y separately published work icon Reading by Moonlight : How Books Saved a Life single work   autobiography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Reading by Moonlight : How Books Saved a Life
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The first time Brenda Walker packed her bag to go into hospital, she wondered which book to take with her. As a novelist and professor of literature, her life had been built around reading and writing. Now she was also a patient, being treated for breast cancer, fighting for her life and afraid for herself and her family. But turning to medicine didn't mean she turned away from fiction. Books had always been her solace and sustenance, and now choosing the right one was the most important thing she could do for herself.

'In Reading by Moonlight, Brenda describes the five stages of her treatment and how different books and authors helped her through the tumultuous process of recovery. As well as offering wonderful introductions and insights into the work of writers like Dante, Tolstoy, Nabokov, Beckett and Dickens, Brenda shows how the very process of reading - surrendering and then regathering yourself - echoes the process of healing.

'Reading by Moonlight guides, reassures, throws light on dark places, and finds beauty in the stories that come to us in times of jeopardy. It affirms that reading can be essential to life itself.' (From the publisher's website.)

Notes

  • Dedication: To Christian and Francis
  • Epigraph: Can the shape of the healing possibly fit the size of the wound? -James Wood
  • On 1st June 2010 this book was the subject of a discussion on the Tuesday Book Club, a television book show from Australia.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Camberwell, Camberwell - Kew area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Hamish Hamilton , 2010 .
      Extent: 229p.
      Note/s:
      • Includes sources pp. 222-229
      ISBN: 9781926428031 (hbk.)

Works about this Work

'Alone and in close company' : Reading and Companionship in Brenda Walker's Reading by Moonlight Bernadette Brennan , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 27 no. 1 2012; (p. 62-75)
The Afterlife of Books Maria Tumarkin , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , Spring vol. 71 no. 3 2012; (p. 79-88)

'In Law and Literature, a subject offered to the University of Melbourne’s final-year law students, they study Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man and Helen Garner’s Joe Cinque’s Consolation. In both books the law fails. Or as Gary Cazalet, who got the subject up and running, says of Hooper’s book: ‘It is an indictment of our legal system and it isn’t.’ I’d put it another way. In both books the victims’ families find, in law, neither solace nor justice. Justice, that is, the way we laypeople like to imagine it: morally purifying, thunderously absolute, a revelation, a release—justice of the kind that law can rarely give us.' (Author's introduction)

Looking between the Lines Edgar Ray (fl. 2010-2011) , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 14 May 2011; (p. 24-25)
Non-Fiction Books Jane Fynes-Clinton , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 10-11 April 2010; (p. 32)

— Review of Reading by Moonlight : How Books Saved a Life Brenda Walker , 2010 single work autobiography
Armed with Loving Care Kathleen Noonan , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 14 - 15 August 2010; (p. 36)
Untitled Sue Bond , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , March vol. 89 no. 6 2010; (p. 41)

— Review of Reading by Moonlight : How Books Saved a Life Brenda Walker , 2010 single work autobiography
Alone in Close Company James Grieve , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 27 March 2010; (p. 16)

— Review of Reading by Moonlight : How Books Saved a Life Brenda Walker , 2010 single work autobiography
Healing Power of a Good Book Bron Sibree , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 10-11 April 2010; (p. 31)

— Review of Reading by Moonlight : How Books Saved a Life Brenda Walker , 2010 single work autobiography
The Healing Power of Narrative Geordie Williamson , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10-11 April 2010; (p. 18-19)

— Review of Reading by Moonlight : How Books Saved a Life Brenda Walker , 2010 single work autobiography
Well Read Katharine England , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 17 April 2010; (p. 24)

— Review of Reading by Moonlight : How Books Saved a Life Brenda Walker , 2010 single work autobiography ; Trouble : Evolution of a Radical : Selected Writings 1970-2010 Kate Jennings , 2010 selected work essay poetry prose
Brenda Walker Catherine Keenan , 2010 single work biography
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 27-28 March 2010; (p. 30-31) The Age , 27 March 2010; (p. 20-21)
Word Power Amanda Keenan , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 27 March 2010; (p. 37)
Armed with Loving Care Kathleen Noonan , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 14 - 15 August 2010; (p. 36)
Looking between the Lines Edgar Ray (fl. 2010-2011) , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 14 May 2011; (p. 24-25)
'Alone and in close company' : Reading and Companionship in Brenda Walker's Reading by Moonlight Bernadette Brennan , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 27 no. 1 2012; (p. 62-75)
Last amended 6 Feb 2012 13:56:39
X