Critic
of the Month
James
Ley was born in Whyalla, South Australia, in 1971 and grew up
in the northern New South Wales town of Armidale. He was educated
at the University of New England and the University of Melbourne.
He worked for many years as a bookseller, and has taught literature
and writing courses at Monash University and RMIT.
James
has been working as a freelance critic and essayist since 1997.
His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The
Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Times Literary
Supplement, and he has twice acted as a judge in the fiction
category for The Age's Book of the Year competition.
James
Ley and ABR
James has been a regular contributor to ABR since 2001 and has
written the monthly La Trobe University Essay on two occasions.
He has greatly appreciated the opportunity to write more expansive
critical pieces that he has been afforded by his association with
the magazine.
What does James Ley expect of a review?
'I think it should be a good piece of writing in itself. It should,
despite the often limited space available, make a serious attempt
to engage with the book, to read it in an intelligent way. There
is no reason why a review, even a short one, cannot aspire to
be a serious piece of literary criticism.'
Some ABR reviews by James
Ley 
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More
ABR critics
 Our
August Critic of the Month was Brenda Niall, acclaimed author of
The Boyds and Judy Cassab. Read
more about Brenda Niall and her reviewing career here.
Current
reviews
Morag
Fraser
The ABC of Controversy
'Ken Inglis teases out motivation,
formation, influences. It is hard to make accurate predictions
about what these men and women will do, say or broadcast after
reading Inglis's accounts of them and where they have come
from. A left-wing cabal? Unlikely. There is too much counterfactual
evidence.''
Read
full text
Peter Rose
Assassin in the Orchard: on Creme
de la Phlegm
'As with all forms of Australian cultural activity, it would
be easy to inflate local critical endeavour (its novelty,
its scintillations, its martial tendencies) and to forget
that the history of acerbity is longer than that of our peppy
federation ... So will this book help the cause, lift standards,
raise consciousness? Is it unforgettable? Maybe not.
But the anthology preserves some fo our best and feistiest
critical writing in a culture not very good at doing that.'
Read
full text
NEW:
THE
ABR FILM COLUMN
Nick Prescott
Celluloid junkies: on Candy, Little
Fish and Em 4 Jay
'Though we have
seen periods during which Australian cinema has been synonymous
with period-set narratives and idealised evocations of the outback,
there has always been a darker side to our cinematic imagination,
a gritty, hard-edged element that is just as crucial to this
country’s feature film output as are the sepia-tinged dreamscapes.'
Read
full text
Delia
Falconer
Risky proximity: on Cate Kennedy's Dark
Roots
'Cate Kennedy's name will be familiar
to anyone who takes even the vaguest interest in Australian
short story contests ... With such a strong recognition factor,
it seems like a smart move by Scribe to publish her first collection.
Not only should it appeal to readers looking for new short fiction
of established quality, but also, presumably, to the thousands
of writers who enter short story competitions every year and
who wish to see the gold standard.' Read
full text.
Gail
Jones
A shape, if only a shape: on After Blanchot
'After Blanchot is a collection
of essays derived from a Melbourne conference organised in 2004
by Monash University. For one who missed this splendid event,
it is exciting to see the calibre of the papers delivered and
the audacious range of positions ratified in its compass. This
is a uniformly brilliant collection of essays.' Read
full text
James
Ley
Through the looking glass: on Reflected
Light
'As
a nation, we are now so gloriously liberated from the tyranny
of political correctness that even taking part in a race riot
does not constitute evidence of racism. Reflected Light
prompts these thoughts less because of its content than
the way Manne and his co-editor, Peter Beilharz, define its
purpose.' Read
full text
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