Dream: I am at my mother's house, though it is also a mansion, and she is also a mother I never had but always wanted, the kind who knows and sees. I should be writing reading responses to several other books that I finished a couple of weeks ago, but I'm starting with the most … Continue reading Little Plum | Laura McPhee-Browne #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
Epigraph: In the economy of Nature nothing is ever lost. Gene Stratton-Porter The end of this quote from Stratton-Porter's Jesus of the Emerald (1923) is, "I cannot believe that the soul of man shall prove the one exception." I'm not sure where Arnott stands on the whole idea of souls, but it is clear that … Continue reading Limberlost | Robbie Arnott #AUSfiction
The first thing we did was change our names. This post will look less like a book review and more like a list of feminist writers. But before we get to the list, a little about my journey with After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz. I deliberately chose to start reading After Sappho knowing next … Continue reading After Sappho | Selby Wynn Schwartz #BookReview
This remarkable novel, first published to a chorus of acclaim in 1952, is one of the lost classics of Australian literature. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer. Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait … Continue reading The Cardboard Crown | Martin Boyd #CCspin
I've been dragging my feet about writing (or finishing) off several reviews for books read a month ago. Part of the problem has been a recent return to work which has left me wondering how on earth I used to fit everything in before Covid-19 came along and slowed things down for a while. But … Continue reading Cherry Beach | Laura McPhee-Browne #AWWfiction
Well! Gerald Murnane! What on earth am I going to say about you and this amazingly, stupendous, spectacular display of writing? How do you sum up or explain your experience with a book that pushes, exposes and plays around with so many ideas in one compact little piece of speculative writing? Where do you even … Continue reading The Plains | Gerald Murnane #AUSfiction
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