Book reviewers and the editors of periodicals that commission them are used to sour assessments of their worth, but Professor John Dale’s article on The Conversation yesterday is in a class of its own…
A Million Windows asks a good deal of its readers, requiring us to piece together elements through patterns of connections rather than through a clear narrative line.
runmonty
Gerald Murnane’s most recent novel, A Million Windows, might be read as a meditation on the relation between sound and silence. At the heart of the novel, though only revealed at the end, is a secret that…
What is lost and gained when book reviewers remain faceless?
Scott Beale / Laughing Squid, laughingsquid.com
The Saturday Paper publishes anonymous book reviews and, occasionally, reviews by identified critics. That anonymity was a much-discussed feature when the paper launched in March, and the debate continues…
Popular fiction and artistic merit are often considered mutually exclusive – not here.
chiaralily
Crime novel covers are often plastered with endorsements: “A terrific read,” “A real page-turner,” or “Author Y is the next Author X.” It’s far less common to read quotes such as the following from Fairfax…
A 34-year-old British-born writer has won Australia’s most prestigious literary prize. Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing was named as the unexpected winner of the 2014 Miles Franklin Award tonight. The…
A deeply moving novel about loss, grief and an unconventional coming of wisdom.
yaruman5
Randolph Stow’s To the Islands (1958) is an astonishing novel, a work of poetic skill and political subtlety – and one that is rarely mentioned today. Its omission from Australian literary syllabuses and…
Hardback, paperback … it’s always good to read between the lines.
Dave Sag
Five years ago, in the midst of the rancorous parallel importation debate the Productivity Commission undertook a thorough examination of book prices in Australia compared to comparable prices in the US…
For James, the reasons for putting pen to paper haven’t changed.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Death is a funny thing. It creeps up on us all, or surprises us if we are unlucky (or lucky, depending on the circumstances). For a writer, especially a self-confessed solipsist such as Clive James, the…
Should Australians be as familiar with David Williamson as with Shakespeare? Should we measure our Jane Austen with sufficient doses of Miles Franklin? Britain has recently revised the GCSE (General Certificate…
A sense of unease that comes with visiting the past is palpable in several of the works on show.
Anna Carey, Costa Vista 2014, giclée print mounted on aluminium, Museum of Brisbane
Last year I re-read Johnno, David Malouf’s 1975 novel, with a group of students. I was intrigued to find out how young men and women living in Brisbane today would relate to a novel that has cast such…
David Ireland’s 1976 novel The Glass Canoe leads its readers into the world of a dying tribe of drinkers.
matthewwu88
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome back to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing…
The London Underground provides the setting for Capital.
Chris Jones
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome back to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing…
Why was this novel, completed in 1971, withdrawn from publication at the last moment?
scrappy annie
It is nearly 50 years since Australian writer Elizabeth Harrower’s previous novel The Watch Tower appeared. Why, after producing four novels between 1957 and 1966, did she stop writing? Or at least stop…
Telling stories for black and white alike involves a difficult negotiation of cultures and contexts.
Luke Redmond
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome back to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing…
A family’s fluctuations in fortune impact upon “the dark side of their married life”.
Amanda Slater
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing. See…
The most magical moment of Matilda’s life is when she meets Feather, a wild bird-man whom she loves with all her heart.
Alfonso Jimenez
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing. See…
Johnny Warren argued that no other sport reflects life the way football does.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP Image
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing. See…
“Scott’s novel is not in denial of the brutal realities of the colonial process.”
sarah_browning
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Today, we start an occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing…
Plot – above all else – has proven successful for Australian author Reilly.
Peter Morris/Pan Macmillan.
I don’t know whether Australian author Matthew Reilly ever studied Aristotle, but he certainly studied action novels. As the subject of tonight’s Australian Story on ABC, Reilly’s affinity with the Greek…
However you read them, there are some hot books this summer.
Leonard John Matthews
Summertime and reading always went together in my family. Whether we were sunbathing on hot silky beach sand or cooling off in the back yard under a shady plum tree, our books came too. In those pre-digital…