Fiction

Paris Dreaming by Anita Heiss

April 2011, no. 330

Having been ‘completely screwed over by men’, Libby Cutmore is on a self-imposed and inevitably short-lived ‘man-fast’. Although she loves her job at the (fictional) National Aboriginal Gallery in Canberra, memories of New York adventures with her friend Lauren (Manhattan Dreaming, 2010), and Libby’s own sense of exclusion now that her two closest ...

The Source of the Sound by Patrick Holland

by Estelle Tang •

April 2011, no. 330

The final offering in Patrick Holland’s first collection of short stories is also its best.

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Bird Cloud by Annie Proulx

by James Bradley •

April 2011, no. 330

Almost two decades ago, when The Shipping News (1993) transformed Annie Proulx into an unlikely literary superstar, one might have been forgiven for...

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Gone by Jennifer Mills

by Adam Rivett •

April 2011, no. 330

Writing in the Guardian late last year, Philip Pullman said this of what he regards as the dominant style in contemporary fiction: ‘What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is...

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The Ghost of Waterloo by Robin Adair

by Kate McFadyen •

April 2011, no. 330

In the afterword to The Ghost of Waterloo, Robin Adair reveals what attracts him to writing historical fiction...

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Blue Skies by Helen Hodgman

by Brenda Niall •

April 2011, no. 330

With its witty cover, showing an overturned pram, Blue Skies places itself in the era of The Female Eunuch (1971) and adds a Gothic horror touch...

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Little People by Jane Sullivan

by Carmel Bird •

April 2011, no. 330

Jane Sullivan’s novel, which was runner-up in the 2010 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize for a novel by a writer over thirty-five years of age, blends the powerful theme of ...

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Flock by Lyn Hughes

by Carol Middleton •

April 2011, no. 330

The language of wallpaper is entrancing: a velvet flock, a Réveillon arabesque, a Dufour panoramic. After ten years’ research and writing, Lyn Hughes’s fourth novel, Flock, is rich with the texture and imagery of wallpaper.

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Those Who Come After by Elisabeth Holdsworth

by Sue Ebury •

April 2011, no. 330

Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten.
(Truly, I live in dark times.)

When her mother uttered that line from Bertolt Brecht’s great poem ‘An die Nachgeborenen’, Juliana – the narrator of Elisabeth Holdsworth’s first novel – knew they were in for a hard time. Janna had returned to the Netherlands from Da ...

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

by Don Anderson •

December 2010–January 2011, no. 327

Don Anderson reviews 'The Finkler Question' by Howard Jacobson

They had been at school together, Julian Treslove and Samuel Finkler. ‘More rivals than friends, but rivalry too can last a lifetime.’

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