Kill Your Darlings: Issue Four (Aus) Ed: Rebecca Starford January 2011 reviewed by Lisa Down Call me a philistine, but I wasn’t previously familiar with the Australian quarterly Kill Your Darlings. It means I don’t have a standard by which I can judge this edition but I walked away satisfied that it had provided the … Continue reading Guest review: Lisa Down on Kill Your Darlings: Issue Four
Other People’s Words
1001 Australian Nights: Gerard Elson interviews Dave Graney, part two
1001 Australian Nights Dave Graney 9780980790436, Affirm Press (Aus) by Gerard Elson Read part one here. Have you tried your hand at prose fiction? Would you ever be interested? I’d prefer to write fiction than something like 1001 Australian Nights. I’m having the heebs a bit with this book coming out and people reading it! … Continue reading 1001 Australian Nights: Gerard Elson interviews Dave Graney, part two
1001 Australian Nights: Gerard Elson interviews Dave Graney, part one
1001 Australian Nights Dave Graney 9780980790436, Affirm Press (Aus) by Gerard Elson Dave Graney likes his coffee weak and his public spaces swarming. So we meet at Starbucks. It’s not exactly rock 'n’ roll, but then that’s Graney: never one to play the scummy, hard-worn rock pariah (thank god). He arrives early and I’m embarrassed … Continue reading 1001 Australian Nights: Gerard Elson interviews Dave Graney, part one
Guest review: Rachel Edwards on Armistice by Nick Stafford
9781849160230 Quercus, 2011 (Aus) (also US, UK) reviewed by Rachel Edwards Armistice recreates the disorientated, discombobulated world of London post World War One and looks at the effect that war had on the lives of those who survived. It is a semi-mystery, semi-romance novel and it tells the story of Philomena Bligh, seamstress of Manchester. … Continue reading Guest review: Rachel Edwards on Armistice by Nick Stafford
Guest review: Lyndon Riggall on The Girl With No Hands by Angela Slatter
Ticonderoga Publications, 2011 9780980628883 (Aus, US, UK) reviewed by Lyndon Riggall In my first year at University I studied fairytales, and more specifically Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, a book which is arguably the poster-child of fairytale re-imaginings. Carter writes well, and in many cases her stories spin beautifully away from tradition while remaining neatly tied … Continue reading Guest review: Lyndon Riggall on The Girl With No Hands by Angela Slatter
Guest review: Matthew Giles on Parting With My Sex by Lucy Chesser
Sydney University Press 9781920898311 reviewed by Matthew Giles In his CAL/Meanjin essay of last year, Paul Daley argued that young Australians aren’t coerced by the state to think about their history in militaristic terms. He said that they do it on their own, because a militarised history is naturally more interesting. He was rebutting Marilyn … Continue reading Guest review: Matthew Giles on Parting With My Sex by Lucy Chesser
Guest post: Around the world in 28 novels, by Kent MacCarter (part two)
28 books, 28 authors, 28 countries... and one year by Kent MacCarter See part one What are some of the hurdles in finding all the books? Translations into English, and the lack thereof, has proven to be the largest hurdle in cobbling together my reading list. Not a surprise. It’s my own fault I’m not … Continue reading Guest post: Around the world in 28 novels, by Kent MacCarter (part two)
Guest post: Around the world in 28 novels, by Kent MacCarter (part one)
28 books, 28 authors, 28 countries... and one year by Kent MacCarter Why am I embarking this reading project? I was two weeks shy of age eighteen before I read my first novel, fuelled by my own motivation. I’ll start this post, cathartically, with that embarrassing, stale, shrivelled yet undeniable fact. It was Fitzgerald’s The … Continue reading Guest post: Around the world in 28 novels, by Kent MacCarter (part one)
Guest review: ‘It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun’, Alice Robinson on 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
Simon & Schuster 9781849833905 (Aus, US, UK) Reviewed by Alice Robinson Aron Ralston is starving, dehydrated and on the brink of death when, six days after being pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder, stranded alone in a remote Utah canyon, he snaps his own wrist; the blade of the $15 multi-tool in his pack just won’t … Continue reading Guest review: ‘It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun’, Alice Robinson on 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
Guest review: Matthia Dempsey on What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den Berg
Scribe Publications, February 2011 (Aus, US, UK) 9781921640896 Reviewed by Matthia Dempsey Laura van den Berg has particular skill in capturing the strangeness that can come at times—the sense of being a stranger to your own life and the world. For many of the women in her stories this feeling is the result of a … Continue reading Guest review: Matthia Dempsey on What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den Berg
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