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By permission of the author.
Linda Jaivin Linda Jaivin i(A32366 works by)
Born: Established: 1955 Connecticut,
c
United States of America (USA),
c
Americas,
;
Gender: Female
Arrived in Australia: 1986
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Works By

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1 Currowan, Bronwyn Adcock Linda Jaivin , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 16-22 October 2021;

— Review of Currowan : A Story of Fire and a Community During Australia's Worst Summer Bronwyn Adcock , 2021 single work autobiography

'In 2005, the CSIRO predicted that climate change would lead to catastrophic fires in south-eastern Australia by 2020. But rather than treating the climate crisis as “a question of science and how we prepare”, as journalist Bronwyn Adcock writes in Currowan: The story of a fire and a community during Australia’s worst summer, the Coalition politicised and trivialised it. In April 2019, following the brutal heatwave of the year before, retired emergency services leaders warned the government that it needed to prepare urgently for climate crisis-related extreme weather events. Prime Minister Scott Morrison refused to meet with them. By November, fires were burning across the land. Morrison assured a nation on edge that everything was under control. Tweeting a photo of himself with Australian cricketer Steve Smith, he told fire-affected communities that the cricketers would give them “something to cheer for”.' (Introduction)

1 Ten Thousand Aftershocks, Michelle Tom Linda Jaivin , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 18-24 September 2021;

— Review of Ten Thousand Aftershocks Michelle Tom , 2021 single work autobiography
1 Travelling Companions, Antoni Jach Linda Jaivin , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 28 August - 3 September 2021;

— Review of Travelling Companions Antoni Jach , 2021 single work novel

'“How to be alone yet to be in company? That,” the unnamed narrator of Travelling Companions tells us, “is the conundrum.” As a train strike throws him into travel limbo with other tourists on the Spanish–French border, he observes: “We are a group but not quite, there is a plausible deniability.” Banding together helps, he notes elsewhere, to “beat down the ontological insecurity”.' (Introduction)

1 Fury, Kathryn Heyman Linda Jaivin , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 26 June - 2 July 2021;

— Review of Fury Kathryn Heyman , 2021 single work autobiography
1 Danielle : Celermajer Summertime Linda Jaivin , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 6-12 February 2021;

— Review of Summertime : Reflections on a Fractured Future Danielle Celermajer , 2021 single work prose
1 Danielle Clode, In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World Linda Jaivin , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 17-23 October 2020;

— Review of In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World Danielle Clode , 2020 single work biography

'There had been an undercurrent of speculation aboard the Étoile about smooth-faced Jean Barret, the stoic and hard-working assistant and personal valet to the ship’s naturalist-doctor, Philibert Commerson. In April 1768, after the ship moored off Tahiti, a local man, immediately perceiving what the French crew had only guessed, cried out, “Ayenne!” – “Woman!” Jeanne Barret’s secret was out.' (Introduction)

1 Malcolm Knox, Bluebird Linda Jaivin , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 26 September - 2 October 2020;

— Review of Bluebird Malcolm Knox , 2020 single work novel

'Bluebird, the setting of Malcolm Knox’s latest novel, is an insular little community on the coastal periphery of “Ocean City”, a wink-wink stand-in for Sydney. The problem with Bluebird, and it’s mostly a problem for the middle-aged white male kidults at the centre of the novel, is that it’s changing. Outsiders are moving in, the Chinese are buying up, and people who’ve lived there only five years maddeningly claim to be locals as they drop in on waves.' (Introduction)

1 Darleen Bungey, Daddy Cool Linda Jaivin , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 4-10 July 2020;

— Review of Daddy Cool : Finding My Father, the Singer Who Swapped Hollywood Fame for Home in Australia Darleen Bungey , 2020 single work biography
1 David Dufty, Radio Girl Linda Jaivin , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 23-29 May 2020;

— Review of Radio Girl David Dufty , 2020 single work biography

'As Australia entered World War II, its all-male armed services had a problem only a woman could solve. That woman was Violet McKenzie, Australia’s first female electrical engineer, a wireless radio pioneer, one of the ABC’s first broadcasters, and the founder of the volunteer Women’s Emergency Signalling Corps, or “Sigs”. Established in 1940, Sigs trained hundreds of women to the highest standards in Morse code and semaphore using a unique system McKenzie devised herself, drawing on mnemonics and musical cues. She also instructed her students in circuit theory and the physics of electromagnetic radiation and taught them how to fix radios and install antennas. The “girls” of Sigs practised military drills at weekend camps and in Sydney’s Centennial Park, the top students wearing the uniform that McKenzie, whom they adored, had designed herself. Australia’s military was in urgent need of personnel with mastery of signalling technologies; it turned to Sigs for help.'  (Introduction)

1 Donna Ward : She I Dare Not Name Linda Jaivin , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 14-20 March 2020;

— Review of She I Dare Not Name : A Spinster's Meditations on Life Donna Ward , 2020 single work autobiography

'Donna Ward’s piano was stranded in the middle of her study. She’d pushed it out from one wall but couldn’t get it to the other side. Two friends, a couple, came to dinner. As they were leaving, they noticed the piano. “This is a time when you ask your friends to help,” they advised her – and left without helping. The anecdote of the marooned piano is a nutshell-sized metaphor for the life that Ward – a writer, publisher and psychotherapist – lives without husband or family. It was not her plan; she’d always hoped to find what she calls her “person”. Sometimes, despite all intention of making it to the other side of the room, a piano just gets stuck in the middle.'(Introduction)

1 Jayne Tuttle : Paris or Die Linda Jaivin , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 7-13 December 2019;

— Review of Paris or Die : A Memoir Jayne Tuttle , 2019 single work autobiography

'Jayne Tuttle’s memoir, Paris or Die, is a literary suitcase packed with sparkling friendships, startling discoveries, mad love, intriguing challenges and hot sex. Quite a bit of hot sex, in fact. There’s also mortal danger and helpless loss, both of which signal their presence in the very first chapter. Tuttle, a writer, actor and charismatically charming first-time author, takes us on quite a journey. Her writing is pitch-perfect and pacy – very, very funny at times, and raw and affecting at others. With death and heartbreak as ever-present themes, Paris or Die is also deeply moving.' (Introduction)

1 Angela Woollacott : Don Dunstan Linda Jaivin , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 21-27 September 2019;

— Review of Don Dunstan Angela Woollacott , 2019 single work biography

'When I immigrated to Australia in 1986, this country was notably forward-looking compared with the United States and Britain, where Reagan’s and Thatcher’s neoliberal policies were busily dismantling civil society and social welfare. Here was universal healthcare, free tertiary education and a decent safety net for society’s most vulnerable. I found palpable excitement about Australian film, popular music and literature. With Uluru recently returned to its traditional owners, it seemed that Indigenous land rights and the redress of historical wrongs were only a matter of time.'(Introduction)

1 Angela Savage : Mother of Pearl Linda Jaivin , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 10-16 August 2019;

— Review of Mother of Pearl Angela Savage , 2019 single work novel

'Mother of Pearl tells the story of a surrogacy from the perspectives of three different women. Meg, a married 39-year-old jeweller from Melbourne, is desperate for a child. Years of IVF treatments have left her bereft, her grief like “a wild animal in a cage”. It’s 2008, the eighth year of south-eastern Australia’s worst drought, and even her once-lush garden is barren, its lawn “straw”, the “ferns like brown bones”.' (Introduction)

1 Ashley Hay (ed.) Griffith Review 64: The New Disruptors Linda Jaivin , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 1-7 June 2019;

— Review of Griffith Review no. 64 30 April 2019 periodical issue

'A disruptive student is a teacher’s nightmare. A disruption in normal programming can signal very bad news. But the meaning of the word “disruption”, with its traditionally negative connotations, has itself been disrupted. According to the neoliberal prophets of Silicon Valley, disruption is a good thing; it is the future itself. Before his own leadership was so rudely disrupted, Malcolm Turnbull promised a good whack of it for Australia – to the bemusement of many.' (Introduction)

1 Natalie Kon-yu, Christie Nieman, Maggie Scott and Miriam Sved (eds) #MeToo Linda Jaivin , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 11-17 May 2019;

'When Kaya Wilson, a writer and scientist, transitioned to male, he suddenly realised he could own the streets. In his contribution to this pioneering anthology, he writes about passing a group of drunken men on a dark street, soon after transitioning. He felt his body tense “as history had taught me”. What happened next enraged him: “they wished me a good night in a pal-to-pal kind of way”. For the first time, he felt “greeted” rather than “hunted”. His fury was that it “had been so simple”.'  (Introduction)

1 Sarah Maddison : The Colonial Fantasy Linda Jaivin , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 13-19 April 2019;

'“Language is important,” Sarah Maddison tells us at the start of The Colonial Fantasy, a necessary and purposefully confronting book. She sets out the vocabulary on which she believes any discussion of black–white relations in this country must be based if we are to find a way forward. First and foremost: Australia is a “settler state” created by “settler colonialism”. We are deluded by the “colonial fantasy” that once we eliminate the differences between us in an act of “colonial completion”, First Nations people and settlers can enjoy life as equals within a shared polity.'  (Introduction)

1 Nakkiah Lui : Black Is the New White Linda Jaivin , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 9-15 February 2019;

'Nakkiah Lui is one of the country’s funniest, smartest and most deliciously outrageous playwrights. To call her a force of nature is less accurate than saying she is a one-woman cyclone. Her work – including her scripts for TV and her podcast Pretty for an Aboriginal – rips through this country’s cultural landscape, tearing down deadwood structures, pitching sacred cows into the air and laying bare a landscape that is scarred by its colonial history and strewn with the bones of massacre. And still, she makes you laugh. Even her 2018 play Blackie Blackie Brown, whose Aboriginal anthropologist protagonist literally digs up some of those bones, is as hilarious as it is provocative.' (Introduction)

1 Best Books of 2018 #2 Linda Jaivin , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 22 December - 25 January 2018-2019;

— Review of No Friend but the Mountains : Writing From Manus Prison Behrouz Boochani , Omid Tofighian (translator), 2018 selected work prose

'No Friend But the Mountains, the electrifying “memoir of ideas” by the refugee journalist-philosopher Behrouz Boochani is my book of the year. Boochani defied every attempt of successive governments to deny refugees such as him a voice, transmitting the manuscript via text and WhatsApp messages from a smuggled-in phone to his translator and interlocutor, Omid Tofighian. Such heroic defiance alone would make it a worthy book. But this is a great book, with a voice, as The Saturday Paper review had it, that is “acerbic yet compassionate, sorrowful but never self-indulgent”.' (Introduction)

1 5 y separately published work icon The Empress Lover Linda Jaivin , Sydney South : HarperCollins Australia , 2014 7064879 2014 single work novel historical fiction

''Stories are the only thing that defy death. Stories are truth. I hereby give you mine...' Peking, 1944: Sir Edmund Backhouse is a man of many parts. A polyglot scholar. An effete homosexual. A genius of perversity, a forger, arms salesman, occasional spy and fantasist. Also, if he is to be believed, the onetime lover of the redoubtable Empress Dowager of China, a woman many decades his senior. In his declining years, tended by his friend, Dr Hoeppli, he writes his memoir - 'a wild tale', as he calls it, 'far-fetched and fantastical'- of his affair with the Dowager Empress. Beijing, 2014: Linnie is an Australian woman of uncertain provenance struggling to make a living in Beijing. A Sinophile, a translator of film subtitles, the author of an unpublished novel about Backhouse called The Empress Lover. One day, she receives an intriguingly old-fashioned and formal invitation from a Professor H, an invitation that promises to reveal long hidden secrets of her family... And so two worlds collide. ' (Publication abstract)

1 The Slash Pile Linda Jaivin , 2013 single work column
— Appears in: The Monthly , April no. 88 2013; (p. 47-49)
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