AustLit

'Cities are essentially palimpsests, layered with overlapping lives, structures, and stories. Constantly in flux, each city is a sprawling and unwieldy text that is continually being rewritten. In Mirror Sydney, Vanessa Berry peels back many of the Harbour City’s layers, to reveal a tangle of hidden meanings and bygone inhabitants. Her book takes us on an eccentric journey through forgotten parts of the city’s history, suburbs, and architecture, while mounting a persuasive argument for paying closer attention to our surrounds.' (Introduction)

'Vanessa Berry’s new book Mirror Sydney: An Atlas of Reflections (Giramondo, 2017) is a travel guidebook of sorts: writing on Sydney that outlines overlooked places far distant to the dazzling tourist promenades that appear in The Lonely Planet and other popular collections. But this highly rewarding collection of essays (with accompanying illustrations) also transcends the panegyrical tone of much city writing, managing to examine the confronting politics of urban space while also thoughtfully re-imagining the contemporary act of memoir-writing. As the title transparently intimates, this is a book that reflects in a philosophical sense as well as ‘through the looking glass’.' (Introduction)

'We may be the most urbanised nation on earth, but for some strange reason we seem to think the bush still defines us. Whereas London­, Berlin or New York are celebrated by writers and urban explorers in the guise of flaneurs or psychogeographers such as Charles Baudelaire, or contemporaries such as Englishman Iain Sinclair, Australian authors — except crime writers — have no such tradition.' (Introduction)