Tag Archives: readings

Dog’s Tails: storytelling nights at Dog’s Bar, St Kilda

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It’s a Thursday. G and I put on our coats and walk briskly down Acland Street, St Kilda, to the warm, busy, art-filled Dog’s Bar for the weekly storytelling event ‘Dog’s Tails’. It’s about 7:30 and we order a glass of the Dog’s Shiraz. Curators of the storytelling event, Chris Flynn and Josephine Rowe, are there already, eating Dog’s Bar specials (I can recommend the risotto) with the star authors for the night, who’ll kick off their readings at 8pm.

I’ve been to four so far. One night, I was lucky enough to be in the comfortable armchair myself, reading to an engaged, intimate audience. George Dunford followed as the star attraction, matching me with smut and filthy language in his humorous and moving pieces. So far there’s been a great range of writers on the stage. Themes of love, loneliness and death have been common, and the writing styles have ranged from realism to surrealism and the fantastical.

Pictured: George Dunford.

Chris Flynn gives a charmingly long-winded introduction - to the venue, the featured writers, and the two hooks above his head (come along to find out what they’re for). He also mentions that at half time there’ll be a short section of open mic, for the brave. Now, we’ve all had bad experiences listening to open mic sections and wishing we were drunk or dead, but so far, the Dog’s Bar open mic section has taken on its own momentum. Maybe it’s the fact it’s in St Kilda, and we aren’t getting the same sorts of voices. There’s also a strong contingent of female readers (true with the event in general) from all walks of life.

Regular open mic-ers Dale and Wendy are worth coming down for. Dale, a tall, poised and enigmatic brunette, has been keeping us on the edge of our seats by unveiling a story week-by-week, set in Germany (thus far) featuring severe injuries, a 24-hour Ferrari, and a sweet man who is nonetheless the ’wrong man’ whose name is Jurgen. Wendy has told two tales so far which are appropriated fairy tales set in the Gatwick Hotel, in St Kilda. They are magical, slightly subversive and rather poignant stories based on incidents in her own life.

There are a few other regulars, including a good-looking young man whose drug- and gun-filled tales make me kind-of drift off, but if that’s your thing, you might dig him. And there’s the occassional surprise poem, story or anecdote from attendees who’ve been coming along trying to strike up the nerve. Last time I attended there was a young woman who relayed a ‘cathartic’ tale of Chapel Street. I didn’t think a great deal of the writing, but there were flashes of potential. I did find her interesting because she was writing about a certain world from within that world. I thought about her night at Dog’s Bar as part of her own personal narrative – a way of stepping out and expressing these burning frustrations (and also admitting to a mask she knowingly adapts in day-to-day life). I liked her for that.

But what of the invited readers? I’ll talk about a couple I’ve seen. A couple of weeks ago Chloe Jackson Willmott took us up some mountains (actual, and emotional ones) through story and emails. Sean M Whelan read  few pieces from past and present – including my very favourite, from the Static performance, where a lion with the face of Harvey Keitel comes to eat his heart.

Two weeks ago, Andrew McDonald opened with the story of how one of his blog posts went ‘viral’. He told us what that meant for all his online activity, and attention for his book The Greatest Blogger in the World. This is the post, by the way (as if you haven’t already seen it). He also read some of the hilarious emails and comments he received, eg. that he couldn’t be a hipster, because he was Australian; and that he should be thrown down some stairs. (!) Many people commented on how dirty his bathroom was, and he also received some emails from people who thought he was their ‘soulmate’.

Pictured: Andrew McDonald.

Kathy Charles was the feature that night. You may remember that I launched her book Hollywood Ending, which is to be released in August in the US as John Belushi is Dead. Kathy is working on a new novel, inspired by her visit to the Museum of Death in Los Angeles. Kathy described to us her visit to this museum – and about how she is fascinated by death, but still squeamish; how staring at death in her work and interests is a way of facing her biggest fear. She also read an extract from the novel, where a young couple who own a serial killer art gallery deal with a creepy client. I heard members of the audience telling Kathy afterwards how they couldn’t wait to see it in print. I hope it gets picked up, too.

Unfortunately last week I missed Ruby Murray and Nathan Curnow, but here’s the great line-up for the next few weeks:

Jun 3rd Claire Halliday & Joel Deane
Jun 10th Patrick O’Neil & Mischa Merz
Jun 17th Eleanor Jackson & Leah Kaminsky
Jun 24th Kent MacCarter & Sean Condon

Keep up to date on who’s reading at Dog’s Bar with the Facebook page.

There was also a recent piece in the Age about the event. Check it out.

Pictured: my turn!

Meeting Alex Miller part four: on re-reading, storytelling, and writing as a woman

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Alex_Miller_Conditions_of_FaithSee also – part one: on the origins of a contemporary story; part two: on wisdom and imagination and part three: on cross-eyed novels, the time we have, and liberties of language. My feature interview with Alex Miller on his new novel, Lovesong (Aus, US), was published in Readings Monthly. You can find it here.

Here’s something I don’t do enough, re-read books. Miller said: ‘Re-reading books is a big deal to me. If I’ve been impressed by a book, if I really like it, then I will say okay, in a year or two, I’ve gotta go back and read it. While there is still some of the energy of the first reading left, but, in a sense you’ve almost forgotten everything. It’s really weird. I’ve been having a big splurge of re-reading Nabokov lately. I’ve read about seven of his books in a straight row, and a couple that I hadn’t read before, like Invitation to a Beheading, and The Eye. But then I thought okay now it’s enough, it’s time to go back to Alexis [Wright]. It’s amazing the similarities in a sense. She’s another one who rips into the language – not in such a self-conscious way, although Nabokov is kinda assailed by his verbal imagination. Alexis is also assailed – she’s liberated herself from the norms – she’s relaxed in a sense, into her own familiar idiom. And the idiom changes and swerves and moves around, from the idiom of Aboriginal people who’ve grown up on the tips on the edge of town – and educated people. And it swerves around in between all these, but it does it with huge energy and confidence. A truly great book. You don’t always recognise that at first reading, because it’s so new and so different, like music.’

One of the central issues of Miller’s life, he said, is the ‘difference between storytelling and storywriting’. ‘I gave it to Sabiha [in Lovesong] to say that storytelling is a communal thing. You’re in a group, you’re sitting around in a group, chatting. Dad used to tell us stories every night when I was a kid. For Dad it was the company. The company made the story. When I wrote my first novel, he said “so what?” Because it wasn’t an improvement over telling – it was a lessening, a reducing of experience. Because it’s a solitary thing. Y’no Sabiha says, looking at John reading in bed, she says “men are lonely, look at them”. He’s in there alone with that book. Why is he reading that autobiography? He’s trying to find himself in there he’s trying to find an echo of his own life in it. And reading and writing are solitary experiences. And it’s the imagination that gives you your company. In a sense it’s a very self-centred thing, both reading and writing. And I can’t live without either of them, but so what? Y’no? But telling a story, you’re with company and to tell the story is an improvisation, always. It’s always different. Someone tells you a good story and you think “I’d love to tell that story” and sometimes you dare to. And you have to change it…’

After I told him a bit about a story I ‘found’ on the tram on the way to Carlton to meet him he said: ‘So that’s it isn’t it, partly what we do. We celebrate the stories … To me it’s very important that the people you write about acknowledge themselves in what you’re written.’

We talked a bit about Conditions of Faith as it’s the one I was reading at the time of our interview, and is set in the time of Miller’s mother’s youth.

He said: ‘I was doing a reading in Sydney and the young woman down the back selling books was glaring at me. She had her arms folded. During discussion time, she stood up she said “yeah, you really disappointed me. Meeting you today is a big disappointment for me.” She said “I read your book and I knew the woman who was writing it. And I imagined the woman who was writing it. I believed in her”. It didn’t have a photograph on it [the book], and obviously she didn’t do any enquiries and didn’t know me before … she said “when I met you today I thought, this can’t be right”. So I had a chat to her about it afterwards, and she finally cracked a smile, but she was seriously upset! But I thought – it’s a great compliment … I don’t have a problem writing as a woman. Why should that be different or difficult? I mean, Sabiha [in Lovesong] is the main character. I didn’t set out to make her the main character. She became the main character. When I read Mum’s memoirs, what there were of them, I just saw my mum as a young woman in Paris. She didn’t know Dad, she didn’t have kids, didn’t have anything like that. The whole world lay before her. What was she gonna do? And it was all so exciting. That was where I started from.’

I hope you’ve enjoyed this four-part insight into one of Australia’s best writers, and one of my personal favourites. Again, Miller’s new novel Lovesong is just out – a great Xmas pressie in hardcover, but I would also recommend all of his backlist, particularly Prochownik’s Dream (if you’re a creative type), Landscape of Farewell (to anyone) and Conditions of Faith (to anyone who has stared out a window wishing to be somewhere else). And I hope Santa brings me The Ancestor Game for Xmas, because it’s just about the only one I haven’t read!

Meeting Alex Miller part three: on cross-eyed novels, the time we have, and liberties of language

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prochownikSee also – part one: on the origins of a contemporary story and part two: on wisdom and imagination. My feature interview with Alex Miller on his new novel, Lovesong (Aus, US), was published in Readings Monthly. You can find it here. 

When asked what his favourite is of all his novels, Miller smiled and said he was fond of all his children – ‘even the ones with the crook legs and the turned-in ankle. I kind of defend them even more’ he laughed. ‘Don’t mention the fact that one of my books is cross-eyed. I’m very sensitive about that. Or has acne. Never mention the acne.’ I didn’t press him but I was quite curious to know which he found more flawed. I told him Prochownik’s Dream was my favourite (though since our interview I have finished Conditions of Faith and it might be taking over). He said a lot of people cited Prochownik’s Dream. ‘I wonder why?’ I’m not 100% sure myself – other than my complete immersion in the main character’s (an artist’s) passion, and failures. I read the book in one go.

What about what Miller is reading? And what are his favourites? ‘The Great Australian Novel which I’m reading for the second time – and the book itself is starting to fall apart a bit, the pages are starting to come out – is Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria.’ I expressed dismay that I still haven’t read it. But Miller was comforting: ‘Well look, don’t worry, you’ve got your life.’ Later on, when the tape was turned off, he also reassured me about the time I have to find the missing ‘key’ in my semi-retired novel manuscript.

carpentaria-fullFurther, on Carpentaria, he says Wright ‘has wrenched the form of the novel in Australia out of alignment and into a new cultural alignment. She’s done that. So it’s the truly innovative piece of writing of our generation, of our time. There’s nothing else like it. Everything else that attempts so-called innovation is just tweaking the edges. She’s done it in a massive way. It’s a huge act of the imagination, that book. It’s not going to be repeated. Not by her or anybody else. And it’s hugely energised. The language itself is a liberty, in her use of the language. And it’s a crossover language. It’s the world seen from the Indigenous perspective of people who live on the town dump … it’s this amazing place. It’s where everything good comes from. So that’s the book that’s really… I’m reading it for the second time and the first time around I loved it. I thought yeah, wow, fantastic. Second time around I realised, god, I’m reading the great Australian novel mate. Come on, this is it. There is nothing else like it … She’s the Australian Joyce and Rabelais rolled into one, with that book.’

We talked about long-haul flights giving you time to read. Miller said ‘People say “I’m too busy [to read]”. Well, I’m not too busy to keep fit, I’m not too busy to read, I’m not too busy to write. That’s it,’ he says.

Most readers of this blog will know those are my sentiments exactly.

There will be more snippets from my conversation with Alex Miller in the coming weeks.

Meeting Alex Miller part two: on wisdom and imagination

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1_MillerAlex1See also – ‘part one: on the origins of a contemporary story‘.

My feature interview with Alex Miller on his new novel, Lovesong (Aus, US), was published in Readings Monthly. You can find it here.

Miller spoke proudly about his 18-year-old daughter, who told him, when he said he was writing a ‘simple love story’, with Lovesong: ‘Dad, love’s not simple, you should know that’. He told me: ‘I don’t believe in the old wise man theory of wisdom, but you, young people have wisdom. Kate [his daughter] is fortunate enough not to be totally dedicated to a career path or becoming the finest doctor in the world or marriage or whatever else, and she’s in a period of wisdom …’

Miller is originally from England, but has lived in Australia since the age of 16. He spent ‘a very lonely number of years trying to become a writer’ after different work experiences and studying English and history at university. He bought a farm for $12,000 and made a living off it, using the time to write. His first novel was published when he was 51.

I asked Miller, in regards to the character Ken, in Lovesong, who is a writer: when Ken decides to gather the story of this couple after witnessing the sadness in Sabiha’s eyes - does the spark (for the story) come from curiosity or empathy? He said:

‘The imagination is the ability to empathise. It’s the ability to – not necessarily consciously – quite unconsciously, find that you’re hugely sympathetic to someone else’s situation. So much so that you imagine a full realisation of it.

‘A really perfect example of that for me is in Landscape – in the scene where Dougald’s father beats him. And he sort of draws it upon himself – this violence to come. There is a deserved violence to come. And okay, life has violence in it, it always does. We’re not getting rid of it. Sometimes it needs to be expressed. In a sense he allows the family violence to be expressed safely, ‘cos he knows he can take it. That happened to me when I was a kid. I never thought of it. I never thought of it when I wrote the thing. It was someone else who pointed it out to me. When they did I was shocked. I thought, oh Christ you’re right. But I remember when I was writing it, I felt I understood the situation. And I maintained my empathy for both Dougald’s father, who was a lost man, and Dougald himself, who had the strength of his grandfather, holding him up. So he didn’t despair, didn’t lose his way. The kind of thing – at least it was helping him. Who knows what he would have done without his grandfather? Maybe he would have continued to stand up anyway. So yeah, I think it’s always a combination. Everything is always a combination of nearly everything else. We have words like imagination – what is that but a conversation with the unconscious?’

There will be more snippets from my conversation with Alex Miller in the coming weeks.

Brethren is one of my favourite words (but that has nothing to do with Peril, my best books of 2009, Kafka's diary, or an Overland blog guest post)

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* This week I went to the launch of Peril, edition 8: ‘why are people so unkind’? It featured readings, and a fun, sexy performance by Ladies of Colour Agency that made me want to get up an shake it, baby. Maxine Clarke, who performed her poetry, gives a very warm of a rundown of the night here. I particularly enjoyed Tom Cho’s presentation where he f**ked with language. Check out the issue online here.

* I was asked by Readings to talk about the best books I read in 2009. Here’s what I said:

‘Some of my favourite reads of 2009 display the variety of books that come under the banner of “Australian fiction”. Steven Amsterdam’s enlightening post-apocalyptic novel-of-stories Things We Didn’t See Coming and Tom Cho’s brilliant, funny and imaginative ride through different types of transformation Look Who’s Morphing were major highlights. I’ve revisited parts of both. Kalinda Ashton’s The Danger Gameis a haunting insight into loss, modern city life, and having political and emotional courage – and I loved the challenging narrator, Patrick Oxtoby, in M.J. Hyland’s This Is How, as well as the book’s existential nature.

‘The best book I read from across the sea was Philipp Meyer’s American Rust, about mistakes and failures, and choices made and violence done on small and large scales, most often quietly. Highly memorable. Other books that definitely will stay with me from 2009 are Nick Cave’s disgustingly compelling The Death of Bunny Munroand Krissy Kneen’s raw and beautiful sexual memoir Affection.’

Check out what other writers, editors, publishers and Readings’ staff had to say, here.

* Some of you may have spotted both myself and the lovely Josephine Rowe in the Melbourne Times and Emerald Hill Weekly this week. Unfortunately it’s not online to link to, but it was a piece about ‘overnight sensations’, and I was chuffed to be interviewed. If you’re visiting the blog because of the article, thanks! Hope you enjoy it – take a look through the archives for reviews, interviews and personalised commentary.

Kafka* I blushed hard at my desk the other day when I saw this blog post – though I was flattered and very touched. That is the first time anyone has dedicated a Kafka passage to me (or called me a ‘blogonaut’ – I like it). By way of reply:

From Kafka’s diary, 8 December, 1917: ‘Sorrow and joy, guilt and innocence, like two hands indissolubly clasped together; one would have to cut through flesh, blood and bones to part them.’

And those are his drawings on the left. I got to see the originals at the Kafka Museum in Prague last year.

* Sorrow and joy, that’s kinda the way I feel when I watch this, too.

* But I got pure joy from this.

* I wrote a guest post for Overland‘s subscriberthon this week on the ‘perfect match’ between book and reader. It begins:

‘I’ve been savouring Richard Yates’ Collected Storiesfor about the past month now, and quite a few times as I’ve been reading, a friend of mine, Ken, has popped into my head. There is the small fact that in the wonderful story ‘A Really Good Jazz Piano’, about male friendship, knowing one’s place, awkwardness, honour, social impressions (and so much more) the character is called Ken. But there are other things about the collection – working in offices, relationships, perceptions of self – things my friend and I have talked about, which made me exclaim to him vehemently the other day that he must read this book. It’s a book I would recommend to others, anyway, but not in the same way. With Ken I feel sure he will get something (a lot) out of it – more than passing entertainment. That ‘something’ is a kind of connection: an affirmation of a recognisable world (even through intertextuality or projection, say, in non-realist fiction – and in all its shades of light and dark) in which one is not alone in their ordinariness, their hope and their suffering.’

Read the rest, here.

* This week has also been one of champagne and new things. But more on those later…

Guest review: Tom Conyers on Readings and Writings: Forty Years in Books

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3rq1iuod0_readings-and-writings440Jason Cotter and Michael Williams (eds)
2009
9781740668217

With Readings and Writings: Forty Years in Books, there doesn’t appear to have been an overriding theme or subject limitation placed on the contributors. Instead, the writers involved, who have all had supportive associations with Readings Books & Music (Melbourne) over the years, are given free reign. The result is a genuinely impressive collection.

The slightly irascible tone in ‘The Age of Terror’ by Chris Womersley is a lovely touch and very funny, recalling the best and most acerbic writings of Amy Hempel. It has wonderful descriptions which caught me out for their unexpectedness and humour (an ambulance officer feeling for a pulse is likened to a ‘trout fisherman, feeling for tremble on his line’) . There was a delighted shock of recognition, which many readers of this anthology will share, of the ‘inner-city parties populated with the absurdly tasteful’. Devastating and brilliant, for my money this is the best story in the mix, and hard to forget.

That said, Kate Holden’s ‘The Sightseers’ rivalled ‘The Age of Terror’ for my vote. A father takes his wife and daughter around Rome in the role of pushy guide, until he unwisely steps off the tourist path. The writing evokes Katherine Mansfield (although much darker) for the way it tracks minutely the shifting sympathies of the characters, and builds small but telling detail toward a shocking conclusion which is nonetheless inevitable when you search back through for clues. An object lesson in clever, subtle and brilliant writing.

Another highlight was ‘The Woodcutter’ by David Cohen. The story works as mad allegory, with satire thrown in, on the subject of marketing. It was great to read a tale so far out of the realist mould, which the majority of this collection falls into. An absurdist romp and an utter delight.   

‘The Nun’s story’ by Peter Goldsworthy replaces the usual predator, the priest, with a nun in a simple but elegant style, building in carefully controlled tension. The nun’s ‘enigmatic smile’ is at first just that – enigmatic – until it becomes a motif of unforced and effective creepiness.

I must mention Catherine Harris’ ‘A Grand Leap of Stupid Faith’, so interesting I suspect the narrator could easily be recycled to sustain a whole novel. Her tone is slightly bored, with nothing glamorised or touched up; the tale is seemingly tossed-off but delivered with tight control.

A game of ten-pin bowling between two brothers, in Paddy O’Reilly’s ‘After the Goths’ effortlessly and unostentatiously told, is a real treat. And what can one say of Christos Tsiolkas’ impeccable storytelling that has not already been said. ‘The Pornographic Scientist’, where a mother tries to understand her estranged, deceased son through the only means left to her – a porno he acted in – is suitably raw and confronting.

No less mentionable, Alex Miller’s musings on what defines home; Elliot Perlman’s slice of everyday tragedy; Amy Tsilemanis’ cool exposure of the covetous generation; and Cate Kennedy’s study of a man and woman’s alternative forms of resilience.

Likewise with Myfanwy Jones’ tale of a dog-walker who is surprised by a moment of tenderness; Barry Divola’s nostalgic warnings on parroting; Robbie Egan’s blistering summer; Miles Allinson’s dreamlike fun-park; and Michael McGirr’s lesson on how philosophy can’t give us concrete answers. There is not a single dud among this collection.

If a theme or feeling can be gleaned from the overriding mood of these stories, then it appears that we may be no wiser or happier. But as examples of contemporary creativity, we are in prolific and fascinating times.

tomTom Conyers is the author of the novel Morse Code for Cats. He makes short films, some of which have been shortlisted for prizes overseas; written a dozen plays (Magpies opened Chapel off Chapel’s Emerging Playwrights Forum 2008); and is currently working on a feature-film project and his second novel.

[Angela: all proceeds from the sale of this book go to the Readings Foundation. More info here.]

 

Newstead Short Story Tattoo

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Pictured: The Fictitious Woman readers at the Dig Cafe: Eleanor Marney, Zoe Dattner (behind, who chaired), Carmel Bird, Cate Kennedy, Tiggy Johnson, Janet Barker, Josephine Rowe and moi.

The inaugural Newstead Short Story Tattoo took place 15 to 17 May 2009.

We gathered, we listened, we absorbed, we read, we learnt, we escaped, we were frightened and delighted and turned-on and appalled and we grew fat on narratives and were in love with the range of voices and experiences in this world, city, town, paddock. We came away inspired.

My Facebook album carries a bit of commentary on the sessions, so do check that out.

Highlights and discoveries:

* Sean M Whelan reading his ‘Static’ piece, where a lion with the face of Harvey Keitel comes to eat his heart, at the Sleazy Stories event. I want to eat this story, it is so good.

* Meeting three people for the first time and having them tell me they read LM.

* Reading alongside Carmel Bird, Cate Kennedy, Josephine Rowe, Eleanor Marney, Tiggy Johnson and Janet Barker. Meeting Carmel Bird after and having her tell me my story, ‘Birds’, was ‘beautiful’.

* Being around people being lovely and smiling, all weekend.

* Getting given Paul Mitchell’s Dodging the Bull, and hearing him read twice. I will review it or feature him somehow here in the future – a writer who is exceptionally skilled at ‘voice’.

* The mythical Selkie story told by Ann E Stewart at the Fire Stories event. I was transported into a magical childhood imagination-space. Also, sipping vodka and toasting marshmallows.

* Getting to spend time with other people’s children.

* Hearing Fraser Mackay read. He blew me away.

* Hearing Paddy O’Reilly say c**t 17 times.

* The time outside the events where I realised more stories were being absorbed – in the car, in kitchens, in layers of clothing – about houses, animals, pastries, children, egg whites, the cultural social political impact of language of everything of constructing ourselves and opinions and shaping the narrative paths we choose to take. The telling and the talking over each other in excitement to share. Sitting back and listening. Remembering some of the little things people tell you more than the big ones…

Thanks ever so much to Neil Boyack for putting on this festival – the opinion was unanimous that this weekend was something pretty special. I’m looking forward to seeing NSST happen again in two years time!

Let's Have a Conversation

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Good-weekend lit-lovelies,

Check out the crowd in the reading room! You can view some more pictures from The Death Mook launch here. This was absolutely the highlight of my week. I had to have a few wines before reading to deal with the nerves, damn them, and because there was such a big crowd! Dion and Lisa sold over 100 copies of the book on the night. It was absolutely grand. My next publications are in Wet Ink and an anthology from the Remix My Lit project, both fiction.

Here are some TITbits for this week:

* There are a few days left to be considered for 15 Minutes of Fame at the Emerging Writers’ Festival. See last week’s round-up for the details.

* Submissions are also now open for the National Young Writers’ Festival, held in Newcastle in October. Click here.

* How did you go with Chris Currie’s ‘secret celebrity writers’ month’ during February on Furious Horses? Could you guess which of the stories was mine?

* Okay, I’m insanely jealous of the comment streams going on at Stephen Romei’s ALR blog. I am contributing, because I do often contribute comments to blogs I enjoy, when I have something I’d like to say. And there is a fresh bunch of varied comments from all sorts of people, excitedly agreeing and disagreeing. Now, last week I had over 2000 people here (*waves*) and I wonder… am I not being provocative enough? Or is it the Crikey system? See, it’s very, very easy to comment at the ALR blog. Here, it is easy as well, but it requires a name and email (for WordPress, not Crikey). Hum. I know many of you have something to say because you write to me. But see one of the great aspects of a comment stream is talking to each other. I will give this some serious thought as to how I can encourage you further. Cookies? Bookmarks? Free books?

Anyway, here’s how I responded to Romei’s post on what makes a good book review (and I was responding to a specific set of questions he asked in the post):

Oh how I love this post. I come to this from many angles – as a fiction writer, a reader, a reviewer (in blog and print form), and a proofreader/editor of reviews at my work.

First of all, what I like in a review is insight and honesty. I want someone to tell me, honestly (and it’s always going to be at least partly subjective due to our past collective of cultural influences, and our personality) what they thought of the book, and then I want them to give me insight into why. And this insight is an intellectual insight – from someone who is truly passionate and interested in the workings of literature. The reviews in ALR are usually ones that I enjoy very much, as they do provide these elements.

I think it should be clear whether or not the reviewer liked the book, because if it isn’t (if it’s vague), I sometimes suspect other agendas (not pissing off an advertiser/publisher/author etc.). And if I read a few of a reviewer’s pieces and share the same interests I will go to them again and take their word for it. In order for a reviewer to build up trust with their own readers, they really must be honest and insightful, and not just write press releases or pooh-pooh books for the sake of seeming ‘clever’. Though a genuine, honest, and insightful damning review can make very entertaining reading! I do think they might find some way to provide some direction or suggestion (insight again) on how the author might improve…?

The reviewer should never reveal crucial plot points, especially endings.

It can be interesting to alert readers to the author’s other books, if it’s relevant to the book being reviewed. But the ‘focus’ of the review should be the book in question. It may be useful to compare it to works of the author’s contemporaries in that it acts as a guide for the reader – if they like such-and-such, they may also enjoy this one. I don’t know about unfairly stacking authors of different genres against each other or anything like that though.

I do indeed expect ALR reviews to be different in style and substance than those in the weekend pages. I also think reviews on blogs and websites can be approached differently (and not necessarilly quality-wise) but I’m saving this discussion for a blog post of my own… something I’ve been thinking about a lot!

And your last question – yes there are some reviewers/essayists I will always read, and some I will deliberately avoid (such as a couple in Aus Book Review who always seem to be on their high horse, and really don’t give me much accessible insight into anything). There are also whole publications/websites/blogs whose reviews I avoid because they don’t have the honesty/insight which I see as essential.

* I have been living in Melbourne one year tomorrow. The UNESCO City of Literature. I love this place.

* Upcoming on the blog… lots of reviews! I have about five in draft stage at the moment. Plus an interview with Eva Hornung (formerly Sallis) about her new novel Dog Boy; Charlotte Wood’s literary space; another ‘small-town notes’ letter from my taxi call-centre friend; an original poem by Geoff Lemon; and the piece mentioned above that I’m writing about successful cultural blogging, and how it differs from reviewing for print media…