ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize

Claire Aman, Gaylene Carbis, Gregory Day, and Carrie Tiffany are the four shortlisted authors in the inaugural ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Their stories appear in this special Fiction issue. ABR and the judges – Tony Birch, Mark Gomes, and Terri-ann White – congratulate the shortlisted authors, who were selected from an impressive field of 1300 stories.

Some thematic currents emerged from this vast pool of entries. As in the contemporary novel, many short story writers chose to re-imagine scenes from colonial Australian life, and other historical periods. Stories of migration, and of migrant life in this country, also featured prominently. And, of course, the perennial narrative mode of domestic realism was ever present, deployed in telling stories ranging from the harrowing to the hilarious.

Four further stories are commended, and will appear in coming issues of ABR. They are: ‘A Body of Water’ by Else Fitzgerald, ‘Bad Luck’ by Rose Lane, ‘Russell Drysdale’s Trousers’ by Catherine Moffat, and ‘Nitrogen’ by Meg Mundell. The judges admired the short-listed and commended stories’ charm and simplicity of expression. Their aims, it was remarked, are modest, contained, and achieved with linguistic economy.

The winner will be announced at the launch of this issue – Wednesday, 12 October, at Readings, Carlton, 6:30 p.m. Shortlisted authors will not know the result beforehand. ABR patron Ian Dickson, who generously supports this Prize, will present the winner with a cheque for $5000; the other three shortlisted authors will each receive $1000. All are welcome to attend the launch. To RSVP email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. And if you can’t be there, follow ABR on Twitter on the night for live updates.

Internship opportunity III

Australian Book Review – supported by The Ian Potter Foundation – seeks applications for an editorial intern. The successful candidate will spend six months at the magazine and will receive $20,000. This is an excellent opportunity for recent graduates who are seeking an entrée into publishing. The ABR Ian Potter Foundation Editorial Internship reflects ABR’s strong commitment to fostering new editorial talent, and extends the magazine’s highly regarded volunteer program.

We seek applications from graduates who wish to work in the publishing industry. The successful applicant will work closely with the Editor and with Mark Gomes, the Deputy Editor, who joined us in 2009 under this program. As in his case, there is much scope for a diverse creative contribution to the shape of the magazine.

Applications close on 21 November 2011. Full guidelines are available here. Applicants should read them closely, and must demonstrate a sound knowledge of the magazine.

Chong and Grenville

W.H. Chong is back with another of his inimitable portrait prints. Kate Grenville, whose new novel, Sarah Thornhill, is reviewed by Sophie Cunningham in this issue, is his fifth subject. Full details of Chong’s limited edition appear here. The first ten purchasers of the Grenville print will receive a signed copy of Sarah Thornhill, courtesy of our friends at Text Publishing.

Dry martini

Advances was amused by one item in The Weekend Australian of 17–18 September. Paul Kelly reported that Heather Henderson, daughter of Robert Menzies, had rebutted John Howard’s claim in his memoirs, Lazarus Rising, that, on becoming prime minister in 1996, he invited the Hendersons to The Lodge for a celebratory martini. Mrs Henderson told the newspaper she was astonished by the claim and that she and her husband had never been invited to The Lodge as a couple. In an earlier letter to Mr Howard, she noted: ‘I don’t like and don’t drink martinis.’ John Howard has now removed this anecdote from the paperback edition. Meanwhile, Sue Ebury, in this issue, reviews Heather Henderson’s edition of Robert Menzies’ Letters to My Daughter (Pier 9).

Give a free six-month sub

We invite renewing subscribers to give a free six-month subscription to a friend. This year the version on offer is ABR Online Edition (not the print edition). Complete the back of the flysheet that accompanied the October 2011 print issue or contact us on (03) 9429 6700. As ever, you can renew your subscription at any time to qualify for this special offer. Renew for two years and give away two free subs, etc. (This offer, ideal for Christmas, is open only to current subscribers.)

Loyalty program

Our new program proved highly popular last month. Those who have been subscribers for five or more years can select a complimentary book when they renew their subscriptions (which can be done at any time during the life of the subscription, not just when it finishes). We have some marvellous new fiction and non-fiction titles to add to the list of books (we will email this to individuals whose subscriptions are due for renewal). Please note: from the complete range of our special promotions (books, gift subscriptions, film tickets, etc.), new or renewing subscribers can select one item. We encourage Melburnians to collect their giveaways from the office. This helps with postage – and we love meeting our readers.

CONTENTS: OCTOBER 2011

Not since Marguerite Yourcenar’s classic Memoirs of Hadrian (1951) have I encountered a novel of such bravura intensity and insight into the jagged contours of the human heart.

Autumn Laing opens with a mercurial soliloquy. Over eighteen shimmering pages, the novel’s eponymous heroine draws scarcely a breath as, in a soul-scouring torrent, spanning a lifetime while skewering the moment, she conjures the characters who are ‘seething in her brain’. Autumn parades her dramatis personae of lovers and artists, loathed family, and beloved friends. She struts her many selves: Cleopatra and crone, artist’s muse and scourge, Sybil and hysteric, moral vagabond and seeker after redemption. Haunted by her own mortality and resurgent remorse, she brandishes Tennyson: Let me shrive me clean, and die.

Declaring an interest

Dear Editor,

No doubt one of the spin-offs for those who commission and read book reviews is the jousting or arm-wrestling following the publication of a review that is contested by an aggrieved writer. An instance of such jousting appears in the Letters column of your September 2011 issue, when Eileen Chanin defended her recent biography Book Life: The Life and Times of David Scott Mitchell against the magisterial but waspish filleting of her work by Paul Brunton in the July–August 2011 issue.

I am not writing here to defend Chanin’s book, but I think she is entitled to feel aggrieved that her reviewer’s special interest in the subject was not declared, with Brunton describing himself innocuously and modestly merely as a ‘Sydney-based archivist and librarian’. It is only in ABR Online Edition that we are told of Brunton’s role in curating a major exhibition on Mitchell in 2007.

Brunton’s own long professional association with the Mitchell collections in the State Library of New South Wales is not mentioned; nor, as Chanin now complains, is there any indication that Brunton served de facto in the role of an institutional host and colleague during her tenure (2007–08) of the C.H. Currey Memorial Fellowship at the State Library of New South Wales while working on the biography.

I think readers of ABR should be alerted to any special interest which either colours a review or which adds substantial value both to commentary and to wider critical debate. More puzzling perhaps is the implication that your expert reviewer did not share his views and knowledge with a conscientious and enquiring author, working in close proximity, on a shared interest in a notably enigmatic and problematic subject.

John Thompson, Darlinghurst, NSW

Paul Brunton replies:

I thank John Thompson for categorising my review of Eileen Chanin’s Book Life as ‘magisterial but waspish filleting’. Two out of three is not bad, and I can live with ‘waspish’. It usually only means the target has been stung. The truth can hurt.

Dr Thompson does not defend the book; rather, he complains that I did not declare a special interest in reviewing it. He also implies I should bear some responsibility for the errors because ‘the expert reviewer did not share his views and knowledge with a conscientious and enquiring author’.

I have no special interest to declare. I have never been a colleague of the author. In fact, I hardly know Ms Chanin. I was not involved with her research. The forty-nine people, excluding her publisher and family, whose assistance Ms Chanin acknowledges in Book Life do not, quite rightly, include me. I was not asked to comment on the manuscript before publication. Ms Chanin may be an ‘enquiring author’, but she never enquired of me.

What is most revealing, though, is that no one seems able to rebut my serious criticisms of this book. That surely is the essential point. Ad hominem attacks have always been the resort of those short of arguments.

Rustling

Dear Editor,

In her review of my book Meet Poppy, Ruth Starke wrote:‘I did wonder, however, what “bushranger” Harry Power wasdoing on the banks of the Murray in 1864 (and how Poppywould know of him), given that he was sentenced inDecember 1863 for horse stealing and known by his realname, Henry Johnstone, until 1869. His infamy asa bushranger came years later’ (July–August 2011).

Starke’s statements are in conflict with my own research. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography: ‘As Power he ... [was] arrested on a charge of horse-stealing; he was sentenced at Beechworth on 19 February 1864 to seven years on the roads.’ Further, the journalist Frank Corlette questioned Harry Power himself extensively, and wrote in 1910:

He did not give his correct name when charged with the offence because it would have brought discredit upon the family, his father being the game-keeper to the Marquis of Waterford.

He stole a saddle and bridle and was overtaken illegally using a blood horse, and with this act his career in Ireland came to an end. He was convicted and sent out in 1838, under the name of Johnston, and adhered to that name until he became a ticket-of-leave man.

Dropping the surname, for obvious reasons, and under the impression that Power would carry him safely over any likely obstacle, he began the life of a highwayman ... It has been said that Power was not his correct name, but I have no doubt whatever about it. More than once I questioned him closely on this subject, but only to irritate him and get the reply ‘No true Irishman who had fought the battles of his country against the landlords would dream of changing his patriotic name.’

This should clear the record.

Gabrielle Wang, Camberwell, Vic.

CONTENTS: OCTOBER 2011

The heroine of All That I Am reflects that an author’s published books ‘preserve the fossil imprint on the world of that particular soul at that particular time’. In her début novel – based on real characters and events – acclaimed non-fiction author Anna Funder (Stasiland, 2003) has preserved the imprint of a particular group of souls at a vitally important historical moment. A beautifully executed blend of historical fiction and psychological thriller, it follows the lives of a London-based network of activist refugees from Hitler’s Germany.