y separately published work icon Australian Book Review periodical issue  
Issue Details: First known date: 2023... no. 453 May 2023 of Australian Book Review est. 1961 Australian Book Review
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Welcome to the May issue of ABR. This month’s powerful cover feature is David N. Myers on the troubled state of democracy in Israel in the light of the recent protests. Meanwhile Gordon Pentland explores the impact of nostalgia on British politics and Marilyn Lake examines a new book on Gough Whitlam and women. Barney Zwartz reviews Chrissie Foster’s new memoir and Michael Easson looks at the history of the Macquarie Bank. Anthony Lynch reflects on poet Jordie Albiston’s posthumous work, Frank, and we review new fiction from Margaret Atwood, Max Porter, Pip Williams, and J.R. Burgmann. Also in the issue, we reveal the 2023 Calibre Essay prize winner.' (Publication summary)

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2023 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Invitation to Remember : A Massacre in Western Australia, Ann Curthoys , single work review
— Review of Kate Auty O’Leary of the Underworld : The Untold Story of the Forrest River Massacre Celeste Liddle , 2023 single work review ;

'This is no ordinary history book. It is in part an account of a massacre and in part a biographical study of one of the perpetrators, Patrick Bernard O’Leary, yet it reads more like a novel, or a prosecutor’s statement in court, than like a conventional history. It is a truly angry book, full of rage at the fact that the perpetrators of a massacre were never brought to justice, rage at the justice system’s treatment of Indigenous people. Its desire to ensure that the victims are never forgotten starts with the dedication, to Warrawalla Marga, an old woman ‘who was walked to her death with a chain around her neck by O’Leary and others in June 1926. She and all the others are not forgotten.’' (Introduction)

(p. 11)
Lust for Liberation : Gough Whitlam’s Reformist Vision, Marilyn Lake , single work review
— Review of Women and Whitlam : Revisiting the Revolution 2023 anthology autobiography ;
'When the Whitlam government was elected in 1972, women across Australia responded with elation. The Women’s Liberation Movement had helped bring Labor to power and was in turn galvanised by the programs, reforms, and appointments that began to be put in place. In Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the revolution, Michelle Arrow has assembled a splendid range of memoirs, reminiscences, and short essays that document twenty-five women’s perspectives on this much mythologised era. The collection will be of great interest to those who lived through these momentous times and to readers of Australian social and political history more generally. It will also serve as a useful teaching text.' 

(Introduction)

(p. 14-15)
Righteous Rage : The Catholic Church’s Betrayal of Children, Barney Zwartz , single work review
— Review of Still Standing Chrissie Foster , Paul Kennedy , 2023 single work autobiography ;

'This is a book about rage, as Chrissie Foster says in her opening sentence. It is motivated and driven by rage and, if this is not an oxymoron, it is a panegyric to rage.' (Introduction)

(p. 17)
Flow States, Tracy Ellis , single work essay (p. 24-28)
Peggy the Obscure : Pip Williams’s New Novel, Jane Sullivan , single work review
— Review of The Bookbinder of Jericho Pip Williams , 2023 single work novel ;

'First, a confession. I am one of a tiny minority of readers who were underwhelmed by Pip Williams’s first novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020). I thought it a splendid idea, one undermined by facile messages about how women’s words were ignored by the men who recorded our language and its meanings. Clearly, I was in a minority: Dictionary became an international bestseller, one of the most successful Australian novels ever published. Friends raved about it. I wondered what I wasn’t getting.' (Introduction)

(p. 31)
A Few Lost People : Climate Fiction as Future Realism, Naama Grey-Smith , single work review
— Review of Children of Tomorrow J.R. Burgmann , 2023 single work novel ;

'James Burgmann-Milner (writing under the suitably sci-fi alias J.R. Burgmann) knows his cli-fi, or climate fiction. A teaching associate at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, he received his PhD for research on the representation and communication of anthropogenic climate change in literature and other popular media. He is the co-author of Science Fiction and Climate Change: A sociological approach (2020) and has also contributed several insightful reviews of cli-fi works in ABR in recent years, including those of Ned Beauman, James Bradley, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Richard Powers.' (Introduction)

(p. 32)
Possessed by the Devil : The Demon of the Viola Da Gamba, Graham Strahle , single work review
— Review of An Ungrateful Instrument Michael Meehan , 2023 single work novel ;

'Subtler in its purring resonances than the cello and more closely resembling the human form in its body, the viola da gamba was cultivated to its greatest heights in the court of Louis XIV. The great virtuoso Marin Marais will be the most familiar name for any who are acquainted with this instrument, but two later figures of equal ability were Antoine Forqueray and his son, Jean-Baptiste. Tumultuous in their relationship, they become the rather unexpected subject of a compelling new novel by Michael Meehan.' (Introduction)

(p. 33)
Fairy Tales and Fever Dreams : Three Tales of Self-discovery, Lisa Bennett , single work review
— Review of Fed to Red Birds Rijn Collins , 2023 single work novel ; How to Be Remembered Michael Thompson , 2023 single work novel ; Compulsion Kate Scott , 2023 single work novel ;
'On the surface, there is little connection between these three début novels. Rijn Collins’s Fed to Red Birds (Simon & Schuster, $32.99 pb, 247 pp) sketches an intimate portrait of migration, beautifully illustrating the migrant’s immersion within and isolation from their adopted land. Elva, a young Australian woman, hopes to remain in Iceland, her absent mother’s home country, despite the unique challenges it presents her. Michael Thompson’s How to be Remembered (Allen & Unwin, $32.99 pb, 344 pp) poses an intriguing metaphysical question: what happens if, each year on his birthday, every trace of one boy’s existence is erased? How can a person survive when nobody, not even his parents, knows who he is? Tommy Llewellyn is determined to find the answer and outfox this universal reset. Kate Scott’s Compulsion (Hamish Hamilton, $32.99 pb, 279 pp) revels in music, drugs, food, fashion, and hedonism. Lucy Lux attempts to uncomplicate her chaotic partying lifestyle by escaping to a remote seaside town she remembers from her childhood, where her passions and problems blaze anew. Despite their many differences, these are all essentially stories of self-discovery, coming of age, and obsession.' 

(Introduction)

(p. 36)
Composition as Calling : A Notable Activist and Musician, Kay Dreyfus , single work review
— Review of Inner Song : A Biography of Margaret Sutherland Jillian Graham , 2023 single work biography ;

'Jillian Graham begins her biography of Margaret Sutherland (1897–1984) with a story that vividly captures two themes that recur throughout the book: Sutherland’s activism, and her sometime exclusion from Australia’s institutional musical life as it developed through her lifetime.' (Introduction)

(p. 38-39)
Christmas In Brogoi"If we always had a long enough line we could forgo prose altogether.", Michael Farrell , single work poetry (p. 39)
Coins, Glass, Nails, Pottery, Cindersi"Nietzsche wrote that a human being resides somewhere between a plant and a ghost.", Joan Fleming , single work poetry
This poem is in twelve numbered parts.
(p. 43)
An Interview with Dan Disney, single work interview (p. 49)
Into the Void : A Potent Posthumous Envisioning, Anthony Lynch , single work review
— Review of Frank Jordie Albiston , 2023 selected work poetry ;

'The Australian photographer Frank Hurley, who accompanied Antarctic expeditions led by Douglas Mawson and Ernest Shackleton, proved to be an able diarist as well as a skilful and adventurous photographer. While Hurley participated in a number of expeditions – as well as serving as an official war photographer in both world wars – the late and much missed poet Jordie Albiston has drawn on Hurley’s diaries from Mawson’s sledging trip of November 1912 to January 1913 and Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of November 1914 to September 1916 for what has become her fourteenth and final poetry collection.'(Introduction)

(p. 50)
Scarecrow Suit : A Selection from Ron Pretty, Sam Ryan , single work review
— Review of 101 Poems Ron Pretty , 2022 selected work poetry ;
'Ron Pretty has published eight collections of poetry and five chapbooks over his long career. His latest and perhaps last book, 101 Poems, from Pitt Street Poetry’s Collected Works series, includes pieces from his previous collections, as well as some new work. We start with The Habitat of Balance (1988) and go all the way through to his most recent collection, The Left Hand Mirror (2017), before encountering a selection of new poems.'

 (Introduction) 

(p. 51)
An Interview with Martin Hughes, single work interview (p. 56)
Gillard as Everywoman : Hagiography in Secular Form, Clare Monagle , single work review
— Review of Julia Joanna Murray-Smith , 2023 single work drama ;

'First things first, the audience loved it. As Julia Gillard, in a performance that blended naturalism and impersonation, Justine Clarke held the crowd in the palm of her hand. They swooned and sighed to the wholesome depiction of Gillard’s working-class Welsh parents and cackled at the pleasurable jokes made at the expense of Kevin Rudd, Mark Latham, and John Howard. And when Julia wrestled with her conscience over the policy compromises of her government – the refusal of same-sex marriage, the resumption of offshore processing for asylum seekers, the reduction of the single-mother benefit – the audience was encouraged to see that such disappointments were the cost of doing business in a dirty game.' (Introduction)

(p. 58)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 9 Apr 2024 14:15:33
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