Cirrus@Austlit

'Susan Sheridan’s latest book, The Fiction of Thea Astley, is a comprehensive cross-disciplinary analysis of the greater portion of Astley’s oeuvre. Interestingly, Sheridan’s analysis focuses primarily on the interrogation of the role of emotions in Astley’s novels and short stories. While the first chapter is aptly named, ‘A Study in Emotions’, it is from this platform which Sheridan launches her interrogation of the literary worlds created by Astley. Sheridan’s book is the perfect reader for researchers and enthusiasts interested in the broader thematic, generic and sociopolitical preoccupations of Astley’s bibliography. Sheridan is at her finest analytical self when she exposes the feministic undercurrent of Astley’s novels. She situates Astley’s works, as they should be, in a specific political and temporal space which Sheridan shows both creates and problematises Astley’s writing. This fierce indictment of the patriarchy is one of the key elements which Sheridan interrogates in Astley’s work.'  (Introduction)

'Andrew McGahan is one of Queensland's most successful novelists. Over the past 23 years, he has published six adult novels and three novels in his Ship Kings series for young adults. McGahan's debut novel, Praise(1992), won the Vogel National Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, Last Drinks (2000) won the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Writing, and The White Earth went on to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award, The Age Book of the Year Award and the Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. In 2009, Wonders of a Godless World earned McGahan the Best Science Fiction Novel in the Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction. McGahan's unashamedly open critiques of Australian, and specifically Queensland, society have imbued his works with a sense of place and space that is a unique trait of his writing. In this interview, McGahan allows us a brief visit into the mind of one of Australia's pre-eminent contemporary authors, shedding light on the ‘what ifs’ and ‘idle daydreaming’ that have pushed his ideas from periphery to page.'  (Publication abstract)