This week on the ABR Podcast, Patrick Flanery reviews The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant, edited by Garth Risk Hallberg. Gallant’s stories mostly appeared in The New Yorker from the 1950s to the 1990s. Indeed, she was one of its most frequent contributors, with the likes of John Cheever and John Updike. Nonetheless, her work has been under-appreciated – until now. Patrick Flanery writes that this collection seeks ‘to ensure that every serious reader knows precisely why one might wish to spend time in Gallant’s idiosyncratic and determinedly realist house of fiction.’ Flanery is the author of four novels, including Absolution, which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award. He is Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. Here her is with ‘A writer’s writer’s writer: Mavis Gallants neglected oeuvre’, which appears in the May issue of ABR.

This week, on the ABR Podcast, Catriona Menzies-Pike reviews The Cancel Culture Panic by Adrian Daub. Menzies-Pike examines Daub’s claim that fear of cancel culture is a US export – as ubiquitous as McDonald’s and Kentucky bourbon. She writes: ‘Cancel culture is now everywhere … What Daub does in this book is trace the origins of the cancel culture panic, registering its defining contradictions.’ Catriona Menzies-Pike was the Editor of the Sydney Review of Books between 2015 and 2023 and was awarded the Pascall Prize for arts criticism in 2023. Here is Catriona Menzies-Pike with ‘Little morality plays: Disingenuous angst over cancel culture’, published in the April issue of ABR.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Miles Pattenden reviews Hope: The autobiography by Pope Francis. It is not every day that a pope writes a tell-all. Pattenden explains: ‘Of Pope Francis’s predecessors, only that preening Renaissance man of letters Pius II Piccolomini contributed to the genre directly.’ Miles Pattenden specialises in the history of the Catholic Church and his books include Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa. Here is Miles Pattenden with ‘Barefoot in the snow: Of poetics and papacy’, published in the April issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Patrick Mullins reviews What’s the Big Idea?, edited by Anna Chang and Alice Grundy, and Age of Doubt, edited by Tracey Kirkland and Gavin Fang. In What’s the Big Idea? essayists suggest changes to combat the myriad crises – from violence against women to climate catastrophe – that Australia faces. The writers in Age of Doubt analyse the ways trust has been eroded in Australia, and how the country might restore it. Writes Mullins, ‘Time will tell whether Australians will take the opportunities presented’. Patrick Mullins is a writer and visiting fellow at the ANU’s National Centre of Biography. Here is Patrick Mullins with ‘Denial, obfuscation, defiance: Two earnest books on the challenges ahead’, published in the April issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Andrea Goldsmith reveals her unread books. These are those works, explains Goldsmith, that ‘you should have read and have always wanted to read – but haven’t.’ They are not, mind you, all books that she intends on reading: ‘I will go to my grave having not finished Ulysses, but even in my failure I am far from ignorant about the book. … because Ulysses is part of our cultural capital, I could converse about Ulysses more than adequately.’ Andrea Goldsmith is a Melbourne-based novelist and reviewer. Here is Andrea Goldsmith with ‘My Unread Books’, published in the March issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Ebony Nilsson unearths the letters that Robert Menzies received from the Australian public during the 1950s Petrov Affair. Letters included everything from warnings to exhalations of relief to expressions of concern for the Petrovs’ dog. Ebony Nilsson is a historian of migration and security during the Cold War and the author of Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West. Listen to ‘“Congratulations Bob”: The Petrov Affair and the Australian public’, published in the March issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, we bring you a special poetry feature. With Peter Rose’s imminent departure from Australian Book Review and the publication this month of his seventh poetry collection, Attention, Please! (Pitt Street Poetry), 18 poets and critics read from Peter Rose’s extensive body of work, dating back to 1990. Readers include Sarah Holland-Batt, Lisa Gorton, Stephen Regan, Morag Fraser, John Hawke, and Peter Rose himself, who reads a poem inspired by his late friend Peter Porter (pictured above).

This week on The ABR Podcast, Timothy J. Lynch reviews Reagan: His life and legend, by Max Boot. While there have Reagan biographies before, Lynch describes Max Boot’s as ‘the most readable’. Lynch writes: ‘The weight of the book, its ten-year writing span, its extensive interviews, its adulation from legacy media, all suggest the defining biography of the most important president of my lifetime. And yet, I ended my summer break in Boot’s company unconvinced.’ Timothy J. Lynch is Professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne and his latest book is In the Shadow of the Cold War: American foreign policy from George Bush Sr. to Donald Trump. Here is Timothy J Lynch with ‘Reagan’s nemesis? The most readable biography of Ronald Reagan’, published in the March issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature a short story from the ABR Archive. The story, ‘A Body of Water’ by Else Fitzgerald, was commended in the 2011 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story prize. It opens in the desolate, quiet space of a former steel town on the Franklin River. Fitzgerald writes: ‘The town hunkers on the southernmost tip of a cruel spit of land stretching down into the Bite, surrounded by the cold ocean.’ Listen to Else Fitzgerald with ‘A Body of Water’, first published in ABR in 2012 and now part of ABR’s extensive digital archive going back to 1978 – all available to subscribers.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Christopher Allen reviews James Fairfax: Portrait of a collector in eleven objects by Alexander Edward Gilly. James Fairfax, who was born in 1933 and died in 2017, was born into the ‘greatest press dynasty Australia had yet seen’. Christopher Allen is the national art critic for The Australian. Listen to Christopher Allen’s ‘“Subject to his birth”: The biography of a prince’, published in the January-February issue of ABR.