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Absolutely Revolting

December 2002-January 2003, no. 247

Welcome to the December 2002-January 2003 issue of Australian Book Review!

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Delia Falconer reviews Father Lands by Emily Ballou
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Silent snarls in the suburbs
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My first thought on reading Father Lands was of Lasse Hallström’s film My Life as a Dog (1985) in the way that both novel and film enter so completely and unerringly into the world of childhood with all its quirks, illogicality, and fears. But there are other traditions at work in this novel, set in Milwaukee in the mid-1970s, and which recounts Cherry Laurel’s experience of the ‘Historical Experiment’ of integrating black and white primary school students. Ballou, an American who has made Australia her home for the last decade, may also have had in mind the use of a child’s-eye perspective that runs through American literature from Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird to Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend, in which matters of great historical significance, particularly the racial history of the USA, are brought into relief by the stark honesty of an ingenuous child-narrator.
Book 1 Title: Father Lands
Book Author: Emily Ballou
Book 1 Biblio: Picador, $30 pb, 349 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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My first thought on reading Father Lands was of Lasse Hallström’s film My Life as a Dog (1985) in the way that both novel and film enter so completely and unerringly into the world of childhood with all its quirks, illogicality, and fears. But there are other traditions at work in this novel, set in Milwaukee in the mid-1970s, and which recounts Cherry Laurel’s experience of the ‘Historical Experiment’ of integrating black and white primary school students. Ballou, an American who has made Australia her home for the last decade, may also have had in mind the use of a child’s-eye perspective that runs through American literature from Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird to Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend, in which matters of great historical significance, particularly the racial history of the USA, are brought into relief by the stark honesty of an ingenuous child-narrator.

Read more: Delia Falconer reviews 'Father Lands' by Emily Ballou

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Free Article: No
Contents Category: Advances
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Article Title: Advances - December 2002-January 2003
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Allen & Unwin tells us that David Marr and Marian Wilkinson’s much-anticipated book about the Tampa Affair has been postponed until February 2003. The title is now Dark Victory: The Military campaign to re-elect the Prime Minister.
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Allen & Unwin tells us that David Marr and Marian Wilkinson’s much-anticipated book about the Tampa Affair has been postponed until February 2003. The title is now Dark Victory: The Military campaign to re-elect the Prime Minister.

Amanda Lohrey is also in the news. Her study of the Greens and their leader, Bob Brown, has just appeared as the latest ‘Quarterly Essay’ (Groundswell: The Rise of the Greens). Meanwhile, the Montpelier and Vulgar Presses have reissued her 1984 novel, The Morality of Gentlemen, along with Jean Devanny’s Sugar Heaven (1936). Delys Bird reviews the latter novel, along with several reissues, on page 61.

Read more: Advances December 2002-January 2003

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Susan Hawthorne reviews Future Active: Media activism and the internet by Graham Meikle
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Contents Category: Media
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In Future Active, Graham Meikle roams the electronic landscape picking out highlights and lowlights. Like all travellers, what he finds is influenced by his interests and perspectives. Sometimes this leads to illuminating insights; sometimes I marvelled at what he might have seen but didn’t.
Book 1 Title: Future Active
Book 1 Subtitle: Media activism and the internet
Book Author: Graham Meikle
Book 1 Biblio: Pluto Press, $34.95pb, 225pp,
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/future-active-graham-meikle/book/9780415943222.html
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In Future Active, Graham Meikle roams the electronic landscape picking out highlights and lowlights. Like all travellers, what he finds is influenced by his interests and perspectives. Sometimes this leads to illuminating insights; sometimes I marvelled at what he might have seen but didn’t.

Read more: Susan Hawthorne reviews 'Future Active: Media activism and the internet' by Graham Meikle

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Elizabeth Webby reviews The Giraffes Uncle by Les Robinson, My Love Must Wait by Ernestine Hill, The Sundowners by Jon Cleary and The Treatment and The Cure by Peter Kocan
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Timely reminders
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As HarperCollins continues to release this welcome series of Australian reissues, it’s especially pleasing to see them including less well-known, even long-forgotten, titles. While I had read none of these latest offerings, I did at least know something about three of the authors. Les Robinson, however, was almost a complete mystery. ‘Almost’ because I had a vague memory of one of his stories being included in an anthology I once lectured on. Obviously, it did not impress me enough to seek out more of his work. Nor would it have been easy to find, since, unlike the other three titles, The Giraffe’s Uncle had never been reissued since its first printing, in 1933, by the Macquarie Head Press, a firm now as forgotten as the books it published.
Book 1 Title: The Giraffe's Uncle
Book Author: Les Robinson
Book 1 Biblio: A&R Classics, $22.95 pb, 116 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-giraffe-s-uncle-les-robinson/book/9780207199578.html
Book 2 Title: My Love Must Wait
Book 2 Author: Ernestine Hill
Book 2 Biblio: A&R Classics, $24.95 pb, 511 pp
Book 2 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600):
Book 2 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/my-love-must-wait-ernestine-hill/ebook/9781743099339.html
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As HarperCollins continues to release this welcome series of Australian reissues, it’s especially pleasing to see them including less well-known, even long-forgotten, titles. While I had read none of these latest offerings, I did at least know something about three of the authors. Les Robinson, however, was almost a complete mystery. ‘Almost’ because I had a vague memory of one of his stories being included in an anthology I once lectured on. Obviously, it did not impress me enough to seek out more of his work. Nor would it have been easy to find, since, unlike the other three titles, The Giraffe’s Uncle had never been reissued since its first printing, in 1933, by the Macquarie Head Press, a firm now as forgotten as the books it published.

Read more: Elizabeth Webby reviews 'The Giraffe's Uncle' by Les Robinson, 'My Love Must Wait' by Ernestine...

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Letters to the Editor - December 2002-January 2003
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Contents Category: Letters
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Not half as nice

Dear Editor,

Nothing jolts a writer like finding that her book has been read in serious discord with her intentions and produced the last effect she’d have wanted. Heather Neilson (ABR, October 2002) thinks I’m ‘preaching’ and condemning to outer darkness those who don’t agree with me. This is disquieting, but also salutary.
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Not half as nice

Dear Editor,

Nothing jolts a writer like finding that her book has been read in serious discord with her intentions and produced the last effect she’d have wanted. Heather Neilson (ABR, October 2002) thinks I’m ‘preaching’ and condemning to outer darkness those who don’t agree with me. This is disquieting, but also salutary. However other reviewers may differ – and they do – Dr Neilson has a right to her own reading of How Simone de Beauvoir Died in Australia. I’m sorry she found no pleasure in my book; but, acknowledging her seriousness, I respond to the question she raises twice in the course of the review: for whom was it intended? The answer is: for any and every reader, not only academics, for whom the shifts and struggles of the liberal conscience are never finished with, and for whom such struggles, as they are lived out, make stories worth telling. It’s also for those who share the sense that carrying Australian nationality is now a more complicated and troublesome business than we once supposed – not half as nice, in fact. In that framework, I’ve proposed that the legacies of writers such as Beauvoir and Raymond Williams have important things to offer and tried to explore how. Since the questions raised by their and others’ works are left alive but unresolved, there’s no ‘preaching’ to the ‘converted’ or anyone else. Ethical exploration isn’t preaching; the speaking position isn’t from a rostrum or pulpit, but from within argumentative milieux that are both divided in the present and shifting over time. I think this is made clear, particularly from the elements of memoir in the book.

Read more: Letters to the Editor - December 2002-January 2003

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