Elizabeth Riddell

This account of the life and dancing times of the ballerina from Newcastle coincides, or almost, with her appointment as Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet. She follows Dame Peggy van Praagh, Sir Robert Helpmann and Ann Woolliams in that position and will no doubt find herself (as they did) adapting, confronting, persuading and opposing the administration and the board. I have to admit th ... (read more)

From short stories Peter Carey has proceeded to long novels. This is his third. It is dense with incident and meticulously delineated characters who drop in and out of the narrative, always with a purpose. In some ways it is as surreal as Bliss, in others as naturalistic as Illywacker. But it is like neither of these novels. It cannot be said to be ‘better’ than either, if this mode of compari ... (read more)

Barry Hill, who is among a few Australians who write from the head as well as from the emotions, sets his latest novel in a Buddhist Teaching Centre in a Queensland forest. Not so deep in the forest that the glorious coast itself cannot be seen, a fact that causes young Mark, who has just learned that his girlfriend Robin is pregnant, to remind himself that (as he gazes at the breakers hurling the ... (read more)