Vintage, 1989 9780375713347 (2002 edn) (Also Aus, US, UK) Miss Olympia is an emotional, hunchbacked albino dwarf, and the complex narrator of this wonderful novel. In the present, Oly secretly watches over the remaining members of her carnival-of-freaks family: her daughter, Miranda, and her mother, Crystal Lil. Why her observance and care is secretive is revealed through … Continue reading Cult carny lit: Katherine Dunn's Geek Love
Reviews + Analyses
Books, poetry, journals and the occassional film…
Guest review: Greg Westenberg on John Mateer’s The West: Australian Poems 1989–2009
Fremantle Press, 2010 (Aus, US, UK) 9781921361869 Remember that Renaissance sculpture you admired, briefly, in a Roman or Florentine church, cool and hard and chiselled and, perhaps a little too dramatically posed? Reading John Mateer’s collection of poems The West, gives an analogous sensation. The sculptors worked in marble that kept its material nature, the hardness … Continue reading Guest review: Greg Westenberg on John Mateer’s The West: Australian Poems 1989–2009
Guest review: Gerard Elson on Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories
Faber/Allen & Unwin (Aus, US, UK) November 2010 (orig. 1997) 9780571270248 Reviewed by Gerard Elson It’s been a big twelve months for Tim Burton. Tim Burton: The Exhibition drew record crowds during seasons at both New York’s MoMA and Melbourne’s ACMI, and his visually brillig (though otherwise rote) Alice in Wonderland became just the sixth film … Continue reading Guest review: Gerard Elson on Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories
Johanna Adorján’s An Exclusive Love
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell (Aus, US, UK) Text Publishing, September 2010 9781921656569 Johanna Adorján’s grandparents took their own lives in October 1991. In this reserved and moving book Adorján pieces together the last day of their lives, interspersing this narrative with details of her grandparents' pasts, pieces of her own story, and musings on various related … Continue reading Johanna Adorján’s An Exclusive Love
Guest review: Elizabeth Bryer on Wayne Macauley’s Other Stories
Black Pepper November 2010 9781876044664 (Aus) Reviewed by Elizabeth Bryer Other Stories brings together Melbourne-based Wayne Macauley’s output over the past decade and counting. The collection is filled with ‘other’ stories—tales that are other, or outside the mainstream, in a double sense. They are other in subject, given that they are stories that trace … Continue reading Guest review: Elizabeth Bryer on Wayne Macauley’s Other Stories
Brendan Cowell’s How it Feels
Picador, November 2010 9781405039291 Our protag, Neil, is a young ‘arty’ guy from Cronulla whose concerns oscillate between the people of home, and his burgeoning theatre career. He’s self-absorbed, which we know because it’s reiterated a million times in the book. He can’t make up his mind about which chick to f*ck and keep f*cking. … Continue reading Brendan Cowell’s How it Feels
Guest review: Genevieve Tucker on Colm Tóibín’s The Empty Family
Picador November 2010 9781405040235 (Aus, US, UK) Reviewed by Genevieve Tucker Much has been made around the traps of the fact that Colm Tóibín published a story in his last collection that used the word empty (and words deriving from it) fourteen times, though no one has bothered to acknowledge that the story in question was … Continue reading Guest review: Genevieve Tucker on Colm Tóibín’s The Empty Family
Test-driving the Sony Reader Pocket Edition
Sony Reader Pocket Edition (loaned to LiteraryMinded for two weeks) Visit the Sony website to check out the Readers available. US readers, see Amazon. There are about three reasons I haven’t bought an e-reader yet (actually, let’s remove the hyphen and call it an ereader - remember ‘e-mail’?). The first reason is that they’re expensive, but … Continue reading Test-driving the Sony Reader Pocket Edition
Guest review: Alice Robinson on John Tesarsch’s The Philanthropist
Sleepers Publishing November 2010, 9781740669979 (Aus) reviewed by Alice Robinson John Tesarsch’s accomplished first novel The Philanthropist is a book about parents and children. It is about what we pass on, and what we inherit in turn. ‘The best thing a father can do, of course, is be there for his children. I wasn’t, because … Continue reading Guest review: Alice Robinson on John Tesarsch’s The Philanthropist
Review of Ali Alizadeh's Iran: My Grandfather up at Mascara
My review of Ali Alizadeh's wonderful book Iran: My Grandfather (Aus, US) has been published in Mascara Literary Review. You can read the review here. While you're there, have a look at the poems, reviews, stories, photographs and translations in this elegant bi-annual which focuses on the work of contemporary Asian, Australian and Indigenous writers
LiteraryMinded 