AustLit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Welcome to the March issue of Australian Book Review. Highlights include young Melbourne historian Samuel Watts’s shocked response to the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, to which he brings a needed historical perspective, reminding us that this was not the first time that racists and insurrectionists sought to disrupt the democratic process. Peter Tregear – at a time of great stress and uncertainty in the higher education sector – reviews a new history of Australian universities. Sarah Maddison reviews Henry Reynolds’s new book, in which he calls for ‘truth-telling’ about Australia’s history. Gerard Windsor reviews Murray Bail’s new memoir, He. Beejay Silcox reviews Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel, Klara and the Sun, and we also review fiction by Trevor Shearston, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Karen Wyld. Paul Kildea writes about the new production of Bitten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Adelaide, and Michael Morley recalls the night he met John le Carré.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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The Ultimate Gesture of Respect : The Appeal of Truth-Telling,
single work
review
'In the wake of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, truth-telling has gained new currency in Australia. The Statement called for a ‘Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history’. Although yet to be fleshed out in any detail, the renewed call for truth-telling has been greeted with enthusiasm by many First Nations peoples and their allies around the continent, who endorse the view that shining the bright light of truth into the darkest recesses of Australian history will contribute to a transformation in Indigenous–settler relations.' (Introduction)
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‘In Whitish Light’ : Memoir as a Cautionary Tale,
single work
review
— Review of He. 2021 single work autobiography ;'In 2005, Murray Bail published Notebooks: 1970–2003. ‘With some corrections’, the contents were transcriptions of entries Bail made in notebooks during that period. Now, in 2021, dozens of these entries – observations, quotations, reflections, scenes – recur in his new book, He. It’s to be assumed that this book, too, is a series of carefully selected transcriptions from the same, and later, notebooks.' (Introduction) - Septemberi"This is one of the times you won’t remember.", single work poetry (p. 27)
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Walking Fuel Stocks : Twenty Essays on Rage,
single work
review
— Review of Women of a Certain Rage 2021 anthology essay ;'Liz Byrski’s introduction to Women of a Certain Rage is, among other things, a homage to second-wave feminism and a lament that feminism, ‘originally a radical countercultural movement’, has been ‘distorted into a tool of neoliberalism’. While there is no doubt that strains of feminism have been co-opted by neoliberalism to debilitating effect, this narrative – that feminism has become ineffectual since the 1970s – is one that erases many contemporary feminisms, as well as broader feminism-informed political movements and the work that they have done and continue to do.' (Introduction)
- Letter from Adelaide : Presenting A Midsummer Night’s Dream during a Pandemic, single work column (p. 30-31)
- Critic of the Month : An Interview with Jacqueline Kent, single work interview (p. 32)
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Scratching the Surface : Trevor Shearston’s New Novel,
single work
review
— Review of The Beach Caves 2021 single work novel ;'At the heart of Trevor Shearston’s latest novel, The Beach Caves, is the act of digging. The protagonist, Annette Cooley, is a young archaeology student, thrilled by the allure of her Honours supervisor’s most recent find: the stone remains of an Aboriginal village on the New South Wales south coast that could rewrite the pre-European history of Australia. Intriguing additional sites are soon discovered, but before long the air of excitement is replaced by one of suspicion, jealousy, and dread when a member of the dig team disappears.' (Introduction)
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‘Scant and Blessed Glimmers’ : An Excavation of Female Doubt,
single work
review
— Review of The Performance 2021 single work novel ;'There is a celebrated moment in Jonathan Glazer’s 2004 film Birth when Nicole Kidman enters a theatre late and sits down to watch a performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre. The camera remains on her perturbed features for two whole minutes. This image kept recurring as I read Claire Thomas’s new novel, The Performance. In it, three women sit and watch a production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days (1961), alone in their thoughts, their whirring minds only occasionally distracted by the actions on stage. If for nothing else, Thomas must be congratulated on the boldness of her conceit, on her ability to make dynamic a situation of complete stasis.' (Introduction)
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The Poo Phantom : Chloe Wilson’s Début Short Story Collection,
single work
review
— Review of Hold Your Fire 2021 selected work short story ;'A series of beautifully controlled fictional voices and an exquisite sense of literary craft contribute to the dark magnificence of Chloe Wilson’s début collection of short stories, Hold Your Fire. This volume explores the strange and sometimes surprising abject horror that characterises the quotidian and the ordinary. The stories both examine and revel in the classically Kristevan abject realities of the body’s expulsions and the disgust that is often characteristic of social marginality. For example, the ‘poo phantom’ writes a ‘message in shit on the walls’; tampons wrapped in toilet paper are described as ‘bodies that needed to be shrouded for burial’; a character feels a ‘quiver down to the bowels, the rush that is equal parts excitement and dread’; another tries ‘to pass a kidney stone’; and two sisters try an ‘Expulsion Cure’, where the doctor asks how much they expel: ‘And how often? And what is the colour? The texture? … When you eat something – poppy seeds, say, or the skin on a plum – how long does it take to reappear?’' (Introduction)
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Ugliness and Beauty : Karen Wyld’s Poignant New Novel,
single work
review
— Review of Where the Fruit Falls 2020 single work novel ;'Set in colonial Australia in the 1960s and 1970s, Karen Wyld’s new novel Where the Fruit Falls examines the depths of Black matriarchal fortitude over four generations. Across the continent, Black resistance simmers. First Nations people navigate continued genocide and displacement, with families torn apart by the state. Where the Fruit Falls focuses on the residual effects and implications of such realities, though it presents a quieter narrative: one of apple trees, wise Aunties, guiding grandmothers, and settlers both malicious and kind-hearted.' (Introduction) -
Looking Away : Balancing Horror and Hope Amid a Changing Climate,
single work
review
— Review of Summertime : Reflections on a Vanishing Future 2021 single work prose ;'It’s an achievement to write about the climate crisis – and the resulting increase in Australian firestorms – without having people turn away to avoid their mounting ecological unease. Despite experiencing the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 directly, I too am guilty of looking away. It’s easier that way. Danielle Celermajer, however, excels at both holding our attention and holding us to account, balancing the horror and hope of not-so-natural disasters, specifically extreme Australian bushfires, in her new book of narrative non-fiction, Summertime.' (Introduction)
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Speculating about a Life : Reimagining Douglas Grant,
single work
review
— Review of The Legacy of Douglas Grant 2019 single work biography ;'Soldier. Draftsman. Massacre survivor. Prisoner of war. Veteran. Son. Brother. Uncle. RSL Secretary. Indigenous Man. Activist. Black Scotsman. Celebrity. These are just some of the words used to describe Douglas Grant, an individual who embodied the contradictions of assimilation and the challenges facing Aboriginal people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Famous during his lifetime, Grant’s reputation has faded since the 1950s but in recent years has attracted the attention of Indigenous Australians and historians of World War I.' (Introduction)
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An Assured Place : Australia’s Pre-eminent Formalist,
single work
review
— Review of The Strangest Place : New and Selected Poems 2020 selected work poetry ;'Stephen Edgar, over the past two decades or so, has earned himself an assured place in contemporary Australian poetry (even in English-language poetry more generally) as its pre-eminent and most consistent formalist. His seemingly effortless poems appear in substantial overseas journals, reminding readers that rhyme and traditional metre have definitely not outlived their usefulness.' (Introduction)
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Lost City : Different Expressions of Love for Sydney,
single work
review
— Review of Sydney 2010 single work prose ;'Poor old Sydney. If it isn’t being described as crass and culturally superficial, it’s being condemned for allowing developers to obliterate whatever natural beauty it ever had. Is it doomed, will it survive, and if so, what kind of city is it likely to be?' (Introduction)
- Auditi"Commissioning deities: Aphrodite, Adonis, Gaia, Venus", single work poetry (p. 59)