y separately published work icon Sydney Review of Books periodical issue  
Issue Details: First known date: 2022... November 2022 of Sydney Review of Books est. 2013 Sydney Review of Books
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Contents

* Contents derived from the 2022 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Against Memoir, Lur Alghurabi , single work review
— Review of Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance Eda Gunaydin , 2022 selected work essay ;

'What could be more humiliating than to write and be read, to be thought about and perceived by strangers? And then the worst: to be dissected, publicly and openly, for all the things we dedicated ourselves as teenagers to hiding? Time and time again, it strikes me that the worst thing that can ever happen to an author is for people to read their book. That’s when they start to think about it, write about it, ask about it, talk about it, and eventually give it back to the author, chewed up, wet and slobbery like a tennis ball out of a dog’s mouth.'  (Introduction)

All Ghosts, John Kinsella , single work review
— Review of Revenants Adam Aitken , 2022 selected work poetry ;

'Revenants creates a liminal zone of perception in Adam Aitken’s oeuvre. Drawing on travel, ‘place’, family memories and indeed his own memoir work, literature and an ongoing commitment to trace and critique the impacts of colonialism, there’s also a restive negotiation between the failed diplomacies of day-to-day life and the consequences of living with the dead that are and aren’t one’s ‘own’.' (Introduction)

A Book About Beauty, Jessica Gildersleeve , single work review
— Review of Seven and a Half Christos Tsiolkas , 2021 single work novel ;

'I now find it jarring to watch films or television programs which depict characters standing closer than one and a half metres apart, failing to don their face masks, or ignoring the use of hand sanitiser. Their naivety is frustrating and glaring. Literature which sidesteps or ignores the pandemic, the way life is now, comes across as illusory, idealised, or fantastic, as if it is taking place in an alternate universe.'  (Introduction)

Flooded In and the Way Out, Merinda Dutton , single work review
— Review of Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray Anita Heiss , 2021 single work novel ;

'As a part time local to Bundjalung Country and someone who grew up in the flood prone Clarence Valley, I am no stranger to flood stories. As I reflect on recent and historical flood events, it is apparent that First Nations knowledges about the land have been undervalued at best. At worst, they have been flatly ignored. The failure to truly listen and observe has led to the establishment of permanent settlements in areas well-known to us to flood frequently in significant and devastating ways. Humans and livelihoods have drowned and been washed away, literally and figuratively. In the muddy depths of grief that is left behind, there are lessons to be had, opportunities to reimagine and reconfigure settler relations with the land. In fact, the emerging climate crisis, the inevitability of future disasters and the threat of another year of La Niña demands this of us all. And for each flood story, there is an Aboriginal Hero in whom our future navigational path resides.' (Introduction)

Yellow Invisibility, Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen , single work review
— Review of The Whitewash Siang Lu , 2022 single work novel ;
A Communal Genre, Oliver Reeson , single work review
— Review of How to Be Between Bastian Fox Phelan , 2022 single work autobiography ;
'There is an episode of The Simpsons that I often think about in relation to the prospect of writing a middling memoir. Season 7, episode 13: ‘Two Bad Neighbors’. George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara Bush, move to Springfield. Sitting at his desk, having just dictated the last typewritten sentence, ‘And since I’d achieved all of my goals as President in one term, there was no need for a second. The End.’ George Bush Senior says, ‘Mmm, good memoirs. Good, not great.’ I recite this phrase any time I write about myself. It’s both fun to say, and a reminder of what, I think, is the greatest fear you face writing modern memoir: that you’ll be so caught up in accounting for yourself that you’ll avoid making anything interesting.' (Introduction)
 
Unnatural Being, Jennifer Mills , single work essay
What Was It Thinking?, Ramona Kennedy , single work review
— Review of Here Be Leviathans Chris Flynn , 2022 selected work short story ;

'Twelve weeks have passed since I left social media to finish my thesis. Twitter was training my brain to think in short, varied bursts, puffs and huffs of information and comment. I know it has been twelve weeks because I can identify the point in my photo reel where I last considered a shot being anything other than grist for the mill of my singular gratification.' (Introduction)   

Inside Pathetic Language, Michael Farrell , single work review
— Review of Case Notes David Stavanger , 2020 selected work poetry ;
From the Porch, Helen Koukoutsis , single work review
— Review of Travelling Among the Stars Peter Skrzynecki , 2022 selected work poetry ;
Signs Lit in the Night, Jeremy George , William Holbrook , single work review
— Review of Between the Last Oasis and the Next Mirage : Writings on Australia Guy Rundle , 2021 multi chapter work essay ;
Pedestrian, Eda Gunaydin , single work essay
Murnane’s Signposts, Joseph Steinberg (interviewer), Merve Emre (interviewer), single work interview

'Gerald Murnane’s meticulously self-curated ‘Chronological Archive’ – as distinct from his ‘Literary Archive’ and ‘Antipodean Archive’, both of which he likewise compiled – fills no fewer than ‘twenty-one of the twenty-four drawers in six steel filing cabinets’. ‘In each drawer’, his catalogue stipulates, ‘at least twenty coloured signposts draw attention to items of more than usual interest’. A list of more than a hundred of these signposts follows. None of the items identified will be available for consultation until after the death of the author and his siblings. Murnane’s decision to announce his archive’s contents seems therefore premature, at least until one notices that this choice is clearly of a piece with the grand legacy-securing undertaking that is his curation of the archive itself: the catalogue’s promise that it contains much ‘humour and literary gossip’ is tacitly underwritten by its pre-emptive publication, which for all its idiosyncrasy functions primarily as an invitation to further discussion of its author.' (Introduction)   

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 12 Dec 2022 10:51:26
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