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Absolutely Revolting

April 2000, no. 219

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Contents Category: Children's and Young Adult Fiction
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Article Title: Margaret Dunkle reviews four books
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Swans are said to mate for life and The Stone Swan builds on the love and anguish of such a relationship as the focus for a lesson in environmental responsibility. A pair of swans, lagging behind the rest of their flight, take solitary refuge in a wetland adjacent to a new housing estate, unaware that it is targeted for ‘development’. The cygnets hatch as the water levels subside and the male swan becomes trapped in a tangle of exposed rubbish and plastic twine. He is near death from exhaustion when a child from the nearby estate finds and frees him. But the peril is not over, for a causeway is being built across the wetland, isolating the swan family from the rest of the flock. The male manages to climb to the top of the roadway, but he will not go on without his mate and she will not leave without her babies. The story ends as she and her young, now fully fledged, fly off to join the flock on their annual migration while the human child witnesses her last farewell to the swan-shaped stone that has appeared on the causeway. Bell’s sombre illustrations in ink and watercolour reinforce the tragic mood of the story. A final page provides background information and references for this timely picture book that could be used effectively in primary school ecology studies.
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Stone_swan.jpgThe Stone Swan by Helen Bell

Cygnet Books, $22.95 hb

Swans are said to mate for life and The Stone Swan (Cygnet Books, $22.95 hb) builds on the love and anguish of such a relationship as the focus for a lesson in environmental responsibility. A pair of swans, lagging behind the rest of their flight, take solitary refuge in a wetland adjacent to a new housing estate, unaware that it is targeted for ‘development’. The cygnets hatch as the water levels subside and the male swan becomes trapped in a tangle of exposed rubbish and plastic twine. He is near death from exhaustion when a child from the nearby estate finds and frees him. But the peril is not over, for a causeway is being built across the wetland, isolating the swan family from the rest of the flock. The male manages to climb to the top of the roadway, but he will not go on without his mate and she will not leave without her babies. The story ends as she and her young, now fully fledged, fly off to join the flock on their annual migration while the human child witnesses her last farewell to the swan-shaped stone that has appeared on the causeway. Bell’s sombre illustrations in ink and watercolour reinforce the tragic mood of the story. A final page provides background information and references for this timely picture book that could be used effectively in primary school ecology studies.

Read more: Margaret Dunkle reviews 'The Stone Swan' by Helen Bell, 'Keep Me Company' by Gillian Rubinstein,...

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Contents Category: Poetry
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Article Title: Four poetry shorts
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Award-winning Louis de Paor, in the spirit of many of his literary compatriots, has produced his best work out of being away from Ireland. Cork and Other Poems, a bilingual collection, celebrates the presence of memory, the confrontation of points of departure. Although his luxurious rhymes in Irish are lost in English, his similes (‘The back of the car’ ‘watertight as a fish’s arse’) and kennings (‘sky-horse’, meaning plane) maintain a resilient life even in translation. Some images are plainly original. Others are held up by mythology, as in ‘The Pangs of Ulster’ and ‘Heredity’. De Paor’s poems remind me of what Bernard O’Donoghue and Chris Wallace-Crabbe said, respectively, of Seamus Heaney’s poetry-steeped in ‘northern Bog-myths’, ‘notably muddy’. This is a remarkable world of rain and birth, fetches and the supra-natural, marsh and sinking. But in this book, his third collection, de Paor’s startling, terse narratives have ‘sweetened the underground dark’ of family, love and homecoming. The language is fluid and urgent, exemplified in ‘Oisn’ and ‘Nanbird’. While he considers the particular through the lens of myth, his true ground is the specific, the faith in individual comprehension, where, when I ‘set foot on the ground / I [see] my reflection / brought down to size.’
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depaorcovercaos.jpgCork and Other Poems by Louis de Paor

Black Pepper, $19.95 pb, 102 pp

Award-winning Louis de Paor, in the spirit of many of his literary compatriots, has produced his best work out of being away from Ireland. Cork and Other Poems, a bilingual collection, celebrates the presence of memory, the confrontation of points of departure. Although his luxurious rhymes in Irish are lost in English, his similes (‘The back of the car’ ‘watertight as a fish’s arse’) and kennings (‘sky-horse’, meaning plane) maintain a resilient life even in translation. Some images are plainly original. Others are held up by mythology, as in ‘The Pangs of Ulster’ and ‘Heredity’. De Paor’s poems remind me of what Bernard O’Donoghue and Chris Wallace-Crabbe said, respectively, of Seamus Heaney’s poetry-steeped in ‘northern Bog-myths’, ‘notably muddy’. This is a remarkable world of rain and birth, fetches and the supra-natural, marsh and sinking. But in this book, his third collection, de Paor’s startling, terse narratives have ‘sweetened the underground dark’ of family, love and homecoming. The language is fluid and urgent, exemplified in ‘Oisn’ and ‘Nanbird’. While he considers the particular through the lens of myth, his true ground is the specific, the faith in individual comprehension, where, when I ‘set foot on the ground / I [see] my reflection / brought down to size.’

Read more: Bev Braune reviews 'Cork and Other Poems' by Louis de Paor, 'Refugee Kosovo' by X. Duong, 'Ten...

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Contents Category: Children's and Young Adult Fiction
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Article Title: Coping with adults
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Blyton got rid of them, Dahl demonised or mocked them but adults are definitely central in  the lives of young people in this recent trio of books for the emerging to the retiring adolescent.

The Keeper (Lothian, $12.95 pb, 160 pp) is aimed at the younger end of adolescence, perhaps written with the view that such readers will be willing to suspend disbelief as they will need to in this romantic story of a troubled young boy’s search for a father. Joel is twelve and lives with his grandmother on the Yorke Peninsula, and fishing is his love but fighting his tormentor, Shawn at school, and generally being disruptive, takes up much of his time. However, from the outset we are alerted to Joel’s essential goodness when he defends the meek Mei who will not fight back.
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The-Keeper-Rosanne-Hawke.jpgThe Keeper by Rosanne Hawke

Lothian, $12.95 pb, 160 pp

Blyton got rid of them, Dahl demonised or mocked them but adults are definitely central in  the lives of young people in this recent trio of books for the emerging to the retiring adolescent.

The Keeper (Lothian, $12.95 pb, 160 pp) is aimed at the younger end of adolescence, perhaps written with the view that such readers will be willing to suspend disbelief as they will need to in this romantic story of a troubled young boy’s search for a father. Joel is twelve and lives with his grandmother on the Yorke Peninsula, and fishing is his love but fighting his tormentor, Shawn at school, and generally being disruptive, takes up much of his time. However, from the outset we are alerted to Joel’s essential goodness when he defends the meek Mei who will not fight back.

Read more: Pam Macintyre reviews 'The Keeper' by Rosanne Hawke, 'Wolf on the Fold' by Judith Clarke, and...

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Contents Category: Children's and Young Adult Fiction
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Article Title: Forms of humour
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In the current overwhelmingly dour landscape of Australian children’s fiction, it’s a welcome relief to pick up three books which at least claim to rely on humour for their effect. Of course, humour comes in different forms, with different purposes.

In Small Sacrifices, for instance, Beverley Macdonald isn’t looking for easy laughs. By its contrast with the harrowing events which constitute the story’s climax, the humour Macdonald injects into the first two thirds of the book effectively maximises the impact of the tragedy. Central to the fun at the beginning are the members of the bizarrely extended family belonging to the narrator, fourteen-year-old Harry. We meet them as they gradually assemble for Christmas at a beachside house in the town where Harry’s artily eccentric grandmother lives.
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small_sacrifices.JPGSmall Sacrifices by Beverley Macdonald

Penguin, $12.95 pb, 179 pp

In the current overwhelmingly dour landscape of Australian children’s fiction, it’s a welcome relief to pick up three books which at least claim to rely on humour for their effect. Of course, humour comes in different forms, with different purposes.

In Small Sacrifices (Penguin, $12.95 pb, 179 pp), for instance, Beverley Macdonald isn’t looking for easy laughs. By its contrast with the harrowing events which constitute the story’s climax, the humour Macdonald injects into the first two thirds of the book effectively maximises the impact of the tragedy. Central to the fun at the beginning are the members of the bizarrely extended family belonging to the narrator, fourteen-year-old Harry. We meet them as they gradually assemble for Christmas at a beachside house in the town where Harry’s artily eccentric grandmother lives.

Read more: Stephen Matthews reviews 'Small Sacrifices' by Beverley Macdonald, 'Smash' by David Caddy, and...

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Contents Category: Letters
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Article Title: Letters to the Editor
Article Subtitle: April 2000, no. 219
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Dear editor, I have often wished that more of the letters to the editor would comprise interesting debate or comment on literary matters. Sadly, about ninety-five percent of them are responses by furious authors to what they perceive as an unfavourable review of their book. While boring, such letters are at least understandable as being the output of wounded childish egos. Not understandable, and in fact unethical and unforgiveable, are attacks by publishers on reviewers, such as happened a while back when Fremantle Arts Centre Press rushed into prolonged print via your letters to criticise Dr Ivor Indyk for having unfavourably reviewed one of the many collections of verse by John Kinsella which Fremantle has pumped out over the last few years.
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Dear Editor,

I have often wished that more of the letters to the editor would comprise interesting debate or comment on literary matters. Sadly, about ninety-five percent of them are responses by furious authors to what they perceive as an unfavourable review of their book. While boring, such letters are at least understandable as being the output of wounded childish egos. Not understandable, and in fact unethical and unforgiveable, are attacks by publishers on reviewers, such as happened a while back when Fremantle Arts Centre Press rushed into prolonged print via your letters to criticise Dr Ivor Indyk for having unfavourably reviewed one of the many collections of verse by John Kinsella which Fremantle has pumped out over the last few years.

Read more: Letters to the Editor - April 2000

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