Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Intellectual Confrontation

by
May 1985, no. 70

Crooks by Bill Reed

Hyland House, $14.95, 232pp

Intellectual Confrontation

by
May 1985, no. 70

‘What do you reckon this is? Some kind of joke’ This final ironic cadence to Bill Reed’s sixth novel, with its upbeat question asked of death and the literary establishment, is never resolved; that isn’t Reed’s way. In a grand guignol of a novel, ostensibly about the repercussions of publishing an expose of crime bosses in New South Wales (which Reed actually did as the publisher of Australian books for Macmillan), he sets out to linguistically conceal the agony of caring for an elusive humanity he finds alien and macabre.

Crooks

Crooks

by Bill Reed

Hyland House, $14.95, 232pp

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.