y separately published work icon Australian Book Review periodical issue  
Issue Details: First known date: 2023... no. 452 April 2023 of Australian Book Review est. 1961 Australian Book Review
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In the April issue of ABR, we look at power, with a major commentary from James Curran on Southeast Asian perceptions of Australian foreign policy, reviews of books about Australian prime ministers, Tanya Plibersek, American myths and hyperpower, and – at the other end of power – life on welfare. We review new fiction from Alexis Wright, Eleanor Catton, Margaret Atwood, Stephanie Bishop, and others. And in a provocative commentary, Debi Hamilton describes noise as the ‘new smoking’ and Peter Rose sketches a New York portrait of writers Darryl Pinckney and Elizabeth Hardwick.'  (Publication summary) 

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2023 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Death in Secrecy : Shannon Molloy’s New Memoir, Anders Villani , single work review
— Review of You Made Me This Way Shannon Molloy , 2023 single work autobiography ;
'Shannon Molloy’s 2020 memoir, Fourteen, recounted a childhood and adolescence of grisly homophobic violence. Yet many readers of that book – a bestseller, adapted for the stage and optioned for a film production – may find You Made Me This Way noteworthy in part because it reveals what Fourteen left out: the sexual abuse Molloy suffered, beginning at age five, at the hands of an older boy. This omission underscores one of the book’s central theses, that on average male victims of child sexual abuse find it harder than female victims to disclose their experiences. A conditioned reticence with grave implications – ‘[t]here is death in secrecy’. Molloy’s book, a hybrid of autobiography and journalism, takes socially important steps in assessing – and humanising – these implications.' (Introduction) 
(p. 19)
A Press with Purpose : The MUP Story, Frank Bongiorno , single work review
— Review of MUP : A Centenary History Stuart Kells , 2023 multi chapter work criticism ;

'Publishers rarely become big news in Australia, university presses even less often. It was notable therefore that the departure in early 2019 of Melbourne University Publishing’s CEO, Louise Adler, and some members of the MUP board, became a matter on which so many of the nation’s political and cultural élite felt they needed to have an opinion. A strong coterie came out in her defence. This had much to do with Adler herself, who had courted their attention, published their books, and made MUP a story in its own right.'  (Introduction) 

(p. 20-21)
Déjà Rêvéi"This is not your life said the sushi train,", Philip Mead , single work poetry (p. 21)
Risk and Reward : Biography as Political Intervention, James Walter , single work review
— Review of Political Lives : Australian Prime Ministers and Their Biographers Christine Wallace , 2022 single work biography ;

'We live in an age of leader- and media-centric politics. There is a name and a personality attached to every significant political initiative, and chief among them are prime ministers and premiers. Political junkies will be familiar with the torrent of ‘leader’ profiles generated by the press and well versed in identifying implicit bias. Yet we constitute a ready market for biographies of current (and perhaps rising) stars, and journalists are often first to seize the opportunity to write ‘the first draft of history’. How well do we understand the genre and its effects?' (Introduction) 

(p. 27-28)
Building a Golem : The First Biography of a Labor Survivor, Patrick Mullins , single work review
— Review of Tanya Plibersek : On Her Own Terms Margaret Simons , 2023 single work biography ;

'In early March 2023, Tanya Plibersek fronted an audience at the Australian National University to question historian Chris Wallace about her newly released account of twentieth-century prime ministers and their biographers. Coming shortly before the publication of Margaret Simons’s biography of her, Plibersek’s interest in the dynamics of writing about a living, breathing, vote-seeking politician seemed prompted by more than mere professional courtesy. ‘It’s like building a golem, in the shape of a person, in a way, isn’t it?’ she remarked. ‘And then you’re putting magic into it and animating it. It comes out of the mud.’'  (Introduction) 

(p. 29-30)
A Bon Vivant's Life : The Long Awaited Biography, Susan Varga , single work review
— Review of Drink Against Drunkenness : The Life and Times of Sasha Soldatow Inez Baranay , 2022 single work biography ;

'Sasha Soldatow was a writer, gay activist, member of the Sydney Push, party animal, and bon vivant with legions of friends. In Drink Against Drunkenness, Inez Baranay maps the life like an archaeologist’s dig, though we are looking into the recent past (Soldatow died in 2006, not yet sixty). A fall in the icy streets of Moscow, in which his hip was broken and subsequently badly reset, heralded a steep decline; his alcoholism grew apace, and many of his friends tired of him. It was a sad end, yet he had a life full of daring: avant-garde writing and living freely as a gay man in a still repressive age.' (Introduction) 

(p. 34)
The Aftermath : Stephanie Bishop’s Alluring New Novel, Astrid Edwards , single work review
— Review of The Anniversary Stephanie Bishop , 2023 single work novel ;
'Stephanie Bishop’s The Anniversary is an example of both deft literary craft and an engrossing read – a feat rarer than it should be. Billed as a ‘novel about writing and desire’, this is more a work interrogating the nexus between art, celebrity, and commerce, while unpicking the ways in which gender informs all three.' (Introduction) 
(p. 36)
The Question of the Future : Alexis Wright’s Expansive New Work, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth , single work review
— Review of Praiseworthy Alexis Wright , 2023 single work novel ;
'An ochre-coloured haze has gathered permanently over the town of Praiseworthy somewhere in the Gulf country. It is composed of dust, soot, broken butterfly wings, memories, and grief – and it isn’t going anywhere. Meanwhile, on the ground, thousands of feral donkeys are being corralled into the town cemetery by an Indigenous leader called Cause Man Steel. Most call this man Planet because he is always banging on about the collapse of the planet.' (Introduction) 
(p. 37-38)
'Such Sadism, Such Pain' : Three Novels about Historical Masculinity, Stephen Knight , single work review
— Review of A Man of Honour Simon Smith , 2023 single work novel ; The Death of John Lacey Ben Hobson , 2023 single work novel ; The Investigators Anthony Hill , 2023 single work novel ;

'In recent historical fiction, women authors have explored the Australian past from a female viewpoint, as in Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves (2020), focusing on Elizabeth Macarthur, and Anita Heiss’s Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, River of Dreams (2022), about Wagadhaany, an Indigenous woman from the Murrumbidgee River. As if in response to such potent novels, now comes a trio expressing historical masculinity.' (Introduction)

(p. 38-39)
Foodies and Fame : Ronnie Scott’s Pandemic-inflected Novel, Morgan Nunan , single work review
— Review of Shirley Ronnie Scott , 2023 single work novel ;

'The unnamed narrator of Ronnie Scott’s second novel, Shirley, is a socially engaged thirty-something foodie from Melbourne’s inner north. She works as an internal copywriter for a health insurance company. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of the vegan-friendly bars and eateries within a five-kilometre radius of her small apartment in trendy Collingwood. She also cooks: scrambled tofu and vegan chorizo soup; Korean vegan pancakes and Cantonese soy sauce noodles; pan-fried gnocchi with blended basil and gochujang. She might wash these down with a glass of wine or whisky, or even a michelada, followed by the occasional menthol cigarette. She has been confined to her apartment alone for 262 cumulative days of lockdown (‘and the wild, long days that have fallen between them’), imposed by the Victorian government to curtail Covid-19. She also happens to be the daughter of a celebrity.'(Introduction)

(p. 40)
High Noon : Romance through the Generations, Maria Takolander , single work review
— Review of Thirst for Salt Madelaine Lucas , 2023 single work novel ;

'While the terms ‘romance’ and ‘novel’ are entangled at their origins, romance novels have been traditionally disparaged as formulaic and frivolous, feminine and anti-feminist. Nevertheless, romance is the most popular genre in the world. Harlequin reportedly sells two books every second. In recent times, scholars have given the genre serious attention.' (Introduction)

(p. 41)
'The Song of Null Land' : The Poetics of Disorientation, Judith Bishop , single work review
— Review of The Book of Falling David McCooey , 2023 selected work poetry ; A Foul Wind Justin Clemens , 2023 selected work poetry ;

'In a world both foul and fallen, where delusion, death, and unassailable Dummheit seem to wait on every corner, what can poetry do that warrants our rapt attention more than every other kind of distraction? Justin Clemens voiced the common lament when he wrote, ‘No-one reads poetry anymore, there being not enough time and more exciting entertainments out there.’ The issue, he said, is ‘a materialist problem that has always proven fundamental for poets: how to compose something that, by its own mere affective powers alone, will continue to be read or recited’ (‘Being Caught dead’, Overland, 202, 2011). That clinches the dilemma rather well. And yet, entertainment or not – and effective or not in their affective power – poetry collections seem to endure as a place, of Lilliputian dimensions, to encounter other worlds and world views.' (Introduction)

(p. 50-51)
An Interview with Pip Williams, single work interview (p. 52)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 9 Apr 2024 14:57:44
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