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Absolutely Revolting

May 1994, no. 160

Welcome to the May 1994 issue of Australian Book Review!

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Helen Elliott reviews Searching for Charmian by Suzanne Chick
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: The charm of a daughter’s desire
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I came to Suzanne Chick’s book full of prejudice and cynicism. Certainly Chick was the illegitimate daughter Charmian Clift had when she was nineteen, but Chick was relinquished at two weeks to her adoptive family and Clift took her own life before Chick began to make enquiries about her natural mother. What could Chick have to say about Clift that those who knew her couldn’t? Wouldn’t this just be crass cashing-in on a famous and alluring name? A ‘Mommie Dearest’ genre from a different angle?
Book 1 Title: Searching for Charmian
Book Author: Suzanne Chick
Book 1 Biblio: MacMillan, $39.95 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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I came to Suzanne Chick’s book full of prejudice and cynicism. Certainly Chick was the illegitimate daughter Charmian Clift had when she was nineteen, but Chick was relinquished at two weeks to her adoptive family and Clift took her own life before Chick began to make enquiries about her natural mother. What could Chick have to say about Clift that those who knew her couldn’t? Wouldn’t this just be crass cashing-in on a famous and alluring name? A ‘Mommie Dearest’ genre from a different angle?

Read more: Helen Elliott reviews 'Searching for Charmian' by Suzanne Chick

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Beverley Kingston reviews Weary: The Life of Sir Edward Dunlop by Sue Ebury
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Contents Category: Biography
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Over 35,000 copies of the hardback edition of Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop’s war diaries had been sold before they were reissued in paperback. Now Sue Ebury, who edited those diaries for publication, has written an accompanying ‘Life’. An impish picture of the older Weary in a sportscoat looking rather smaller than he really was grins beneath his name written in gold on a red silk background. In the paper edition it will surely be embossed.
Book 1 Title: Weary
Book 1 Subtitle: The Life of Sir Edward Dunlop
Book Author: Sue Ebury
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $45 hb
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Over 35,000 copies of the hardback edition of Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop’s war diaries had been sold before they were reissued in paperback. Now Sue Ebury, who edited those diaries for publication, has written an accompanying ‘Life’. An impish picture of the older Weary in a sportscoat looking rather smaller than he really was grins beneath his name written in gold on a red silk background. In the paper edition it will surely be embossed.

This book is very long, as is often the way with modern biographies, and it needs a strong pair of wrists, but unlike many modem books the typeface is a decent size for the older reader. Much of it was written before Dunlop’ s death in 1993 and with his assistance, so it has some of the qualities of an autobiography. Sue Ebury had access to Dunlop’s papers and other correspondence which is still in private collections and she was able to interview many of his friends and associates.

Read more: Beverley Kingston reviews 'Weary: The Life of Sir Edward Dunlop' by Sue Ebury

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Thomas Shapcott reviews Lyrebird Rising: Louise Hanson-Dyer of l’Oiseau-­Lyre, 1884–1962 by Jim Davidson
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Contents Category: Biography
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Article Title: Virtuoso display
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One of the defining features of recent years in Australian ‘literature’ (as I suppose we must call it), in tandem with a perceived growth in the quantity of fiction and poetry by women, titles reflecting the ethnic diversity of origin in more and more writers, and a growth industry in Aboriginal studies, has been the remarkable increase in sophistication of approach to biography. Perhaps more specifically, cultural biography.
Book 1 Title: Lyrebird Rising
Book 1 Subtitle: Louise Hanson-Dyer of l’Oiseau-­Lyre, 1884–1962
Book Author: Jim Davidson
Book 1 Biblio: Melbourne University Publishing, $49.95 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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One of the defining features of recent years in Australian ‘literature’ (as I suppose we must call it), in tandem with a perceived growth in the quantity of fiction and poetry by women, titles reflecting the ethnic diversity of origin in more and more writers, and a growth industry in Aboriginal studies, has been the remarkable increase in sophistication of approach to biography. Perhaps more specifically, cultural biography.

Read more: Thomas Shapcott reviews 'Lyrebird Rising: Louise Hanson-Dyer of l’Oiseau-­Lyre, 1884–1962' by Jim...

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Helen Daniel reviews Mad Meg by Sally Morrison
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Furore and disarray
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Midway through Sally Morrison’s new novel, Mad Meg, I began to develop the scissor twitch, an almost overwhelming urge to cut it up and reassemble it into a new structure. Not quite the vandalism it suggests – I read Mad Meg in galley pages, which encourages scissorly desires. It is a vast, kaleidoscopic novel, which opens with a wonderful mischievous energy, full of surprises and pleasures, and laconic wit. Yet it begins to teeter midway and, in my view, ends in unnecessary disarray. Hence the twitch.
Book 1 Title: Mad Meg
Book Author: Sally Morrison
Book 1 Biblio: WHA, $24.95 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Midway through Sally Morrison’s new novel, Mad Meg, I began to develop the scissor twitch, an almost overwhelming urge to cut it up and reassemble it into a new structure. Not quite the vandalism it suggests – I read Mad Meg in galley pages, which encourages scissorly desires. It is a vast, kaleidoscopic novel, which opens with a wonderful mischievous energy, full of surprises and pleasures, and laconic wit. Yet it begins to teeter midway and, in my view, ends in unnecessary disarray. Hence the twitch.

Read more: Helen Daniel reviews 'Mad Meg' by Sally Morrison

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Cath Kenneally reviews Lullaby: A novel by Janine Burke
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: You hiding from me, Pa?
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Janine Burke in Lullaby, is writing about writing-out. Her character, Bea, is a writer with a block, seemingly precipitated by the failure of a marriage and the temporary loss of a recent lover, but the author is trying for much more than just this one story, which looks, on the evi­dence of the first chapter, to have more than enough fuel in it for a novel.
Book 1 Title: Lullaby
Book 1 Subtitle: A novel
Book Author: Janine Burke
Book 1 Biblio: Picador, $16.95 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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‘You have your own place now; your own magic.’
‘How to make it last, that’s the question.’
‘You mean, what spell should you invent – what’s in your power?’
Bea smiled. ‘Words, I suppose. Stories.’

Janine Burke in Lullaby, is writing about writing-out. Her character, Bea, is a writer with a block, seemingly precipitated by the failure of a marriage and the temporary loss of a recent lover, but the author is trying for much more than just this one story, which looks, on the evi­dence of the first chapter, to have more than enough fuel in it for a novel.

Read more: Cath Kenneally reviews 'Lullaby: A novel' by Janine Burke

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