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Issue Details: First known date: 2021... no. 436 October 2021 of Australian Book Review est. 1961 Australian Book Review
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The October issue of ABR brings together some of the country’s finest critics on the latest political and cultural developments. In our cover article, David Jack offers a trenchant critique of the privileging of ‘bare life’ in state responses to the pandemic. Morag Fraser reads Tim Bonyhady’s latest book on the politics of visual culture in Afghanistan, while James Curran assesses the recent history of Australian–American diplomatic relations. It is a blockbuster fiction issue with reviews of the latest offerings by Sally Rooney and Jonathan Franzen by Beejay Silcox and Declan Fry, respectively. Booker Prize shortlisted novels by Damon Galgut and Richard Powers are also examined. David McCooey follows poet Sarah Holland-Batt as she ‘fishes for lightning’ in her criticism, and there are new poems by Ann Vickery and Alex Skovron. The issue also looks at work by Maggie Nelson, Jeanette Winterson, Nicolas Rothwell – and much, much more!' (Publication abstract)

Notes

  • Contents indexed selectively.

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2021 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Tongerlongeter’s Story : Revisiting the Indomitable Military Leader, Libby Connors , single work review
— Review of Tongerlongeter : First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero Henry Reynolds , Nicholas Clements , 2021 single work biography ;

Tongerlongeter was surely one of Australia’s toughest military leaders. Henry Reynolds and Nicholas Clements expressly narrate his story to affirm the place of the Frontier Wars in the Anzac pantheon. Reflexive conservative responses to such arguments – that Anzac Day commemorates only those who served in the Australian military – are flawed and outdated. The Tasmanian frontier is one of Australia’s best-documented cases of violent operations against Aboriginal people. In 1828, Governor George Arthur, unable to gain control over the ‘lamentable and protracted warfare’, issued a Demarcation Proclamation later enforced by the formation of Black Lines, military cordons stretching several hundred kilometres across southern and central Tasmania to secure the grasslands demanded by white settlers. Despite the efforts of Australia’s culture war protagonists led by Keith Windschuttle and Quadrant magazine, Tasmania’s Black Lines remain infamous in Australian history, with revisionist work emphasising the military planning, enormous cost, and extensive civilian involvement owing to Arthur’s declaration of a levée en masse, a form of conscription, to support the military operations. Comprising more than 2,200 soldiers and settlers, these army cordons remained ‘the largest domestic military offensive ever mounted on Australian soil’. Despite the forces arrayed against him, Tongerlongeter and his compatriots passed through the Black Lines with comparative ease in 1830. (Introduction)

(p. 13-14)
‘For Whom Is It Free?’ Correcting Assumptions about Knowledge, Laura Rademaker , single work review
— Review of True Tracks : Respecting Indigenous Knowledge and Culture Terri Janke , 2021 multi chapter work information book ;

'This book hit a nerve. It’s not that Terri Janke sets out to confront her readers; if anything, she is at pains to convey goodwill. Janke, who is of Meriam and Wuthathi heritage, writes to build bridges and, above all, to give useful advice. But beneath this is a profound challenge for those who write and create: that is, to rethink how we know.'  (Introduction)

(p. 16-17)
Marionettesi"It’s our runaway imaginings that seduce us", Alex Skovron , single work poetry (p. 17)
Blurb Praise and Hot Takes : Criticism in an Age of Publicity, James Jiang , single work essay

'Because my background is academic (and in English studies), certain disciplinary conventions still find their way into my review writing. In fact, it’s hard for me to think of my reviewing as reviewing rather than as criticism in that more university-bound sense: that is, as having something to do with the art of interpretation. It may help that most of the books I review – works of contemporary poetry and literary criticism – are considered ‘hard’ or at least esoteric, and thus in need of a little explaining. The persona I hear most recognisably in my journalistic prose is that of my former lecturer-self (a good lecture, like a good review, strikes the right balance between granular analysis and makeshift generalisation). I suppose I still think of the primary goal of my reviewing as teaching something about how to read.'  (Introduction)

(p. 21-22)
Richard Mahony’s Most August Imaginationi"Before you could say Jack Robinson, I was posting", Ann Vickery , single work poetry (p. 25)
Truth-Telling : Veronica Gorrie’s Memoir of Family and Survival, Meriki Onus , single work review
— Review of Black and Blue : A Memoir of Racism and Resilience Veronica Gorrie , 2021 single work autobiography ;

'Aunty Ronnie is a Kurnai and Gunditjmara woman. She is also a mother of three, a grandmother of two, and one of Australia’s most underrated comedians. Black and Blue, her autobiography, is an enthralling book set primarily in three places: Bung Yarnda, Morwell (Black), and the Queensland Police Service (Blue), where Aunty Ronnie served as a member for ten years. The title is a play on the old saying ‘black and blue’, which commonly refers to someone covered in bruises.' (Introduction)

(p. 26)
Giving Breath to the Ghosts : A Mood of Systematic Retrospection, Paul Giles , single work review
— Review of Red Heaven Nicolas Rothwell , 2021 single work novel ;

'Nicolas Rothwell is perhaps best known as a critic of art and culture for The Australian, though he has also published several non-fiction books, one of which, Quicksilver, won a Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2016. Red Heaven, subtitled a ‘fiction’, is only the second of Rothwell’s books not to be classified as non-fiction. Always straddling the boundary between different genres, Rothwell has cited in Quicksilver Les Murray’s similar defence of generic hybridity in Australia: the novel ‘may not be the best or only form which extended prose fiction here requires’. Working from northern Australia, and intent upon exploring how landscape interacts obliquely with established social customs, Rothwell, in his narratives, consistently fractures traditional fictional forms so as to realign the conventional world of human society with more enigmatic temporal and spatial dimensions.' (Introduction)

(p. 28-29)
Fashioning the Self : Reinvention as Fact and Metaphor, Susan Midalia , single work review
— Review of Bodies of Light Jennifer Down , 2021 single work novel ;

'Australian novelist and short story writer Jennifer Down has been rightly acclaimed, with an impressive list of awards to her name, including the Jolley Prize in 2014. Her new novel, Bodies of Light, is both much more ambitious in scope than her first and an altogether more harrowing read. Spanning the years from 1975 to 2018, and traversing many different locations in Australia, New Zealand, and America, the novel confronts us with child sexual abuse, a suicide attempt, a series of fractured relationships, allegations of infanticide, recurring social alienation, and a serious drug addiction. But it is also, and mercifully, a story of a woman’s remarkable resilience, the possibility of human kindness, and the necessity of hope. Bodies of Light thus has affinities with the feminist Bildungsroman popularised in the 1960s and 1970s; a genre that championed a belief in productive self-fashioning by women in the face of systemic misogynistic oppression.' (Introduction)

(p. 34)
Lili and Lyle : Michelle de Kretser's New Novel, Shannon Burns , single work review
— Review of Scary Monsters Michelle De Kretser , 2021 single work novel ;
(p. 36-37)
Trauma and Discovery : Documenting Reclamation, Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen , single work review
— Review of My Body keeps Your Secrets Lucia Osborne-Crowley , 2021 single work autobiography biography ;
'The proliferation of trauma writing in the past few years is a double-edged sword. While giving public voice to subjects once relegated to the dark lessens stigma and creates agency, there is almost an expectation for women writers to reveal or perform their trauma, as well as a risk of exploitation and retraumatisation.' (Introduction)
(p. 51-52)
Eve and Steve : Distinguishing Fiction from Biography, Susan Sheridan , single work review
— Review of Eve Langley and 'The Pea Pickers' Helen Vines , 2021 single work biography ;

'In 1942, The Pea Pickers was published by Angus & Robertson in Sydney, garnering high praise for its freshness and poetic invention. A picaresque tale of two sisters who, dressed as boys, earn their living picking seasonal crops in Gippsland in the late 1920s, it impressed Douglas Stewart, literary editor of the Bulletin, with its ‘love of Australian earth and Australian people and skill in painting them’. The author, Eve Langley, was at that time incarcerated in the Auckland Mental Hospital, where she would remain for the next seven years, isolated from her estranged husband and three young children, and from her mother and sister, who were also in New Zealand.'  (Introduction)

(p. 52-53)
Freedom and Possibility : Portrait of a Year in Poetry, David McCooey , single work review
— Review of Fishing for Lightning : The Spark of Poetry Sarah Holland-Batt , 2021 selected work poetry essay ;

'Sarah Holland-Batt’s Fishing for Lightning is a book about Australian poetry. As such, it is a rare, and welcome, bird in the literary ecology of our country. It is welcome because poetry, like any other art form, requires a supportive culture that educates and promulgates. Not that Holland-Batt, herself one of our leading poets, is ‘merely’ didactic, or a shill for the muses. Holland-Batt, who is also an academic, writes with great authority and insight, and she is a fine stylist, penning essays that are packed with humour and playfulness. These essays cater for all kinds of audiences, from newcomers to poetry experts, which is no small feat.'  (Introduction)

(p. 53-54)
Open Page : An Interview with Claire G. Coleman, single work interview (p. 56-57)
‘With Their Own Hands’ : Poems That Refuse Easy Resolution, Geoff Page , single work review
— Review of Letters from the Periphery Alex Skovron , 2021 selected work poetry ;

'To those who have followed Alex Skovron’s poetry since The Rearrangement (1988), it’s not a surprise to learn that he has been the general editor of an encyclopedia, a book editor, a lover of classical music and chess, an occasional translator of Dante and Borges, and the author of six well-spaced poetry collections, a stylish novella, and a collection of short stories. He can often seem the very embodiment of the European/Jewish/Melburnian intellectual (despite an adolescence spent in Sydney).' (Introduction)

(p. 57-58)
Islands : New Ecopoetry by Kristen Lang and Caitlin Maling, Ella Jeffery , single work review
— Review of Fish Work Caitlin Maling , 2021 selected work poetry ; Earth Dwellers Kristen Lang , 2021 selected work poetry ;
'New collections from Caitlin Maling and Kristen Lang are situated in vastly different landscapes but pursue similar ideas about the natural world’s fragility and the imminent environmental catastrophe. Maling’s Fish Work, as its title suggests, is primarily interested in marine life and the scientists studying it at Lizard Island Research Station on the Great Barrier Reef, while Lang’s Earth Dwellers explores mountains, caves, and coastlines in Tasmania and Nepal, examining the myriad complexities of ancient ecosystems. Maling’s and Lang’s new books, their fourth collections, urge readers to attend to the work of millennia that has produced these distinctive ecosystems and, in doing so, to appreciate the urgency of protecting them.' (Introduction)
(p. 58-59)
Poet of the Month : An Interview with Alex Skovron, single work interview (p. 60)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 27 Oct 2021 11:25:54
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