In the next week (I hope), I'll be reviewing Anna Krien's Into the forest, her investigation into the longstanding conflict over logging native forests in our southernmost state, Tasmania. In the meantime, though, as I've been reading the book, I've been thinking again of the role eucalypts play in Australian life and culture - and, … Continue reading Monday musings on Australian literature: The gum tree in the Australian imagination
Books into films
'Do you mind what they did to your book?' 'Well, they can't do anything to my book. They can't alter a single comma ... ' I came across the above in an article about P. D. James' in the September issue of goodreading magazine. The discussion relates to her non-crime novel The children of men which was adapted into … Continue reading Books into films
John Banville, The infinities
This is what Benny loves, what all the gods love, to eavesdrop on the secret lives of others. Hmm ... this is also, I think, what readers love! Readers after all are, surely, the ultimate voyeurs. And yet the god Hermes, who narrates John Banville's The infinities, also admits to the gods interfering in people's lives, which is, in … Continue reading John Banville, The infinities
Lionel Shriver, So much for that
Having had my own rather traumatic experience of the American healthcare system back in the 1980s I was rather keen to read Lionel Shriver's latest offering, So much for that. And, I wasn't disappointed - or, let me rephrase that, I found it an interesting and engaging page-turner though not a top-ten-of-the-year one. First a … Continue reading Lionel Shriver, So much for that
Monday musings on Australian literature: In praise of the “taker-outers”
Today's Monday musings post is not solely about Australian literature but it was inspired by an Australian writer, Kate Jennings, about whom I've written a few times in the last month or so. In 2002 she wrote an essay titled "Bone and sinew", for our now defunct Bulletin magazine, in which she praises short novels … Continue reading Monday musings on Australian literature: In praise of the “taker-outers”
Kate Jennings, Snake
In her "fragmented autobiography", Trouble, Kate Jennings used excerpts from her first novel, Snake, to convey her childhood experience of growing up on a farm in the Riverina region of New South Wales. She had, she wrote, an "unhappy mother, diffident father". Snake is the story of such a mother and father. While the novel … Continue reading Kate Jennings, Snake
Another award for Nam Le
I read Nam Le's collection of short stories The boat a few months before I started my blog. The collection has been well reviewed nationally and internationally, and has won quite a few awards. I have just read that he has now been awarded another: The Kathleen Mitchell Award which is a biennial literary prize for writers … Continue reading Another award for Nam Le
Monday musings on Australian literature: Kookaburras at the coast
With daughter and dog left to guard the fort, Mr Gums and I are holidaying on the northern NSW coast with Ma and Pa Gums, and so this week's musings will be short and more relaxed. In fact, I am just going to write about one thing: Kookaburras. I was pondering what this week's Musings … Continue reading Monday musings on Australian literature: Kookaburras at the coast
Kate Jennings on Gutless Fiction
Did I say in my review of Kate Jennings' Trouble that she's not backward in coming forward? If not, I do now and will cite as an example her essay "Gutless fiction" which was first published in The Australian Financial Review in 2005. The article was inspired by her becoming aware of "prejudices against so-called business fiction". Business … Continue reading Kate Jennings on Gutless Fiction
Monday musings on Australian literature: For the love of ballads
I was first introduced to Australian ballads by my father who loved to read the works of AB (Banjo) Paterson to us. I loved it - my father's reading and the poems themselves. This love was reinforced in my first year of high school, through my poetry textbook, The call of the gums: An anthology of … Continue reading Monday musings on Australian literature: For the love of ballads
Whispering Gums 