y separately published work icon Australian Book Review periodical issue  
Issue Details: First known date: 2021... no. 430 April 2021 of Australian Book Review est. 1961 Australian Book Review
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Welcome to the April issue! In our cover story, ABR theatre critic Tim Byrne examines the ways in which Australian theatre companies are coping after lockdown and the strategies they are implementing to welcome back audiences. Senior journalist (and new ABR Board member) Johanna Leggatt reviews Alan Rusbridger’s new book in which the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian offers an uneven attempt to demythologise journalism. Shannon Burns examines Steven Carroll’s fictionalised look at the life of the woman behind the notorious French novel Story of O. Claudio Bozzi, a legal academic, looks at whether the election of Joe Biden has given cause to hope that the position of Science Advisor to the President of the United States might be returned to a position of influence after years of neglect under Donald Trump. Other reviewers include Robert Dessaix, Andrea Goldsmith, Barry Hill, Kim Mahood, and Zora Simic.' (Publication summary)

 

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2021 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
A Different Kind of Loneliness : The Story of Two Complex Australian Women, Kim Mahood , single work review
— Review of Into the Loneliness : The Unholy Alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates Eleanor Hogan , 2021 single work biography ;

'Into the Loneliness is the story of two Australian women, opposites in temperament, who eschewed the conventional roles expected of women of their eras, lived unconventional lives, and produced books that influenced the culture and imagination of twentieth-century Australia. The book focuses on their complicated friendship, and on Ernestine Hill’s role in assisting Daisy Bates to produce the manuscript that was published in 1938 as The Passing of the Aborigines, which became a bestseller in Australia and Britain. Hill, a successful and popular journalist, organised the anthropological material and ghost-wrote much of the book, for which Bates privately expressed her gratitude, while not acknowledging it publicly.' (Introduction)

(p. 9-10)
The Doherty Bunch : Recruiting Your Own Children as Spies, Jane Sullivan , single work review
— Review of With My Little Eye : The Incredible True Story of a Family of Spies in the Suburbs Sandra Hogan , 2021 single work biography ;

'Here’s a story about a spy with a wooden leg, another spy who liked to sit around with his penis exposed, and a spy’s daughter who spent decades refusing to believe her father was dead. If this tale of an everyday family of secret agents were a novel or a Netflix drama, we’d laugh, frown, and admire it as a surreal fantasy. But it is real, the children are still alive, and their recollections are proof that truth is nuttier than fiction.' (Introduction)

(p. 21)
What Is It about Sisters? : Alison Croggon’s Deeply Wounded Memoir, Sarah Walker , single work review
— Review of Monsters Alison Croggon , 2021 single work autobiography essay ;

'Alison Croggon has written poetry, fantasy novels, and whip-smart arts criticism for decades, but Monsters is her first book-length work of non-fiction. In this deeply wounded book, Croggon unpacks her shattered relationship with her younger sister (not named in the book), a dynamic that bristles with accusations and resentments. In attempting to understand the wreckage of this relationship, Croggon finds herself going back to the roots of Western patriarchy and colonialism, seeking to frame this fractured relationship as the inexorable consequence of empire.' (Introduction)

(p. 23)
Out of the Shadows : A Memoir of Hearing Loss and Identity, Andrea Goldsmith , single work review
— Review of The Shape of Sound Fiona Murphy , 2021 single work autobiography ;

'More than twenty-five years ago, I wrote an essay on the work of Oliver Sacks (Island Magazine, Autumn 1993). Entitled ‘Anthropologist of Mind’, it ranged across several of Sacks’s books; but it was Seeing Voices, published in 1989, that was the main impetus for the essay. In Seeing Voices, Sacks explored American deaf communities, past and present. He exposed the stringent and often punishing attempts to ‘normalise’ deaf people by forcing them to communicate orally, and he simultaneously deplored the denigration and widespread outlawing of sign language. Drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, Sacks showed how deaf people were stigmatised and marginalised from mainstream culture, and he revealed, contrary to prevailing opinion in the hearing world, the richness and complexities of American Sign Language.' (Introduction)

(p. 24-25)
Marlini"A boy appears at school early", Anders Villani , single work poetry (p. 25)
A Plague on All Our Houses : How Theatre Companies Are Coping After Lockdown, Tim Byrne , single work essay

'James Shapiro, in his brilliant book 1606: William Shakespeare and the year of Lear (2015), notes the general reluctance of the Elizabethan theatre to deal directly with the subject of plague, despite its pressing relevance to audiences of the day. He asks if this is ‘because it was bad for business to remind playgoers packed into theatres of the risks of transmitting disease or because a traumatised culture simply couldn’t deal with it?’ As our own theatre begins to emerge from pandemic, those twin concerns of risk and trauma loom large over the collective consciousness. Outbreaks that explode like spot fires around the country have sapped our confidence, and the gap between our desire to participate in live performance and our fear of community transmission still seems insurmountable.' (Introduction)

(p. 26-28)
Swimming between Boundaries : Myriad Stories from John Kinsella, Thuy On , single work review
— Review of Pushing Back John Kinsella , 2021 single work novel ;

'Comprising more than thirty works of poetry, fiction, memoir, and criticism, John Kinsella’s prolific output is impressive, and this figure doesn’t include his collaborations with other artists. Here is a writer who swims between boundaries, experiments with form and content, and eludes easy categorisation. His most recent novel, Hollow Earth (2019), was a foray into science fiction and fantasy, and his most recent poetry volume The Weave (2020), was co-written with Thurston Moore, founder of NYC rock group Sonic Youth.' (Introduction)

(p. 30)
‘Rolling Over so Easily’ : Steven Carroll’s Take on Story of O, Shannon Burns , single work review
— Review of O Steven Carroll , 2021 single work novel ;

'On the back cover of O, we learn that the protagonist of the novel, Dominique, lived through the German occupation of France, participated in the Resistance, relished its ‘clandestine life’, and later wrote an ‘erotic novel about surrender, submission and shame’, which became the real-life international bestseller and French national scandal, Histoire d’O (1954). ‘But what is the story really about,’ the blurb asks, ‘Dominique, her lover, or the country and the wartime past it would rather forget?’' (Introduction)

(p. 31)
Addressing Identity : Stories of Present-day Tasmania, Anthony Lynch , single work review
— Review of Born Into This Adam Thompson , 2021 selected work short story ;

'When as a boy I listened to football on the radio, I would often hear mention of David Harris, a skilful midfielder who played for Geelong and Geelong West respectively in what were then the VFL and VFA. Harris was mostly known as ‘Darky’, not ‘David’. Recently, thanks to a YouTube interview, I learnt that Harris’s parents were Lebanese Australians. While in the interview Harris did not express offence, one can only wonder about the effect on him of this nickname – one he’d had since his own boyhood – based on the colour of his skin.' (Introduction)

(p. 32)
The Beauty of the Ordinary : Stories of Loss and Devastation, Elizabeth Bryer , single work review
— Review of Smokehouse Melissa Manning , 2020 selected work short story ;

'Smokehouse is an engagingly constructed collection of interlinked stories set in small-town, yet globally connected, settler Tasmania. The volume, which is focused on personal crises and family breakdown, is bookended by the two parts of the novella that lends the collection its name. This splicing is an inspired decision: the end of Part One keeps us turning the pages through the subsequent, fully realised short stories; with Part Two we feel rewarded whenever we spot a character first encountered in a story that seemed discrete.' (Introduction)

(p. 33)
Taking the Temperature : Four New Novels, Anna MacDonald , single work review
— Review of The Price of Two Sparrows Christy Collins , 2021 single work novel ; Repentance Alison Gibbs , 2021 single work novel ; Low Expectations Stuart Everly-Wilson , 2021 single work novel ; Friends and Dark Shapes Kavita Bedford , 2021 single work novel ;
'To survey concurrent works of art is to take the temperature of a particular time, in a particular place. And the temperature of the time and place in these four début Australian novels? It is searching for a sense of belonging, and, at least in part, it’s coming out of western Sydney in the wake of the 2005 Cronulla riots. All four novels are set in New South Wales, three of them in suburban Sydney. Each is concerned with who is entitled to land and the stories we tell while making ourselves at home in the world, sometimes at the expense of others.' (Introduction)
(p. 34-35)
‘Objects of Readerly Desire’ : A Close Look at Australia's Consequential Book Editors, Susan Sheridan , single work review
— Review of Literary Lion Tamers : Book Editors Who Made Publishing History Craig Munro , 2021 multi chapter work criticism ;

'Craig Munro’s latest book shines a spotlight on the work of some very different Australian book editors. It begins in the 1890s, when A.G. Stephens came into prominence as literary editor of The Bulletin’s famous Red Page. It continues through the trials and tribulations of P.R. (‘Inky’) Stephensen in publishing and radical politics in the interwar period and his internment during the war for his association with the Australia First Movement. Literary Lion Tamers then moves on to Beatrice Davis’s long career as a professional book editor with Angus & Robertson after World War II. It concludes with Rosanne Fitzgibbon, with whom Munro developed fiction and poetry lists at the University of Queensland Press.' (Introduction)

(p. 36-37)
Clare and Kiribatii"On Clare’s Skype the beach mixed every coral colour: the sheen,", Jennifer Maiden , single work poetry (p. 39)
Publisher of the Month : An Interview with Kent MacCarter, single work interview (p. 41)
Springboards : Three New Poetry Collections, Gig Ryan , single work review
— Review of I Don't Know How That Happened Oliver Driscoll , 2020 selected work poetry ; Nothing to Declare Mags Webster , 2020 selected work poetry ; The Dancer in Your Hands <> Jo Pollitt , 2020 single work poetry novella ;
(p. 42-43)
‘May Every Kiss Be a Coastline’ : New Collections from Three Assured Poets, Rose Lucas , single work review
— Review of Biological Necessity Jennifer Maiden , 2021 selected work poetry ; In This Part of the World Kevin Brophy , 2020 selected work poetry ;

'These three new poetry collections are works by established poets at the top of their game in terms of poetic craft and the honing of insights into both life and art. These are voices developed across a significant number of previous collections, allowing for an emergence of innovation, confidence, and ease of style and mood.' (Introduction)

(p. 43-44)
Second Circlei"Heads down and shoulders hunched, we set off, trampling", Stephen Edgar , single work poetry (p. 54)
The Pastures of Youth : An Uneven Poetic Memoir, Aidan Coleman , single work review
— Review of Walk Like a Cow : A Rumination on Walking Brendan Ryan , 2005 single work autobiography ;
'‘The first forty years of life furnish the text, while the remaining thirty supply the commentary,’ Arthur Schopenhauer remarked in The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims. While the timespan is different, the proportions are similar. Brendan Ryan’s Walk Like a Cow, which focuses predominantly on the poet’s first twenty-five years, has been written over roughly two decades. The memoir features twenty-seven largely self-contained chapters and nine previously published poems, in a roughly chronological narrative.' (Introduction)
(p. 55)
Open Page : An Interview with Mark McKenna, single work interview (p. 56)
In Beatie's Footsteps : A New Adaptation of Ruth Park's Classic, Polly Simons , single work review
— Review of Playing Beatie Bow Kate Mulvany , 2021 single work drama ;

'Ruth Park’s novels were as much about Sydney as the people who live there. In Park’s famous The Harp in the South trilogy, the slums of Surry Hills are almost as lively and characterful as the Darcy family, whose story it relates. In Playing Beatie Bow, the changing face of The Rocks underpins every part of the narrative.' (Introduction)

(p. 66)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 16 Apr 2024 10:13:50
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