Hidden Author
Stella Lees
Philip Reeves’s Infernal Devices (Scholastic) is the third part of a quartet about cities on wheels trundling about a future Earth. It has action, irony, intertextuality and flawed characters – some with dark agendas – and displays an original and startling imagination. Number four will complete the best fantasy since Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. On a smaller s ... (read more)
Brisbane crackers
The Brisbane Writers’ Festival has come and gone with great success and a sizeable audience. ABR sponsored a session: Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Tim Milfull, Brenda Niall and Peter Rose (photographed by Judith Potts below) discussed ‘The Art of Literary Criticism’. On the Sunday, Delia Falconer launched our October issue: ‘a cracker’, in her words. Describing ABR as ‘an i ... (read more)
2005 ABR Reviewing Competition
This year we received eighty-seven entries, with a good range in all three categories, children’s/young adult books; fiction; and non-fiction/poetry. New South Wales contributed almost half the entries; but each state was represented. It’s always interesting to note the most popular titles. This year they were Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender and Christos Tsiolkas ... (read more)
ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.
... (read more)
ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month and must include a telephone number for verification.
... (read more)
David Musgrave is the author of four volumes of poetry, the most recent being Phantom Limb. His first novel is Glissando (reviewed on page thirty-three). He is also the publisher at Puncher & Wattmann. See www.davidmusgrave.com
Why do you write?
It’s not really a choice, but a necessity. Usually, it is the pressure of an idea or an emotional state that only seems to be satisfactori ... (read more)
ABR welcomes concise and pertinent letters. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and e-mails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.
Pushing ahead
Dear Editor,
Beverley Kingston has written a rather world-weary review of my book The Commonwealth of' Speech (ABR, December 2002/January 2003). I read ... (read more)
William Kostakis
Jackie French explores the impact of World War I on both the home- and battlefronts in her extensively researched and earnestly written A Rose for the ANZAC Boys (Harper-Collins), which finds three young girls ditching the irrelevant deportment classes of an English boarding school to start a canteen in France for wounded soldiers. Barry Jonsberg’s Ironbark (Allen & Unwin), ... (read more)
Patrick Allington
Of 2009’s emerging Australian novelists (such a silly term: emerging from what?) Craig Silvey’s second novel, Jasper Jones (Allen & Unwin), stands out. A dark and funny morality tale set in a 1960s Western Australian mining town, it ruminates on death, secrets, racism, dodgy parenting and adolescence. For anybody who once dreamed of sporting greatness, the cricket match ... (read more)