Cirrus@Austlit

'This essay situates the recent return to referentiality and authenticity in contemporary historical fiction in the context of the current climate of global literary culture, which is concerned with ideas of identity, positionality, proximity, and authenticity. This return is guided by a refreshed ethics of literary production, a renewed sense of moral obligation to represent the past truthfully and earnestly, while maintaining postmodernism's skepticism toward the production and construction of historical narratives. Some contemporary historical novels have (re)assumed the responsibility of demonstrating to the general reading public how histories are written and, by extension, propose an ethical and critical engagement with the past that aligns with the shift in political and cultural sensibilities we have witnessed over the past decade. The case study in this essay is A Room Made of Leaves (2020) by Kate Grenville, a critically acclaimed Australian historical novelist.' (Publication abstract)

'It is uncanny to read a book that describes the same dim hallway, the same scullery kitchen and outdoor bathroom, as the place in which you live.' 

"The lodgings at the end of girlhood are not as advertised …

'The weight of our bodies, the heat of them; the thick waist of history; and the crush of possible futures, these poems reside on the lip of contemporary womanhood.

'Sometimes a poet’s voice seems to land with a satisfying thump, fully formed. Charlotte Guest’s is one such voice. Her elegant, tender and surprising lyrics are tuned, in her words, to ‘invisible forces’. Her learning, worn light, makes the suburban world strange and familiar all at once. Investigating in her debut Soap ‘the lodgings at the end of girlhood’ with both wit and heart-aching ambivalence, Guest is one to watch. Lucy Dougan 

'These are clear-eyed poems, both tough and tender. Guest casts dappled light across the everyday. Emily Stewart' (Publication summary)