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Review: ‘The Best Australian Stories 2011’

Cover, 'The Best Australian Stories 2011'The Best Australian Stories 2011
Cate Kennedy (ed)
Black Inc.

If the job of fiction is, as many suggest, to flesh out place and cement it socially, physically and culturally in time, then, despite the variety of voice and subject matter, The Best Australian Stories 2011 succeeds with Southern Cross stars.

This is not to say that all the stories are perfect or, indeed, all facets of Australian life are represented in them, but there is a quintessentially recognisable state-of-being that renders the collection absolutely worthwhile, not to mention good reading. Short stories a cut above the rest are bound to be a delight. So allow me, as Cate Kennedy did so well in her introduction, the privilege of pulling over the menu board to tell you of some of my favourites and some that I favoured a little less in this year’s Best Of in short fiction. ... read more

Written by SJ Finn on 4-01-2012, 9 user comments

Best non-fiction reads 2011

My pick of non-fiction books is, as you would expect, mostly a reflection of my own particular obsessions and interests. However, one of the pleasures of being a regular reviewer of non-fiction books is the discovery of gems you would not otherwise have stumbled across or even thought were your thing.

One such discovery was How to Cause a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behaviour by Laura Kipnis (Scribe). This book could have been a supremely trashy exercise in schadenfreude were it not for Kipnis’s witty razor-sharp analysis of the unconscious forces that drive those who scandalise and those who feed on these public fiascos. Taking her cue from Freud, Laura Kipnis tackles four case studies – the spurned female astronaut bent on revenge, the judge who created alter-egos to stalk a former lover, the false friend who snitched on Monica Lewinsky and the fibbing memoirist. As she follows the convolutions of these lurid plots, she lays bare the basic psychic ingredients of scandal: the impulse to self-sabotage, the capacity for self-delusion, the revenge imperative, the flimsiness of rationality and the collective hunger for a scapegoat. Her psychoanalytical approach, fascination with human foibles and feel for narrative make Kipnis akin to Janet Malcolm on overdrive. ... read more

Written by Fiona Capp on 16-12-2011, No comments

A gobsmacker of a book

The Cook
Wayne Macauley
Text Publishing

The Cook is a gobsmacker of a book.

Written by the much-lauded Australian writer Wayne Macauley, The Cook’s themes of capitalism-gone-mad, excessive consumption, untrammelled growth and rampant exploitation of humans, animals and natural resources is timely.

Macauley explores a number of issues recently highlighted by the Occupy Movement, animal welfare groups and the GFC through his main protagonist Zac, one of a number of young offenders sent to Cook School to learn a trade and become decent, upstanding and productive citizens. ... read more

Written by Trish Bolton on 14-12-2011, 7 user comments

AS Patric’s ‘The Rattler and Other Stories’

The Rattler and Other Stories
AS Patric
Spineless Wonders

Do you know the screensaver that comes standard with windows called Mystify? It looks like a kaleidoscope of string art, with lines from one shape flowing in and out of the preceding and following patterns; it can be quite mesmerising to watch. I got the same sense reading AS Patric’s The Rattler & other stories, each story is standalone brilliant, but together they flow and mystify the reader. ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 13-12-2011, 8 user comments

Review: ‘The Unforgiving Rope’

The Unforgiving Rope: Murder and Hanging on Australia’s Western Frontier
Simon Adams
UWAP

Have you got one of those relatives, the kind who insists that the answer to all the world’s problems is to bring back hanging? You know who I mean. They usually live in a fantasy land called the Good Old Days. Yes? Well, I have just the Christmas present for them.

Simon Adams’ study of hanging in WA from 1844 until 1909 does not come to any shocking conclusions. From the first establishment of the Swan River Colony, Indigenous people and ethnic minorities felt the noose tighten more often than white, Anglo settlers. The book walks through and around the stories of executed Aborigines – who could still be hanged publicly long after the spectacle had been abolished for any other criminal – convicts and Irish Catholics, Chinese, Japanese, Afghans and bad mothers. It is not a simple catalogue of the dead. Adams zooms in and out to give us the wider cultural, legal and historical picture in addition to the specifics of each chosen case. Technological advances in the execution process and changing views on the public display of the execution are discussed. He has also travelled to the crime scenes and pored over the archives. ... read more

Written by Rhona Hammond on 6-12-2011, 3 user comments

Review: My Dog Gave Me the Clap

My dog gave me the clap

My Dog Gave Me the Clap
Adam Morris
Fremantle Press

Personally I feel sorry for the dog. Maybe dogs don’t care about these things but if someone gave me the clap, I reckon they’d be mortified if I wrote a book about it. Thankfully, Adam Morris deals with Feathers the dog and his main character Saul’s ‘green wang’ problem early on in this hilarious book. Feathers exits stage left at the end of chapter one and the reader can breathe, smile with relief and move on to Saul’s philosophising about how easy it would be to get laid if he were gay, his negative thoughts about his negative thoughts diary and a series of rather nasty ‘incidents’ involving Akubra hats, shotguns, Russian dancing and a chookhouse. ... read more

Written by Sarah Drummond on 26-10-2011, No comments

Rebellion in poetry

ghazal games

Ghazal Games
Roger Sedarat
Ohio University Press

Experimenting with traditional poetic form is not a new concept. John Keats wrote his poem ‘On the Sonnet’ warning of the dangers of constraining the ‘muse’ to strict form. Imagist poets like Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell adapted the haiku form to English-language verse. Where there are rules, there are rebels.

But the act of experimenting with form is arguably less about rebellion and more about determining what said form is really capable of achieving by exaggerating its conventions. In hindsight it can be said that most poetry is to some degree a reaction against the poetry that came before it, but that the act of ‘reacting against’ is in itself a kind of homage. Poetry that deliberately sets out to experiment with form is the most transparent kind of poetic homage, validating the traditional form for its potential relevance to contemporary culture. ... read more

Written by Tara Mokhtari on 25-08-2011, 3 user comments

Gender and China Mieville’s ‘Embassytown’

KT author pic highresFiction writer, poet, essayist and literary critic, Kirsten Tranter, grew up in Sydney’s literary atmosphere and studied at the University of Sydney, but it was at New York’s Rutgers University that she completed her PhD in English on Renaissance poetry. Tranter’s first novel, The Legacy, was listed for the Miles Franklin in 2010. Her second novel, A Common Loss, is due to appear in January 2012. Today she chats with us about her essay ‘Refiguring fiction: Gender and China Miéville’s Embassytown’, featured in Overland 204. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 23-08-2011, 2 user comments

Sophie Cunningham’s ‘Melbourne’

MelbourneMelbourne writer, editor and publisher, Sophie Cunningham, is the author of several novels: Geography and Bird, and currently working on a third. Editor and publisher of numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction, she has worked for such notables as McPhee Gribble, Penguin and Allen & Unwin as well as taking the helm as editor of Meanjin (2008-2010). She writes on such diverse topics as travel, cultural analysis, Buddhism and television (not to mention literature) but her latest adventure is Melbourne, commissioned by Newsouth as part of a series on Australia's capital cities. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 18-08-2011, No comments

The Protectors: a journey through whitefella past

The Protectors: a journey through whitefella past
Stephen Gray
Allen & Unwin

The ProtectorsFor much of John Howard’s reign as Prime Minister debate on Australian history took a polarised view: the Black Armband History versus the White Revisionist’s History. The culmination of which was John Howard’s refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generation. With Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology, and the bi-partisan support for it, it seemed that that debate had ended, that a compromise had been achieved. But has it? In his book The Protectors: a journey through whitefella past, Stephen Gray addresses this question by asking what are we apologising about? ... read more

Written by Scott Foyster on 30-06-2011, No comments

Waltzing with Jack Dancer: a slow dance with cancer

'Waltzing with Jack Dancer' coverWaltzing with Jack Dancer: a slow dance with cancer
Poems by Geoff Goodfellow
Story by Grace Goodfellow
Wakefield Press

This review is dedicated to Guido Schivella, who lost to cancer in 2008, and to Charisse Mitchell, who will beat cancer in 2011.


Cancer is indiscriminate, picking its battles with seeming randomness. There are hypothesised causes: smoking, drinking, sun etc, but they are not definitive. Cancer picked the wrong fight when it tried to take on Geoff Goodfellow, the man HG Nelson describes as ‘tough nut’. Geoff’s boxing training, working-class background and teenage daughter were three things that cancer didn’t count on. ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 11-05-2011, 15 user comments

You can only get so close on Google Earth

Cover of Ann Shenfield's bookYou Can Get Only So Close On Google Earth
Ann Shenfield
Arcadia

Ann Shenfield is recognised as an animation filmmaker and author-illustrator. You Can Get Only So Close on Google Earth is her debut poetry collection.
Poems within the collection have been recognised, winning such prizes as the Rosemary Dobson and Max Harris Poetry Awards in 2007 as well as publication in journals such as Visible Ink and Glass (2003).

A recurring theme is death; the death of a father when the poet was 5 years old, and the relatively recent death of a sister. Indeed, both traumatic experiences. I did, however, find the imagery used in the particular poems to be a bit flowery and assume the poet has reconciled the trauma of these events. ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 6-05-2011, 14 user comments

Punch and Judy and the theatre of politics

Punch & Judy

Punch & Judy: the double disillusion election of 2010
Mungo MacCallum
Black Inc.

Mungo must have been punching out Punch and Judy during the election – trawling the mediascape for fodder and spitting it back out between midnight and 4am, when only he and Tony Abbott were awake. Like all of us, he was surprised at the result but like most of us, upon reflection, wasn’t that surprised and Punch and Judy reflects this. In his analysis of the election, the result seems almost inevitable by the book’s end. Both candidates were useless and more alike than different policy wise, so there hardly seemed any point in voting unless you voted Greens or Independent as they were the only ones saying anything contrary to the unified voices of the Coalition and Labor. ... read more

Written by Rohan Wightman on 5-05-2011, 6 user comments

Non-fiction review: From Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story

1194_mary_gaudronFrom Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story
Pamela Burton
UWAP

From Moree to Mabo is the compelling and readable biography of a remarkable lawyer. Although some of the detailed analysis of the key cases and political turmoils of Mary Gaudron’s time as Solicitor General of NSW can be overwhelming, it is hard to put this book down. If you don’t know who Mary Gaudron is or if you cannot explain what is meant by equal opportunity or if you have never heard of section 75(v) of the Australian Constitution, then this is a good book for you. ... read more

Written by Rhona Hammond on 29-03-2011, 4 user comments

All Along the Watchtower

watchtowercoverAll Along the Watchtower
Michael Hyde
Vulgar Press

Michael Hyde’s All Along the Watchtower is a recent Australian example of the trend of memoirs by 60s activists, which has also seen the publication of Tariq Ali’s Street-fighting Years (1987, 2005), Luisa Passerini’s Autobiography of a Generation (translation published 2004) and Tom Hayden’s Rebel: A Personal History of the 1960s (2003). (See Radical Middle for 50 accounts written by US citizens alone.) ... read more

Written by Sophia Always on 22-03-2011, 3 user comments