Cirrus@Austlit

'Before commencing Murray Middleton’s new novel – the follow-up to his Vogel Award-winning debut When There’s No Where Else to Run (2015) – some readers might be taken aback by the title, which evokes a song of the same name.'

'Considering literature’s value is a difficult task in that it asks one to quantify an aesthetic form that by its very nature thwarts measurement. This does not mean that literature is an ineffable phenomenon. The value of literature comes from its ability to foster a sense of communal belonging and provide a unique window into the lives of others. The imaginary worlds of novels in particular enable one to inhabit vast linguistic spheres that generate sensations beyond the everyday. Shirley Hazzard’s novel The Transit of Venus (1980) provides remarkable evidence of literature’s ability to conjure such worlds and experiences. Her technique of ‘prolepsis’ installs the future into the present in unpredictable ways, making The Transit of Venus a powerful example of how novels can transport readers beyond themselves and into imaginative spaces of deep reflection. This novel demands close analysis because it is a carefully crafted work of fiction that offers a rich, even painterly sense of the world. It is also a novel that at times adopts an aerial perspective that crosses both physical and disembodied realms – landscapes of the body and of the mind. As in life, the generosity of Hazzard’s writing is antithetical to naive or simplistic outcomes, as the subtlety of her prose invites both readerly speculation and contemplation. I argue that Hazzard’s novel is a deeply generous fiction that awakens in readers a profound sense of interiority as one is encouraged to ponder the many facets and dimensions of The Transit of Venus.' (Publication abstract)

'Max Easton’s novel Paradise Estate offers a variation on the share-house drama epitomised by Monkey Grip (1977), Helen Garner’s chronicle of communal living in Melbourne.'

'Before prospective readers can get to the opening chapter of Chris Womersley’s new novel The Diplomat, they will find themselves assailed with several pages listing past awards received by the author and supplying a range of accolades cut and pasted from reviews of his earlier works.'

'Eleanor Limprecht’s new historical novel The Coast recreates a lost world that was once damned to obscurity. Set in a formerly remote coastal area known as Little Bay, just outside of Sydney, her book imagines a series of characters forced into quarantine after being diagnosed with leprosy.' (Introduction)

'The spaces of our childhood maintain a particularly enduring hold when they cease to exist or are so reconstructed that the previous version is effectively obliterated. Recollections of an early home that no longer exists provide the framework for David Malouf’s celebrated 12 Edmondstone Street. In this article, I juxtapose Malouf’s experiences with recollections of my own family home in Kyogle, coincidentally situated at the other end of the old railway line that began just a couple of hundred metres from Malouf’s childhood dwelling. In addressing both the similarities and differences between Malouf’s and my own example, the discussion will develop around the fact that in contrast to the physical non-existence of the address of 12 Edmonstone Street, my own family home in Kyogle has not been extinguished; instead, it is today a disfigured ‘renovation’ of its former self. Ultimately, 12 Edmondstone Street – a piece of writing whose poetic power and mnemonic resonance go beyond the mortal limits of physical space – will operate as a literary shelter through which the power of memories of former living spaces can be articulated.' (Publication abstract)

'Depicting a ten-year-old Aboriginal boy's struggle to reconcile his cultural identity with the demands of a Western school system, Maya Newell's documentary raises timely questions about how to synthesise traditional culture and mainstream education - as well as framing its subject's story within the lingering history of Indigenous dispossession, as Suzie Gibson discusses.'

Source: Abstract.

'The very word suburban often carries a pejorative meaning that aligns it with an unsightly urban sprawl. In reality, many modern suburban homes and streets are tarnished with a lack of individuality, presenting as part of commodified en masse living conditions where every home looks alike down to the ubiquitous and inhospitable roller door garage frontages. Much has been written about suburban spaces and the need to liberate one’s self from their insularity. A widely known example is Richard Yates’s famed Revolutionary Road (1961), chronicling a couple’s efforts to retrieve their marriage through daring plans to leave their leafy suburban life in Connecticut in order to make a break for Paris – a glittering world city that promises to replace sombre mediocrity with freedom and glamour.' (Publication abstract)

'With his maiden voyage into fiction, Anthony Uhlmann, a professor of English at Western Sydney University, has produced an ambitious novel that dramatises the intertwining of time and memory. Saint Antony in His Desert is a literary thought-experiment partly concerned with a famous quarrel between Albert Einstein and French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson, where the German physicist’s theory of relativity was unwisely rejected by the latter. Some believe that their disagreement led to the division between philosophy and science. Ingeniously, Uhlmann’s novel seeks to unearth a common ground between these thinkers, and undertakes this task by exploring time as an intuitive, psychological, and even literary phenomenon.' (Introduction)

'By the time poet David Malouf wrote Johnno (1976), his first work of prose fiction, he was in his late thirties and living in the Renaissance city of Florence. Both European Florence and antipodean Brisbane mirror and enfold the novel's eponymous hero, Johnno, and his narrator-creator, Dante. The Florentine poet, and by extension his medieval trappings, resonate throughout a tale about growing up in a frontier town far removed from the cosmopolitan centres of the Northern Hemisphere. This Italian connection can be explored further by considering Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1997) alongside Johnno. The depiction of Venice in Calvino's novel can operate as a point of contrast and comparison to the river city of Brisbane, conjured by Malouf's Dante. (Publication abstract)

'The power of literature has the ability to elevate the lives of others, including non-human animals. This is poignantly dramatised in J.M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello. The titular character of this fiction asserts that literature has the capacity to imagine and inhabit the existence of others, including non-human animals. If this is possible then animal life can be represented as being just as valuable as a human life. In Elizabeth Costello we are confronted with ethical and moral questions to do with the valuing human above that of non-human animals.'

Source: Abstract.

'The folkloric power of place cannot be underestimated. This article examines the importance of David Malouf's childhood home in South Brisbane–12 Edmonstone Place–in shaping the imagination of one of Australia's most celebrated writers. It also addresses another very different kind of South Brisbane architectural site, hairdresser Stefan Ackerie's phallic Skyneedle. What will be considered is how Malouf's now long destroyed weatherboard home preserves the sheen of mythology, whereas Ackerie's all too visible Skyneedle short circuits the very possibility of being legendary because of its vertical omnipresence.'

Source: Abstract.

'Ned Kelly has been the subject of innumerable articles, ballads, tales, and debates. Both his character and story have enraptured the imagination of colonial Australia, as well as Australia’s post-colonial now. What the following article addresses is the kind of debates that have long circulated around the figure of Ned Kelly, while also paying particular attention to the recent re-burial of his remains. It considers the complexities around the idea of remembering his life and laying to rest his physical traces, as well as its missing parts. Notably the essay addresses the question of his missing head and how it has come to reinvigorate speculation concerning his life and times.'

Source: Article abstract.