'History
versus the novelist'
James Bradley on Kate Grenville's
new novel
James Bradley reviews
Kate Grenville's new novel, The Lieutenant.
While praising the flawless construction,
economy and grace of The Lieutenant,
Bradley critiques the novel's relationship with historical
and biographical sources. It remains mired, Bradley
argues, in 'the same mess of historical pastiche that
entraps Eleanor Dark's The Timeless Land (1941),
neither history (with all the restrictions that implies)
nor truly fiction in its own right, but some unsatisfying
amalgam of the two.'
'The
great nothingness'
Peter Pierce on The
Penguin Book of the Road
'Roads are not places,' writers Peter Pierce,
'but ways to and from them.' This anthology includes
contributions from
eminent Australian writers, including David Malouf,
Robert Hughes, Dorothy Hewett and Clive James. Commending
Delia Falconer's astute editorship, Pierce notes that
in spite of the metaphor of divergence and flight,
the characters from these stories are seeking ways
to return home.
'Barefoot
on sharp stones'
Chris Wallace-Crabbe on Robert
Dessaix
'Who is, or rather who was, Andre
Gide?' asks Chris Wallace-Crabbe in his review of
Robert Dessaix's Arabesques,
a 'tale of double lives'. Cross-stiching autobiography
with
reactions to exotic places and past writers, Dessaix
takes his audience sightseeing through Algiers, Northern
Italy and
France - much to Wallace-Crabbe's delight: 'Dessaix
is never less than a writer of cunningly shaped, seductive
narratives.'
'Missing from My Own Life'
Elisabeth Holdsworth - winner
of 2007 Calibre Prize
Last year Elisabeth Holdsworth won
the inaugural Calibre
Prize for her essay 'An die Nachgeborenen:
For Those Who Come After'. Few ABR articles
have generated such interest
and emotion. Now she has written a further instalment
of her remarkable life story, and explains the reasons
for depicting aspects of it in fiction.
Sharman, shaman, showman
Gay Bilson on Blood &Tinsel
The
ever-popular Gay Bilson reviews Jim Sharman's memoirs.
Sharman has kept interesting company in his illustrious
career as a theatre and opera director: Rudolf Nureyev's
notorious sexual haunts are mentioned; there is an
exchanged look with Andy Warhol. At the heart of the
book, however, is Sharman's professional and personal
relationship with Patrick White.
