Ronnie Scott

The Adversary by Ronnie Scott

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May 2020, no. 421
Alex Cothren reviews 'The Adversary' by Ronnie Scott

One of the few details we learn about the unnamed narrator of Ronnie Scott’s début novel, The Adversary, is that he is fond of Vegemite. Although only a crumb of information, this affinity for the popular breakfast tar reveals much about our hero. Just as Vegemite ‘has to be spread very thin or you realised it was salty and unreasonable’, his human interactions give him a soupçon of a social life, a mere taste that never threatens to overwhelm his senses.

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The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish

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Online Exclusives
Ronnie Scott reviews 'The Lie and How We Told It' by Tommi Parrish

Even in these golden years for Australian comics, Tommi Parrish stands out for their insight and talent. Their work takes weighty topics like gender, work, and friends and examines them through focusing on individual experiences, interior moments. It’s all brief grabs of sensations and ideas, which depends on ...

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Crow Mellow by Julian Davies

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January-February 2015, no. 368
Crow Mellow

Crow Mellow, the sixth novel by Julian Davies, centres on a bush retreat where a millionaire couple gathers artists to share around ideas. From an optimistic standpoint, the retreat is a salon. Viewed differently, all parties are engaged in a status grab: artists ‘came from the cities of the east coast to score … the kudos of being there when their collea ...

Blue  by Pat Grant

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April 2012, no. 340

The Australian graphic novel, being a fairly new phenomenon, has no unifying aesthetic, no identifiable form. While it is possible to group the characteristics of French, American, and Japanese comics, Australia’s finest exponents are stylistically on their own. Nicki Greenberg crafts adult work from a child’s figurative toolkit, Shaun Tan’s comics are drenched in high fantasy draftsmansh ...

Sensitive Creatures  by Mandy Ord

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March 2012, no. 339

It’s a simple proposition: short graphic stories about city life, and one narrator – Mandy Ord – drawn with a single bulging eye. But the slice-of-life stories in Sensitive Creatures are rarely straightforward. Sweeping and brittle, kinetic and lush, this is a consistently surprising volume, at once an autobiography, a collection of vignettes, and a comprehensive catalogue of an ...