Cirrus@Austlit

'This special section on book reviewing in Australia emerges from the symposium Critical Matters: Book Reviewing Now, held at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on 9 April 2015 and hosted by Monash University’s Centre for the Book. This symposium, the first of its kind ever to take place in Australia, brought together over thirty reviewers, academics, writers, literary editors and publishers to debate a series of ‘provocations’ on topics such as the necessity of negative reviews, the problem with pitching, the anachronistic nature of critical jargon, the pros and cons of ‘clubbishness’, and the advent of online reviewing sites. Like the symposium, this special section consciously refuses two premises: namely that, before we even start to talk about book reviewing itself, we have to defend its right to exist or that it is in a state of crisis. Instead, this special section understands book reviewing to be a dynamic field that has influence beyond itself, and that can and should be treated to sustained attention by academics.' (Introduction)

'The academic, critic and nun Veronica Brady once wrote that Thomas Keneally ‘has always been a writer who mattered, even when he is writing too much too quickly’ (74). For several reasons, I often ponder this brilliant line. First, it captures a fundamental truth—perhaps the fundamental truth—about Keneally’s oeuvre. Indeed, it is an even more accurate appraisal of Keneally’s legacy in 2016, taking into consideration his more than fifty published books, than it was when it appeared in the literary magazine Meanjin in 1979. Second, the brevity of Brady’s observation is admirable: she uses so few words to say so much so well. Third, Brady here offers a mixed critical response: she is at once positive and negative about Keneally, with the two responses commingling rather than competing; her tone is moderate.' (Introduction)