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Reading Australia
This work has Reading Australia teaching resources.
Unit Suitable For
AC: Senior Secondary (Literature Unit 4)
Themes
displacement, identity, Language, memory, place, postmodernism, transnationalism, trauma
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Information and communication technology, Intercultural understanding, Literacy, Personal and social
Cross-curriculum Priorities
Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia
Notes
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Also available as a sound recording.
Contents
- Happy Diwali, single work short story (p. 3-14)
- You Gave Me Hyacinths, single work short story (p. 15-22)
- The Inside Story, single work short story (p. 23-31)
- Moving Out, single work short story (p. 32-44)
- Waiting, single work short story (p. 45-55)
- Ashes to Ashes, single work short story (p. 57-67)
- The Dark Wood, single work short story (p. 68-76)
- Some Have Called Thee Mighty and Dreadful, single work short story (p. 77-85)
- After the Fall, single work short story (p. 86-93)
- The Baroque Ensemble, single work short story (p. 94-103)
- The Owl-Bander, single work short story (p. 104-113)
- Golden Girl, single work short story (p. 114-127)
- Mosie, single work short story (p. 128-138)
- Port after Port, the Same Baggage, single work short story (p. 139-154)
- The Bloody Past, the Wandering Future, single work short story (p. 155-162)
- Morgan Morgan, single work short story (p. 163-171)
- The Mango Tree After Long Absence, single work short story (p. 172-180)
- Isobars : A Fugue on Memory, single work short story (p. 183-189)
- The Last of the Hapsburgs, single work short story (p. 190-202)
- Uncle Seaborn, single work short story (p. 203-210)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
[Essay] : Collected Stories
2013
single work
essay
— Appears in: Reading Australia 2013-;'As I write this essay the cicadas are shrill outside. The air is heavy and even in my cool study I am sweating with the heat. Later today it might rain; tonight it is quite possible that a storm will sweep over. In several minutes the chorus of cicadas will stop in unison, as if conducted by a maestro. This is Sydney weather, not the imaginary tropical north of much of Janette Turner Hospital’s fiction, yet these experiences are so similar when reading her work that it creates a constant tremor of recognition, one so potent as to be almost physical.' (Introduction)
-
Trauma, Memory and Landscape in Queensland : Women Writing ‘a New Alphabet of Moss and Water’
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , December vol. 19 no. 2 2012; (p. 205-216) 'The cultural association of Queensland with a condition of imagination or unreality has a strong history. Queensland has always ‘retained much of its quality as an abstraction, an idea’, asserts Thea Astley in her famous essay on the state's identity (Astley 1976: 263). In one of the most quoted descriptions of Queensland's literary representation, Pat Buckridge draws attention to its ‘othering’, suggesting that Queensland possesses ‘a different sense of distance, different architecture, a different apprehension of time, a distinctive preoccupation with personal eccentricity, and . . . a strong sense of cultural antitheses’ (1976: 30). Rosie Scott comes closest to the concerns of this present article when she asserts that this so-called difference ‘is definitely partly to do with the landscape. In Brisbane, for instance, the rickety old wooden Queenslanders drenched in bougainvillea, the palms, the astounding number of birds even in Red Hill where I lived, the jacarandas, are all unique in Australia’ (quoted in Sheahan-Bright and Glover 2002: xv). For Vivienne Muller, Buckridge's ‘cultural antitheses’ are most clearly expressed in precisely this interpretation of Queensland as a place somewhere between imagined wilderness and paradise (2001: 72). Thus, as Gillian Whitlock suggests, such differences are primarily fictional constructs that feed ‘an image making process founded more on nationalist debates about city and bush, centre and periphery, the Southern states versus the Deep North than on any “real” sense of regionalism’ (quoted in Muller 2001: 80). Queensland, in this reading, is subject to the Orientalist discourse of an Australian national identity in which the so-called civilisation of the south-eastern urban capitals necessitates a dark ‘other’. I want to draw out this understanding of the landscape as it is imagined in Queensland women's writing. Gail Reekie (1994: 8) suggests that, ‘Women's sense of place, of region, is powerfully constructed by their marginality to History.’ These narratives do assert Queensland's ‘difference’, but as part of an articulation of psychological extremity experienced by those living on the edges of a simultaneously ideological and geographically limited space. The Queensland landscape, I argue, is thus used as both setting for and symbol of traumatic experience.' (Publication abstract) -
Olfactory Imagery in the Australian Lives in Selected Short Stories of Janette Turner Hospital
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 2 no. 2010; 'The sensuality of the prose of Janette Turner Hospital is to my mind informed by the importance of olfaction and olfactory imagery underpinning her work, particularly in relation to the links between olfaction and memory, and place, as well as to the recurring themes of dislocation that inhabit the 'Australian' lives of characters in several of her short stories. Place and memory, and their associated links to olfaction, would suggest that an inquiry into Janette Turner Hospital's use of olfactory imagery might well offer deeper insights into how she effects her grapplings with the concepts of 'home' and 'belonging'.' (Author's abstract) -
Layers of Meaning
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Dotlit : The Online Journal of Creative Writing , August vol. 4 no. 1 2003;
— Review of Collected Stories 1970-1995 1995 selected work short story -
Elegant Narratives of Memory, Violence and Witness
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 16 no. 2 2002; (p. 195)
— Review of Collected Stories 1970-1995 1995 selected work short story
-
[Untitled]
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , June no. 6 2002;
— Review of Collected Stories 1970-1995 1995 selected work short story -
Elegant Narratives of Memory, Violence and Witness
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 16 no. 2 2002; (p. 195)
— Review of Collected Stories 1970-1995 1995 selected work short story -
Layers of Meaning
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Dotlit : The Online Journal of Creative Writing , August vol. 4 no. 1 2003;
— Review of Collected Stories 1970-1995 1995 selected work short story -
Thwarted Love, Tormented Prophetic Vision
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 15 October 1995; (p. 22)
— Review of Cassandra 1995 single work novel ; Collected Stories 1970-1995 1995 selected work short story -
The Distinctive Terrain of Janette Turner Hospital's Stories
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 175 1995; (p. 29-30)
— Review of Collected Stories 1970-1995 1995 selected work short story -
Olfactory Imagery in the Australian Lives in Selected Short Stories of Janette Turner Hospital
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 2 no. 2010; 'The sensuality of the prose of Janette Turner Hospital is to my mind informed by the importance of olfaction and olfactory imagery underpinning her work, particularly in relation to the links between olfaction and memory, and place, as well as to the recurring themes of dislocation that inhabit the 'Australian' lives of characters in several of her short stories. Place and memory, and their associated links to olfaction, would suggest that an inquiry into Janette Turner Hospital's use of olfactory imagery might well offer deeper insights into how she effects her grapplings with the concepts of 'home' and 'belonging'.' (Author's abstract) -
Trauma, Memory and Landscape in Queensland : Women Writing ‘a New Alphabet of Moss and Water’
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , December vol. 19 no. 2 2012; (p. 205-216) 'The cultural association of Queensland with a condition of imagination or unreality has a strong history. Queensland has always ‘retained much of its quality as an abstraction, an idea’, asserts Thea Astley in her famous essay on the state's identity (Astley 1976: 263). In one of the most quoted descriptions of Queensland's literary representation, Pat Buckridge draws attention to its ‘othering’, suggesting that Queensland possesses ‘a different sense of distance, different architecture, a different apprehension of time, a distinctive preoccupation with personal eccentricity, and . . . a strong sense of cultural antitheses’ (1976: 30). Rosie Scott comes closest to the concerns of this present article when she asserts that this so-called difference ‘is definitely partly to do with the landscape. In Brisbane, for instance, the rickety old wooden Queenslanders drenched in bougainvillea, the palms, the astounding number of birds even in Red Hill where I lived, the jacarandas, are all unique in Australia’ (quoted in Sheahan-Bright and Glover 2002: xv). For Vivienne Muller, Buckridge's ‘cultural antitheses’ are most clearly expressed in precisely this interpretation of Queensland as a place somewhere between imagined wilderness and paradise (2001: 72). Thus, as Gillian Whitlock suggests, such differences are primarily fictional constructs that feed ‘an image making process founded more on nationalist debates about city and bush, centre and periphery, the Southern states versus the Deep North than on any “real” sense of regionalism’ (quoted in Muller 2001: 80). Queensland, in this reading, is subject to the Orientalist discourse of an Australian national identity in which the so-called civilisation of the south-eastern urban capitals necessitates a dark ‘other’. I want to draw out this understanding of the landscape as it is imagined in Queensland women's writing. Gail Reekie (1994: 8) suggests that, ‘Women's sense of place, of region, is powerfully constructed by their marginality to History.’ These narratives do assert Queensland's ‘difference’, but as part of an articulation of psychological extremity experienced by those living on the edges of a simultaneously ideological and geographically limited space. The Queensland landscape, I argue, is thus used as both setting for and symbol of traumatic experience.' (Publication abstract) -
[Essay] : Collected Stories
2013
single work
essay
— Appears in: Reading Australia 2013-;'As I write this essay the cicadas are shrill outside. The air is heavy and even in my cool study I am sweating with the heat. Later today it might rain; tonight it is quite possible that a storm will sweep over. In several minutes the chorus of cicadas will stop in unison, as if conducted by a maestro. This is Sydney weather, not the imaginary tropical north of much of Janette Turner Hospital’s fiction, yet these experiences are so similar when reading her work that it creates a constant tremor of recognition, one so potent as to be almost physical.' (Introduction)