All posts in category Literary, Classic

Short Stories Roundup Jan-April 2013

As there are fewer reviews of collections of short stories, and individual short stories, than in other genres, we’ve scheduled the roundups of these for every few months.  However, in the nearly-four months of this year, there have been 38 reviews of short stories, which is half of the number reviewed last year!  It’s great to see so much enthusiasm for the form.

Like-a-house-on-fire-kennedyOf the books reviewed, the most popular was Cate Kennedy’s Like a House on Fire, with five reviews.  This book has already done well in the prize lists, with a shortlisting for the Stella Prize, and longlistings for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and the Kibble award for established women writers.  Kathy from Play, Eat, Live, Learn  ‘connected deeply with Kennedy’s stories and her characters,’ finding them ‘unbearably moving, some thought-provoking, some peppered with humour (although on the whole, these are not funny stories) but none heavy handed or contrived.’  Janine of Resident Judge, who isn’t a fan of the genre, became a convert (at least with this collection), writing that ‘Every single one of [the stories] is memorable, and for me that’s a big thing.  All too often I find myself reading the next story in a collection because the last one has been too insubstantial.’  Denise on Goodreads found the stories easy to read, but their subject matter was hard to stomach as so much of it was about loss and lack.  I also enjoyed the collection, and reviewed it here.  If Not, Read, who is familiar with Kennedy’s work, found the collection inconsistent, commenting that ‘Kennedy’s skillful writing comes through in some stories but several pieces fall well short of her usual precise story-telling ability.’  It’s always refreshing to read a variety of responses to a work, as literature is fiercely subjective and reviews should reflect this.

inheritedOther collections of short literary fiction included reviews of individual stories from Barbara Baynton’s collection Bush Studies.  Sue of Whispering Gums analysed Baynton’s masterful use of the Gothic in ‘A Dreamer’, and of her use of humour as a screen for the less savoury aspects of early bush life, such as misogyny, in ‘Scrammy ‘and’.  Kate Rizzetti penned a review of Fire, edited by Western Australian academic Delys Bird, and referred to it as an ‘important piece of work, reminding us that we live in a dangerous time in our history and we are less in control of our surroundings than we believe ourselves to be.’  The work also needs to be consumed slowly, she writes, like very dark chocolate.  Marisa wrote that Amanda Curtin, in Inherited, ‘will drag you into the landscape of her stories,’ while the writing in Jess Huon’s The Dark Wet was the loveliest I’ve read in ages.

asymmetrySpeculative Fiction was the most popular genre, making up nearly half of the reviews (17 in total).  A number of books in the Twelve Planets series, which consists of twelve books of speculative fiction by Australian women writers, were covered.  Kaaron Warren’s Through Splintered Walls, which consists of three short stories and a novella, was reviewed by  Tsana. She describes the short stories as ‘almost the kind of creepy tales you might tell around a camp fire at night’ whereas the novella was unsettling, and seems to feature a cat food factory grinder (I’m glad I got the heads up on that one).  Sean also reviewed the collection, and recommended it to those who enjoy ‘good, understated horror, horror in the everyday’.  Meanwhile, Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Love and Romanpunk was reviwed by Mel at Subversive Reader, who has found the Twelve Planets series to be ‘a great way to be introduced to Australian speculative fiction.’  Asymmetry by Thoraiya Dyer is the most recently published book, contributing to the Twelve Planets series’ extremely positive reception.  Alex from Randomly Yours describes the theme of its stories as ‘a lack of balance, especially in power; sometimes, also, a lack of balance in an individual’s life, making them particularly vulnerable to direct manipulation or simply life’s vicissitudes’ while Tsana found the stories complex and innovative, dealing with different ways of belonging.

Green Monkey DreamsOther speculative fiction titles that were reviewed include two by the prolific Isobelle Carmody: Green Monkey Dreams (which Mel at MelReviewsBooks really enjoyed and Metro Winds (also reviewed by Mel), while fairy stories and myths also made an appearance in Prickle Moon by Juliet Marillier, reviewed by Stephanie, and in Fairy Tales for Freya by Georgina Ann Taylor, reviewed by Lynxie at Goodreads.

Valentine's DatesRomance also featured in reviews of Christmas Wishes and Valentine’s Dates by Lauren at The Australian Bookshelf, who enjoyed both of them.  Lauren also reviewed Room Service, which ‘didn’t quite dish up what was on the menu.’  Sally from Oz found Loretta Hill’s One Little White Lie ‘fast paced, light and entertaining read,’ while ShelleyRae from Book’d Out reviewed Margaret Lynette Sharp’s Long and Short Australian Stories, describing it as a ‘congenial, mellow short story collection and an easy read for a quiet evening.’

There were quite a few other collections reviewed that I don’t have the space to refer to here.  If you’d like to see what else is being reviewed, or if you need some ideas for reading, head over to the 2013 Short Stories page.

About Me

JessI’m Jessica White, a writer and researcher.  I have a PhD from the University of London and have published two novels with Penguin, A Curious Intimacy (2007) and Entitlement (2012).  My short stories have been published in Overland, Island, Southerly and the Review of Australian Fiction.  You can find more information about me at my website.  I’m also on Twitter @ladyredjess.

7 Comments
by ladyredjess on April 29, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Book review, Literary, Classic, Romance, Short stories, Speculative, Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Science Fiction

Posted by ladyredjess on April 29, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/04/29/short-stories-roundup-jan-april-2013/

Announcement of the Kibble and Dobbie Awards longlist

Today the long lists for the Kibble award, for a work by an established woman writer, and the Dobbie award, for the first published work by a woman writer, were released.  This is the first time in the awards’ 21-year history that a long list has been announced, the intention being, as Chairperson and author Bridgid Rooney says, to ensure its writers ‘get the recognition they deserve’.  In light of this, it seems worthwhile to flag which books on the longlist have been reviewed in the Australian Women Writers Challenge, and those which readers might like to pick up before the shortlist is announced on 5th June, and the winners on 24th July.

The Kibble Literary Award Long List:

Questions-of-Travel-194-297James reviewed Michelle de Krester’s fourth novel, Questions of Travel, in the Newtown Review of Books, noting her attempts to defy the criticism that Australian literary fiction lacks ambition with ‘a palimpsest of themes’ that include ‘colonialism, ways of knowing, the soft incursion of technology, migration, tourism, the numbing bite of terror and the mean coinage of tolerance’.  However, as the work progressed, he found its ‘declarative prose’ had the effect of boxing in the main characters, Ravi and Laura, and suggested that the author was providing answers to questions, rather than leaving these for the reader to work out.  Kathy, of Play, Eat, Learn, Live, who has undertaken the admirable task of reviewing all books on the Stella Prize’s longlist, found the book took a while to get into, but appreciated the author’s ‘calm, measured, almost somnolent voice.’

beloved-faulknerAnnah Faulkner’s The Beloved has been reviewed by Lauren at The Australian Bookshelf.  As a fellow Queensland writer with an interest in art and disability, Lauren’s review prompted me to order this book from the library, and I hope that it finds other readers too.

Chloe Hooper’s psychological thriller, The Engagement, has a number of admirers, including Bree at allthebooksicanread, Monique at Write Note Reviews, Rebecca at Lit-icism and Kate at booksaremyfavouriteandbest.  Some, such as Caitlin at GoodReads, were more ambivalent, and her entertaining review is worth a read.  I also found the book a bit of a let-down (despite being a fan of Hooper’s work), for its well-crafted tension seemed to simply dissipate.

my-hundred-loversSusan Johnson’s sensuous My Hundred Lovers elicited a range of delicious responses.  Lara at This Charming Mum described it as ‘deeply moving’ and ‘blunt and unapologetic in its discussion of the unloveliness of the human body and the awkwardness of self-discovery,’ Linda at the Newtown Review of Books writes that the novel ‘remind[s] us of the wonder of our bodies simply drawing breath,’ Kate at The Truth be Told  consumed the book ‘with a passion I usually reserve for expensive wine’, Janine at Resident Judge found it ‘a beautifully written book, expanding love and sexuality to encompass the whole of life and being human,’ while Debra posted a detailed review on the AWW blog and Marg wrote up a readalong hosted by Bree of allthebooksicanread.  I also loved the novel’s concept and its absolutely gorgeous writing, and have long been a fan of Johnson’s oeuvre, but was a little let down by the ending.

Cate Kennedy’s book of short stories, Like A House On Fire, was referred to as a ‘hit-and-miss collection’ by ifnotread, while Kathy ‘whipped through it at a rapid pace, finding it not only beautiful, meaningful and moving but also, not to put too fine a point on it, a bloody good read.’  Janine at Resident Judge was, up until the point of reading this, quite opposed to short-stories, but found herself writing, ‘I don’t think that I’ve ever enjoyed a collection of short stories so much.’  It also prompted Denise at GoodReads to go back to Kennedy’s other works.

Patti Miller’s search for her ancestors in her non-fiction work, The Mind of a Thief , was reviewed by Anna Maria Dell’oso at the Newtown Review of Books, Mel at Migratory Mel and Deborah at GoodReads.  In general, readers seemed to find themselves unsettled by the book, sometimes questioning its style and delivery, and I wonder if any novel about belonging in Australia will have this effect.

an-opening-radokStephanie Radok’s collection of essays, An Opening: Twelve Love Stories about Art, was intelligently reviewed by Kathy, who described it as  ‘telescop[ing] unevenly between [Radok’s] personal reflections and recollections and the wider, more philosophical musings that she engages in with respect to art (particularly indigenous art).’  Radok’s book is on my desk, and I’m planning to review it this weekend.

Mateship with Birds, Carrie Tiffany’s second novel, has been widely and, for the most part, positively, reviewed.  I refer readers to Paula Grunseit’s summary of this in her wrap-up of the Miles Franklin longlist.

Dobbie Literary Award Long List:

Paula also noted six reviews of Romy Ash’s Floundering in her roundup of the Stella Prize longlist in February, and mentions Courtney Collins’ The Burial in this same post.  Adding to this is a review by Kathy, who describes the narrator as telling ‘the story of the bones of the earth, of the tragedy of wanting to live even when life is pain, of the bush and the struggles it holds.’

Jessie Cole’s Darkness on the Edge of Town was reviewed by Lisa Walker, who makes the interesting comment that this is a ‘you’ll read quickly and then wish you’d read slowly because you don’t want it to end.’   Meanwhile, for Shelleyrae, the prose created ‘a haunting melody of loneliness, grief and desire.’

finding-jasperLynne Leonhardt’s Finding Jasper was reviewed by Amanda Curtin, who knew the novel when it was a manuscript, and by Elizabeth at Devoted Eclectic.  Elizabeth found a resonance with the flawed, female protagonist, and felt the book was haunting, the way music might be.

Jacqueline Wright’s Red Dirt Talking and Lily Chan’s Toyo: A memoir, haven’t yet been reviewed for the AWW Challenge.  It would be great to hear some responses to these before the shortlist is announced.

Why do we need awards for women writers?

The short answer is: to redress bias.  This is the bias that leads to more books with male authors being reviewed than female authors, which is catalogued by the annual Vida statistics.  It’s often an unconscious bias, which means that many take the view that male dominance of our culture is universal, when in fact it’s a skewed perspective because women haven’t been able, or even permitted, to contribute their voices.  Even the more well-read among us haven’t been conscious of this attitude, as Elizabeth Lhuede writes in her account of establishing the AWW challenge.

For the long answer, I refer readers to Deborah Copaken Kogan’s eye-opening (and, to continue the bodily metaphors, jaw-dropping) account of her publishing history in which she was denied recognition and had to fight earnestly to be treated as her male peers were.  As she writes, ‘There’s a reason J.K. Rowling’s publishers demanded that she use initials instead of “Joanne”: it’s the same reason Mary Anne Evans used the pen name George Eliot; the same reason Robert Southey, then England’s poet laureate, wrote to Charlotte Brontë: “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.”‘  It’s also the same reason why Miss Nita Kibble (for whom the award is named by her niece Nita Dobbie) was successful in her application for the position of junior assistant at the Public Library of NSW in the 1800s: her signature was taken for a man’s.

Later, she became the first woman to be appointed a librarian with the State Library of New South Wales and held the position of Principal Research Officer from 1919 until her retirement.  Had her writing been taken for a woman’s, she would never have had the opportunity to offer as much as she did to the library profession.

Until a woman’s name on a book means that she’ll be read with the same seriousness as a man’s, we need the Stella, the Barbara Jefferis, the Kibble, and the Dobbie to increase awareness of, and the audience for, Australian women’s writing.  I’m damn pleased for every writer on this longlist, and hope that many more readers will find their books because of it, both in the lead-up to and the aftermath of the award ceremony.

About Me

JessI’m Jessica White, a novelist and researcher, and I’ve been deaf since age 4 when I lost most of my hearing from meningitis.  I have a PhD from the University of London and have published two novels with Penguin, A Curious Intimacy (2007), about botany and lesbianism, and Entitlement (2012), about Native Title and grief.  A Curious Intimacy was shortlisted for the Dobbie award in 2008.  You can find more information about me at my website.  I’m also on Twitter @ladyredjess.

18 Comments
by ladyredjess on April 11, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Book review, Contemporary fiction, Genre bias, History, memoir, biography, Indigenous literature, Literary, Classic, News, Nonfiction - general, Prize winner, Short stories

Posted by ladyredjess on April 11, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/04/11/announcement-of-the-kibble-and-dobbie-awards-longlist/

March 2013 Roundup: Classics and Literary

The year is hotting up and it’s starting to get serious here in Literary-and-Classics land. Not only were significantly more reviews posted in March but the awards season is well underway. The Miles Franklin Longlist was announced in March (and reported on this blog by Paula Grunseit) and the inaugural Stella Awards will be announced in April. All of the Stella shortlisted books have been reviewed for the challenge, but one of the eight Miles Franklin nominated books – Jacqueline Wright’s Red dirt talking – has yet to be reviewed. (I do have it and will do my best to read it in time, but if anyone is looking for a book to read, think about this one!) By the way, did you notice that eight of the ten books long listed for the Miles Franklin award are by women writers. Interesting huh!

Some March numbers

Thirty-nine book reviews were tagged as Classics and/or Literary, nearly 40% more than last month. Well done, participants! Here are some overall observations:

  • The 39 reviews were posted by 30 reviewers, with one reviewer, writereaderly, posting 4 reviews. She’s a reviewing machine!
  • 34 of the reviews were classified as Fiction, 5 as Non-fiction, 4 as Poetry, and there were 2 anthologies which are edited by women, but include male authors. (These numbers add up to more than 39 because books can be allocated to multiple categories).
  • 29 authors were reviewed with several receiving multiple reviews: Kate Forsyth (6), Karen Foxlee (3), and Jesse Blackadder, Patti Miller and Dorothy Porter (2 each).
  • Four indigenous authors were reviewed – Larissa Behrendt, Melissa Lucashenko, Jeanine Leane and Tara June Winch. (Noted in the spirit of  Affirmative Action!)

Classics

Henry Handel Richardson, Maurice Guest

Courtesy: Text Publishing

Two reviews were classified as a classic by their reviewers. Funnily, one was by the same author as our February classic, Henry Handel Richardson, but for a different book, Maurice Guest. The reviewer, John (Musings of a Literary Dilettante), says that the prose is sublime, even though a little overblown and times. It’s a story of “obsession and erotic love” and is set in Europe. John concludes that:

It’s not Australian in any particular way, so I can’t call it an ‘Australian classic’. It is, instead, that greater thing, a realist European novel of the highest calibre, a forgotten classic perhaps, but a classic nonetheless.

The other classic was Miles Franklin’s All that swagger, reviewed by Canberra’s Dani who has sworn to only read books related to Canberra this year. Miles Franklin grew up in the Canberra area and Dani quotes a gorgeous description in which Franklin describes the landscape as having “a necklace of ranges beautiful as opals and sapphires”. The book, she feels, is about how landscape has changed Australian character and culture.

March’s most popular books

Kate Forsyth, The wild girlThe book which garnered the most reviews this month (6) is one I’ve never heard of, Kate Forsyth’s The wild girl. It’s an historical romance set in 19th century Germany about the Grimm Brothers. It restores to the historical record (if fiction can be said to do that!) the story of the woman who provided many of the tales the Grimms collected. Sally from Oz loved it, saying it:

must not be missed; it is a powerful story about storytelling, about love in the harshest of conditions, overcoming adversity. It is also about the cruelty of war, the cruelty by those who should protect you, deprivation and obedience to parents no matter what. It is a strong story and the abuse is handled delicately and with compassion. The pages just flew by; I did not get bogged down once.

Shelleyrae, like Sally, comments on how well Forsyth blended her historical research with fiction, and Stephanie says the “prose is utterly beautiful”.

Karen Foxlee’s second novel, The midnight dress, was only published this year, but we already have four reviews, three of them this month. It’s a suspense story about a young girl who goes missing on the night of the Harvest Parade. Amanda suggests that although it’s labelled adult fiction it would work well for young adults, while Shelleyrae, who describes the book as “rural Australian Gothic”, argues that while the protagonist is teenage, “it exceeds the boundaries of young adult fiction”. The third reviewer, Nicole, also highly recommends it.

I’ve just picked out the two books which received the most reviews to feature this month but you can check all the reviews by clicking this link.

As for the non-fiction…

Patti Miller, The mind of a thiefThere were 5 reviews for non-fiction, including two for Patti Miller’s memoir, The mind of a thief, which was longlisted for the Stella Prize, but missed the shortlist. It’s about Miller’s return to the country of her childhood, an area now known as belonging to Wiradjuri people, and her exploration of relationships to land – for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. She also explores the possibility that she may have Wiradjuri blood. Mel had some concerns with Miller’s voice but would I think agree with Anna Maria Dell’oso’s assessment that the book is:

a muted, thoughtful journey of identity, part of the anxious white Australian search for belonging and authenticity that has underscored our culture since 1788.

Dell’oso also has some minor reservations, but both reviewers clearly think it is well worth reading. I suspect it’s a case of a tricky subject that is hard to get right. The important thing is that we keep trying.

Other reviews can be found by clicking the link provided above.

About Me

I’m Whispering Gums and I read, review and blog about (mostly) literary fiction. It was reading Jane Austen when I was 14 years old that turned me onto literary fiction/classics, which is why I am here today doing this round-up! Little did Jane know what she started!

My love of Aussie literature started with Banjo Paterson’s ballads and Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians in my childhood. But, I didn’t really discover Australian women’s writing until the 1980s when I “met” and fell in love with Elizabeth Jolley, Thea Astley, Olga Masters, Helen Garner and Kate Grenville. Ever since then I have made sure to include a good percentage of Australian (and other) women writers in my reading diet.

2 Comments
by whisperinggums on April 10, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Literary, Classic, Poetry
Tagged ,

Posted by whisperinggums on April 10, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/04/10/march-2013-roundup-classics-and-literary/

February 2013 Roundup: Classics and Literary

Well, here it is March already and I’m bringing you the February roundup of reviews in both the Literary Fiction/Non-fiction and Classic areas. Paula Grunseit, who is responsible for the Classics area, will be posting on some special topics. Adding Classics to my area is a comfortable fit and, anyhow, only one book was classified as a classic by its reviewer this month!

The numbers game

In February, 28 book reviews were tagged as Classics and/or Literary, one more than last month, and again they are broad-ranging. Here are this month’s overall observations:

  • The 28 reviews were posted by 21 reviewers, with 2 reviewers, Phillip A Ellis and Tarla  Kramer posting 3 reviews each.
  • One review, by Le Koala Lit, was written in French!
  • 18 of the reviews were classified as Fiction, 7 as Non-fiction, and 7 as Poetry. (I know this doesn’t add up to 28 but that’s because reviewers can apply multiple categories).
  • 24 authors were reviewed with 3 receiving multiple reviews: Lisa Jacobson (3), Helen Garner (2), and Toni Jordan (2)
  • As in January, 75% of the reviews were for works published in the 21st century, with the rest being from the 20th century.

THE Classic

Henry Handel Richardson's The getting of wisdomJust one review was classified as a classic by its reviewer, and that was Henry Handel Richardson’s bildungsroman The getting of wisdom, reviewed by ifnotread. She (I think ifnotread is a she) identified with poor blue-stocking Laura and the difficulties she faced in trying to fit in. But what I loved most about her review was her concluding comment about enjoying classics over contemporary books:

With the classics and fiction such as The Getting Of Wisdom, I feel like I’m on a sturdy boat, basking in the sun, relaxed, arms stretched out, and enjoying the ride.

This was a nice ride.

I look forward to seeing more reviews of classics from ifnotread.

That diverse bunch we call Literary Fiction

Jacobson, The sunlit zoneThe other seventeen fiction reviews cover a broader range of styles and genres than the January bunch did. While most (8) are for contemporary novels, there are also reviews for two historical fiction novels, two crime/mystery novels, and three reviews for Lisa Jacobson’s speculative fiction verse novel, The sunlit zone. As it’s the most reviewed book of the month in my category and was recently longlisted for the Stella Prize, let’s start with it.

Jessica Wilkinson makes the comment in her review that the Australian poetry scene “boasts a rich and varied tradition of verse novel writing” and she gives examples such as Dorothy Porter’s The monkey’s mask and Les Murray’s Fredy Neptune. I’d add a favourite of mine, Geoff Page’s The scarring. She comments that while they are diverse in poetic approach, they exhibit a distinctly Australian “tongue” and suggests this may help their accessibility. Meanwhile, Tsana went out of her comfort zone to read this book, and was:

surprised how readable The Sunlit Zone was, given that it’s poetry of which I don’t usually read much. If you’re wondering, it’s not rhyming verse, although there are a few occasional scattered rhymes.

However, the ending initially disappointed her, though she suggests that may be because it’s not squarely in the speculative fiction genre. Bronwyn sees the verse novel as “literary fiction in its most evolved state”. She writes that the book:

makes music with language, but that linguistic music resonates with meaning as well—the verse tells a compelling story, with developed and engaging characters and plot lines. Some literary fiction I have read has not held me with the narrative. I have enjoyed the vividness of the writing, but couldn’t care less what happened next. The Sunlit Zone, however, is full of suspense.

This is a book I need to check out.

The other book to receive more than one review is Toni Jordan’s Nine days. Told in nine voices and covering several decades, it’s an ambitious novel. Lisa Walker was expecting not to like Jordan’s departure in this novel from romantic comedy, but she was impressed, saying that

by the end of the book, I felt satisfied with having met such a diverse array of characters and this deepened the impact of the final story when it came.

Like Lisa, Natasha was initially concerned about the nine voices being able to provide enough connection with the reader but she too was won over, describing it as one of the best books she’d read in a long time. I would concur with Lisa and Natasha and say, go read it!

Two books that have featured in recent literary awards were reviewed – Eva Hornung’s Dog boy, which won the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, and Favel Parrett’s Past the shallows which was shortlisted for several awards in 2012 and was positively reviewed by Jonathan Shaw. I just have to quote Shannon on Dog boy, though, because this is exactly how I feel about it:

I almost don’t know what to say about this book. It’s powerful and thought-provoking, tragic and wise. It speaks so loudly and clearly and beautifully for itself, what is left for me to say but Read It? I don’t understand why is hasn’t won more awards – it won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2010, but for a work of this scope and depth and sheer literary talent, I can’t imagine why the Miles Franklin and Booker etc. didn’t come knocking, too.

Madeleine St John, The women in blackSurely this book will become a classic …

For the full list of Literary/Classic reviews to date, click this link. You’ll find reviews of such books as Helen Garner’s The spare room, Marion Halligan’s The apricot colonel and P.A. O’Reilly’s The fine colour of rust, among many others. For this post though I would like to finish on Le Koala Lit’s review of Madeleine St John’s The women in black. She praises it for its readability and its evocation of its era:

Madeleine St John reconstitue l’ambiance de ces années 50 à merveille et surtout les préoccupations des femmes de cette époque.

If you want to practise your French, you know where to go …

What about the rest?

Elizabeth Hodgson, Skin paintingThe rest of the reviews are for non-fiction and poetry. These are likely to be covered by other round-ups so I won’t spend too much time on them here. One of the poetry reviews is Magdalena Ball’s of Jennifer Maiden’s Liquid nitrogen in which she praises Maiden for “the utterly female way in which the domestic, the political, the personal, and the universal are woven together so that there’s almost no distinction”. Another is Phillip Ellis’s review of indigenous poet Elizabeth Hodgson’s Skin painting which won the David Unaipon Award. He writes that:

It is what the internet magazine rabbit calls nonfiction poetry, poetry arising out of and engaging with the poet’s lived experience of the world and her life.

This intrigues me as much of the poetry I’ve reviewed on my blog seems to be like this, and yet nowhere have I seen those books described as “nonfiction poetry”. Perhaps they are and I just didn’t know! Anyhow, Ellis admires the work for “its language and style, its candour and its avoidance of the worst excesses of confessionalism”.

The Resident Judge reviewed Gillian Bouras’ memoir-or-is-it-fiction, A stranger here, which I’ve also read, though eons ago. Based on her time as a wife and mother in Greece, the book explores the challenges Bouras (or her book alter-ego Irene) faces in dealing with her mother-in-law and her friend. The Judge had mixed feelings, asking:

While identifying with it, I did become a bit impatient at the ‘stuckness’ of the narrator in this book and was relieved that it didn’t go on for much longer, even though I was enjoying reading it.  I do wonder if  the author takes the  adage “Write what you know” a little too seriously: can any one person’s ordinary life carry the burden of so many novels???

Readers of my blog know that I regularly read Jane Austen. I love to hear what books or authors, if any, other readers go back to. For Tarla it’s Kate Llewellyn’s The waterlily, a book I’ve often meant to read but now feel inspired to. The Waterlily is a journal, and Tarla says she reads it pretty much every year, “mainly when life is really tough”. She says its “emphasis is on small joys, and the prose is as poetic as a good poet can get away with”. She calls it “literary valium”!

And that, I think, is as good a place as any on which to conclude this roundup. But first, here’s a question: what book, if any, do you come back to again and again, to soothe your soul?

About Me

I’m Whispering Gums and I read, review and blog about (mostly) literary fiction. It was reading Jane Austen when I was 14 years old that turned me on to reading literary fiction/classics, which is why I am here today doing this round-up! Little did Jane know what she started!

My love of Aussie literature started with Banjo Paterson’s ballads and Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians in my childhood. But, I didn’t really discover Australian women’s writing until the 1980s when I “met” and fell in love with Elizabeth Jolley, Thea Astley, Olga Masters, Helen Garner and Kate Grenville. Ever since then I have made sure to include a good percentage of Australian (and other) women writers in my reading diet.

2 Comments
by whisperinggums on March 13, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Literary, Classic, Poetry

Posted by whisperinggums on March 13, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/03/13/february-2013-roundup-classics-and-literary/

January 2013 Roundup: Diversity

Reviews of books about diversity have got off to a good start this year, with some twenty reviews in January on books either by Indigenous authors, or canvassing themes of Aboriginality, gender and sexuality, disability, and race.

home-larissa-behrendtThere were a few reviews of books by Indigenous authors in January, and more have been coming through this month, which is fabulous. Writereaderly reviewed Larissa Behrendt’s 2004 novel, Home.  Her reaction to the book was ambivalent, finding the framing-story at the beginning ‘heavy-handed’ and ‘infuriating’.  As she continued reading, however, the reviewer became absorbed in the work, commenting that ‘the stories of Garibooli’s kidnapping from her family in the early 1900s, and the trajectories of her children and grandchildren, are diverse, well-informed and emotive without being overly emotional’.  She also suspects it was a ‘successful prize-winner because of a wee bit of white-man guilt.’  Getting the correct balance between style and subject matter is an interesting topic, and one which I hope to write about later down the track, and at least, as she concludes, ‘the awards got more people to read this novel.’  Behrendt’s second novel, Legacy, was also reviewed by Maree Kimberley at GoodReads, who described it as ‘unputdownable’.

Paisley lone protestorThere were several books that addressed Indigenous themes or people, but which were not necessarily written by Indigenous authors.  I was delighted to see a review of Fiona Paisley’s The Lone Protestor, about the life of Anthony Martin Fernando, an Indigenous man who left Australia in the early 20th Century to protest against the injustices done to his people.  Yvonne has written a highly articulate summary of the work, noting the difficulties that Fiona encountered in undertaking her research because Fernando moved across several countries in Europe, and the archives of marginalised groups such as Indigenous people have not been kept because they weren’t considered to be important.  In the case of Indigenous people as well (although not necessarily in Fernando’s instance), their emphasis on oral storytelling means that their history is passed down through voice rather than written records.

secret-riverKate Grenville’s trilogy on the settlement of Sydney and early white-black relations continues to be reviewed.  Buggalugz found the violence of the first of these novels, The Secret River, to be quite confronting, and believed ‘this was probably Grenville’s intention when it came to writing about this aspect of our history; to appeal to the conscience of every person who reads this story.’  Meanwhile, John from Musings of a Literary Dilettante, penned an in-depth review of book three, Sarah Thornhill, and included the interesting link to one of his ancestors who features in the book.  He countered many of the criticisms of the novel, one of which was that the Indigenous people were portrayed as passive.  John notes that ‘The aboriginal stable hands at Thornhill’s farm are indeed meek, yet this is plausible because their lives have been so reduced by working for Thornhill. They must know of Thornhill’s past. To work for such a man would cause a reduction of spirit that we can’t fathom.’  I can’t help but wonder, however, if it is not the task of a novelist, particularly those writing on Indigenous issues, to help their readers understand this ‘reduction of spirit’ (a fine phrase), particularly given the antipathy of many white people to Indigenous people and their losses.

Same, but little bit diff'rentReviews of childrens’ books featuring Indigenous themes include Kylie Dunstan’s Same, but little bit diff’rent, which is reviewed by Subversive Reader (scroll down to reach the review).  She adored this book about Normie from the Top End.  The Barrumbi Kids by Leonie Norrington was reviewed by Narelle M Harris, who spoke highly of its believable representation of kids crossing the cultural divide.

Subversive Reader also reviewed Love Like Water, Meme McDonald’s young adult/adult novel about three characters in Alice Springs.  These include Jay, a successful DJ in Sydney whose urban background differs strongly to that of the Indigenous people in Alice, and who encounters pockets of racism in different contexts.

Tsana’s reviews of the The Fallen Moon series by K.J. Taylor, which includes The Dark Griffin, The Griffin’s Flight and The Griffin’s War, demonstrate how fantasy can also be used to illustrate racism by transposing it into an imaginary world.  In the world of The Dark Griffin, the protagonist Arran is ostracised because of his race even though, as Tsana notes with appreciation, ‘the racism was not based on skin colour’, but rather because he looked slightly different.

eonFantasy is also used to explore issues of gender and disability.  Alison Goodman’s Eon and Eona, reviewed by Nalini at Dark Matter fan zine, follows the protagonist Eon, a girl who masquerades as a boy eunuch to get ahead.  Both books also feature disability which, as Nalini writes, is usually healed with magic in the fantasy genre.  As she rightly points out, this is a little convenient, for ‘in real life people with disabilities don’t get healed’.  She found that Goodman redeems herself by having Eona adjust to her lame body (caused by a badly set broken hip).   I really enjoyed Nalini’s discussions of this issue and, as with her, I’d like to see more realistic representations of characters functioning with their disability in fantasy.  These two books and their themes were also reviewed last year by Tsana.

alex as wellOther portrayals of gender are examined in Alyssa Brugmann’s Alex as Well, a young adult novel reviewed by Danielle (and also mentioned by Amanda in her January wrap up of non-speculative YA fiction).  She was impressed with the book, writing that ‘Putting yourself into the shoes of a transgendered youth is no mean feat, but Brugman accomplishes the seemingly impossible’ and, at the same time, fulfils the important role of creating stories about transgendered youth. As with other young people struggling to define who they are, they need positive stories and representations of themselves, particularly given their high suicide rate.  Meanwhile, Marisa came across a book by Marj McRae titled Not a Man, featuring a eunuch.  Although, she says, it isn’t a book for the faint-hearted, after a while the reader becomes ‘dragged in’.  I have never read a book featuring a eunuch and I, too, was intrigued, not least because of Marisa’s comment that ‘The relationships Shuki has with people are odd to say the least, mostly because as an eunuch, relationships work out very differently’.

Kate Grenville, Sarah ThornhillOn a final note, the Stella Prize longlist has just been released (see Paula’s post at AWW for commentary), reminding us of the need to champion writing by women, as well as that of minorities who do not receive the recognition they deserve.  Sometimes this recognition is mislaid due to marketing by publishers, an issue flagged by John in his review of Sarah Thornhill.  As he notes, the hardback edition features the back of a woman’s head as she looks towards a sepia-coloured river, while the soft cover is of a black and white image of the sea crashing against the cliffs.  John wonders why the more ‘feminine’ cover was changed, as he writes: ‘Although I’d like to say a man wouldn’t worry about such things, I’d say that many would. It’s not one I’m particularly drawn to. I have no idea whether this was done on purpose—to market the book toward readers of what is derisively termed ‘women’s fiction’ (which outsells ‘literary fiction’).’

These comments echo those made by Jane Gleeson-White in her Overland essay on ‘The Year of Australian Women Writers’, in which she compares the reception of Grenville’s first novel, The Secret River, with Sarah Thornhill.  The third novel, she observes, doesn’t seem to have received the same level of critical attention as the first although, in her opinion, Sarah Thornhill was a finer novel.  On contemplating the reasons for this, she comes to the issue of voice:

Grenville has conjured from nowhere, almost, with very few archival records of early nineteenth-century women’s voices, the vivid voice of an early Australian colonial girl, woman, lover, wife, mother. The novel is told in the first person, from the constrained, socially restricted, uneducated viewpoint of a girl. Does such a voice carry weight in our broader Australian literary culture? Not much, it seems. Or not as much as a third person account of Sarah Thornhill’s pioneering, nation-making father, the protagonist of The Secret River.

Huon Dark WetIn the ensuing comments on this article (which add complexity to Jane’s commentary), Emmett Stinson noted that at the Australian Book Industry Awards, Sarah Thornhill won in the ‘General Fiction’ category, rather than the ‘Literary Fiction’ category.  The prevalence of such marketing and pigeon-holing indicates the necessity of the Stella Prize and the Australian Women Writers Challenge, which encourage readers to become more savvy, to recognise that their reading choices are sometimes guided by marketing and culture.  It would be marvellous if, as I mentioned in my review of Jess Huon’s The Dark Wet, a person’s skin colour, sexual orientation, body make-up or gender didn’t package them into checklist-like boxes.  However, the day in which we are all seen as equal is sadly a long way off, and until then, these considered reviews on the voices of diverse people are necessary — and wonderfully interesting — reading.

                                                                                                                          

About Me

Photo JWI’m Jessica White, a novelist and researcher, and I’ve been deaf since age 4 when I lost most of my hearing from meningitis.  I have a PhD from the University of London and have published two novels with Penguin, A Curious Intimacy (2007), about botany and lesbianism, and Entitlement (2012), about Native Title and grief.  You can find more information about me at my website.  I’m also on Twitter @ladyredjess.

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by ladyredjess on February 23, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Book review, Children's, Contemporary fiction, Diversity, History, memoir, biography, Indigenous literature, Literary, Classic, Uncategorized, Young Adult

Posted by ladyredjess on February 23, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/02/23/january-2013-roundup-diversity/

January 2013 Roundup: Classics and Literary

Welcome to 2013 to all you Australian Women Writers Challenge participants. And lurkers! We welcome you too! I will be bringing you over the year, regular round-ups of reviews in the Literary fiction/non-fiction area. Paula Grunseit, who is responsible for the Classics area, has recently posted a couple of special articles (Indie Book Awards Shortlist and Sleeping Beauties), and so, by negotiation, we are letting her off the hook and I’m including Classics in my round-up!

Who likes Stats? I do ….

Some 27 book reviews tagged as Classics and/or Literary were posted in January. They represent a pretty broad church – which is the nature of this particular beast and what makes doing this round-up such fun for me. Here are some observations, for what they’re worth:

  • The 27 reviews were posted by 18 reviewers, with 6 reviewers being responsible for just over half of the reviews.
  • 11 of the reviews were also categorised as Contemporary, 7 as Historical fiction, 4 as Non-fiction, and 3 as Classics.
  • 24 authors were reviewed with 2 receiving multiple reviews: Kate Grenville (3) and Barbara Baynton (2)
  • Over 75% of the reviews were for works published in the 21st century, with the rest being from the 20th century.
  • At least two of the reviewers, James Tierney and the Literary Dilettante are men. In fact, the Literary Dilettante said at the beginning of the year that he considered confining all his reading this year to Australian women, but probably won’t go quite that far. However, this is going to be his major focus and to date all the reviews on his blog this year have been for Australian women writers. That doesn’t sound very dilettantish to me but I’m not complaining!

Let’s start with the Classics

Ruth Park Harp in the south

Ruth Park’s timeless novel

This is easy as there are only three of them. There will always be arguments about what defines a classic so I’m going to circumvent that issue and just let the reviewers decide – this time anyhow. I don’t promise that we’ll always go easily!

One of the three reviewed classics was for Ruth Park’s wonderful The Harp in the South (1948). If you are taking part in the challenge and haven’t yet read this, add it to your list. It’s a must. Our reviewer, writereaderly, says this:

Excellent to read in terms of Sydney’s industrial history, and absorbing in that it reminded me that Australia too has (and has had) poor white folk (compared to our contemporary image of ourselves a bourgeois, urban and professional) …

It’s a powerful read that is warm and generous to its characters, that is sad but also has humour. As I said, a must. Sorry folks, can’t help pushing it!

The other two classics reviewed were done by me and were for two short stories by Barbara Baynton from her book, Bush Studies . “A dreamer” is the first in the collection and is, from what I’ve read so far, a little gentler than the rest of the collection but nonetheless introduces us to Baynton’s “non-romantic view of the Australian bush which is, for her, alienating and forbidding, particularly for women”. It was a view that was not appreciated by many of the male publishers, editors and authors of the time.

… and then move on to the Literary Fiction

Kate Grenville, Sarah Thornhill

Grenville’s Darah Thornhill

Of the nineteen literary fiction reviews, three were for works by Kate Grenville, who is one of Australia’s most popular current writers of literary fiction. Two reviews were for The Secret River and one for Sarah Thornhill. The Literary Dilettante said he “zipped through it [Sarah Thornhill], cosseted by an authentic voice and gripping story that explores how the past’s secrets shape the present”.

There were also reviews for last year’s Miles Franklin award-winner, All that I am by Anna Funder, and for Gail Jones’s Five Bells, Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with birds, and Annabel Smith’s Whisky Charlie Foxtrot. Antoinetta said she picked up Smith’s book because of its cover (“yep, I one of those people” she writes) and was very glad she did.

It’s encouraging to see writers like Annabel Smith, Deborah Biancotti and Jessica White also reviewing books (by other writers of course!) for the challenge. Jessica reviewed Jess Huon’s set of short stories The Dark Wet. She writes that there were some mixed reviews for Huon’s stories but argued that any failings are overcome by the writing, which she describes as “absolutely gorgeous – so delicate and poised, and rendered with beautiful details”.

I can’t describe every review of course in a roundup like this, but if you’d like to check more out, this link is the place to be. However, I would like to mention one author whose book is probably on the cusp of being labelled a Classic. It’s Shirley Hazzard’s The Bay of Noon (1970) which was shortlisted in 2010 for the Lost Man Booker Prize, a special prize for books published in 1970  but which had missed being considered for the Man Booker due to rules alteration. Reviewer Deborah Biancotti writes that it is “A beautifully observed portrait of a time & a place”. That sounds just like the Hazzard I know.

But wait, there’s more …

diaries of miles franklin

The diaries of Miles Franklin

This round-up is becoming longer than the list of books reviewed this month so I’ll just briefly mention a couple of other reviews. One is The diaries of Miles Franklin, reviewed by Tarla. This is a pretty hefty tome so all credit to Tarla for reading it. Her response is a very personal one. She says:

It is always heartening to have a closer look at the life of writing giants and discover all the same frustrations, years spent trying to get published, fears of failure, lack of money; and that they write on regardless. I have been writing for 20+ years and have gotten nowhere; part of that time went on bringing up babies (four) under the impression that a woman could have it all. Franklin had no such delusions, but by the end of her life, wondered if her choice not to have a marriage and family had all been worth it. We would say it did.

Two other non-fiction works were reviewed, Kate Holden’s memoir, The Romantic, reviewed by Jessica White, and Anne-Marie Priest’s Great Writers, Great Lovers, reviewed by Marisa Wikramanayake. The Romantic is an intriguing read because, although it’s a memoir, it has been written in third person. How many memoirs have you read like that?

———————

About Me

I am Whispering Gums and I read, review and blog about (mostly) literary fiction. It was reading Jane Austen when I was 14 years old that turned me on to reading literary fiction/classics, which is why I am here today doing this round-up! Little did Jane know what she started!

My love of Aussie literature started with Banjo Paterson’s ballads and Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians in my childhood. But, I didn’t really discover Australian women’s writing until the 1980s when I “met” and fell in love with Elizabeth Jolley, Thea Astley, Olga Masters, Helen Garner and Kate Grenville. Ever since then I have been making sure to include a good percentage of Australian (and other) women writers in my reading diet.

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by whisperinggums on February 13, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Literary, Classic

Posted by whisperinggums on February 13, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/02/13/january-2013-roundup-classics-and-literary/

AWW 2012 Challenge Wrap-up: Literary Awards/Classics Part 2

This is a wrap-up of literary awards (with a focus on Miles Franklin Award titles) and Classics reviewed in 2012. Part 1 is here.

What is a classic and how does a book actually become ensconced in the hallowed halls of the ‘canon’ or the ‘academy’? This debate which needs its own space, and much more room than we have here, will always be an interesting and controversial one. Jennifer Mills’ brilliant post in which she writes about the five classics she read for AWW2012 addresses this issue of definition.

All canons are lists and all lists restrictive. ‘Classics’ are a product of their time. What a list of important books does is hammer a marker into the landscape, to be walked around, kicked at, tripped over and fought with.     Jennifer Mills

Jane Gleeson-White has written two seminal works on the subject: Australian Classics: 50 Great Writers and their Celebrated Works, and Classics: 62 Great Books from The Iliad to Midnight’s Children.

Geordie Williamson’s The Burning Library features several of our great Australian women writers including M. Barnard Eldershaw (actually two people), Olga Masters, Christina Stead, and Jessica Anderson.

Gleeson-White and Williamson are champions of our forgotten women writers. I’ll be posting (very) belatedly about their discussion Sleeping Beauties: Reviving Australia’s Forgotten Women Writers. It was on at the State Library of NSW in December last year.

As they say, everything old becomes new again so it’s great that there has been such a huge revival of interest in classics which have become popular again. A wide range of classics were reviewed for the 2012 AWW challenge and it is so encouraging to see our forgotten women writers being re-read and reviewed. Virginia Lloyd pointed out that Miles Franklin wasn’t the only woman writing under a male pseudonym; it’s just that she got most of the attention. Lloyd wrote an interesting piece about Henry Handel Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom which she found to be ‘anti-feminist’.

Angela Meyer reviewed Henry Handel Richardson’s trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony referring to it as ‘a masterpiece, a great novel’ and saying that reading it was one of the most ‘fulfilling literary experiences’ she’d ever had. Christine over at Freud in Oceania reviewed Ultima Thule (Volume 3 of the same trilogy) saying it provided so much insight into the human condition that it could be read and re-read, almost as a stand-alone novel.

James Tierney reviewed Barbara Baynton’s short story Squeaker’s Mate likening it to ‘an old unheard song to which you can somehow hum the tune’.

Sue Terry reviewed Baynton’s short story The Chosen Vessel concluding: ‘I’m not surprised that those late nineteenth century men found her writing confronting and that the Bulletin only ever published one of her short stories, but, for me, Baynton’s writing presents an alternative view of life in the bush that I’m glad we have available today.’

Eleanor Dark’s Lantana Lane was reviewed at Unique Schmuck’s blog. ‘A wonderful read … it’s not really about farming at all. It’s about people, surviving, and being different from the norm, and a true community. It’s also bloody hilarious.’

Jo at Wallaby reviewed We of the Never Never by Aeneas Gunn finding that despite it being ‘a product of its time’, it is worth reading for two reasons. ‘First, it is a book by a woman about a woman’s life in a situation about which we know comparatively little (especially as it applied to women). Secondly, and more importantly, it gives some insight (although not, perhaps, the insight the author intended) into attitudes of the day in relation to race and gender, especially the former, and the atrocities committed under the guiding light of those attitudes. This helps us to understand how far we have to go in trying to redress those wrongs.’

Adam reviewed Dymphna Cusack’s A Bough in Hell and was glad he persevered with it despite struggling to ‘get into it’ at first. ‘I’ve never read any Dymphna Cusack before – she’s one of those authors people speak of but few have read, which is why I wanted to read her. I’m so glad I made the effort and I am definitely going to read more of her. Also very keen to track down a memoir or biography too.’

Denise also reviewed A Bough in Hell which she recommends despite being disappointed in the ending. ‘A Bough in Hell is worth reading because of Dymphna Cusack’s excellent powers of description, and her intelligent exploration of alcoholism at a time when it carried more of a stigma than it does now, especially for women.’

Even though Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children was referred to over at Sue Terry’s Whispering Gums as one of the Top 10 ABR Favourite Australian Novels in their 2010 poll (3 out of 10 books were by women),  it was reviewed only once as part of the 2012 AWW Challenge and the reader was not impressed. Writereaderly found it: ‘Hard to get into, drag-drag-drag in the middle, and I wish the last 150pp — which were quite good — had been the entirety of the novel. Overrated, not recommended, so glad it’s over!’ It will be interesting to see some more reviews of this landmark novel in 2013 — it’s definitely on my reading list.

Sue Terry, my co-blogger for these wrap-ups has posted here about other literary fiction and non-fiction reviews and the full list of Literary/Classic reviews is here.

About Me

I’m a freelance book reviewer, journalist and editor and have worked as a librarian for many years. I’m always feeling guilty about what I ‘should have’ or ‘should be reading.’ I signed up for the AWW challenge in 2012 and this year, as well as doing my own challenge where I’d like to focus on our long-lost women writers, I will be posting updates about Literary Awards and Classics. I blog over at Wordsville and you can find me on Twitter @PaulaGrunseit

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by Paula on January 25, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Paula on January 25, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/01/25/aww-2012-challenge-wrap-up-literary-awardsclassics-part-2/

AWW 2012 Challenge Wrap-up: Literary Awards/Classics Part 1

This is a wrap-up of literary awards (with a focus on Miles Franklin Award titles) and Classics reviewed in 2012.

Miles Franklin

Miles Franklin

In May 2011 I attended Celebrating Varuna: Disturbing the Status Quo, a session at the Varuna component of the Sydney Writers Festival in which feminist academic Carole Ferrier and Australian author/historian Humphrey McQueen discussed Eleanor Dark and her circle which included Nettie Palmer, Jean Devanny, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Marjorie Barnard and of course, Miles Franklin.

It was an odd head space to be in considering it was barely a month after the announcement of the shortest shortlist in the history of the Miles Franklin Award where the three contenders were all men. I felt not a little desperate about our ‘progress’ as I thought about the great Australian women writers who had paved the way, struggling so hard merely to ‘get to the desk’ as Barbara Brooks put it in her essay here. I imagined them standing at the back of the Carrington ballroom, the ghosts of Varuna, feeling disappointed and angry but urging us not to give up.

Fast forward to 2012 which, despite the shock ‘disestablishment’ of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, was a great year for women writers. This year is looking even more promising with ‘an award of her own’, the inaugural Stella Prize, Australia’s first major literary prize for women’s writing, to be awarded in April.

In 2012, after years of women having been marginalised or totally excluded from Miles Franklin shortlists, Anna Funder won the award with her novel All that I Am. Six men and seven women made the longlist and the shortlist consisted of five contenders: two men and three women. In December 2012, it was announced that The Miles Franklin Award prize money had been increased from $50,000 to $60,000. The judges have been busy over the holidays reading submissions (around 60 of them) and the longlist will be announced in March.

And last but by no means least, thanks to Elizabeth Lhuede, we have the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Here at the blog, forty-one reviews of Miles Franklin Award short/long-listed titles were submitted. You’ll find some links here to positive and negative reviews because that’s the beauty of this initiative — a wide range of readers and reviews.

All That I Am by Anna Funder

All That I Am by Anna Funder

Jon Page of Bite the Book praised  All that I Am saying ‘it deserves every prize thrown at it and more’, that it’s a book ‘everyone should read’ and that he’d love to see it on a high school reading list. He also wrote an interesting follow-up post in which he explains why he doesn’t think it should have won the Miles Franklin Award.

Not everyone loved All that I Am. Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader ‘found the pace of the novel to be quite slow and ponderous and it was difficult to maintain all that much interest.’ She also felt that using two voices (Dora and Ruth), ‘distracted rather than enhanced the narrative.’

The Precipice by Virginia Duigan

The Precipice by Virginia Duigan

Over at Fair Dinkum Crime, blogger Bernadette fell ‘head over heels in love’ with Thea Farmer, the heroine of Virginia Duigan’s The Precipice and called the novel ‘a fantastic read’. At her other blog Reactions to Reading, Bernadette wrote about picking up Favel Parrett’s Past the Shallows ‘with trepidation’, having given up on reading literary fiction long ago and having been put off by reviews referring to the book as ‘dark, moody and haunting’. She was pleasantly surprised: ‘It explores important, heavy themes without inducing clinical depression in the reader. Alongside its central sadness there is beauty in the natural environment brought stunningly to life and hope in the irrepressible effervescence of the boys. Reading it was an absolute treat.’

Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears

Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears

Shelleyrae of Book’dOut said it was ‘easy to see why the literati were so taken by Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears which she called ‘a remarkable novel’. ‘It is a novel that is appreciated rather than enjoyed, for the unrelenting tragedy that dogs Noah and the Nancarrows is almost unrelieved. Mears cultivates an oppressive atmosphere where joy is short lived and always edged in achingly raw heartbreak. At times I found it difficult to go on yet I also found I could not let go, challenged by the intriguing characters and fascinated by a time and place long gone.’ At All the Books I can Read, 1girl2manybooks loved Foal’s Bread despite its bleakness; it was her first reading of Gillian Mears but it won’t be her last.

Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville

Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville

Marilyn at Me, You and Books strongly recommends Kate Grenville’s Sarah Thornhill calling it ‘a powerful novel of early British settlers about Australia, but one which stumbles in its depiction of Aboriginal people.’ She asks the reader to notice ‘what gets left out’ and feels the author ‘does not make the imaginative leap to creating Indigenous characters that were as fully human as her own ancestors.  In recreating what her ancestors felt and thought, she reproduces their limited views of those they considered their enemies.’

Five Bells by Gail Jones

Five Bells by Gail Jones

Five Bells by Gail Jones was reviewed at Booklover Book Reviews with the finding that ‘The story’s intensity built steadily to a climax but ultimately I felt unsatisfied by the conclusion, or lack thereof. Perhaps I missed something, but it just seemed like so much more could have been made of the threads available while still retaining a bit of artistic mystery. For me it was like a few New Year’s Eve firecrackers failing to ignite…’

Janine Rizzetti says she was not ‘struck emotionally speechless’ by Animal People as some other reviewers of the same book had been. She still rated it highly, giving it 8 out of 10, and said: “Certainly, it was very easy to read, and I was quickly drawn in enough to want to keep reading, and it captured urban, middle class Sydney very well.  It had just a touch of the ‘book club’ about it, something that Lisa at ANZ LitLovers noted as well.  I don’t think that I mean this as a put-down (after all, I belong to online and face-to-face bookgroups myself) but there’s something about the straining for theme and topicality that made me wonder if it was written with this demographic in mind.” Louise Bassett highly recommends Charlotte Wood’s Animal People saying it ‘casts a bright, almost forensic light on the way we live today’ and is ‘one of her favourite books of recent years.’

Books by and About Miles Franklin

Stella Miles Franklin Jill Roe

Stella Miles Franklin Jill Roe

Animal People by Charlotte Wood

Animal People by Charlotte Wood

Yvonne Perkins reviewed Jill Roe’s biography of Miles Franklin saying its ‘comprehensiveness’ can be seen as both a strength and a weakness. ‘Jill Roe’s biography of renowned Australian writer Miles Franklin is a thoroughly enjoyable read as well as being a fine piece of historical scholarship. It is detailed, it is long, but it gives the reader many hours of pleasure.  Miles Franklin’s life is of continuing relevance to writers today.  This biography needs to be widely read and discussed.’

All that Swagger by Miles Franklin

All that Swagger by Miles Franklin

Perkins also reviewed All that Swagger to commemorate the anniversary of the author’s birthday and even though she doesn’t usually read fiction, she was absorbed by this family drama spanning four generations. It was Miles Franklin’s best-selling book.

My Brilliant Career was reviewed at the Bookstore off Euclid Avenue.

‘This is a passionate and precocious book, but most of all is Franklin’s brutal honesty and stunning bravery that strikes me most. This is a book that deserves to be read, and I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me so long to do so.’ David Golding reviewed My Career Goes Bung calling it ‘a neglected Australian classic.’

Part Two of this wrap-up about Classics is here.

About Me

I’m a freelance book reviewer, journalist and editor and have worked as a librarian for many years. I’m always feeling guilty about what I ‘should’ have or ‘should be reading.’ I signed up for the AWW challenge in 2012 and this year, as well as doing my own challenge where I’d like to focus on our long-lost women writers, I will be posting updates about Literary Awards and Classics. I blog over at Wordsville and you can find me on Twitter @PaulaGrunseit

14 Comments
by Paula on January 24, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Paula on January 24, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/01/24/aww-2012-challenge-wrap-up-literary-awardsclassics/

2012 AWW Challenge: Short Stories and Poetry

We’re nearly at the end of the wrap-ups of reviews of Australian women’s writing for 2012, which have shown that writing and reading by Australian women is diverse, enthusiastic and unabated.  While poetry and short stories may not be as widely-read as other forms, they offer a huge range of styles and content, just as with the AWW Challenge itself.

Short Stories

Over 2012, there were 76 reviews of 42 works by Australian women writers, including both collections and individual stories.  Speculative fiction featured strongly, with 22 reviews of collections in the Twelve Planets series published by Twelfth Planet Press in Western Australia.  As Tsana notes in her AWW Challenge 2012 Speculative Fiction wrap up, the aim of the series is to publish twelve collections from twelve Australian women writing speculative fiction, and many of the stories have Australian settings. Below is a list of those which have been published and reviewed to date (I’ve included alternative links to Tsana’s where I can, to show how widely they were reviewed):

cracklescapeBad Power by Deborah Biancotti (reviewed by Tansy Rayner Roberts); Showtime by Narelle Harris (reviewed by Marg); Nightsiders by Sue Isle (reviewed by Tsana, who summed it up as ‘collection full of strong and well drawn female characters’); Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan (who made Sean cry); Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts (reviewed by Dave); Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex (also reviewed by Tsana) and Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren (also reviewed by Dave, who called it a ‘complete success … Creepy, daring and provocative).  The consensus among reviewers was that the Twelve Planets series was a great initiative, and a good way of sampling an assortment of speculative fiction.

Other speculative fiction collections which were reviewed include Isobelle Carmody’s Metro Winds (reviewed by Maree), the gigantic volume Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies by Lucy Sussex (reviewed by Narelle M Harris, who struggled with its size over breakfast), and another Margo Lanagan collection, Black Juice, (reviewed by Marg).

inheritedIn the literary fiction genre, Amanda Curtin’s Inherited was praised for its spare, but haunting writing (see Angela Myer’s comprehensive review), while Janette Tuner Hospital’s new collection, Forecast: Turbulence, was described as ‘exquisitely crafted’ by Rebecca Howden.  Jennifer Mills’ The Rest is Weight was enthusiastically reviewed for the variety of its stories by Sean and ShellyRae, while Bronte mused on the dark undertone of the stories from Brothers & Sisters, edited by Charlotte Wood.  Genevieve Tucker’s tender and sensitive review of Josephine Rowe’s Tarcutta Wake was like poetry itself.  ‘Each story,’ she writes, ‘carries others nesting within it, and they unfold like the precisely engineered wings of migrating birds.’  Fittingly, Black Inc.’s annual The Best Australian Stories made an appearance.  This edition was collated in 2011 by short story connoisseur Cate Kennedy, and was reviewed by Sophie.

Memoir also featured, through Ilsa Evans’ Once a Poner Time (reviewed by Jayne from The Australian Bookshelf ) as did romance – see Kate Rizzetti’s review of URL Love.  It was heartening to see reviews of works by Indigenous authors too, with Jenny writing on Me, Antman and Fleabag by Gayle Kennedy, which was the winner of the 2006 David Unaipon award for unplublished Indigenous authors.  Sally wrote a review of Marie Munkara’s Every Secret Thing, which also won the David Unaipon award, this time in 2008.

Short fiction, as Matthew Lamb, editor of the Review of Australian Fiction has noted, ‘is a concentrated form of writing. It requires a concentrated form of reading. It requires occupying a certain mental space for the duration of the story, reading it in one sitting, as a coherent whole, in order for the effect of that whole to have an impact upon the reader.’
bush-studiesFor this reason, it’s pleasing to see reviewers focussing upon individual short stories as well as collections.  Sue of Whispering Gums was prompted to read the Bush Studies version of Barbara Baynton’s ‘The Chosen Vessel’ before it was edited and re-named to align with The Bulletin’s masculinist bias.  She also reviewed Thea Astley’s ‘Hunting the Wild Pineapple’ and Paddy O’Reilly’s ‘The Salesman’, both stories about tense relationships between men and women.  Jayne of The Australian Bookshelf also picked up some individual romance titles on her eReader (see her reviews of Anne Brear’s ‘A Most Serious Gentleman’ and ‘Caroline and the Captain’ by Maggi Andersen), while James Tierney commented on Barbara Baynton’s harsh story ‘Squeaker’s Mate’.

Such a diverse range of storytelling across all these genres is testimony not only to the talent and elasticity of writers, but also their readers, who willingly engage with any number of characters and settings with ease.  A full list of the collections and stories can be found here.  Meanwhile, collections are already being reviewed for 2013, which is wonderful.

Poetry

Bronte from Stilts Journal opens her review of Michelle Dicinoski’s Electricity for Beginners with an astute comment: ‘When I ask people if they like poetry I often get told that, no, they don’t understand it. It’s too pretentious, it’s outdated, or it’s just too hard. And I think to myself, what a shame. Poetry can be such a pleasure if you’re willing to give it a go.’  I’m in complete agreement with her and, as she notes, Michelle’s volume is a great place to start.

electricity-beginnersSeven volumes of poetry by Australian women writers were reviewed over 2012, from the historical to the contemporary.  Poet Adam Ford penned detailed reviews of two debut collections, Lisa Gorton’s Press Release and Fiona Wright’s Knuckled, which was also reviewed by Phillip Ellis.  Angela Myer outlined the intriguing story and language of Kristin Henry’s verse novel All the Way Home, Timothy reviewed Dorothea Mackeller’s classic My Country and Other Poems, and Deb Matthews-Zot discussed Heather Taylor Johnson’s ‘feminine and fecund collection’, Letters to my Lover from a Small Mountain Town.  Skin Painting, by Indigenous author Elizabeth Hodgson, which won the David Unaipon award in 2007, was reviewed by Heidi.

Poetry is a way of sampling both the tiny and the grand through pockets of writing.  The collections reviewed here – often attentively – are testimony to readers’ willingness to focus intently, or to cast their minds wide.  If, like me, you’ve been inspired to head to your local bookstore or library to pick up one of these volumes, you can find the list of reviews here.  Alternatively, you might be taking up the gauntlet to read some new ones and, if so, I’m really looking forward to reading about them in the 2013 AWW Challenge.

 

About Me

Photo JWI’m Jessica White, a novelist and researcher.  I have a PhD from the University of London and have published two novels with Penguin, A Curious Intimacy (2007), about botany and lesbianism, and Entitlement (2012), about Native Title and grief.  I’ve also published short stories and poetry, which you can find at my website.  I’m also on Twitter @ladyredjess.

5 Comments
by ladyredjess on January 15, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Guest author, Literary, Classic, Nonfiction - general, Poetry, Prize winner, Uncategorized

Posted by ladyredjess on January 15, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/01/15/2012-aww-challenge-short-stories-and-poetry/

2012 AWW Challenge Wrap-up: Literary Fiction and Non-fiction

What is literary fiction? Is it a genre? Is it a style? No, it’s supernovel! Seriously though, some libraries and booksellers ignore the issue altogether and simply shelve all their fiction alphabetically, while others attempt to classify it with varying success. For the Australian Women Writers challenge, the definition has been pretty much left up to the individual reviewers. They entered their reviews, they decided how to categorise them. Overall, there has been a lot of consistency suggesting, perhaps, that we know it when we see it.

Most of the fiction “tagged” as “literary” falls into what I would call “general” fiction. It tends not to be easily categorised and is rarely part of a series. However, this does not mean that books that clearly fit into genre categories can’t also be “literary”. You’ll certainly find some here.

I am, I know, side-stepping actually defining “literary” fiction – but if others can’t do it and many have tried (just do a Google search and you’ll see what I mean) – I don’t intend to either.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

all that I am-198-300As the stats for this area are necessarily rubbery given that there is some subjectivity to the classification, I’m going to (mostly) provide approximate figures rather than exact ones.

There were about 280 reviews tagged as “literary” representing about 90 writers, and around 95 different reviewers.

Not surprisingly the two individual books which received the most reviews were also this year’s two most awarded books in the 2012 literary award circuit. That’s the “two most awarded books” not “the two most awarded books written by women”. It was, in other words, a stellar year for women in the literary awards stakes. The two books are:

  • Anna Funder’s All That I Am (11 reviews): Kevin describes the book’s subject as: “It compels us to confront many of the dark threads of the twentieth century: the horror of war and failure of the peace; the popularity of fascism and anti-Semitism; the complicity of many in the British ruling class and elsewhere; the brutal, calculated march by the Nazis to the final solution.”
  • Gillian Mears’ Foal’s Bread (11 reviews): Christina named this her best novel of 2011, writing that its gift is “the shock of the new when you enter a world that is different than the one you live in, and meet characters who are recognisable yet different, ordinary yet strange, lost, failed, broken, yet magnificent in their passion and their singularity”.

The most reviewed author was Margo Lanagan, with 16 reviews across 5 different novels. Other well-reviewed authors, all with 10 reviews, were Helen Garner (3 novels), Kate Grenville (4 novels), Gail Jones (4 novels), Kirsten Tranter (2 novels) and Charlotte Wood (2 novels and an anthology).

New kids on the block

dog-boy-hardcoverAs you would expect, the reviews were dominated by recently published books, with around 55% of the reviews being for books published from 2010 on. In addition to the abovementioned Funder and Mears, a lovely variety of recently published books, by debut and established authors, was reviewed.  Notable among them were:

  • Favel Parrett’s debut novel, Past the Shadows, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Miles Franklin Award. Bernadette, who claims not to be a fan of literary fiction, loved this book. She wrote that it’s “like reading a poem. A beautiful poem that you want to re-read, savour and quote bits of forever more”.
  • Eva Hornung’s 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Award novel, Dog Boy. Elizabeth Lhuede (instigator of the AWW Challenge) wrote a highly personal, moving  review in which she described it as, for her, one of those books that “become part of your soul”. Jessica said that “It is one of the cleverest pieces of writing I’ve read for a long time, making one question what it means to be human, and if the human condition [...] is necessarily better than that of being an animal”.
  • Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts, a fantasy novel published in 2012, was reviewed nine times (nearly equalling Funder and Mears). Angela Meyer wrote that she was “instantly drawn into its strange, contained world”. Krissy Kneen claimed to not read fantasy but was also captivated:  “In Margo’s skillful hands we are woven a tale that resonates with so much in our real lives, that feeling that we often have that we do not belong in this world, a longing for something that is missing from our hearts, a certain melancholy that we all experience at one time or another, the idea that love is temporary and that no matter how strong a relationship can be there is always a longing for something more.” I’m also no fantasy reader, but with Krissy likening the novel to the film, The Secret of Roan Inish, and to novelists like Michael Ondaatje and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I can feel the pull of the selkie!

Other multiply reviewed books include My Hundred Secret Lovers by Susan Johnson, A Fine Colour of Rust by PA O’Reilly, and Sweet Old World by Deborah Robertson.

Oldies but goodies

newspaper-clarmont-streetOne of the greatest advantages of book blogs is that they cover new and old books by authors past and present. We book bloggers are not confined to current releases but can, upon whim, read what we want, when we want.  Consequently, a lot of older books were also covered by AWW reviewers in 2012, including some of my favourite books like Shirley Hazzard’s 1980 novel The Transit of Venus (reviewed by Deborah Biancotti), Elizabeth Jolley’s 1981 rather black novella, The Newspaper of Claremont Street (reviewed by Buried in Print), Helen Garner’s 1985 novella, The Children’s Bach (reviewed by four reviewers), and Carrie Tiffany’s quirky little book from 2006, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (reviewed by Tony).

AWW, in other words, is the place to be for reviews of older works!

Vive la différence

bite-your-tongue-thumbLiterary fiction, this undefinable beast, is a pretty broad church. It encompasses works by writers of all backgrounds, such as indigenous writer Alexis Wright, whose wild Miles Franklin award-winning novel Carpentaria was reviewed by four readers, and Philippine-Australian writer-performance artist Merlinda Bobis with her inventive novel Fish-hair Woman which I described as “part war story, murder mystery, political thriller, romance, and historical epic”.

It can also include works that play with form such as Francesca Rendle-Short’s fictional memoir, Bite Your Tongue, which explores different ways of truth-telling, and Drusilla Modjeska’s book, The Orchard, which pretty much defies definition. Ask Samuel.

But wait there’s more …

If you think “literary fiction” is hard to define, try “literary non-fiction”. And yet, it is now generally agreed that there is such a thing. Without getting too specific, it is generally described as non-fiction writing that uses some of the techniques of fiction, particularly, but not only, in terms of narrative style.

Australian women are well-represented in the field. Some of our best regarded writers in this category were reviewed, including Inga Clendinnen’s Dancing with Strangers (reviewed by American participant, Marilyn), Anna Funder’s Stasiland (reviewed by three readers), Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man (reviewed in French by Le Koala Lit), and Drusilla Modjeska’s The Mountain (reviewed by Stephanie).

… and even more

Literary Awards and Classics, which are closely related to this category, will be covered in an upcoming post. Watch for it …

Meanwhile, thanks to all those who took the time to read and review books this year for the challenge. I wish I could mention every one of you who wrote a review for this category. However, if you’d like to see all reviews tagged “Literary” in the 2012 Challenge, please click here.

**********

About me

Like most here, I fell in love with books and reading way back before I can remember. Christmases and birthdays were judged by how many books I received. I fell in love with big-L Literature at high school. I loved thinking about how authors did what they did. I loved rolling their words around in my mouth. I loved finding the connections between writers, between works, between eras. And so my reading preferences shifted – from Enid Blyton to Jane Austen! My love of Aussie literature started with Banjo Paterson’s ballads and Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians in my childhood. But, I didn’t really discover Australian women’s writing until the 1980s when I “met” and fell in love with Elizabeth Jolley, Thea Astley, Olga Masters, Helen Garner and Kate Grenville.

And now you know why I am here, and in my blog Whispering Gums, reading, reviewing and blogging about (mostly) literary fiction .

12 Comments
by whisperinggums on January 11, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Literary, Classic

Posted by whisperinggums on January 11, 2013

http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013/01/11/2012-aww-challenge-wrap-up-literary-fiction-and-non-fiction/

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