Infidelity and Other Affairs | Kate Legge #AWWmemoir

Affairs are a little like childbirth. Someone is always having one somewhere, usually right under the nose of a spouse because nobody knows everything that happens inside a marriage, not even the people in it. I have no idea how I'm going to respond to this memoir. To say Infidelity and Other Affairs has generated … Continue reading Infidelity and Other Affairs | Kate Legge #AWWmemoir

Everything Feels Like the End of the World | Else Fitzgerald #AWWshortstories

We drove home along the forest road, the trees like exposed bones in the headlights, trunks bending in over the gravel track. From the first story in the collection, 'River' Everything Feels Like the End of the World is a speculative fiction short story collection 'exploring possible futures in an Australia not so different from … Continue reading Everything Feels Like the End of the World | Else Fitzgerald #AWWshortstories

Before He Left the Family | Carrie Tiffany #AUSshortstory

Before he left the family, my father worked as a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company. He travelled from chemist to chemist with samples of pills and lotions and pastes in the back of his Valiant station wagon. The best sales representatives visited modern chemists in the city and suburbs. My father had to drive … Continue reading Before He Left the Family | Carrie Tiffany #AUSshortstory

Lone Wolf: Albanese and the New Politics: Quarterly Essay 88 | Katharine Murphy

I would like to be a regular Quarterly Essay reader. Every time I read one, I admire the format and find the content fascinating, challenging or enlightening. It's a fairly quick and easy way to absorb a current topic, yet I rarely prioritise them in my reading schedule. Insert shrug. Although it looks like it … Continue reading Lone Wolf: Albanese and the New Politics: Quarterly Essay 88 | Katharine Murphy

Salonika Burning | Gail Jones #AWWfiction

By midnight all was blaze and disintegration. A group of soldiers standing on the hill watched with indecent pleasure. The wind locals called the Vardaris blasted from the north, puffed minarets into candles and monuments to blocks of gold. A whoosh of flame - shaped paisley in its exotic unfurling - caused some spontaneously, shamelessly, … Continue reading Salonika Burning | Gail Jones #AWWfiction

The Evening of the Holiday | Shirley Hazzard #AUSnovella

Epigraph: Questo di fu solenne: or da' trastulli prendi riposo. Giacomo Leopardi | La sera del dì di festa The Evening of the Holiday (1820) | Giacomo Leopardi (29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) - full poem here. According to a variety of online poetry sites, Leopardi's idyll expresses his unhappiness thanks to an indifferent, distant woman plus a … Continue reading The Evening of the Holiday | Shirley Hazzard #AUSnovella

This Devastating Fever | Sophie Cunningham #AWWfiction

Epigraphs (3): (1) I very rarely think either of my past or my future, but the moment that one contemplates writing an autobiography...one is forced to regard oneself as an entity carried along for a brief period in the stream of time, emerging at a particular moment from darkness and nothingness and shortly to disappear … Continue reading This Devastating Fever | Sophie Cunningham #AWWfiction

Otherland | Maria Tumarkin #UnderstandingUkraine

It is on the train from Russia to Ukraine that the moment I have been waiting for finally comes, and Billie refuses to use the toilet, point-blank. Maria Tumarkin is an Australian writer of memoirs and cultural histories. Her books and essays tend to include oodles of fascinating things about the nature of memory, change … Continue reading Otherland | Maria Tumarkin #UnderstandingUkraine