AustLit

''Why didn’t you and Daddy want people to give you any presents?' I used to ask. But my mother could never be drawn into talking about the wedding. I assumed it was because she did not wish to be reminded of the ghastly mistake she had made in marrying my father.

'AS a child, Nadia Wheatley had a sense of the great divide between her parents, who had met and married while working in Germany on the front line of the Cold War. Growing up in 1950s Australia, the child became a player in their deadly contest. Was she her mother’s daughter, or her father’s creature?

'At the age of ten, the author began writing down her mother’s stories: her Cinderella-like childhood, and her escape into a career as army nurse and refugee aid worker. Fifty years later, the finished memoir is not only a loving tribute but also a social history of twentieth-century Australia, told through the lives of a mother and her daughter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This collection of thought-provoking essays explores what it means to grow old in our youth-obsessed world.

'Improved health care and increased standards of living mean that each generation is living longer than the last. Rather than heralding this as a success, governments see our ageing population as an imminent disaster and old age as a medical problem. In response, we are encouraged to remain active, stay healthy and work longer — in short, to refuse becoming old. But if living longer is really about staying young, do we risk turning a blind eye to issues facing the elderly?

'Written with intelligence and compassion, Joosten’s pieces consider the housing crisis as it affects older people, the politics of nursing-home care, the realities of dementia, and women’s changing relationship to their bodies as they age. Weaving interviews with research and personal essay, Joosten undertakes a timely and clearsighted investigation into what it means to age in a world focused on the young. Arguing that every one of us has the right to be old while maintaining integrity, these essays ask us to reconsider our individual and collective experiences to find meaning and come to terms with growing old.' (Publication summary)

'An unflinching portrait of talent and addiction.

'In 2008 the artist Adam Cullen invited journalist Erik Jensen to stay in his spare room and write his biography.

'What followed were four years of intense honesty and a relationship that became increasingly claustrophobic. At one point Cullen shot Jensen, in part to see how committed he was to the book. At another, he threw Jensen from a speeding motorbike. The book contract Cullen used to convince Jensen to stay with him never existed.

'Acute Misfortune is a riveting account of the life and death of one of Australia's most celebrated artists, the man behind the Archibald Prize-winning portrait of David Wenham. Jensen follows Cullen through drug deals and periods of deep self-reflection, onwards into his court appearance for weapons possession and finally his death in 2012 at the age of forty-six. The story is by turns tender and horrifying: a spare tale of art, sex, drugs and childhood, told at close quarters and without judgement.' (Publication summary)