Browsing No 245 - October 2002 by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-17 of 17
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The Tongue of Slander. "The Life of Matthew Flinders" by Miriam Estensen and "The Navigators: The Great Race between Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin for the North–South Passage through Australia" by Klaus Toft. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Miriam Estensen’s "Life of Matthew Flinders" is a full-blown biography of Flinders. Klaus Toft’s The Navigators does not aspire to the same level of scholarship. -
Modest Everyman. "Nugget Coombs:A Reforming Life" by Tim Rowse. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)In Rowse's view, Nugget Coombs, with his breadth of concerns, his finely tuned ecological, cultural and economic antennae, and his technical competence, is the fit, in fact a better, prophet for any viable new Australian ... -
Trafficking in the Unsaid. “The Owner of My Face: New and Selected Poems” by Rodney Hall and “Collected Poems” by Les Murray [Review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Poetry is a likening, even when no metaphor is being deployed, no simile adduced. It knows that it is a miming, and, as often as not, is trying to find out what is being mimed. Murray and Hall are alike in their having ... -
Colonial Romps. "Mrs Cook: The Real and Imagined Life of the Captain's Wife" by Marele Day and "Carrion Colony" by Richard King. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)This is a review of two books about early Australian Colonies. -
Playing the Game. "The Greek Liar" by Nikos Athanasou and "Attempts to Draw Jesus" by Stephen Orr. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)NOBEL PRIZEWINNER Albert Camus played soccer for Algeria. First-time novelist Nikos Athanasou has been likened to Camus — for his writing, not his ball skills — but, on the basis of his début, this comparison is hard to ... -
Inwardness and Outwardness. “My Lover’s Back: 79 Love Poems” by M.T.C Cronin and “Bestiary” by Coral Hull. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Cronin’s love poetry, and the love it describes, both define themselves by their distance from what we might loosely call the public world: the world of soaps, films, television and the crowd. Cronin’s poems are small, and ... -
National News. [essay]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)In November, the National Library will publish Many Voices: Reflections on Experiences of Indigenous Child Separation, which is the culmination of four years of project work in an area of crucial importance in Australia’s ... -
On the Freedom Road. "Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers" by Ann Curthoys. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Ann Curthoys’s Freedom Ride is a meticulously researched piece of Australian history, and so much more. It could sit comfortably on the required reading lists of subjects ranging from History, to Government, to Media. ... -
Heads above Water. "Above the Water" by Margaret Bearman and "Borrowed Eyes: A Novel" by Saskia Beudel. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Jenny Digby reviews two remarkably accomplished works, "Borrowed Eyes" and "Above the Water". Both novels are from experienced authors and are remarkably accomplished works. Although they tell very different stories in ... -
Deep River. "Rivers" by Peter Porter, Sean O'Brien and John Kinsella and "The State of the Rivers and Streams" by Warrick Wynne. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Rivers are important to us in all sorts of ways: usefully symbolic for poets, often loved in childhood while ‘messing about in boats’, sucked dry by cotton farmers, worried over by environmentalists, boosted by local ... -
Beyond the Pale. “Black Sheep: Journey to Borroloola” by Nicholas Jose. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)At the book's heart is the concern for connections, to country and to people, a concern that haunts many Australians, particularly those who have been insulated from the legacies of the frontier. As those legacies make ... -
An Obsessional Storyteller. “Xavier Herbert: Letters” by Frances de Groen and Laurie Hergenham. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)The cover of this substantial volume tells you what's coming: it features a photograph of Xavier Herbert, sixtyish and fit-looking, standing behind the converted 4WD that constitutes his bush camp and dressed in nothing ... -
Preaching to the Converted? "How Simone de Beavoir Died in Australia: Stories and Essays" by Sylvia Lawson. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Sylvia Lawson’s How Simone de Beauvoir Died in Australia warrants a second reading to be properly appreciated. The seven pieces in this collection are intricately connected, so that the messages are cumulatively conveyed. ... -
Elusive Beauties. "Journey to the Stone Country" by Alex Miller. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Miller offers a love story coloured and almost subsumed by family and ancestral memory, one located in a landscape that, insofar as it has appeared in Australian fiction. Miller accepts the challenge to write of Aboriginal ... -
Bakowski's Strategic Dartboard. "Days That We Couldn't Rehearse" by Peter Bakowski
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Peter Bakowski’s Days That We Couldn’t Rehearse is in many ways the most consistent and satisfying of his five collections to date. He has cultivated strengths and eliminated weaknesses found in earlier volumes. Yet it is ... -
Activist in White Gloves. "Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist" by Marilyn Lake. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-10)Lake advances continuities between Bandler's lifelong commitment to coalition politics, non-racialism and contemporary campaigns for reconciliation. This is surely the ground of ongoing discussions between biographer and ... -
The Singo Tango. “Singo: Mates, Wives, Triumphs, Disasters” by Gerald Stone. [Review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-12)While not without flaws, “Singo” is an engaging and generally well-researched study of a life not yet complete. Bridget Griffen-Foley suspects the advertising guru would be quietly relieved that his biographer is a journalist; ...