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
Australian writers
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
Jeremy Chambers, The vintage and the gleaning
There's something I haven't had an opportunity to share with you, until now that is - and that is that I love to visit wine regions. Not just because I like wine but also because I like the areas in which wine is made. The landscape is often beautiful, the wineries themselves vary so much … Continue reading Jeremy Chambers, The vintage and the gleaning
Peter Temple, Truth
I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader (Stephen King, On writing) As I was reading Peter Temple's Truth I wondered whether I was Temple's "ideal reader". Somehow I think not. I am not a crime novel reader, but I did read and greatly like Temple's previous book, The broken shore, so why … Continue reading Peter Temple, Truth
Monday musings on Australian literature: Some Australian expat novelists
Australia is the only country I have come across that divides its writers into residents and those who have dared to live elsewhere. Can one imagine Americans writing of Ernest Hemingway, or the Brits of Auden, thus? (Carmen Callil, Australian-born founder of Virago Press) That answers one of my questions: that is, whether other nations … Continue reading Monday musings on Australian literature: Some Australian expat novelists
Kate Jennings, Trouble: Evolution of a radical
I'm not going to beat about the bush but tell it like it is: I absolutely gobbled up Kate Jennings' Trouble: Evolution of a radical: Selected writings 1970-2010. It took me a fortnight to read it, partly because I've been pretty busy but also because there was so much to savour and take in that … Continue reading Kate Jennings, Trouble: Evolution of a radical
Monday musings on Australian literature: Indigenous writers
It's important I think that my third post be on our indigenous writers. Again it's going to be pretty idiosyncratic as my reading in this area has been scattered, not for lack of interest so much as the old "so many books" issue that we all know only too well. I was first introduced to … Continue reading Monday musings on Australian literature: Indigenous writers
Helen Garner, Cosmo cosmolino
When I returned to seriously reading Australian writers back in the 1980s, there were four women writers who caught my attention, and I have loved them ever since. They were Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007), Thea Astley (1925-2004), Olga Masters (1919-1986) and Helen Garner (b. 1942). Garner, the youngest by a couple of decades, is the only … Continue reading Helen Garner, Cosmo cosmolino
Eva Hornung, Dog boy
I first read Eva Hornung when she was writing as Eva Sallis. It was her second novel The city of sealions, which is a pretty passionate and evocatively written exploration of cultural alienation and dislocation brought about primarily by migration. In some ways Dog boy explores similar concerns, but its alienation is played out in a … Continue reading Eva Hornung, Dog boy
Herz Bergner, Between sky and sea
Book cover (Courtesy: Text Publishing) Do you read introductions to novels? And, if you do, do you read them before or after you read the novel itself? I read them, but always afterwards because I like to come to novels as objectively as I can. And so, this is what I did with Herz Bergner's … Continue reading Herz Bergner, Between sky and sea
Whispering Gums 