Fiction

Admirers of the first two volumes in Frank Moorhouse’s ‘Edith Trilogy’, Grand Days (1993) and Dark Palace (2000), will remember the gripping and heartbreaking scene at the end of Dark Palace in which Edith Campbell Berry, her British husband, Ambrose, and several of their senior colleagues are humiliatingly informed, in the cruellest ... More

Isaiah Berlin famously divided people into two categories: hedgehogs and foxes. The former know one big thing with absolute certainty; the latter know many small things. When it comes to writers of fiction, a parallel distinction might be made on stylistic grounds. There are some writers who cultivate a finely attuned personal style – a style that becomes unmistak ... More

The demands of history

Elena Gomez

The Monsoon Bride
by Michelle Aung Thin
Text Publishing, $29.95 pb, 256 pp, 9781921758638

The historical novel has always been characterised by a formative tension – the demands of history versus the demands of ... More

Portents everywhere

Gillian Dooley

Foal’s Bread
by Gillian Mears
Allen & Unwin, $32.99 pb, 360 pp, 9781742376295

Gillian Mears has been to death’s door and back. Her wonderful essay ‘Alive in Ant and Bee’ (2007) recounts the journey and ... More

Super feats of empathy

Nic Low

What the Family Needed
Steven Amsterdam
Sleepers Publishing, $24.95 pb, 284 pp, 9781742702117

Here is a cliché to start your day: superhuman feats of strength. You find them in disaster stories and war epics ... More

Degradation of the times

Jeffrey Poacher

The Magic of It
by Michael Wilding
Arcadia (Press On Series 8), $24.95 pb, 356 pp, 9781921875373

Declarations of loathing for the other members of one’s species tend to be tedious in reality but hilarious ... More

‘A writer is writing even when he’s not writing, maybe even more then, even if he never writes again.
Got it?
Class dismissed.’
(Morris Lurie, ‘On Not Writing’, in Hergesheimer Hangs In)

In Wild & Woolley: A Publishing Memoir (2011), Michael Wilding recalls: ‘Morris Lurie sent us a collect ... More

Beyond youth

Romy Ash

Cargo
by Jessica Au
Picador, $22.99 pb, 224 pp, 9781405040280

Jessica Au’s first novel, Cargo, is an arresting look at what it means to be young.

Au moves her story beyond the category of Y ... More

Elusive memory, silent death

Claudia Hyles

To Silence
by Subhash Jaireth
Puncher & Wattmann, $24 pb, 111 pp, 9781921450426

The voices of Subhash Jaireth’s three fictional autobiographies within To Silence are those of historical figu ... More

The best kind of character

Bec Kavanagh

A Pocketful of Eyes
by Lili Wilkinson
Allen & Unwin, $17.99 pb, 311 pp, 9781742376196

Beatrice May Ross (Bee) is a list-maker, an amateur detective, a taxidermy assistant, and a regular tee ... More