useless, invisible.

"We have an obsession with bodies in the West but there is a denial of bodily-ness," de Kretser argues, saying the obsession with fitness and control of appetites is unsensual. Our animality is something we have become disgusted by, she says. Perfect teeth, straight strong limbs and glowing skin form the template that separates the Western physical orthodoxy from a more diverse cast in less affluent countries.

Profile of Alexis Wright

In "The New York Times", Jane Perlez introduces Alexis Wright to an American audience. Still no American publisher for Carpentaria at this time.

Despite highly laudatory reviews, Wright's 500-plus-page tale of the tortured relations between blacks and whites in the sparsely populated desert country around the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Queensland languished on bookstore shelves. With a few exceptions, the independent bookstores run by political liberals, who have often expressed embarrassment at the sorry treatment of Australia's indigenous people, were reluctant to promote it. Too difficult stylistically, said the salespeople at the Macleay Bookshop and Bookoccino, two of Sydney's top literary outlets, where Wright's novel was hard to find in the months after its publication.

But today Carpentaria, published by the small literary house Giramondo after it was rejected by every major publisher in Australia, has become a literary sensation. It is in its sixth printing, with sales of 25,000 copies, far above the usual 2,000 to 3,000 for a literary novel here.

This is pretty rare for the NYT to give this amount of coverage to an Australian writer. Peter Carey might get it, Malouf and Murray maybe. But not many others.

Kathryn Fox Interview

With her third novel, Skin and Bone, out and about, Kathryn Fox is interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Samela Harris.

"Of course, in reality, one is not going to like everybody and everybody is not going to like you. I've discovered this with readers."

Internet feedback, it seems, is sometimes hard to take. Fox calls them the "armchair critics" who, liberated by anonymity, ping off gratuitous bursts of email venom.

Some crime readers are fixed in their tastes, obsessively loyal to their favourite writers . . . or so Fox explains.

It is clear she feels stung.

But she is not striving to emulate anyone and, possessed of a generous spirit, feels no territorial imperative on the creative scene. She believes in a more-the-merrier of crime fiction, a world which encompasses Patricia Cornwell, P.D. James, Sara Paretsky -- and Kathryn Fox.

Matthew Reilly Interview

In "The Sydney Morning Herald", Ray Cassin interviews Matthew Reilly, one of Australia's best-selling novelists, as his new novel Six Sacred Stone, is published for the Christmas market.

"What I do is write books for an audience that thinks in a movie language," Reilly says. "That's the way I think and I also believe that not enough authors keep up with the audience.

"Since Seven Wonders came out [in 2005] we've had shows such as 'House' on TV and before that 'CSI'. "Those two shows, and especially 'CSI', are of movie-quality every week. 'CSI' has close-ups, long shots, dissolves. It's got a movie language.

"I think the audience is watching 'CSI' and 'House' closely and they assimilate information quickly. If I had Jack West, for example, jumping onto the wing of a plane and maybe his grip is slipping and his hand is sweaty and you can see the fingernails scraping. I can describe that in either a close-up or a long shot.

"I am writing for what I believe is the way this ever more-sophisticated audience is thinking. So I reject the notion that I'm writing the books so they can be turned into films. I'm writing them for an audience that thinks in terms of films." Reilly consciously distinguishes himself from other thriller writers because he writes in this way.

Matthew Condon Profile

Following on from her profile of Venero Armanno that I linked to yesterday, Rosemary Sorenson also talks to Matthew Condon as his new novel, The Trout Opera, hits the shelves.

Condon's generation -- which includes Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Gillian Mears, Nick Earls and Venero Armanno -- were the first wave to benefit from the push to publish more young Australian writers generated by the success of The Australian/Vogel Award. But Condon believes his path may have been muddied somewhat by those same enthusiasms.

"It's taken me 20-odd years to understand writing is a bloody hard job," he says. "It's not easy to move forward and still maintain the standard of quality. People think they're just going to bowl in and that's it for the next 40 years, but you can't stop working at it."

Venero Armanno Profile

Rosemary Sorenson profiles Venero Armanno in "The Australian" as his latest novel, The Dirty Beat, is published by University of Queensland Press.

One of his novels, The Volcano, took 10 years to complete and none of his other six books had the almost uncannily easy transition to the page that he found with The Dirty Beat. This one, he believes, came gushing out of him as though the two words, dirty beat, had opened a dam he'd closed up all those years ago, when he turned away from [his university band].

"It came out so fast because behind it was 25 years of not talking about it, of not wanting to confront the thing," Armanno says. "We had actually thought we were building something and when it became apparent we weren't getting anywhere it hurt so much. We had tried hard with that creative thing, and I genuinely loved the guys, but after the end of the band I didn't see them again. I don't think I could face it, so I had to deny it all."

Eric Rolls (1923 - 2007)

Eric Rolls, author of A Million Wild Acres, has died at the age of 84.

Rolls wrote poetry and non-fiction works for both adults and children across a long career. His best-known work, A Million Wild Acres: 200 Years of Man and an Australian Forest, won "The Age" Book of the Year Award in 1981, and the National Book Council Award for Australian Literature in 1982. According to the Australian Online Bookshop, the book "is the story of men and their passion for land; of occupation and settlement; of destruction and growth. By following the tracks of those pioneers who crossed the Blue Mountains into northern New South Wales, Eric Rolls -- poet, farmer, and self-taught naturalist -- has rewritten the history of European settlement in Australia. He evokes the ruthlessness and determination of the first settlers who worked the land - a land they knew little about."

Rolls was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1992.

Sean Williams Interview

Adelaide science fiction writer Sean Williams is interviewed by Tobias Buckell on the "Clarkesworld Magazine" website.

Harlan Ellison gave a talk to a bunch of people in Canberra back in the 1990s in which he described the scene then as a Golden Age of Australian speculative fiction. If it was gold then, I don't know what it is now. Platinum, perhaps, or something even more precious. The scene has really exploded in the last decade, with so many new writers coming up the ranks and so many of us old pros selling overseas that it's very difficult now to remember what it was like when I first started. Then, you could've counted the number of US sales on a couple of hands. Now, there are established writers like Sara Douglass, Greg Egan, Garth Nix, Trudi Canavan, and Lian Hearn continuing their already successful careers, with relatively new names like Karen Miller, Joel Shepherd and Justine Larbalestier bursting onto the world stage behind them. It's a very exciting time, whatever you call it.

Christopher Koch Profile

Jason Steger profiles Christopher Koch in "The Age" on the eve of the publication of his new novel, The Memory Room.

The only secret life Koch has is his writing. Without that it would be difficult for him to function. "All writers are obviously neurotic; this is an absurd occupation. And I think it begins very early. For various reasons, writers retreat into an imaginary world because they find ordinary life rather difficult or boring or both."

Clive James Watch #1

A couple of weeks back I started a "J.M. Coetzee Watch" segment as I seemed to be finding quite a number of references to that writer turing up on the web. The only other Australian writer at present that continually appears on a number of websites is Clive James. This is probably mainly due to this year's publication of Cultural Amnesia, which has given a lot of commentators lots of material. But he's also out and about on
his own.

James's major recent book review is of Philip Roth's latest novel, Exit Ghost, in "The New York Times". He finds the novel "is just too fascinating to leave alone. It was designed that way, like the Tar Baby. Actually -- leaving aside all questions about authorial identity for the moment -- this book is latter-day Roth at his intricately thoughtful best, and a vivid reminder of why a dystopian satirical fantasy like The Plot Against America was comparatively weak. Roth has no business making up the world. His business is making up his mind, in the sense that his true material for inventing a pattern is self-exploration, not social satire...Exit Ghost. Great title. The book of a great writer. A great book? Maybe it's just another piece of a puzzle. A great puzzle, and true to life in being so."

In the "Times Literary Supplement", James returns to his glory days with a review of "British Film Forever", a television program aired recently on the BBC. Reading it, you get the distinct impression that James has seen every British film ever made, and has an opinion on each and every one of them. Just what you want from a reviewer: knowledge, and the wit to know when and how to use it. "The most glaring self-deception was a persistent failure to follow the money. The director John Boorman once said that film turns money into light. In cinema, money might not be everything, but it is always the first thing...There never was then, and still isn't, a reservoir of finance within Britain to sustain a film industry without a pipeline to the American market. Korda's productive heyday lasted for a while, and Michael Balcon's for a while longer, but without one eye on America nobody can last indefinitely: the true wording of British Film Forever should have been "British Film Sporadically". This was the biggest theme demanding to be treated by a documentary survey of the history of British film. Its almost complete absence guaranteed that the commentary could not be serious; so we got sprightliness instead."

As the subject rather than the viewer, James is interviewed by Rob Blackhurst in "The Financial Times". It's down to the success of Cultural Amnesia in America of course: "At 68, James has finally reached the age that he has looked for the past 20 years. He's still heavy-set and paunchy but gone are the tight television suits that he used to be funnelled into like an overgrown schoolboy, or Alexei Sayle. These days, with his dark-rimmed specs and existentialist uniform of black shirt and trousers, he could pass for a professor of English literature. "Previous interviewers, expecting to meet a sun-drenched larrikin, have been disappointed to find James in a state of wintry pessimism. Today, perhaps, because he's fed up with being portrayed, in his words, as a 'self-questioning, paranoid sad-sack', he's doing a fine impersonation of a man who is giddily upbeat."

On the "Autopilot" weblog, Murph probably nails the real reason why Cultural Amnesia is so successful and accessible: "I don't have a lot of use for the café bound philosopher/writer, and I while I enjoyed what little philosophy I did study there's no way I would ever persevere to be a truly 'deep' thinker. Many of the people James discusses in this book were, and had all the vices and weaknesses common to their species. They did not have happy lives, were riddled with insecurities, and several even committed suicide. People like Anna Akhmatova, Egon Friedell, and Paul Celan. "Were I to meet any of these people, there would be instant and mutual distain. Somehow James manages to present these people in their element. He proudly shows you their moment of greatness -- no matter how brief -- or damns them for their failings, no matter their reputation. "Somehow, in James' hands, these people are always interesting."

Shaun Tan Interview

Zack Smith, on the weblog "newsarama" interviews Shaun Tan as his new graphic novel, The Arrival, makes a big splash in the USA.

I always felt that the central idea -- of a wordless migrant story set in an imaginary country -- was very strong and simple, but I often worried about how it would be received given that it is fundamentally strange and ambiguous. So it's been extremely gratifying to discover how many readers have felt a great sense of empathy with the story, especially older generation migrants, and feel no need to question the unusual form. Although the book was originally published in Australia, there are many references to the immigrant experience at Ellis Island in the early twentieth century, and I'm hoping that the book will have a special resonance for US readers.
[Link via Blog of a Bookslut.]

Matthew Condon Interview

Matthew Condon, author of The Trout Opera, is interviewed by Angela Meyer. The piece was originally published in "Bookseller+Publisher" and Angela has now reprinted it on her weblog, "LiteraryMinded".

I think literature can take and hold a moment in time better than a newspaper, magazine or other media outlet. By the very nature of it being held, it can pose deeper questions than the press can offer day to day.

Sheryl McCorry Interview

Sheryl McCorry was the first Australian woman to run an immense cattle station (800,000 ha), and has recently written a memoir/autobiography, Diamonds and Dust, detailing her time on the land, her two difficult marriages and the loss of her young son. Christopher Bantick interviews her in "The Courier-Mail".

She pulls no punches in this at-times brutally frank and astringent book. Did she have to record her life in a fiercely uncompromising way?

"When I sat down to write, it all just tumbled out. Everything. My father called me after he had read the book and said you've written as you talk.

"But what I have written was the way it was for me. I'm pleased I have written the book as it has meant a sense of healing. When I wrote about the death of my son, I was angry.

"I rewrote it through tears and finally, the third time, I saw it clearly." While many books are described as Australian, McCorry's is the real deal. She can write with spare brevity and a kind of unadorned honesty that is at times confrontational and also profoundly
moving.

Christopher Koch Interview

As his new novel, The Memory Room, is released, Christopher Koch is interviewed in "The Australian" by Greg Sheridan.

Part of what the novelist does is unconscious, in Koch's view. Novelists can't always explain everything that leads them to write about particular themes and subjects. "I've never set a book in Europe. I've lived in Europe three times but somehow or other it wasn't the experience that engaged me in that way. I really don't have much interest in theories about what Australia should be doing in Asia. Writers to some extent are childish, and it's at the childish level that one really engages with any experience. What really moves you is at the very personal, childish level of the imagination. My business is the imagination and my imagination is engaged by Asia."

Peter Carey Interview

In "The Courier-Mail", Stefanie Balogh interviews Peter Carey ahead of his visit to the Adelaide Writers' Week next March, where he will release his tenth novel, His Illegal Self.

He has spent nearly two decades living in New York, but says one never loses a sense of being Australian. "People tend to think you do and also, I realise now, that I've got a kid who was born here who is 17. So I've been here 17, almost 18 years. In my mind it's not like that at all," he says. "I occupy that space all the time in my head but, of course, 18 years is a long way to be away, so obviously it's tough. But in my head I'm an Australian and I can't not be and I am in a very detailed sort of way."

Matthew Reilly Interview

Matthew Reilly, author of Ice Station, Seven Ancient Wonders, and the follow-up The Six Sacred Stones, is interviewed, in "The Sydney Morning Herald", by Angela Cuming, about the new television series he's scripted, "Literary Superstars". Amongst other things.

Death of Steve J. Spears

"The Age" newspaper is today reporting that Steve J. Spears, author and playwright, has died at his home in Aldinga, south of Adelaide, after a long battle with cancer. Spears is best known for his play, The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin, but in recent years had been writing a series of crime novels. One such novel,
God's Diary, remains unfinished, though Melbourne playwright Rob George and his wife, Maureen Sherlock, friends of Spears, hope to complete the work.

Colleen McCullough Interview

Colleen McCullough, author of Antony and Cleopatra, the last volume in her Masters of Rome series, is interviewed for "The West Australian" newspaper.

Her mother's legacy to Colleen was haemorrhagic macular degeneration, a condition which affects the retinas and which has left her with no central vision in her left eye and only about five-eighths in her right, making reading difficult. The nerves in her spine are also crushed, making it difficult to walk. She can still manage it but says it causes her great discomfort. "I find myself more and more inclined to use a wheelchair because I get so terribly tired," she says. But unlike her mother, McCullough's brain keeps fizzing. "My body is ratshit but at least what's inside my head, knock on wood, isn't," she says.

D.M. Cornish Interview

D.M. Cornish, author of Monster Blood Tattoo: The Foundling, is interviewed by Miss Erin on her weblog.

What can you tell us about the next Monster Blood Tattoo book?

I can tell you it is called Lamplighter -- but most would already know that, that it is about 136,000 words long (Foundling was 83,000 words) that the Explicarium for Book 2 will be just as long as it was for Book 1, that it begins near on two months after RossamĂĽnd first arrived at Winstermill -- the headquarters of the lamplighters, that it introduces a whole new cast of characters -- such as the hard-headed Grindrod, the lamplighter-sergeant -- whilst keeping a few of the originals, that it will be in books shops, by the grace of God, May next year (that is 2008) -- bring it on, I say!

Adrian Hyland Book Sales

Adrian Hyland won the 2007 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel for Diamond Dove and I had heard a rumour from somewhere that he was working on a follow-up, but had no details of the new book. Then, today, I found this reference in the October 2007 edition of "Bookseller + Publisher", under their "Wheeling and Dealing" column: "Text bought the...ANZ and translation rights to Adrian Hyland's Gunshot Road." And seeing that this information was out there I thought I'd check on the web to see if there was anything else:

Adrian Hyland's DIAMOND DOVE, the story of a woman caught between two worlds, who returns to her home in the Australian outback only to have a friend murdered hours after her arrival, and GUNSHOT ROAD: Two Emily Tempest Novels, to Laura Hruska at Soho Press, in a nice deal, for publication in spring 2008, by Peter McGuigan at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, on behalf of Mary Cunnane at Mary Cunnane Agency (NA).
That quote is taken from the "My Irrationalities" weblog, in a section titled "Industry Update" dated 15th December 2006. I wonder if this is a matter of the news taking this long to leak out here, or if Hyland sold his second novel in the US first. Either way I'm sure his new book will succeed as well as his first.

J.M. Coetzee Watch #1

Long-time readers of this weblog will have figured out by now that I restrict the focus of Matilda to Australian literature - fiction or non-fiction - and to books that relate to Australia. I had a bit of a "scoping" problem with J.M. Coetzee in the early days as he was a South African writer living in Australia. But then he started publishing books with Australian settings, themes and characters, and then took up Australian citizenship. So he moved from being a difficulty to fitting in quite nicely. Over the past couple of years I've reported on his books, his essays, reviews of his books and his festival appearances with intermittent regularity. Now, however, I'm finding that he seems to be cropping up everywhere on the web. And I'm wondering if this is the usual case for Nobel Prize winners, or if I'm just that bit more sensitive to his appearances given he's the only living Nobel literature laureate we have in this country? Do Harold Pinter or Nadime Gordimer get the same coverage, or is it just him?

In order to keep track of all this, I've started a "J.M. Coetzee Watch" segment, with this as the first instalment. Don't expect any regular pattern to appearances of this topic. He's just as liable to plunk himself in front of his desk to work on another novel and disappear from view.

Recent web appearances: The quarterly "Hopkins Review" literary magazine is set to be relaunched and JMC is listed among the contributing editors, along with novelist James Salter, poet John Hollander and critic Harold Bloom.

In the "Business Standard", out of India, VV reviews JMC's latest novel, Diary of a Bad Year: "It is the questions more than the plots that make his new novel like the hurly-burly of the politics of our days."

And staying in India, Aveek Sen reviews the same novel for "The Telegraph" from Calcutta: "The structure is polyphonic -- a tribute to Bach, 'the spiritual father'; the plot secretly reworks James and recalls Kawabata; and the implied master-allusion is to Nabokov. Coetzee's latest work is a bottomlessly clever feat of intellectual virtuosity and authorial legerdemain."

I can't tell who runs the "This Space" weblog but they write pretty well. They were also quite impressed by JMC's novel, even though a Booker judge described it as "a piece of radical literary theory." "Diary of a Bad Year is an exceptionally moving investigation of what it means to have singular opinions in a plural universe. The short, diverse essays at the top of each page signal a diminishment of writerly power."

The New Peter Carey

I wasn't even aware Peter Carey had a new novel coming out, but, according to "The Elegant Variation", it's titled His Illegal Self, and to prove it he's even got a photo of the galley proof. Amazon.com lists its publication date as February 5, 2008; and amazon.co.uk lists a date of February 7, 2008. They have a blurb which reads:

Che is raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother, the precocious son of radical Harvard students in the sixties. Yearning for his famous Outlaw parents, denied all access to television and the news, he takes hope from his long-haired teenage neighbour who predicts 'They will come for you, man. They'll break you out of here.' Soon Che too is an outlaw, fleeing down subways, abandoning seedy motels at night, as he is pitched into a journey that leads him to a hippy commune in the jungle of tropical Queensland. Here he slowly, bravely, confronts his life, learning that nothing is what it seems. His Illegal Self is an achingly beautiful and emotional story of the love between a young woman and a little boy, and a wonderful journey of self-discovery.
Che is always a good name. Best
Australian Rules footballer's name I ever heard was Che Cockatoo-Collins. Essendon and Port Adelaide supporters will remember him.

Shane Maloney Interview

Australian crime writer Shane Maloney is interviewed by Lucinda Schmidt in, of all places, the money pages of Fairfax Digital. Nice story about how he came to be published by Text.

Alice Pung Interview

In the past twelve months Alice Pung's memoir, Unpolished Gem, has been shortlisted for a NSW Premier's Literary Award, a Victorian Premier's Literary Award, an "Age" Book of the Year Award, and won the Australian Book Industry Award for Best Newcomer. Not a bad year's work all in all. Now Deborah Bogle has interviewed the author for "The Courier-Mail".

We read of a mother who worked late into the night making jewellery, and of her struggle to adapt when she was forced to give it up due to ill health. "I've had older women, not necessarily migrants, who've said those were the best parts of the book, that they had had the same experience when their children grew up and went to university," Pung says. "It was really touching to realise that, despite the cultural differences and the specific neighbourhood of Collingwood, people had found some universal appeal in the book."

Tom Keneally and Oscar Schindler

Schindler's Ark is now 25 years old, and now Tom Keneally has returned to the story of Oscar Schindler, and the tale of how he came to write his novel with Searching for Schindler, A Memoir. Nick Bray interviews the author in "The Courier-Mail".

"It came to me about three years ago that there was a bit of a story here in the process of producing the book and the film," Keneally says modestly from his home in Sydney. And it would be an opportunity to tell the story of Poldek, also known as Leopold Pfefferberg Page, the man who convinced Keneally that Schindler's story was, as he repeatedly called it, "the greatest story of humanity, man to man".

Michael Robotham Interview

The "reviewingtheevidence" website goes 60 seconds with Australian author Michael Robotham.

Belinda Castles Interview

Christopher Bantick interviews Belinda Castles, as her novel, The River Baptists, hits the shops. This novel won The Australian/Vogel award last year and so comes highly regarded, with Bantick calling it "essentially new Australian fiction."

Peter Temple

Australian crime writer, Peter Temple, talks to Bob Cornwell on the "Tangled Web" website. The topics of conversation cover football, cabinet-making, crime writing and Temple's next novel.

Carmen Callil Interview

It's been about a year since Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France by Carmen Callil was published, and still she gets grief over it. This week Emma Brockes interviews the author about her career, the book, and the reactions to it.

It is 34 years since Callil founded Virago, the feminist publishing house, and over a decade since her relationship with it ended, but her reputation still derives from that era: outspoken, pushy -- strident, in the pejorative of the day -- and inexorably linked with her Australian background...

Callil loves a good fight, none more so than with herself; she is bracing about her own nature. "I was always scared, really. I was scared until I grew up. I was scared when I started Virago, I was scared when I started my book. I'm scared when I have to speak in public. I think I've just sort of gotten used to being scared, so I ignore it."

It is a book about disillusionment, personal and cultural. Callil was romantic about Australia when she first came to Britain. "Now I realise what a mistake I made. I made a really big mistake about that, I sort of fantasised about it. Because there can be scumbags anywhere. That's the summary of the situation."

Lucy Sussex Speculative Fiction

Local Melbourne author, Lucy Sussex, is to conduct a one-day speculative fiction workshop at the Victorian Writers' Centre on Saturday 22 September, 10am-4pm. Charges: Non-member $130, VWC Member $90 / $80VWC conc. Bookings essential - ring 9654 9068.

I bought her a beer on Friday night and she didn't mention this. Looks like I'll have to warm up the grill plate in future.

[Thanks to Horrorscope for the link.]

David Conyers Interview

David Conyers, author of The Spiraling Worm, a 'linked-novel' of seven Cthulhu Mythos horror/espionage stories, co-authored with John Sunseri is interviewed at the "Horrorscope" weblog. The interview is in two
parts.

Long ago, I decided not to focus on "how" my writing career was going to happen, just on "what" I wanted it to be. By knowing what I want and staying focused upon my goals, I find the "hows" just comes to me, exploring options on how to get there, and then trying out the hows see if they work -- or not. Eventually, something does...

I'd always wanted to write science fiction ever since I was six when I saw Star Wars for the first time. That desire has never left me. I'd tried writing a novel, and then another, and those few publishers who did give me feedback said something very similar to what my English teachers said: the ideas are there but your grammar is terrible. So I decided to try my hand at writing role-playing games, which seemed easier to write. I started with the Call of Cthulhu game, which had always been a favourite.

Clive James Interview

As Clive James prepares to deliver the opening address of the 2007 Melbourne Writers' Festival tomorrow night, he is interviewed today in "The Age" by Ray Cassin. The main topic of the conversation is James's most recent book, Cultural Amnesia, but it does stray into other areas, including the possibility of a sequel.

Peter Temple Interview

Jenny Davidson, US novelist, decided to tag along on the One Shot World Tour organized by Colleen Mondor and interview Australian author Peter Temple. It was only afterwards that she realised that the original Tour was aimed at Australian YA authors. Doesn't matter; we're always happy to hear from Temple about life.

I like horses and horse racing. The animals are beautiful, their nobility shames the often tawdry humans who surround them. I am a gambler too, so racing is a source of pleasure, smugness, pain, and chagrin. What else in life offers so much? Australian Rules football, that's what. It's a game of beauty, elegance and physical danger. Then there is the casual brutality and the bravery and the endurance. And I am speaking only of what it takes to be a fan.
He has a few things to say about wrtiing as well, including the prospects of a South African based novel.

Australian SF Author Interviews

Back in 2005, Ben Peek undertook to interview as many Australian sf and fantasy writers as he could, and called it 2005 Snapshot. Two years on, Girlie Jones decided that was such a good idea she'd get a few friends together and do it again.

The websites involved in the 2007 Snapshot are:
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com
http://girliejones.livejournal.com/
http://benpayne.livejournal.com/
http://kaaronwarren.livejournal.com/
http://cassiphone.livejournal.com/

And the interviews all took place last week. The best place to look into those interviews is, oddly enough, back at Ben Peek's weblog. Ben points out the differences between his survey in 2005 and this latest version, and is in the best position to comment on the changing fortunes of a number of the writers interviewed. If you want to know what's happening on the Australian sf and fantasy fiction scene, then this is the place to start.

Michael Robotham Interview

Michael Robotham, author of The Night Ferry, is interviewed by Peter Wilmoth in "The Age".

Robotham says a writing career in the small Australian market is hard and he acknowledges his happy position. "When you dream of being a writer since you were 12 years old and initially your aim is to get a book published and then when you discover you're not only going to get it published but you're going to be able to do it full-time, it's almost as though, 'When did I sell my soul to the devil, and when is he going to ask for it back?'"

Shirley Hazzard Interview

Shirley Hazzard is interviewed in the "New Zealand Listener" by Denis Welch. "Shirley Hazzard may just be the best-kept secret in English literature today. The Australian novelist writes prose with the poet's gift of knowing exactly what to leave out, and when. In its oblique grace her style has, sadly, an almost old-fashioned ring now, but fellow writers like Michael Cunningham and Joan Didion are enraptured by it."

Karen Miller Interview

Karen Miller, whose first novel, The Innocent Mage, was released recently, is interviewed by Sandy Auden on the "UK SF Book News" website.

"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe started the journey," said Miller. "It was the very first fantasy novel I ever read, back in fourth class primary school. My imagination was captured, not only by the heroism and emotion of that story, but by the boundless possibilities contained within the speculative fiction genre. There was no looking back after that. My love affair with all things fantasy and science fiction began the day I opened that book and continues to this day.

Marianne de Pierres Interview

Marianne de Pierres, Australian author of the Parrish Plessis and The Sentients of Orion series, is interviewed at "Cover to Cover" on "The Dragon Page". As best I can figure out, the interview is only available as a downloadable podcast.

Janette Turner Hospital Interviews

Janette Turner Hospital has been promoting her new novel, Orpheus Lost, in both Australia and New Zealand.

Bron Sibree interviewed her for the "NZ Herald":

All her novels have coalesced around a central question. But in the case of Orpheus Lost, she says, "there were multiple questions. What would be the life trajectory at this point in history for someone with a Muslim parent who'd turned to terrorism? How would you negotiate that? And there's also the huge Amnesty question, how do you balance human rights with legitimate means of maintaining national security? To me there's a line you just don't cross. Although we feel as an individual we can do precious little on a world scale, I feel every human being is accountable for decisions made in our name by a government. To me that is a passionately personal question, not just a big social one."

And Lily Bragg profiled the author for "The Sydney Morning Herald":

Torture, kidnapping, despair and lies followed by truth and redemption are all played out. Vividly imagined, Turner Hospital writes with depth and scalpel-like precision.

"I was fascinated by the moral and emotional repercussions of what happens when innocent people get caught up in extremism, when national hysteria sets in and people are willing to trade civil liberties," she says.

"I was interested in pursuing the inner emotional lives of these people and the choices they make."

A fervent supporter and long-time member of Amnesty International, Turner Hospital says she is constantly aware of the abuse of human rights and unacceptable torture practices around the world. It's this awareness that prompts her to pursue such disturbing themes in Orpheus Lost.

Clive James Interview 2

And speaking of Clive James, you can watch, and read a transcript of, an interview with the author conducted by Bill Moyers for the PBS TV network.

Clive James Interview

Andrew Fenton interviews Clive James for "The Adelaide Advertiser", mainly about his new book, Cultural Amnesia.

Unlike many critics, James is a great generalist. A quote from Jean Prevost in Cultural Amnesia sums him up: "My soul is a fire that suffers if it doesn't burn. I need three or four cubic feet of new ideas every day, as a steamboat needs coal."

That, says James, is a very attractive thing to say.

"If you're asking me whether I identify with him, I do, and with almost every other hero in the book," he says. "What I liked about him was that he was interested in everything and wrote about everything."

James will be in Adelaide on October 12 as part of his lecture series titled "Clive James Out On His Own".

Andrew Hutchinson Interview

Andrew Hutchinson, author of the very interesting debut novel Rohypnol, is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Erik Jensen.

"The philosophy, I think people can relate to it," Hutchinson says. "I think you can relate to the aggression. You can read from the start to the end and sort of see where it's coming from; you can feel the frustration.

"I think you can link in with that [philosophy], but you can't link in with what they're doing. You shouldn't be able to link in with what they're doing.

"Hopefully people can read it and not necessarily understand, and yet empathise in a way and sort of feel with it, feel the aggression and feel the anger. As much as it is this real angst sort of stuff, you're meant to feel it."

Rebecca Sparrow and Nick Earls

Rebecca Sparrow is the author of The Girl Most Likely and The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay, and Nick Earls is the author of 9 novels, notably Bachelor Kisses and The Thompson Gunner. Now the two authors have combined to write Joel and Cat Set the Story Straight, and are interviewed in "The Courier-Mail" by Sally Browne.

Dianne Blacklock Interview

Just because you already have three books published doesn't mean that number 4 is necessarily going to see the light of day. Sometimes it takes a major life upheaval to draw
you back to the right path. Such was the case with Dianne Blacklock, whose fourth novel was a "cold, clinical flop". The author is interviewed by Genevieve Swart in "The Sydney Morning Herald" who hears how divorce changed this author's life in more ways than just one.

Antoni Jach Profile

Jane Sullivan profiles author Antoni Jach in "The Age" over the weekend. Jach is the author of Napoleon's Double which has been perplexing a few book reviewers of late.

Describing Napoleon's Double isn't easy, because it's not a simple historical adventure; it doesn't rely on the attractions of narrative or character; nobody accomplishes great deeds; and the reader is not even sure whether something really happened.

But what it does have is ideas. Jach's naive young narrator never tires of exploring his exciting new worlds through the exciting ideas of French thinkers such as Diderot, Rousseau and Voltaire.

What he discovers is often uncannily similar to modern philosophical obsessions and enables Jach to take a quizzical and sometimes satirical view of everything from how to live a good life to the foundations of a relaxed and comfortable Australia.

Glenda Adams Obituaries And Remembrances

Obituaries and remembrances of Glenda Adams have been appearing over the past few weeks, so it's probably time to sample them.

In "The Sydney Morning Herald", John Dale provides a summarised biography in his obituary, which is probably as good an example of the form as you can hope for in the confines of a newspaper's columns: "Adams was a writer's writer who understood the creative process. Never one to seek the limelight, she made a significant contribution to Australian literature and the discipline of creative writing. She built an international following of admirers of her fiction and her approach to teaching."

Richard, on the weblog "Syntax of things", takes a different direction and writes about the Glenda Adams he knew in the 1970s.

As does the writer on "The View from Elsewhere" weblog, proving yet again that there is a place for the intimate blogging approach: "I met Glenda a couple of years ago when she came to Alice Springs to conduct a series of creative writing workshops. I found her a greatly encouraging, yet incisive teacher: she seemed to possess the perfect blend of astuteness and diplomacy for teaching creative writing. A gentle, almost fey personality, she exuded a grandmotherly charm that seemed to mask a fascination with the darker, more gothic aspects of life. She also had a knack for making pithy comments about the writing process, many of which often come back to me as I try to teach and write. I remember her joking in one of our workshops, 'I keep on telling you these all bon mots, though none of them are particularly bon.'"

Trudi Canavan Interview

Trudi Canavan, author of "The Black Magician" and "Age of the Five" trilogies of fantasy novels, is interviewed on the OrbitBooks website.

I'm not sure how old this interview is, but it states that Canavan's latest novel, Voice of the Gods, was only published a week previously, and that novel's publication date in the UK was July 5th 2007. Let's say it was fairly recent, within the past month.

Right now I know what I'll be working on for the next four years. It's strange, but reassuring. The biggest change in my writing has been the introduction of deadlines. Because the Black Magician Trilogy was my first "book" I had no contract, and writing wasn't my only income earner, so I could take as long as I wanted to rewrite and improve it. Having a deadline gives you less time to fiddle and tweak. Yet I've also noticed that I write slower now but my first drafts need less rewriting and polishing. Experience has taught me better plotting and how to avoid common structural mistakes. Not that I don't still make mistakes or don't still polish obsessively.

Alexandra Adornetto Interview

It's not often I link to teen web sites from Matilda. Then again, it's not often that we see a 15-year-old author with a book in the shops. Alexandro Adornetto, author of The Shadow Thief, is interviewed by Sarah Karakaidos on the "Bellaboo" website.

At times I'll be so focused on writing that my homework starts to pile up. Because of this, I have had to learn to manage my time carefully. I try to write everyday -- even if it's for a very short period of time. For focused writing you need blocks of free time and this usually only happens on weekends and holidays. Overall, I try to keep my school-life quite separate to my literary one.

Max Barry Interview

Max Barry, author of Jennifer Government and Company, is interviewed by Mike Atherton on the "Great Writing" website. I'm not sure how old this interview is, though as it refers to Company coming out "next year", I can only assume it's from the end of last year. "I understand that for a lot of people, the US is superior to their country of residence in myriad ways, but I'm Australian. We have it all: the weather, the beautiful cities, the brand of football that involves neither padding yourself up like Santa Claus nor standing in a line in front of goal and covering your testicles... I'm very happy about having been born in Australia. It was a close thing, too; my parents are both New Zealanders. That wakes me up in a cold sweat sometimes."

Katherine Howell

Genevieve Swart, of "The Sydney Morning Herald", profiles new author Katherine Howell as Pan Macmillan publishes her first novel, Frantic. The author has done quite well first-up with sales in Australia, as well as Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Russia.

Howell is finishing up her second novel, to be published next year, and working on an outline for her third.

Glenda Adams (1940-2007)

"The Age" newspaper is reporting that Glenda Adams, the Miles Franklin Award winning author of Dancing on Coral, has died at the age of 67 after a long illness.

Matt Rubinstein Profile

Matt Rubinstein is getting a fair bit of coverage for his first novel, A Little Rain on Thursday, and it continued over the weekend with Andrew Stephens profiling the author in "The Age". Comparisons with that Dan Brown monster of a year or so back are rather inevitable given the book deals with "an enigmatic manuscript, a church, a monk (though not an albino) and two scholarly types embroiled in a heady trail of mystery." But "Rubinstein, 33, is one of the few people who hasn't yet read Da Vinci but comparisons seem inevitable -- even though his compelling work, A Little Rain on Thursday, is in quite a different literary league, rich with characters and intellect."

D.M. Cornish

monster_blood_tattoo.jpg

I was most impressed with D.M. Cornish's novel Monster Blood Tattoo: The Foundling when I read it last year: a good adventure, excellent and inventive world-building, and great illustrations. I had read somewhere that the Adelaide-based author was aiming to bring out the next two novels in the sequence at yearly intervals, which, by my calculations, put the expected publication date of volume two as somewhere around April or May of this year. But I couldn't find a copy anywhere in the shops and figured there must have been a delay of some sort.

And it seems I was right, Cornish has a weblog on which he explains a bit about the delay and then drops the news that we will have to wait till April of 2008 for the next novel. That's a pity, as I was looking forward to it. But it's good to see the author letting his readers know just what is going on. Should be more of it.

Alexandra Adornetto Interview

In October last year we reported that 14-year-old Melbourne student, Alexandra Adornetto, had signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins. The first of those novels, The Shadow Thief, is now in the bookshops and the author is interviewed in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Steve Meacham.

David Malouf Interview

I missed this interview with David Malouf that was published in "The
Courier-Mail" back at the start of June.

The interesting thing about this piece, which was published just before the author's latest collection of poetry, Typewriter Music, was published, is that it also contains a conversation with the poetry volume's editor. This provides some interesting insights into the way a collection of poetry is ordered.

In addition, there are thoughts from Roger McDonald, Frank Moorhouse and UQP publisher Madonna Duffy, which add up to one of the best profile/interviews you're likely to read.

Amy Witting's Reader

When Louise Swinn was a teenager she wrote a letter to Amy Witting, author of I for Isobel. To her total surprise, the author wrote back, and so began a long and remarkable friendship.

Jason Nahrung and Mil Clayton

Over on the "Horrorscope" weblog, Talie Helene interviews authors Jason Nahrung and Mil Clayton, as their dark fantasy novel, The Darkness Within, is launched in both Melbourne and Brisbane.

There is a slight curiosity in the book's marketing:


The Darkness Within has been published under Jason's name; I was curious if this was a marketing decision to consolidate under one name, or if there was a point when you decided that authorship belonged more to Jason...

Mil: "Lothian only wanted the one name on the cover. We either had to choose a pseudonym or go under Jason's name. I believed it was fair to have Jason's name on the cover as it was he who had work-shopped and expanded the novel to bring it to the current polished story that it is today. My name appears on the title-page inside."

Jason: "We could have used a nom-de-plume, but that didn't really work for marketing future work, because I do have a number of manuscripts I hope will see the light of day. I'm the one who wants to write -- and sell -- more books. Most of the reworking -- rewriting, editing, marketing, and all that jazz -- has been mine. That means I have to take most of the blame, too."

Juliet Marillier

Juliet Marillier writes about the craft and busines of genre fiction on the "Writer Unboxed" weblog. She does this by answering a number of questions she was asked, by a group of young writers, recently. Marillier lives near Perth in Western Australia and is the author of 8 fantasy novels.

Michael Robotham Interview

Christopher Bantick interviews author Michael Robotham as his latest novel, The Night Ferry, picks up good reviews around town. I'm certainly seeing it prominently displayed in the local bookshops.

Gail Jones Profile

Gail Jones was in London recently, two days before International Sorry Day, delivering an address at Australia House. Jane Cornwell from "The Australian" was there to hear what she had to say.

Matt Rubinstein Interview

Matt Rubinstein's new novel, A Little Rain on Thursday, was recently published, and he is interviewed by Patrick Allington in the Adelaide "Advertiser".

The first review of the novel appeared in "Australian Book Review" in the June 2007 issue, and you can read the author's reaction to that review (positive), and a note about the book's recent launch in his blog.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

I heard a few comments expressed over the weekend at the 2007 National Australian Science Fiction Convention about Shaun Tan's latest book, The Arrival - none of it derogatory. Which is hardly surprising as Shaun is well-known and well-liked within the sf community. The main thrust of the points made was that it was good to see the general literary populace appreciating books that many might normally baulk at picking up.

Similarly, Shirley Dent in "The Guardian" over the weekend is very impressed with the work, stating that "A wordless novel about an impoverished migrant's harrowing life might not seem to offer the smalls much that you want them to learn. But its lessons are rich indeed...The Arrival is a beautiful book and many of the images stand alone in their skill and exquisiteness. But it is so much more than a collection of pretty pictures. If your idea of a children's picture book is Meg and Mog (marvellous in its own way, of course) and you think a graphic novel is nothing more than a comic with ideas above its station, then prepare to think again."

Peter Temple Interview

As Peter Temple's The Broken Shore gains a following in the US, Elisabeth Vincentelli interviews the author for "Time Out New York". As some will know, or will find out by reading this piece, Temple was originally from South Africa, and has a very interesting way of looking at parts of Australian life:

Melbourne is a strange place, where the sensibilities of Europe meet the kind of manly, testosterone-charged Sydney atmosphere. It likes things of the mind. The winters are only enlivened by sitting in pubs arguing about politics, philosophy and football. You're not a proper intellectual there unless you can move from Kierkegaard to football in one sentence. And it's intensely tribal because Melbourne was originally divided into the territories of its football teams, and these teams are divided along class, religious and family lines.

Alexis Wright on Carpentaria

As we gear up towards the announcement of the 2007 Miles Franklin Award winner on June 21, Alexis Wright writes about her shortlisted novel Carpentaria, in "The Australian".

From the start, I knew Carpentaria would not be a book suited to a tourist reader, someone easily satisfied by a cheap day out. I wrote most of the novel while listening to music -- I have an eclectic taste that roams around the world collecting a mixture of traditional, classical, new world, blues and country. One of my intentions was to write the novel as though it was a very long melody made of different forms of music, mixed somehow with the voices of the Gulf. The image that explains this style is that of watching an orchestra while listening to the music. Within the whole spectacle of the performance fleeting moments occur, in which your attention will focus on the sudden rise in the massiveness of the strings, horns, or percussion.

Raimond Gaita Interview

Text Publishing have released a new edition of Romulus, My Father by Raimond Gaita as the film version of the memoir is playing around town, and the author is interviewed this week by Deborah Bogle in "The Courier-Mail".

David Malouf 2

I was listening to Romona Kaval's interview with David Malouf this morning, from ABC Radio's "The Book Show", when I heard him mention the Poetry International website; a site I hadn't previously visited. There you will find a full Malouf bibliography, a brief biography written by Michael Brennan, along with a selection of Malouf poems.

One of the selections is titled "Typewriter Music", which might act as a good introduction to the poet's latest collection.

David Malouf

Hot on the heels of the publication of his latest collection of poetry, Typewriter Music, the "San Francisco Chronicle" is reporting that David Malouf's The Complete Stories will be published, in July, by Pantheon.

The US publisher is an imprint of Random House, and, while there is a webpage on the Random House Australia website, no details are currently available about the book.

Les Murray

Dan Chaisson surveys Les Murray's poetry in "The New Yorker", dipping into Fredy Neptune and The Biplane House along the way.

Poetry goes to the backwater to refresh itself as often as it goes to the mainstream, a fact that partly explains the appeal of Les Murray, the celebrated "bush bard" of Bunyah, New South Wales, Australia. The son of a poor farmer, Murray, who was not schooled formally until he was nine, is now routinely mentioned among the three or four leading English-language poets. Because in Murray's poetry you learn, for example, that there exists such a thing as the "creamy shitwood tree," he has been mistaken for a neutral cartographer of far-flung places. But the key to Murray, what makes him so exasperating to read one minute and thrilling the next, is not landscape but rage.

Nick Cave as a Lyricist

Will Self puts the case, in "The Guardian", for Australia's Nick Cave to be considered as one of the greatest writers on love of our times:

Cave, as a poetic craftsman, provides all the enjambment, ellipsis and onomatopoeia that anyone could wish for. A word on eroticism and the dreadful dolour of knowing not only that all passion is spent - but also that you're overdrawn. If Cave were to be typified as a lyricist of blood, guts and angst, it would be a grave mistake. He stands as one of the great writers on love of our era. Each Cave love song is at once perfumed with yearning, and already stinks of the putrefying loss to come. For Cave, consummation is always exactly that.

Nick Cave: The Complete Lyrics is recently published by Penguin.

Margo Lanagan Interviewed

Margo Lanagan, author of the short story collections Black Juice and Red Spikes, is interviewed at "Articulate", the ABC's Arts and Entertainment blog.

In the interview she gives details about what she has coming up, and what she is currently working on: the major news being the drafting of a full-length novel, which has been sold to both adult and children's imprints, and which is due by the end of July.

Elizabeth Stead Interviewed

Elizabeth Stead reminds me a little of the late English writer Mary Wesley, at least from a publishing perspective: both wrote for many years before publishing their first novels late in life - with Stead she was in her early 60s when The Fishcastle appeared. I guess having Christina Stead as an aunt wasn't as much of a help as that relationship might first suggest.

Ian Barry interviews the author for "The Courier-Mail" on the occasion of the publication of her fourth novel, The Gospel of Gods and Crocodiles.

Shane Maloney Interview

Shane Maloney, whose latest novel Sucked In is selling out all over town, is back on home territory for his interview with the "Moonee Valley Community News".

Readers of the Murray Whelan series need to be aware that the author is foreshadowing the fact that there will be only one more in the series, bring the total to seven. No details of when the seventh and last novel will be published.

Raimond Gaita

As we noted earlier this month, the film adaptation of Raimond Gaita's memoir Romulus, My Father has now been completed, with premieres of the film being held in Castlemaine and Melbourne in Victoria over the weekend. Now Gaita href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/romulus-revisited/2007/05/24/1179601574737.html">explains to Rachel Buchanan how he reacted to the film, how he has no plans to write further memoirs, and what he is intending to publish next.

Sophie Gee Interviewed

Sophie Gee is not a name that most people interested in Australian literature will be aware of, but it might well be worth committing to memory as she is starting to attract some interest. Originally from Sydney, Gee is the niece of Kate Grenville and has been based in the US for the past 12 years working as an academic. Now, with her debut novel The Scandal of the Season about to be published, she is interviewed by Michael Williams in "The Sydney Morning Herald".

Garth Nix Out and About

Garth Nix has been out promoting his books in the UK, and the Online Edition of "News Shopper" reports on a booksigning he did in Bromley on May 3rd. He gave advice to his young readers interested in writing stories, they should start "by introducing a character and a situation, finding a complication and resolving the problem in the conclusion." Yep, the old three-act show works everywhere.

I read this described recently as something along the lines of: in act one force your major character up a tree, in act two throw all the rocks you can find at him, in the third act figure out a way to get him down again.

I guess it's all in the pitch.

Carol Lefevre Interview

As Carol Lefevre's first novel, Nights in the Asylum, accumulates reviews in the major outlets she is interviewed by Danielle Teutsch in "The Sydney Morning Herald". Of special note is the news: "Lefevre is now doing a PhD in creative writing at the University of South Australia and working on her second novel, If You Were Mine.

"Her second novel will explore the bonding process between mother and child, and themes of adoption and infertility. They are issues close to Lefevre's heart, as she adopted her daughter after an unsuccessful round of IVF treatment.

"This time, she is drawing geographical inspiration from South Australia's 'Heartbreak Plains', about 250kilometres north of Adelaide, which she describes as a 'landscape littered with abandoned cottages and the odd spooky ghost town'. Once again, the place is a rich repository for stories."

Which certainly interests me as that was the area in which I grew up.

Tom Keneally on BBC Radio

I recently received the following note from the BBC:

We're soon recording a programme with Thomas Keneally, in which a studio audience and booklovers around the world will be able to ask the author questions about his book. I wondered if there's anything you'd like to ask Thomas Keneally about it? If so, please email me your question to: "gary[dot]stevens[at]bbc[dot]co[dot]uk", and our presenter will put the question to him on your behalf. The interview with Thomas Keneally is in a BBC World Service series called: "World Book Club". You can find information about the programme on our website: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/world_book_club.shtml
I got in contact with Gary and asked if I could post his request here. He agreed. So, if you have any questions about Keneally's book, drop Gary a line at the email address listed. I'm sure you can decipher the address.

David Malouf on Himself

"In the end a writer is the work that appears under his name, not a personality or character; all that in time gets lost. What remains, embodied in the work, is a consciousness with its own peculiar preoccupations, quirks, questions, doubts, insights; a set of responses to the isness of things, the great plural world of phenomena -- light, colour, landscape, atmosphere, all the tumbling paraphernalia of living and, more quietly, a voice with its individual cadence."

So says David Malouf as he contemplates his life as a writer, and what got him there.

Shane Maloney

Shane Maloney's new Murray Whelan novel, Sucked In, has hit the bookshelves and
the author is all over the book pages this weekend. Jason Steger, in "The Age", conducts an interview in a cemetery, and "The Australian" publishes an extract which, unfortunately, doesn't appear to be on their website.

Tom Keneally - Playwright

Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks? At the age of 71, Tom Keneally, better known for his novel writing, is finalising the production of a play he has been developing for the past few years. "Either Or is based on the life of Kurt Gerstein, an enthusiastic Nazi who joined the SS as a sanitation expert trained in the use of Zyklon B, the gas the Nazis used to kill millions of Jews in death camps."

Kenally came across the story during his research for his Booker prize-winning novel Schindler's Ark and has been working with the Theatre J theatre company based in Washington D.C. for the past two years to get the original script into shape.

Keneally isn't sure how it will turn out, yet concludes: "whatever happens, I will die a better playwright."

New Award for Tom Keneally

Somewhat late in the reporting is the news that Tom Kenneally has been named the 2007 recipient of the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, an annual award based on a writer's full career. Keneally will be presented with the award in December in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Erin Vincent Profile

Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest said "To lose one parent . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; but to lose both looks like carelessness."

This unfortunate event happened to Australian author Erin Vincent when she was 14, and it was the catalyst for her new memoir, Grief Girl: My True Story, about her parents, and her life after their accident. As the book is published here in Australia, Vincent is href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/dealing-with-grief-written-from-experience/2007/04/26/1177459869968.html">profiled in "The Age" by Lily Bragge.

Richard Flanagan Profile

As Richard Flanagan's new novel, The Unknown Terrorist, is published in the UK, the author is interviewed by Stephen Moss in "The Guardian".

"I'm sorry about that," says Flanagan when I mention my post-book depression. "I wanted to make a mirror to what I felt Australia had become. I think it is a pretty bleak country at the moment. It was a land of such hope and possibility when I was younger, and in the past couple of years, like a lot of Australians, I've ended up feeling ashamed of what it had become. But we can't blame governments or parties or politicians; we have to accept in the end it was we as a people who happily went along with this. There was a loss of empathy. I don't know where that comes from. We're a migrant nation made up of people who've been torn out of other worlds, and you'd think we would have some compassion."
...
"He claims he has become a controversialist and polemicist by accident. "A novelist's job is to write good novels -- that's the beginning and end of it, and that's what I strive for. There are writers who wish to be politicians and they corrupt their own writing in the process, but I'm in an unusual situation. I write very little about Australian or Tasmanian politics; it's just that when I do, it seems to get noticed."

Dorothy Porter

On the eve of the publication of her new verse novel, Dorothy Porter is interviewed in "The Australian" by Corrie Perkin. The novel, El Dorado which is published on May 1, takes us back to the territory of Porter's earlier successful work, The Monkey's Mask: a novel I was very impressed with a couple of years back.

In the new book, we re-visit the themes of murder, child abduction and friendships that are tested. If it's anything like the earlier work there is much to look forward to.

Michelle de Kretser

Michelle de Kretser, author of The Rose Grower and The Hamilton Case has sold a new novel. The following comes from the "Magical Musings" weblog: Title: THE LOST DOG Author: Michelle de Kretser Agent: Sarah Lutyens at Lutyens & Rubinstein (NA). UK rights previously to Chatto & Windus; Australian rights to Allen & Unwin. Editor: Pat Strachan at Little, Brown Blurb: Concerning the collision of modernity and the past, the primal and the civilized, home and exile.

Carol Lefevre

Carol Lefevre is a South Australian writer whose first novel, Nights in the Asylum, has just been published in Australia, and which I have under review. While not an interview as such, Kay Sexton, on her weblog "Writing Neuroses...mine are rare, yours may be legion", intersperses some comments by Lefevre amongst her own comments on the weblog's main topic.

Clive James - Cultural Critic

Allen Barra, in the webzine "Salon", describes Clive James thus: "That James is at home with subjects as light-years apart as Liza Minnelli and Alexander Solzhenitsyn is one indication why he is the greatest living cultural critic. Many serious critics waste needless time and energy trying to justify their intellectual curiosity regarding things pop. James, who made much of his early reputation covering television, bites into the pop cultural hot dog with unapologetic relish." This, of course, is in response to the publication of James's latest volume, Cultural Amnesia, a collection of over a hundred essays on the lives of various famous, and not so famous, individuals: James's personal wikipedia, if you like.

Barra's description of James may be hard to justify but his final conclusion about the book is probably a start: "One of the things that distinguishes Cultural Amnesia from the finger-pointing, eat-your-bean-sprouts tomes about canons and multiculturalism is that James doesn't make you feel guilty, he makes you feel hungry."

Mark Sarvas, on "The Elegant Variation" weblog, wonders if Barra's piece is just too overblown to be of any worth.

Wayne McLennan Interview

I can still remember the travelling boxing troupes in South Australia in the late 1960s and thought they had probably died out long ago. But Wayne McLennan discovered in the 1990s that they were still traveling through Queensland and decided to join one. Jane
Cornwell interviews him on the eve of the publication of his account of that time, Tent Boxing, which recreates a sporting/cultural phenomenon that most of us only heard about in a Midnight Oil song.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton

Cecilia Dart-Thornton has now completed two major fantasy series, The Bitterbynde Trilogy and The Crowthistle Chronicles, and is interviewed in "The Australian" by Rosemary Neill.

Clive James Interview

Clive James has been rather busy of late: releasing North Face of Soho, the fourth volume of his memoirs, last year, and now gearing up for the release of Cultural Amnesia, his huge compendium to modern culture. On the eve of that publication he is interviewed in "The Age" by Stephanie Bunbury.

Sarah Hopkins

Sarah Hopkins's debut novel, The Crimes of Billy Fish, is to be published by ABC
Books, after being highly commended for the 2006 ABC Fiction Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. (This is the award that was won by Will Elliott for The Pilo Family Circus). This weekend the author was profiled in "The Sydney Morning Herald" by Joyce Morgan.

Justine Larbalestier

As the third, and final, novel in her YA fantasy series is published, Justine Larbalestier is interviewed by John Joseph Adams. In the process she mentions the main reason why I find most novels of magic rather hard to take: "Seriously, I was reading this fantasy where every time the main character got into trouble he'd pull out his magic doobalackie and the problem would go away," Larbalestier said in an interview. "It drove me crazy."

Which is also interesting as I'd always pronounced it "doovalackie", with a diminutive of "doova".

Anna Funder

Australian author Anna Funder, who won the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in 2004, for her book Stasiland, is attending the WORD festival as part of the Adelaide Fringe 2007. The "Adelaide Advertiser" carries a profile of the author this week.

Richard Flanagan Profile

Richard Flanagan is the featured author this month for "The Courier-Mail" Big Book Club, and will travel to Queensland to discuss his latest novel The Unknown Terrorist, which last week was included on the Miles Franklin Award Longlist for 2007. In the lead-up to that, the paper runs a profile of the author by Nick Bray.

Steven Carroll Profile

Deborah Bogle profiles author Steven Carroll, in "The Advertiser" from Adelaide, as his new novel, The Time We Have Taken, starts to gain some momentum round the tracks. Some reviews of the book have been noting that this is the third book in a trilogy. Carroll states that there will be a fourth novel in the sequence, which he is currently writing.

Richard Flanagan

Samela Harris, in "The Advertiser", interviews Richard Flanagan as his latest novel, The Unknown Terrorist, is chosen to be "The Advertiser" Big Book Club's book for March.

And let me tell you, that's a very grumpy looking photo of the author.

John Brosnan

Garry Kilworth took John Brosnan's ashes home, to '... a vineyard outside the community of Sulky, between the large towns of Ballarat and Castlemaine in Victoria, Australia. There we scattered the remainder of John's ashes on the vines, with the words, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, wine to the vine." We chose the vineyard of "Dulcinea" wines because of the literary connection -- Dulcinea being "the sweet and
beautiful one" in Don Quixote as I'm sure you all know. It was a sunny day, not too hot (though the countryside here is in the 11th year of a drought) with a wonderful view from the vineyard which swept down to open fields, over what we would call a dew pond (here they call it a dam) to hazy blue mountains beyond. There was a stiff breeze which caught the ashes and spread them down one of the lanes of vines. I had also chosen a verse from an Australian poem called "The Old Australian Ways" by Banjo Patterson, who wrote "Waltzing Matilda". We drove to the bottom of the vineyard where I read it out loud, feeling the owners might wonder what the heck was going on. So throw the weary pen aside / And let the papers rest, / For [you] must saddle up and ride / Towards the blue hill's breast; / And [you] must travel far and fast / Across their rugged maze, /To
find the Spring of Youth at last, / And call back from the buried past / The old Australian ways.' [via Robert Holdstock]

From Ansible 236, March 2007

You might remember that I wrote about the death of John Brosnan here in 2005.

Tributes to Elizabeth Jolley

The tributes to Elizabeth Jolley keep coming. In "The Age" Peter Craven takes an overview of the author's work, and attempts to put it into some sort of context; Kelly Gardiner talks of a time she interviewed Jolley and was completely captivated; Meredith writes, on the weblog "Sarsaparilla", about a time when Jolley came to teach a creative writing subject she was taking, and Kerryn Goldsworthy responds with a
piece that also provides a personal perspective.

Max Barry Profile

Max Barry is practically unknown here in his home country of Australia, but he's big in the US. Michael Williams profiles the author in "The Age", on the eve of the publication of his third novel.

Interview with Terry Dowling

The "Just Adventure" gaming website interviews Terry Dowling about his recent foray into the gaming world, and his fiction.

You're widely known throughout Europe and Australia, yet relatively unknown in the United States -- which I find amazing as some of your horror stories are as good as anything Stephen King has ever written -- why have you yet to find a market in the U.S.?

Terry Dowling - Thanks for the kind words. I suspect it's because I haven't been a novelist to date. Only about eight per cent of writers earn their livings from their writing, and very few writers make a career for themselves writing only short stories, novellas and novelettes, which is what I do. Ray Bradbury and Harlan [Ellison] come to mind
as managing it, a handful of others. I've been writing professionally for twenty-three years now and have had quite a number of appearances in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (I was the only author to have two stories in the 2001 volume; something I'm very proud of), but apart from having my first linked collection Rynosseros published by the SF Book Club back in 1993, I haven't had US editions of my work. Hopefully that will start to change this year with the release of a hardcover collection of my best horror stories from Cemetery Dance.

Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007)

The news has been released this morning that Western Australian author Elizabeth Jolley died last week at the age of 83.

Elizabeth Jolley was born in Birmingham, England, in 1923 and brought up in a German-speaking household. She undertook her early education in the English Midlands both at home and at a Quaker boarding school. She stayed there until the age of 17 when she began nursing studies in London at the height of World War II. Married, with three children, she migrated to Western Australia in 1959, and worked in a variety of jobs until she took a job as a part-time creative writing tutor at the Fremantle Arts Centre in 1974. She taught there until 1985, and also taught at a number of tertiary institutions, including Curtin University.

Although she started writing early in life it was not until her fifties that she received the recognition her talent deserved. She won "The Age" Book of the Year Award on three occasions (for Mr Scobie's Riddle, My Father's Moon, and The Georges' Wife) as well as the Miles Franklin Award for The Well. Her non-fiction title, Central Mischief, won the Western Australian Premier's Prize in 1993. Mr Scobie's Riddle won the Fiction section of the WA Premier's Prize in 1983.

Elizabeth Jolley was one of Australia's most acclaimed and beloved authors, and was awarded an honorary doctorate (Hon. D. Tech.) from the Western Australia Institute of Technology (now Curtin University) and an order of Australia Medal.

Henry Lawson in London

Local Melbourne writer and critic, and occasional Matilda commenter, Lucy Sussex, is combining with Meg Tasker, associate professor of humanities at the University of Ballarat, on a book about Australian ex-patriates living in London in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Not a great item of interest there you might say, but every so often research of this type turns up some interesting literary gems. Such is the case here as outlined by Jason Steger in "The Age" over the weekend. It appears that some details have come to light regarding the activities of Henry Lawson in London during this time. Lawson travelled to London in the hope of fame and fortune, but found only despair and disappointment. It was known that his wife, Bertha, had been committed to an asylum while in England, though not exactly why, until now.

David Malouf Interview

As his latest short story collection, Every Move You Make, is published in the UK, David Malouf is interviewed by Tom Adair for "The Telegraph".

Banjo Paterson Again

It seems to be Paterson time right now with a major piece in "National Geographic" magazine.

A.B. "Banjo" Paterson

Near the anniversary of the death of A.B. "Banjo" Paterson, Tom Lovett, in "The Epoch Times", pens an appreciation of the poet and writer, and, in the process, gives a boost to the Australian Bush Poets Association. Elsewhere, Archie's Archive reprints Paterson's poem "Lost", as a response to a discussion on Mother Love. And Ambit Gambit casts Australian-of-the-Year Tim Flannery in the main role in a parody of Paterson's "Clancy of the Overflow". The original version of the poem is available.

Tom Keneally Interview

Over the past month or so we've mentioned the trip by a number of Australian authors to the 2007 Kolkata Book Fair. Tom Keneally was one of those authors, and while he was in India, Namita Kohli of "The Indian Express" got the chance to interview the author about his work, and about his upcoming novel Widow and Her Hero. "Twenty-five years after Schindler's Ark, this time the focus is on the women left behind, those who were widowed, whose lives changed with gunshots in another country, who smelled cordite years after the war was over and wondered whether those heroic missions were little more than foolhardy exploits."

Steven Carroll Interview

Steven Carroll has written two books in his series about Melbourne suburbia: The Art of the Engine Driver (2001) and The Gift of Speed (2004), both of which were shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Now, the third book in the projected four-book series, The Time We Have Taken, is about to be published, and Helen Elliott in
"The Australian" newspaper interviews the author.

Justine Larbalestier Interview

Australian non-fiction and young adult writer Justine Larbalestier is interviewed in the latest issue of the "Bookslut" magazine by Adrienne Martini.

Clive James on the Radio

The BBC News website interviews Clive James on the eve of a new radio program from the author, A Point of View which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2250 GMT on Friday and 0850 GMT on Sunday. It appears that transcripts of the program will be available on the BBC website, and James also states that the programs will be available in audio form on his website. The first of the transcripts has been posted to the BBC website, but no sign of the audios as yet.

Rodney Hall Profile

Angela Bennie profiles author Rodney Hall on the publication of his new novel Love Without Hope - which I started last night. I'm not sure how much of this piece I should read before finishing the novel. Are these essays designed to inform committed readers or to bring new readers to the author's work? Maybe
both. I think I'll read the book on my own first.

New Books from J.M. Coetzee

The UK's Publishing News has announced that J.M. Coetzee has a new novel, Diary of a Bad Year, coming out in September this year. The novel "is the story of an eminent, 72-year-old Australian writer who is invited to contribute to a volume entitled Strong Opinions - a platform, of course, for Coetzee to air his views on such issues as the treatment of asylum seekers, Guantanamo Bay and the Middle East." In "The Guardian", Joel Rickett reports that the author will also publish a volume of his literary essays, Inner workings, at the start of March.

Will Elliott Interview

You will have noticed a number of mentions of Will Elliott's debut novel, The Pilo Family
Circus
, on this weblog over the past few weeks: it won the ABC Fiction Award for an unpublished manuscript last year, has recently been published in the UK, and has been nominated for an Aurealis Award in the Category of Horror novel. Now the author is href="http://ozhorrorscope.blogspot.com/2007/01/interview-will-elliott.html">interviewed by Stephanie Gunn on the "HorrorScope" weblog. It's interesting to note that, while Circus is considered his debut, he had no idea that would be the first of his to be published: he's written four or five others.

Garry Disher Profile

Samela Harris, of the Adelaide "Advertiser" profiles Australian crime writer Garry Disher, on the eve of the publication of his fourth Inspector Challis novel, Chain of Evidence. Normally based on Victoria's Mornington Pensinsular, in this novel "Disher draws upon his memories of SA's arid Mid North. It turns out that Challis grew up just a bit further north - 'somewhere on the edge of the rainshadow'." Which sounds like it was just near where I grew up.

Update:

It seems I blindly followed in Haris's footsteps and got the title of the new Disher novel incorrect. That has now been fixed.

Fiona McIntosh

Fiona McIntosh is one of those authors who can slip under the radar. The author of 7 fantasy novels, including one in each of 2005 and 2006, she has received only one mention on this weblog in those two years: a brief listing of a small review of her novel Emissary in early December 2006. That gives me the impression that her work is just not being considered by the mainstream media in this country.

Now, however, "The Sydney Morning Herald" has published a long profile of the author. You have to wonder if this was brought on by the fact that McIntosh has sold the rights to her latest fantasy trilogy, the Percheron series, to the UK, the US and Canada. In any event, the extra publicity is obviously going to be welcome with the third book in the series, Goddess, out late this year.

Added to that there is a crime novel written under a pseudonym also being published, and she is currently working on a children's fantasy for nine to twelve year-olds. It makes you tired just thinking about it. For more information, you can visit the author's website.

Peter Temple and Jack Irish

It's titled "An Interview with Peter Temple", but this piece is really a one-pager from Temple giving some details about the Jack Irish novels, how they came to be written and how they have developed. It's a PDF file but is only one page so shouldn't flood your system too much.

Robyn Davidson Profile

Robyn Davidson, author of the travel memoir Tracks, is profiled in "The Age" by Jane Sullivan.

Davidson doesn't like categorising herself at all: she hates being called a travel writer and is not even keen to call herself any kind of writer. 'I'm not one of those true writers who can't bear not to be writing. Yet it's one of the most important things in my life.'

She is full of writing and travelling plans for the future: to get back to her memoir; to work on a larger book about nomads; to revisit Tibet and stay in a monastery; to follow up a story from the tiny kingdom of Mustang at the tip of Nepal.

Davidson is also the author of the new "Quarterly Essay" No Fixed Address. You can read an extract from the essay on the website - it's a PDF file.

Richard Flanagan Profile

Richard Flanagan is profiled by Christopher Bantick in "The Courier-Mail". Seems he has been in a bit of hot water in his home state of Tasmania, criticising the late premier Jim Bacon and his close ties to a particular logging company. "It is not a case of tall poppyism or anti-intellectualism in Tasmania which Flanagan has to negotiate. This former Rhodes scholar can stand at a bar and drink with storemen and packers while quoting from Faulkner. His books are bestsellers in his home state, but he is punished for his profile." Flanagan's new novel, The Unknown Terrorist, was recently published by Macmillan.

Articulate interviews Shane Jiraiya Cummings

The Articulate weblog interviews Shane Jiraiya Cummings on the occasion of the release of two new horror anthologies: Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror 2006 and Book of Shadows from Brimstone Press.

"The 'anthologies don't sell' tag has become almost mythologised of late. The reason anthologies (and horror for that matter) are perceived to not sell is because publishers aren't pushing them. It's a catch-22. Are bookstores not carrying short fiction anthologies because they don't sell, or are short fiction anthologies not selling because bookstores are not carrying a variety of titles?

"We believe, with passion and marketing behind our anthologies, we may be able to address this misconception. It's about believing in what you are publishing, and we're 100 per cent committed."

Are we about to see a resurgence in the small press market in Australia? I hope so.

John Marsden Profile

After the recent publication of his latest novel, Circle of Flight, John Marsden is profiled in "The Courier-Mail" by Christopher Bantick. "Besides his many awards and accolades both nationally and internationally, this year Marsden was given the Lloyd O'Neill Award for lifelong services to the Australian book industry. He was only the fifth author to receive the award and joins Ruth Park, Tom Keneally, Morris West and Peter Carey, as previous winners. He is short-listed for the Melbourne Prize for Literature for 2006."

Catherine Jinks Profile

In "The Sydney Morning Herald", Clara Iaccarino profiles Catherine Jinks, the Brisbane-born, Blue Mountains-based author who has just published her 30th book, The Secret Familiar. "Much to her (and her agent's) chagrin, the only defining characteristic of Jinks's work is her name. Her chops and changes between genres have seen her fall between the cracks of popular and literary fiction and she has failed to corner one particular market. Medieval history is her comfort genre ('it's like coming home after travelling') but her tendency to become easily bored means she won't write two medieval thrillers back to back. She's well-known in 'teacher-librarian circles', but Jinks believes her failure to be pigeonholed as a writer of one genre is her downfall in terms of more widespread notoriety."

Sean Williams Interview

Sean Williams, sf and fantasy author from Adelaide, is interviewed by Rob Bedford on the SSFWorld.com website. "I do find that writing SF and fantasy can be very different on both a nuts-and-bolts level and in terms of other fundamental perspectives. Fantasy is more overtly about character and landscape, while good SF self-consciously uses science and the scientific method to take us places on wings made of metal, not feathers."

[Link from Sean's website.]

Peter Temple

As Susan Wyndham in "The Sydney Morning Herald" so rightly points out, 2006 has been a big year for Peter Temple. His latest novel, The Broken Shore, "won Temple a fifth Ned Kelly Award for crime writing but also took out the Colin Roderick Award for the best book about Australia, the best general fiction award from the Australian book industry and - unheard of for a crime book - was shortlisted for the country's top fiction award, the Miles Franklin." Longlisted actually, but let's not quibble. Now Temple has been awarded a two-year $90,000 fellowship by the Australia Council for the Arts. All power to his writing arm.

Robert Hughes on "Enough Rope"

As mentioned in the comments section recently, Robert Hughes was interviewed by Andrew Denton on ABC TV's "Enough Rope" on Monday 13th November. You can read a transcript of the interview, download an mp3 podcast and watch a video excerpt. This is what I love about the ABC - not only do they provide interesting programs such as this, but they also allow us to follow up if we missed it. Technology at its best.

Interview with Clive James

You could be forgiven for being a little tired of Clive James entries here. There have been quite a few mentions of him over the past few weeks. But, let's face it, he's a major figure on the Australian literary landscape and the latest volume of his memoirs has been reviewed all over the place. There has been the odd interview, though few, I suspect, which garner as much about James's future plans as the recent one in "The Sunday Times" by Bryan Appleyard. Nor about his political leanings: "He is, like his friend and compatriot Robert Hughes, culturally conservative and politically left-wing. 'I was brought up on the proletarian left, and I remain there. The fair go for the workers is fundamental, and I don't believe the free market has a mind.' He sees, rightly, the failure to understand the importance of cultural transmission as one of the great failings of the left. And, of course, he intends to write a book about where the left went wrong."

I saw James on a lecture tour of Australia in the late 1990s, and, if you'd asked me then, I would never have picked him as left-wing - centre-right more likely. Extolling the virtues of the monarchy in the middle of the debate on the republic referendum might have been the main cause for that thought.

Tim Flannery Award

Susan Wyndham, in "The Sydney Morning Herald" reports that Tim Flannery has been awarded the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, which is worth a cool $US150,000. The award was presented to Flannery for his "excellence in nonfiction". The author's most recent book was The Weather Makers.

Clive James on the Radio

You can listen to Clive James reading from his fourth volume of memoirs, North Face of Soho, on BBC Radio 4. The readings started on Monday 6th November and run to this Friday 10th November. They'll only be there for seven days according to the website.

Richard Flanagan Interview

Richard Flanagan, author of the new novel The Unknown Terrorist, was interviewed on ABC TV's "7:30 report" last night by Kerry O'Brien. You can read a transcript of the interview.

Profile of Lian Hearn

Lian Hearn (also known as Gillian Rubinstein) is profiled in "The Sydney Morning Herald". The piece includes news that she has finished the fifth novel in her Otori series - the next one being a prequel to the original trilogy with the title Heaven's Net is Wide, which will be released next year. She also gives a few details (and I mean a very few) on what she will work on next.

Clive James Back on the Tube

Clive James is making a return to the television screen with his new interview program Clive James: Talking in the Library. At this time the program will only appear on the Artsworld channel on the UK's Sky pay-tv network. No news yet if it will be shown in Australia on Foxtel's Ovation channel. We might have to scour YouTube for a viewing.

Clive James No Prima Donna

The "Hendon and Finchley Times" isn't too impressed with Clive James at present. They attempted to speak to the man ahead of a performance in nearby Edmonton and were directed to "a syndicated piece, written by Mr James' PR people". They quote: "Over the years, various adjectives have attached themselves to Clive like burrs to a woolly jumper: charming, intelligent, witty, wry, genial. I'm here to tell you, they're all true. During a coruscating hour in his company, I'm treated to a wondrous one-man command performance." And here I was, all this time, thinking that the adjective "coruscating" was only used in reviews of guitar-heavy rock albums.

Gwen Meredith

Author Gwen Meredith has died at her home in Bowral, in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Meredith is best known for her work as the writer of the long-running ABC radio serial Blue Hills. The program ran for 27 years and aired for 5,795 episodes. In addition to her radio work she also wrote four novels: The Lawsons 1948, Blue Hills 1950, Beyond Blue Hills: The Ternna Boolla Story 1953, and Into the Sun: a Blue Hills novel 1961. She was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1967 for her services to radio entertainment, and was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1977 for services to the arts.

See also "The Age", and "The Australian".

Kylie Minogue

I posted back in March this year about Kylie Minogue's entry into the children's book market. That book, The Showgirl Princess, was launched in the UK on the weekend. Seems it has been on sale here in Australia since September 21. Must have missed it. Can't think how.

David Malouf

David Malouf has been noticably absent from our bookshelves of late, but now he writes of the bonds between writer and reader in "The Age" over the weekend, and has a new collection of short stories coming out from Random House, entitled Every Move You Make.

Interview with Lian Hearn

Amanda Craig target=new>interviews Lian Hearn in "The Times". Hearn is the Adelaide-based author of the Tales of the Otori series of young adult novels. And excellent stuff they are too.

Oddly enough Craig starts the interview rather strangely: "The true identity of Lian Hearn was until recently one of the most closely guarded secrets of children's literature. Who was the author of the bestselling novel Across the Nightingale Floor, an adventure set in medieval Japan about which readers from 8 to 80 became passionate in the space of a single chapter? Was it a man or a woman? Was the author Japanese or European?"

I had to check the date on this piece (September 16, 2006) and ponder the nature of the phrase "until recently", before I came to the conclusion that Craig has been living in an alternate universe for the past couple of years. I'm not sure when I became aware that Lian Hearn was really Gillian Robinstein but I'm pretty certain is was about the time the first novel in the series was published, ie in 2002. You can actually read a review of the book by Peter Pierce in "The Sydney Morning Herald", where the author's real name is revealed in the first line. And how did I find this? By typing in the name of the novel into Google Australia and selecting the first entry. All reviewers make mistakes but a little bit, a teensy bit, of checking would have alerted the writer to the true story.

Other
than that, the interview is quite reasonable, even if it doesn't delve all that deeply.

Colin Thiele

Colin Thiele, the great Australian writer, died in Queensland on September 4th this year. Thiele was born in Eudunda, in country South Australia, educated at the University of Adelaide, and started his writing life working in verse. But he is best known for his novels for children, such as Sun on the Stubble (1961), Storm Boy (1963) and Blue Fin (1969), all of which were filmed. He won numerous awards for Australian
children''s writing and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia for his services to literature and education.

I remember reading Sun of the Stubble almost forty years ago and some of the scenes in that book still remain vivid in my memory. It's a pity that we are only reminded of authors such as Thiele upon news of their death. "The Age" published their obituary of Thiele today.

Death of Alex Buzo

Australian playwright Alex Buzo has died after a long illness, he was 62. Born in Sydney in 1944, he was educated at The Armidale School, the International School in Geneva and the University of New South Wales from which he graduated BA in 1965. He came to national attention in 1968 with his play Norm and Ahmed, though he is probably best known for his plays Rooted (1969), The Front Room Boys (1969) and Coralie Lansdowne says No (1974). In addition to his plays he was the author of two novels (The Search for Harry Allway (1985) and Prue Flies North (1991)).

William McInnes Profile

Best known as an actor, William McInnes received wide-acclaim for his 2005 memoir A Man's Got to Have a Hobby, and is now profiled in "The Age" by Jason Steger on the eve of the publication of his first novel, Cricket Kings. As McInnes puts it: "My old man used to say in cricket you think you're doing nothing and all of a sudden you see someone do something and you certainly work out something about that person. It's a game that teaches you to talk and to listen and to watch."

Clive James on Stage

For certain readers in certain parts of the United Kingdom, Clive James will be appearing at the Norwich Playhouse on November 18th at 7.30pm. Tickets are ÂŁ15.

Shirley Hazzard Profile

James Campbell profiles Shirley Hazzard in "The Guardian" over the weekend, concentrating on her long-term friendship with Graham Greene while both were residents of Capri, but also delving into her writing history.

Tara Moss Interview

Tara Moss, fashion model turned crime novelist, is in Canada to promote her second novel, Split, and is interviewed by Alexandra Gill in the "Globe and Mail".

Moss grew up in Victoria [Canada] with a fascination for all things morbid, which she attributes to an early immersion in Edward Gorey's Gothic books for children. By the age of 10, Moss was writing gruesome Stephen King-inspired stories that cast her classmates as murder victims. "I was a bit strange," she confesses.
[Thanks to Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind for the link.]

Tegan Bennett Daylight Interview

In "The Sydney Morning Herald", Erin O'Dwyer interviews Australian author Tegan Bennett Daylight, whose third novel Safety has been gathering a bit of attention lately. "It is 10 years since Bennet Daylight burst onto Sydney's writing scene. In 1996 her first novel, Bombora, was short-listed for the Australian/Vogel Literary Award. In 2002 she was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists, following the publication of What Falls Away."

Justine Larbalestier Interview

Justine Larbalestier is interviewed by Jason Nahrung in "The Courier-Mail" about the publication of Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century , an anthology she has edited. The book contains 11 classic stories by women writers from the 20th century, accompanied by critical essays about each story. "A chance, Larbalestier says, to give credit where it has largely been unpaid in the past, as well as making some hard-to-find stories accessible once again."

The interview also touches on her own writing with Magic Lessons, the sequel to Magic or Madness, being published in Australia in September. A third book will follow.

Tim Flannery in the USA

For the first time that I can remember an issue of "The New York Review of Books" carries a full page color (it's the US spelling I know) advertisement for a book by an Australian author. Tim Flannery's book The Weather Makers gets the full treatment with quotes from Peter Singer, "The Washington Post", David Suzuki, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bill Bryson and Tony Blair, amongst others. A while back we mentioned that the US edition would differ from the UK version in that a quote from Tony Blair would be added in place of the one by Bill Bryson that adorns the one available here.

Well, not according to the ad in the NYRofB it won't. Tony Blair has been relegated to the bench and in his place we have Jared Diamond with: "At last, here is a clear and readable account of one of the most controversial issues facing everyone in the world today." Diamond, of course, is the author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, both of which you really should read.

The interesting thing about all this relates to the current feeling towards Tony Blair in US publishing circles. Maybe he's on the nose as much in the USA as he is in the UK now. You can just about hear the "wheeee" noise being made as the chances of a big advance for his future memoirs plummets earthwards.

DBC Pierre Interview

You can now listen to the full interview with DBC Pierre conducted by Andrew Denton on ABC TV on Monday night. It's available at the "Enough Rope" website. A transcript is also available.

Damien Broderick Interview

Australian sf and science writer Damien Broderick is appearing as guest writer on an open forum over at ASif! - Australian Specfic in Focus. Damien is curently the fiction editor for COSMOS magazine and is probably best known for The Dreaming Dragons, which was runner-up for the 1981 John W. Campbell Award, and for The Spike, his exploration of the technological singularity expected within the next 25 to 30 years.

[Thanks to Chris Lawson over on the Talking Squid weblog for the link.]

Peter Carey and His Novel Again

"The Guardian" takes up the tale of the novellist and his ex-wife with "The Plaintiff" talking to Suzanne Goldenberg. Summers complains that "In those bitter days when their marriage was unravelling, she says, Carey took to referring to her as The Plaintiff in conversations and email with the couple's mutual friends. He also, she claims, spread stories that she was money-hungry. She says that to her horror, the gossip stuck, and among the literary set of Manhattan, where Summers and Carey have lived since 1990, she became something of a social pariah, shunned by several of her famous friends. As a result, Summers says, she has been forced to abandon hopes of getting a job in publishing."

This is starting to get a bit like a libel case where the aggrieved complains that their reputation has been sullied, only the general public either knows nothing about it or has forgotten the whole affair. The act of initiating a legal suit brings it back into the general consciousness and there it tends to stick.

Summers states again that she is writing a novel called Mrs Jekyll: "But she insists that the story is not modelled on her ex. 'I am not into revenge,' she says."

She sounds like she is running an advance publicity campaign for the book. She should have just written it, got it published and moved on. As we know, revenge is a dish best served cold.

Peter Carey and His Marriage and His Latest Novel

In "The Independent" Peter Carey's ex-wife, Alison Summers, takes a swipe at the author, accusing him of using his fiction to settle some old scores. According to one friend: "He has trashed the ex-wife to clear the way for a popular welcome for his new partner."

Nasty stuff. The trouble is, can an author ignore a major life experience in his fiction? Should they be ultra discrete? Does it matter?

The final piece of news is that Summers is now writing a novel of her own, titled Mrs Jekyll. "I never would have started my own novel if it hadn't been for the past few years."

Trouble is, you can't slag someone off for doing something and then go on to do exactly the same thing, without copping a large amount of flack yourself. We await the novel with interest.

Nick Cave Interview

Nick Cave, Australian songwriter, who wrote a novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, in 1989 is interviewed at the SuicideGirls website. Amongst other things, he explains why he isn't writing novels any more.

[Thanks to the Bookslut weblog for the link.]

DBC Pierre Interview

Dean, of The Happy Antipodean blog, and recent commenter on this weblog, has posted a long interview with DBC Pierre which was conducted by Caro Llewellyn (director of the Sydney Writers' Festival). The interview was conducted in front of a live audience on March 26th this year when Pierre was in Australia promoting his latest book. I wonder why Pierre was drinking martinis in a Belgian Beer café?

Colleen McCullough Interview

In the lead-up to the US publication of her latest novel On, Off, Colleeen McCullough talks to the California Literary Review. The book, a crime novel set in Connecticut in the 1960s is something of a departure for the author, making a change from the Australian bush and ancient Rome. It transpires that her deteriorating eyesight may have heavily influenced her to cross genres. "I don't have to do a lot of research for them, the prose is crisp and bald, and I find it easy to keep plot twists in my head...So I feel it is the genre that would give me the most amusement and pleasure as a writer, combined with ease for people who had to write from my dictation."

[Thanks to Sarah Weinman for the link.]

Les Murray Interview

Les Murray is interviewed in today's "Age" by Jane Sullivan and reveals that his great-great-grandfather's brother founded the House of Worth in Paris.

Odd how these things turn up. Reminds me of the time I got a funny look from a visiting American friend when I told her, at the footy as it happens, that the bloke playing full-forward for St Kilda (Fraser Gehrig) was related to the baseballer, Lou, of the same family name.

Markus Zusak, Justine Larbalestier, and Scott Westerfeld

Ron Hogan, of the mediabistro GalleyCat weblog, went along to the Books of Wonder book-signing of Markus Zusak, Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld last Saturday in New York. Ron has posted some photos from the signing as well as a link to Zusak's "Good Morning America" appearance that I mentioned the other day. Check it out. It's pretty good, and runs about 5 minutes.

Markus Zusak

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which we href="http://www.middlemiss.org/weblog/archives/matilda/2006/02/worthy_books_un_24.html">looked at a week or so back, has been published in the US. Justine Larbelestier caught up with Markus in New York over the weekend to find that his novel, which was released on March 14 there, was featured on "Good Morning America" and subsequently hit #1 in Books on Amazon.

A check this morning finds that it has slipped from #3 yesterday to #8 today. Which is not too shabby anyway you look at it. Interesting to note that the book is considered Zusak's "breakout" novel here in Australia, after several young adult books, while the US edition looks to have a distinctly YA cover, and is listed as "Grade 9-up" by the "School Library Journal".

Peter Carey Again

There I was, just the other day, stating that the new Carey novel, Theft, wouldn't be out until June, and then I read in Maud Newton's weblog that it's already been published here in Australia. Bugger.

From the publisher's blurb: "A truly brilliant novel - an act of fantastic writing bravura from Peter Carey, in which he once again displays his extraordinary flair for language - THEFT is a love poem of a completely unexpected kind. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Sydney and Tokyo and exploring the ideas of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption, this is a dark, thought-provoking and stirring story that will also make you laugh out loud." Yeah, I'd read that.

Peter Carey Interview

Benedicte Page, of The Bookseller, has published an interview titled "Peter Carey: Fakes, Frauds, Lies and Hoaxes". Carey talks about his upcoming novel Theft: A Love Story (due from Faber in June), James Frey, and the place of Australia in the literary pantheon: "There is this whole issue for Australia of being on the periphery and having no cultural authority, of cultural authority being determined elsewhere--in New York or in
London--and Australians have taken huge pleasure in undermining that authority and proving it wrong."

And about the prospect of returning home: "I've followed my life--one follows it, not makes it--and my ex-wife really, really wanted to come and live here. I would never have thought of coming in a million years but there was no reason not to, so that happened...yes, a time will come to go back to Australia. I'm on a kind of moral holiday."

[Thanks to The Literary Saloon for the heads-up.]

James Bradley Profile

As James Bradley's new book The Resurrectionist is about to be launched at the Adelaide Writers' Week, Jason Steger has profiled him in "The Sunday Age". The novel, a gothic journey from the light into the dark and back again partly inspired by the story of Edinburgh's William Burke and Robert Hare, took Bradley to some strange places: "I'm so glad I'm not writing the book any more . . . in all honesty I think it messed with my head". Originally scheduled for publication in 2001, it seems the author embarked on a journey almost as dark as the one his main character endures.

[As I write I'm about half-way through the novel, so I think the word "enjoy" is not one I should use about it at this point. The sense of foreboding is rather intense and fifty pages is about all I can handle at a sitting. This is one that is going to stick in the mind for some time to come.]

J.M. Coetzee to Formalise "Australian" Status

We at Matilda claimed him some time back, based on his long-term residency in our erstwhile home-town, Adelaide. Now "The Advertiser" reports that J.M. Coetzee is to take Australian citizenship in a ceremony at Writers' Week next Monday.

[Thanks to Maud Newton for the link.]

DBC Pierre Profile

DBC Pierre is profiled by Emma-Kate Symons in "The Weekend Australian". His new book, Ludmilla's Broken English will be published in the UK next week. "I can't imagine [the critical reaction]," Pierre says of his second stab at artistic glory. "I don't know anyone personally who would like the new book. And Vernon was exactly the same. I didn't know anybody who would like it. But you have to write for yourself and just respect the nominal reader. "The novel has to be a vehicle and carry you somewhere and not be too indulgent. "But f--- knows what they'll say about it. And it doesn't really matter because the work is done. It was an exercise."

Kate Grenville Interview

This week Kate Grenville is interviewed by "The Scotsman". She seems remarkably fixated on trousers. More to follow.

[Thanks to Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind for the link.]

Sonya Hartnett Profile

Sonya Hartnett is profiled in this week's "Bulletin" magazine. "It wasn't that I decided I wanted to be a writer; I decided I would be a writer. I became a writer because I was too bloody lazy to do anything else." Ah, honesty at last. But seriously, she published her first novel at 15, and has produced such novels as Of a Boy and Surrender. After reading those you quickly come to the conclusion she could be nothing else.

Gabrielle Lord on the Radio

ABC Radio's "Ockham Razor" is a short lecture series presented each Sunday on Radio National. Podcasts of this series are available and I can state that I find them vastly enjoyable, even when I disagree with the viewpoint expressed. This week, local crime writer Gabrielle Lord "talks about the research she has to undertake when she gathers materials for one of her books. To give her stories the authentic touch she has to constantly learn about the world of forensic science."

Margo Lanagan Profile

Margo Lanagan is profiled in "The Weekend Australian", with the major item of news being that she aims for ten written pages a day. I'm not sure if the photo accompanying the piece was taken at her home or at the new writing location she's recently acquired. In any event the table looks pretty neat, and you know what they say about neat desks... Lanagan is currently working on a new collection of stories and a novel. For further updates on how both of these are progressing you can check out her weblog. I do, regularly.

Breaker Morant

Harry "Breaker" Morant was born on this day in England in 1864, possibly under the name Edwin Henry Murrant. He arrived in Townsville, Queensland in 1883 where he later married Daisy May O'Dwyer (later known more famously as Daisy Bates) - and quickly divorced - and took to droving and horse-breaking; hence the nickname. In the late 1890s he enlisted with the South Australian Mounted Rifles to fight in the Boer War in South Africa. Along with P.J. Handcock, Morant was court-martialled for executing several Boer prisoners and a German missionary. He was found guilty and executed by firing squad on February 27th 1902. The story of his trial and execution was told in the 1979 film "Breaker Morant" with Edward Woodward as Morant, Bryan Brown as Handcock, along with Jack Thompson as the defending council - the film was directed by Bruce Beresford. Morant was one of the 'back-block' bards of the 1890s and published the bulk of his work in The Bulletin magazine.

They are mustering cattle on Brigalow Vale
   Where the stock-horses whinny and stamp,
And where long Andy Ferguson, you may go bail,
   Is yet boss on a cutting-out camp.
Half the duffers I met would not know a fat steer
   From a blessed old Alderney cow.
Whilst they're mustering there I am wondering here --
   Who is riding brown Harlequin now?

....
From starlight to starlight - all day in between
   The foam-flakes might fly from his bit,
But whatever the pace of the day's work had been,
   The brown gelding was eager and fit.
On the packhorse's back they are fixing a load
   Where the path climbs the hill's gloomy brow;
They are mustering bullocks to send on the road,
   But -- who's riding old Harlequin now?

From Who's
Riding Old Harlequin Now?
by Breaker Morant

Interviews with Australian Authors

The British website Bookmunch features a few interviews with Australian authors (transcripts rather than audio) which are worth checking out. A quick glance though the list reveals interviews with:

Michel Faber - author of The Crimson Petal and the White
Kate Jennings - author of Moral Hazzard
Emily Maguire - author of Taming the Beast
DBC Pierre - author of Vernon God Little

[Thanks to Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind for the link.]

Hazel Rowley is doing the publicity rounds in the USA after the publication of her new book TĂŞte-Ă -TĂŞte: The Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. You can listen to an interview with her from wbur.org in Boston. Harper Collins describes the book as follows:

They are one of the world's legendary couples. We can't think of one without thinking of the other. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre -- those passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers -- had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. With TĂŞte-Ă -TĂŞte, distinguished biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays them up close, in their most intimate moments.

Lily Brett Profile

On the publication of her new novel You Gotta Have Balls, Lily Brett is href="http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/site/articleIDs/B7694E5A90F368FACA2570A5000126CE?open&ui=dom&template=domBulletin">profiled in "The Bulletin Magazine".

Lily Brett's favourite lipstick is called Sheer Power. It's an appropriate shade for a woman whose latest novel, You Gotta Have Balls, makes a couple of provocative statements about how little support women offer each other. When the book's heroine, Ruth Rothwax, who runs a customised letter-writing business, attempts to establish a women's group with the intention of creating a support network, she finds herself stumped: her friends don't want to join, or have a different agenda. Brett has experienced this frustration first-hand and believes it is genetic. "Men are not like that, they just get on with it," she says. "They don't have to be best friends to help each other out. Women criticise and undermine each other with comments about their appearance. When Martha Stewart went to jail, her harshest critics were women. This is something that has been bugging me for years and I decided it was time to write about it."

J.M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee is a featured author over on "The New York Times" website. They have sections devoted to each of his books, including reviews, excerpts and articles about his full body of work.

[Thanks to Conversational Reading for the link.]

John Birmingham

John Birmingham (born 1964) is an Australian author. Birmingham was born in Liverpool UK and migrated to Australia (unfortunately) with his parents in 1970. He grew up in Ipswich, Queensland. Birmingham is most notable for the novel He Died With A Felafel In His Hand (1994), which has since been turned into a play, film and a graphic novel. The sequel is The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco (Duffy and Snellgrove, 1997). The play was written and produced by thirty-six unemployed actors. It went on to become the longest running stage play in Australian history.

John Birmingham is also a foreign affairs expert, and has written an essay about Australia's relations with Indonesia, Appeasing Jakarta, which was published in the "Quarterly Essay". Other works by him include the How To Be A Man, a semi-humorous guide to contemporary Australian masculinity and Off One's Tits, a collection of essays and articles previously published elsewhere. He also spent four years researching the history of Sydney for Leviathan: the unauthorised biography of Sydney (Random House, 1999, ISBN 0091842034). It won Australia's National Prize For Non-Fiction in 2002. In 2004 he published Weapons of Choice, the first in the "Axis of Time" trilogy, a series of Tom Clancy-like techno-thrillers; simultaneously a satire of the technothriller and alternate history genres. Many writers from those genres appear as minor characters. It was published by Del Rey in the US and by Pan Macmillan in Australia. In August 2005, the second book, Designated Targets was published in Australia. US publication followed in October. - From Wikipedia.

You might also like to know that John Birmingham also maintains a weblog, which is mainly concerned with his recent novels. The Random House website has a description of the latest book along with an author Q&A.

Adam Lindsay Gordon

Adam Lindsay Gordon was born on this day in 1833 in Fayal, Azores, Portugal. While no longer the "iconic" poet of the likes of Lawson or Paterson, Gordon remains the only Australian to have a plaque in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, London. Gordon's family took him to England when he was young and it was there that he completed his education. He was then sent by his family to South Australia in 1853 where he enlisted in the mounted police. He was briefly a member of Parliament and lived in Western Australia and Ballarat before moving to Melbourne. During his time in Ballarat he suffered a severe head injury in a riding accident, was bankrupted by a fire in the livery stable and lost his infant daughter. The day after the publication of his poems in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes he committed suicide on Brighton Beach in Melbourne. He died on 24 June 1870.

Damien Broderick Interview

Damien Broderick, Melbourne sf and science writer, is now based in San Antonio, Texas. He is interviewed in the September 2005 issue of Locus magazine. The website offers some excerpts from the interview, but you'll have to buy the printed version of the magazine to read the full thing.

Sumner Locke Elliott and Les Murray

Today is the birthday of two of Australia's greatest writers: Sumner Locke Elliot and Les Murray.

Sumner Locke Elliot was born in Sydney on this day in 1917. The son of writer Sumner Locke, he is probably best known for his 1963 novel Careful He Might Hear You which won the Miles Franklin
award
and which was later made into a film in 1983, featuring Wendy Hughes and Robyn Nevin, and directed by Carl Schulz. Elliot emigrated to the USA in 1949 where he died in 1991. He was presented with the Patrick White Award in 1977.

Les Murray was born in Nabiac, New South Wales, in 1938. He graduated from the University of Sydney, worked and travelled widely before deciding on a freelance writing career in 1971. He is best known for his poetry which is known world-wide, with such volumes as The People's Otherword, Fredy Neptune and Subhuman Redneck Poems. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1998 on the recommendation of Ted Hughes, he was proclaimed an Australian Living Treasure in 1998, and is an Officer of the Order of Australia. Perpetually rumoured to be on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize, he lives near Bunyah in New South Wales, only a few kilometres from where he grew up.

Brian Castro Profiles

Brian Castro has been described as an author more admired than read. His latest novel, The Garden Book, was reviewed in the "Age" on August 29, and now he is profiled in "The Sydney Morning Herald". It's funny that they should use the same photo for the two pieces. Anyway the book sounds pretty interesting, and is one that I should check out.

Shirley Hazzard Pays a Visit

"For all her restless travelling the apartment in New York, the annual sojourns in Capri and Naples - there's something very familiar, a whiff of old Sydney, about Shirley Hazzard. The colours she wears have the clarity of frescos, the shoes are Italian elegance, and her conversation lilts with rhythms of languages perfected by living in Siena and Paris. But the poise comes from 11 years at an Australian girls' school in the days when suburban women always wore a hat and gloves into the city. There's concern for others, too, a grace favoured by headmistresses before university placements dominated education."

"The Bulletin" profiles the Australian author Shirley Hazzard as she visits Sydney. Although this article is dated 14th September I get the feeling it has been held over since Hazzard's visit to Australia back in June.

Death of Donald Horne

The news is just through that Donald Horne, author of such works as The Lucky Country and The Education of Young Donald, died earlier today at home after a long illness. He was 83 years old. A great loss.

C.J. Dennis Birthday

C.J. Dennis was born on this day in 1876, in Auburn, South Australia. Considered by many (well, by me at least) to be one of the greatest of Australia's poets, he is probably the best-selling of any of them.

From the time of its publication in 1915, Dennis's The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke had sold in excess of 66,000 copies within 18 months of initial printing. It has since gone on to sell well over the 100,000 mark. While the Bloke was the best known of all Dennis's works, he also wrote such works as The Moods of Ginger Mick, Doreen and Rose of Spadgers in the same sequence, as well as The Glugs of Gosh, Digger Smith and Jim of the Hills. In the latter part of his life, Dennis became the resident poet for The Herald newspaper in Melbourne, writing over 3,000 pieces of poetry and prose for the paper over a near twenty year period. Dennis died in Melbourne on 22 June 1938.

Margaret Scott Follow-Up

In today's "Age" the author and journalist Martin Flangan presents an obituary of Margaret Scott who died earlier this week. I can't find the piece on the web but one section amused me: 'She went to Cambridge University in 1953 and was in the same circle as Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Indeed, Scott was present the night Plath met Hughes, Plath dramatically concluding their first embrace by biting Hughes' cheek until it bled. The girl who had accompanied Hughes to the party approached Scott, upset, and said: "Ted's just kissed that American girl", to which Scott replied: "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure it won't come to anything."'

Margaret Scott 1934-2005

Margaret Scott, the noted author who came to national attention through her appearances on the ABC's Good News Week and Great Debates in the 1990s, has died in
Tasmania. Scott was born in Bristol, England, in 1934 and migrated to Australia with her son and first husband in 1959. A second marriage latter added three stepchildren. Scott was the author of two novels: The Baby-Farmer in 1990, and Family Album in 2000. She edited Effects of Light: The Poetry of Tasmania in 1985 as well as publishing six collections of her own poetry. Earlier this year she was awarded the Australia Council Writers Emeritus Award.

[Update: "The Australian" also printed an obituary.]

Ruth Park and David Ireland

Ruth Park was born
on this day in 1923 in Auckland, New Zealand. She moved to Australia in 1942 and
married the writer D'Arcy Niland. She is best known for her "Harp in the South" novels: The Harp in the South 1948, Poor Man's Orange 1949 and Missus 1985. She was awarded the Miles Franklin
Award
for her novel Swords and Crowns and Rings in 1977. Beyond her adult novels she also wrote many works for children, including The Muddle-Headed Wombat series and Playing Beattie Bow 1980, which won the Children's Book of the Year Award. After Niland's death in 1967, Ruth Park lived on Norfolk Island from 1973-85 before returning to Sydney, where she now lives.

David Ireland was born on this day in 1927, in Lakemba, New South Wales. His second novel The Unknown Industrial Prisoner won the Miles Franklin Award in 1971, as did his later novels The Glass Canoe in 1976, and A Woman of the Future in 1979. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1981.

Robert Drewe / Louis Nowra / Dinny O'Hearn Part 2

The saga continues in today's "Age" with a follow-up in the letters column. One Bruce Nichol, of Albury, writes that he believes he was probably in the pub on the night Nowra and O'Hearn went at it. Now I should mention that part of the story I left out yesterday (cos I didn't think it was that interesting and cos I didn't want to get sued for copyright infringement) concerned Nowra's determination not to mess up his suit during the aforementioned donnnybrook. Of course Nichol picks up on this point: "...I believe I was in the bar at Stewart's Hotel in Carlton at the time of the alleged affray, and all I can remember after all this time was an inconspicuous bloke picking a blue with the well-known-at-Stewart's Dinny, and then, almost in tears, shouting: 'Don't rip my coat!' 'My coat!' 'Watch out for my coat!' There wasn't much 'clocking' being done."

It just gets better and better. As a means of dating this little incident, which Drewe neglected to do in his original piece, O'Hearn's review of Palu was published in "The Age" on 5th September 1987.

Robert Drewe / Louis Nowra / Dinny O'Hearn

In the latest Weekend Round-Up I started off by linking to a piece by Robert Drewe in last Saturday's "Age" newspaper. This piece had Drewe looking back on his time attending the Melbourne Writers' Festival. One anecdote, in particular, seems have struck a nerve with one of the featured writers, Louis Nowra. The anecdote went as follows: "It began innocently enough on the Friday evening. When playwright and novelist Louis Nowra and I came out of a talk session together. I suggested a drink at Stewart's, where, as a visitor from Sydney, I planned to catch up with Dinny O'Hearn. Louis thought this was a good idea. I soon learnt why. "We arrived there and ordered a drink; Dinny arrived five minutes later, and as he was removing his coat and tweed cap, Louis rushed up and swung a punch at him. It turned out that Dinny had recently unfavourably reviewed Louis' novel Palu. A small hubbub followed, culminating in Louis rapidly exiting the pub."

All good festival fun you might think, but it probably helps if you get the story right. Or, at least, check available sources. Yesterday, Wednesday 17th August, Louis Nowra wrote to "The Age" to give his side of the story. He starts his letter by outlining Drewe's version of events and comments that it is "wildly inaccurate". "First, although my novel had been reviewed by a D.J. O'Hearn, I had never heard of him...A few years later, O'Hearn said in an interview that we discussed the review, which admittedly had annoyed me, and then I went for him. He said my aggression was over the review.

"This was slightly disingenuous. Palu was a novel about a black woman and at the time my girlfriend was black. The fact was that he made some derogatory remarks about black women that so incensed me that I determined to clock him."

So, we all squared away about that then?

Margo Lanagan

Margo Lanagan's collection of short stories, Black Juice, is getting a lot of coverage around the traps: Rob Gerrand, editor of The Best Australian Science Fiction Writing, mentioned that he enjoyed both this collection and her previous one White Time; and just the other day my 12-year-old daughter asked after it as she has had the book recommended in her English class. Getting your book onto school reading lists must be a huge boon to any Australian writer.

A while back I found that Locus has included the collection in their list of Recommended Reading for 2004 in the sf and fantasy fields, and the following storieswere highlighted: "Earthly Uses", "Red Nose Day", "Rite of Spring", and "Singing My Sister Down". And now I find that "Singing My Sister Down" has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, and the book as Best Collection.

All in all this is an impressive sequence. But if that isn't enough, you can find out from the lady herself how she feels about all this on her new weblog, Among Amid Awhile. She's not actually there as I write as she's attending the Byron Bay Writers' Festival. Expect her back next week. The news she does impart is that she is working on a new novel, and that her next collection of stories will be titled Red Spikes.

Christina Stead Revisited

In this week's "Weekend Australian" Peter Craven extols the virtues of the great Australian writer Christina Stead, paying particular attention to what is considered her greatest novel, The Man Who Loved Children. In his excellent piece, Craven puts the main question and then
goes ahead and answers it:

"Why should we bother with Stead? Because she was one of the greatest writers, one of the greatest artists in any medium, this country has produced and one of the better writers of the 20th century. And, for what it's worth, the country of her birth is written all over her work wherever it is set. It was Australia that gave Stead that grand, long-breathed style that seems to sweep up the world in its sails, which is not afraid of eloquence or excess and which the reader has to accept as an article of faith or be lost on the rocks while the sea of Stead's magic sweeps out."
The other question that can be asked is: was she really an Australian writer anyway? After all, she left the country when she was in her mid-twenties and didn't return until her early 70s. The bulk of her important work was produced while she was in "her deliberate expatriation", as Craven puts it. I believe she was, though I must admit to her being another author I've sadly neglected. Still, I'm looking into what to take with me on a family holiday on a couple of months, and I'm currently tossing up between Stead and Hazzard. I think Craven has convinced me to give Christina a bit of a go.

Peter Singer Profile

Peter Singer, Melbourne philosopher and author, is given a very long profile in "The Guardian" this week. Singer's appointment to Princeton University in 1999 led "The New York Times" to say that " not since 1940, when City College tried to hire Bertrand Russell, had a philosopher's appointment by an American university caused such a commotion."

Andy Griffiths Profile

Andy Griffiths, author of such classics as The Day My Bum Went Psycho and Just Stupid, has now written a book for adults titled Fast Food & No Play Make Jack a Fat Boy with Jim Thomson and Sophie Blackmore. The title pretty much gives the game away: the book is aimed at adults to help them get their kids off the couch and off the fast food. Griffiths is profiled by "The Age" prior to publication date.

George Johnston and My Father

George Johnston was born on this day, July 20th, in 1912 in Malvern Victoria. Johnston was the author of such major Australian works as My Brother Jack, Clean Straw for Nothing and A Cartload of Hay, the first two of which won the Miles Franklin Award. Johnston died in 1970. This day is also the anniversary of man's first landing on the moon, the birthday of Francesco Petrarch (Italian poet, 1304), Augustin Daly (American playwright, 1838), Thomas Berger (American writer, 1924), Cormac McCarthy (American writer, 1933), and Uwe Johnson (German writer, 1934). And also my father, Brian Middlemiss (1930). Happy birthday to one and all.

Kate Grenville

The spotlight of publicity in Australian literary circles tends to shine on only one author at a time. A few months back it was Geraldine Brooks and her new novel March. Now it's the turn of Kate Grenville.

"The Bulletin" has recently run two pieces on Grenville, a profile on 6th July, followed a week later by a review of her novel. "The Age" did something similar with a review by Peter Craven which was preceeded by a good article by Jane Sullivan, which attempted to put the book into literary and historial context. And on Sunday 17 July, Grenville appears on the Radio National program "Books & Writing" with Romana Koval.

There are a few Writers' Festivals coming up so she'll be doing the rounds for a while yet.

Mardi McConnochie Profile

On the publication of her new novel, Fivestar, Mardi McConnochie is profiled by the "Sydney Morning Herald". "I think most writers are gamblers at heart," she says. "There are some really strange books out there that have struck a chord with people and you never really know what's going to do that. You always hope that you've written that one."

Clive James Interview

Clive James is back in Australia at present and was interviewed by Andrew Denton on ABC TV last night. A transcript of the interview is already available. Not much new in the interview. It just seemed to be getting started when it ended.

Margo Lanagan Interview

"Locus", which styles itself as the magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy field, has an interview with Margo Lanagan in the June 2005 issuue. They have also made available some excerpts from that interview on their website.

Patrick White Debated

In "The Sydney Morning Herald" Bruce Elder and Sacha Molitorisz debate whether Patrick White was ever worth reading.

Elder thinks not: "...while the personality of a writer should never intrude on his works, Paddy, as he was known to his one friend, was a vindictive, malicious, boorish, arrogant old sod who had such an inflated opinion of his inner and intellectual worth that he treated even those who loved him with disdain."

Molitorisz thinks so: "The Tree of Man is set in the Australian bush early last century, where Stan and Amy Parker are two stoic survivors. With a veracity peculiar to great fiction, White creates a mythic work that contains several decades of Australian history. All of which makes it sound important, but tedious. The opposite is true. To borrow from White, The Tree of Man has the simplicity of true grandeur."

Elizabeth Jolley Appreciation

Elizabeth Jolley has been one of the great Australian writrs over the past 30 years with such works as The Well, which won the Miles Franklin Award in 1986, and Mr Scobie's Riddle, My Father's Moon and The Georges' Wife, all of which won the Age Book of the Year Award. But we haven't heard from her since her 2001 novel An Innocent Gentleman. And now comes the news that age is catching up with her.

In "The Sunday Age" over the weekend Helen Garner published an appreciation of her friend and long-time correspondent. A beautiful piece of writing.

Errol Flynn

Errol Flynn, the Australian actor of notorious reputation, was born on this day in 1909 in Hobart Tasmania. What is probably not so well-known about him was that he was also an author, having penned one novel, Showdown, in 1946, and two volumes of autobiography, Beam Ends in 1937, and My Wicked, Wicked Ways in 1959. He died in October 1959. A posthumous volume of his collected writings, From a Life of Adventure: The Writings of Errol Flynn was published in 1980.

Shirley Hazzard Live

In rather late notice (I only got the note yesterday) Shirley Hazzard will be appearing in Melbourne tonight. Details: Shirley Hazzard in conversation with Jane Sullivan Monday 20th June, 6.30pm for 7pm Melbourne City Conference Centre, 333 Swanston St Tickets $20/$18 Conc. and available exclusively from Reader's Feast on (03) 9662 4699 or in person at the store.

Australian Author Birthdays

It's the birthday of Henry Lawson (1867), Kerry Greenwood (1954) and Gail Jones (1955) today. Again showing that there is something to this clumping theory of mine. Lawson needs little introduction as he is considered to be in the top rank of Australian authors.

He's not as well-known as Banjo Paterson for his iconic poetry, but he was probably a better short story writer with his collections, While the Billy Boils and Joe Wilson and His Mates, being considered classics of the genre. He struggled throughout his life to earn a decent living and to rid himself of his alcoholism. He died in 1922, aged just 55. His loss was keenly felt and C.J. Dennis, amongst many others, sang his praises after he'd gone.

Kerry Greenwood is best known for her Phryne Fisher series of mystery stories and is one of the most popular writers of detective novels in Australia today. Matilda recently looked at the reviews of her novel Heavenly Pleasures. Greenwood lives in Melbourne.

Western Australian Gail Jones is currently in the limelight for her novel Sixty Lights which was longlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize and has been shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Award. Reviews of the novel were covered here in Matilda in January.

J.M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee's new novel, Slow Man, will be released on September 22nd in the USA, and on September 1st in the UK. This should make it eligible for this year's Booker prize.

Amazon UK describes the book as: "A masterful new novel from one of the greatest writers alive. Paul Rayment is on the threshold of a comfortable old age when a calamitous cycling accident results in the amputation of a leg. Humiliated, his body truncated, his life circumscribed, he turns away from his friends. He hires a nurse named Marijana, with whom he has a European childhood in common: hers in Croatia, his in France. Tactfully and efficiently she ministers to his needs. But his feelings for her, and for her handsome teenage son, are complicated by the sudden arrival on his doorstep of the celebrated Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello, who threatens to take over the direction of his life and the affairs of his heart. Unflinching in its vision of suffering and generous in its portrayal of the spirit of care, Slow Man is a masterful work of fiction by one of the world's greatest writers." Interesting to see Coetzee's character
Elizabeth Costello making another appearance.

Geraldine Brooks

"The Washington Post" has chosen March by Geraldine Brooks as one of its "Editor's Picks" for best novels of the summer. They describe the novel as: "Brooks's novel conflates Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's father, with the errant Yankee chaplain, Mr. March, who serves in the Civil War during most of Little Women . Not really a biography or a companion to Little Women, March is a wholly original and engrossing story about a man whose lofty principles are scorched by his
failings."

Garth Nix on Amazon

The new book by Garth Nix, Drowned Wednesday, the third in his "Keys to the Kingdom" series, has just been released in paperback in the UK and has jumped to #31 on Amazon's book chart. This is a pretty impressive debut by anybody's estimation. The other two books in the series Mister Monday, and Grim Tuesday, are sitting at positions #538 and #835 respectively.

Patrick White Revisited

There's a big, black hole in the heart of my understanding of Australian literature, and its name is Patrick White. I've only ever tried to read one of his novels and that was back in late high school when The Tree of Man appeared on the English wider reading list. I gave it as good a shot as I could but didn't finish it: the print-face of the Penguin edition was small and cramped, the story was dour, and the pace glacial. It was not a good combination all round for a sixteen-year-old whose main reading fare tended to the science fictional.

Now, to commemorate White's birthday, Peter Craven takes another look at Australia's only Nobel Laureate. I do have intentions of getting back to White at some time. I'm just not sure when.

Geraldine Brooks Interview

Geraldine Brooks was interviewed by Andrew Denton on his televison program Enough Rope during her rceent tour to promote her latest book March. A full transcript of that interview is available.

David Francis #2

The truth behind the mysterious David Francis is now revealed in a short interview with the writer conducted by Mark Sarvas on his weblog The Elegant Variation. It seems that Francis is indeed a first-time novelist and that The Great Inland Sea and Agapanthus Tango are one and the same. Just another case of changing the title for the publishing market. A practice, I should point out, that I disagree with.

Percy Trezise (1923-2005)

The death has been announced of Percy Trezise, painter, author and activist. Trezise is best known for his children's picture books dealing with indigenous stories, which he both wrote and illustrated. According to a report in "The Courier-Mail", Trezise leaves behind a vast legacy for the people of Northern Queensland, and of Australia as a whole. His best known works include a series related to the Quinkan rock art galleries near Laura, Queensland.

Miles Franklin Profile

With the announcement of the shortlist for the 2005 version of the award that bears her name, Miles Franklin is profiled in the 2005 May issue of NLA News.

In addition, the National Library of Australia is hosting an exhibit dedicated to Franklin titled "Miles Franklin: A Brilliant Career?" The exhibit runs from April 23 to July 17, 2005, in the Exhibition Gallery of National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Canberra. Admission is free.

[Thanks to the Literary Saloon at the
complete review
for the note regarding the exhibit.]

Australian Authors' Birthdays

A busy day for Australian authors' birthdays today, 5th May, with T.A.G. Hungerford, Elliot Perlman, and Kit Denton all saluting the candles. T.A.G. Hungerford turns 90 today. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1988 for services to literature. and was the winner of the Patrick White Award in 1992. He has published 10 novels, including The Ridge and the River, Sowers of the Wind, and Swagbelly Birdsnatcher and the Prince of Siam. "The Weekend Australian" recently carried a major profile of the man.

Eliott Perlman was born in 1964 and has been featured quite a bit on this site over the past few months. The film adaptation of his first novel, Three Dollars, was recently released, and his latest work, Seven Types of Ambiguity, is getting mixed reviews around the world.

Kit Denton, father of ABC television interviewer Andrew Denton, was born in 1928, and is best known for his work The Breaker. This novel told the story of Breaker Morant, an English-born Australian poet who fought in the Boer War in South Africa, and who was court-martialled and shot for executing Boer prisoners in 1902. Kit Denton died in 1997.

Barry Heard Profile

Barry Heard, Vietnam veteran and former high school teacher, is profiled in the "Courier-Mail", on the publication of his memoir, Well Done, Those Men. Heard began writing about three years ago as a form of therapy and has since won a number of awards for his short stories, including the Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop Memorial Award.

Hannie Rayson Responds

The Australian author and playwright, Hannie Rayson, has found it necessary to respond to a recent critical review of her new play, Two Brothers, by Tom Hyland. According to Hyland, the play is "a compelling, provocative and entertaining dramatic thriller", but a political polemic nonetheless. He believes that Rayson "has produced a piece of propaganda that deals in stereotypes, preaches to the converted and panders to prejudice". Which is pretty strong criticism for a piece of political fiction.

And this is the point that Rayson attempts to make today: "I chose to write a political thriller - a form of entertainment that looks cruelty, ambition and injustice in the face. The play opens on a dark and stormy night with a cabinet minister stabbing a man to death, in self-defence. That clearly signals to an audience that we have leapt into fiction." It appears to me that Hyland wanted to see a play about a particular event, he wanted it treated factually and "truthfully" so the "real" events could be examined. I think it fair to say that Hyland went seeking one thing and got another, and was not too pleased by the occurrence. And that's hardly a fair basis on which to build a critical review.

Kerry Greenwood Profile

Kerry Greenwood is profiled on the New Zealand Stuff website in conjunction with the release of her new novel, Heavenly Pleasures, in that country. This weblog featured the book a couple of days back. Greenwood, who works part-time as a lawyer with Victoria Legal Aid, doesn't utilise much of her legal career in her writing.

"You can't make a good plot out of my clients, because lined up at the magistrates court every Thursday, out of the 15 I represent, about 13 have done something mind-bogglingly stupid. They haven't thought about it, they haven't
got good reasons for doing it.

"I had two kids as clients and they'd broken the windows of a McDonald's. I was hoping they'd say they didn't like the food or they think McDonald's are ruining the rainforest. So I asked them why they'd broken the windows, and they said the bus was late."

The interview also contains the news that "Greenwood will visit New Zealand to promote the next [book in the Phryne Fisher series], Death by Water, which is published in June. The story is set on a cruise ship, the Hinemoa, that comes to New Zealand". Greenwood then goes on to detail her fascination with New Zealand
cricketer Daniel Vittori:
"He used to look like Harry Potter and I love the way he pushes his eye-glasses up his nose with his finger. He's a bloody good bowler and he's developing into a really good batsman."
[Thanks to Sarah Weinman and her Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind weblog for the link.]

Frank Hardy's Birthday

Almost let this one slip me by, but today, March 21st, is Frank Hardy's birthday. Best known for his massive work, Power Without Glory, Frank Hardy was born in Bacchus Marsh in 1927, and later moved to Melbourne in 1938. He joined the Communist party in 1939 and enlisted in the army in 1942. He was de-mobbed in 1946 and started work as a journalist in Melbourne. It was during this time that he collected the material for Power Without Glory, a semi-fictional account of the life of John Wren - a legendary figure on the criminal fringe in the inner Melbourne suburb of Collingwood. Although subsequently accepted as one of the great Australian novels Hardy had difficulty getting his work published, and was later sued by Wren's wife over certain allegations about "her" in the book. The trial lasted nine months and was eventually won by Hardy. Hardy died in Melbourne in 1994.

Joseph Furphy Statue

Joseph Furphy, author of the Australian classic Such is Life, is being commemorated in the Victorian country town of Shepparton with the unveiling of a statue in his honour. In addition, a collected set of his works is due for publication from Halstead Classics, as is the biography of the writer by Miles Franklin. It would appear that Furphy is in for a long-overdue re-appraisal of his works. And a good thing too.

Edward Dyson's Birthday

Birthdays of important Australian authors are coming thick and fast at present. Today's is Edward Dyson's.

Dyson was born in 1865 near Ballarat in Victoria. His father was a mining engineer and Edward and his brothers all started off their working lives working in the goldmines in and around Victoria. Even though they came from solid working-class backgrounds Edward, and his brothers Will and Ambrose, all went on to artistic careers in writing or art. Will later married Norman Lindsay's sister Ruby. Though there was a lot of bad blood between Lindsay and Will after Ruby died of influenza in London.

Dyson supported his family by writing and editing at a time when such pursuits were poorly paid. He was very prolific. AustLit, the major resource for Australian literature, currently lists some 1635 items (poems, short stories and novel) in its catalog. This number is increasing all the time as further periodicals from the period of his working career are indexed. In any sense of the word he was prolific. He died in 1931 and is now largely forgotten.

I have published a number of his poems here on Matilda over the past few months and you can read a few more by Dyson on my Edward Dyson website. Major changes to this site are planned over the next few months.

Important Australian Author Birthdays

On this day both John Shaw Neilson and Norman Lindsay were born. (However, if you check around the Web enough some sites list Lindsay's birthday as the 23rd. I'm taking my cue from AustLit.)

Lindsay, the better known of the two, was born in Creswick, Victoria (near Ballarat) in 1879. At the age of sixteen he left Creswick for Melbourne where he joined his brother Lionel working as a journalist and artist. He soon became known for his "sexually explicit" (ie nude female) drawings and paintings. You can get an idea of his style by visiting Art Galleries Schubert website. In 1911 Lindsay moved to the Blue Mountains outside Sydney with his second wife Rose. He remained there until his death in 1969. Amongst his writings he is best known for the eternal children's classic The Magic Pudding - which Philip Pullman considers his favourite children's book. In other news, John Baxter (whose latest book was reviewed in "The Daily Telegraph" on the weekend and listed here yesterday, is working on a biography of Lindsay. No known publication date at this time.

John Shaw Neilson was born in Penola, in South Australia's south-east, in the middle of what is now the Coonawarra wine district, in 1872. The son of John Neilson, a bush poet of some note in the 1880s, Neilson published his first poetry in The Bulletin in 1896, and continued to work until his death in 1942. You can read some of his poetry here.

And it's a Happy Birthday to Banjo and Louisa

Louisa Lawson was born on this day in 1848. She is probably best known as the mother of Henry, but is a major Australian author in her own right. Austlit lists 1 novel, 178 poems, and 59 separate pieces of prose. In 1888 she founded the periodical Dawn, Australia's first magazine specifically for women. She is considered to be one of the major early figures in the history of Australian feminism. In 1988 Brian Matthews wrote Louisa, probably the best known of her biographies. She died in 1920.

A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson was born on this day in 1864. In the top rank of Australian writers he appears on the Australian ten dollar note (of which more will be written at a later time) and is probably best known for such works as "Waltzing Matilda" (which some idiot has purloined for one of these web thingamajigs), "The Man From Snowy River", "Clancy of the Overflow" and many, many others. You can read more about Banjo, along with some of this famous poems, on the website that I have developed - yes, it needs work, but I've been busy, all right? In 1983, Lansdowne Press released a massive two volume set (Singer of the Bush and Song of the Pen) containing his complete works which I still see listed on the Australian Ebay fairly regularly. This, and the similar Henry Lawson collection, are essential items for any Australian literature library. Paterson died in 1941.

Author Profile: Cassandra Austin

Seeing George by Cassandra Austin

Michael Winkler profiles Cassandra Austin as she ponders the publication of her debut novel Seeing George two months ago(!!). [Some currency with these profiles would be nice.]

The novel details a love triangle between a married couple and a dragon, and as soon as I read that description I started looking for the old "magic realism" label. To Winkler's credit he doesn't use the term but the novel is bound to be tagged that way somewhere or other. Austin seems have led a rather varied life after growing up in country Victoria and then taking a masters degree in criminology. So the book promises something a bit out of the ordinary. Parts of it reminded me a little of Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy, which was a wonderful little book from the early 1980s. That book was considered an out and out fantasy. And didn't suffer a jot.

A. Bertram Chandler

A. Bertram Chandler was born in Aldershot, England, in 1912, and migrated to Australia in 1956. Mainly known as a science fiction writer, he began writing short stories for John W. Campbell's Astounding during the Second World War. After moving to Australia he concentrated mainly on sf novels, many of them set in his 'Rim Worlds' sequence, featuring Commander Grimes (a sort of galactic Horatio Hornblower). He was known and honoured around the world - culminating in being Guest-of-Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1982. He died in Sydney in 1984.

Now David Kelleher, a long-time Chandler fan, has created a website devoted to Chandler. Of special interest to me is the associated page which contains a number of pieces that Chandler wrote for various sf fanzines (such as "Australian Science Fiction Review", "The Mentor" and "Science Fiction") and other general literary magazines (such as "The Australian Author"). Kelleher also reports that Chandler's story "Familiar Pattern" will be the featured story on the www.scifi.com/ website from 2nd February. I think it will only be there for a week.

Thomas Keneally

Thomas (or Tom, depending on whether he is writing fiction or non-fiction) has a couple of recent articles readily available on the web:

  • "Captain Scott's Biscuit" appears in Granta 83, and tells the story of how Keneally came to purloin a biscuit from Scott's Hut at McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic, and how he came to take it back.
  • "The Handbag Studio" appears in Granta 86, and finally explains how Keneally happened on the story that later turned into the novel Schindler's Ark and then into the Spielberg film "Schindler's List."

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