Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Skip to main content
Absolutely Revolting

September 1992, no. 144

Marie Maclean reviews Vanishing Points by Thea Astley
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Fiction
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: Lines of flight to the north
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

The play of mirror images in this new work of Thea Astley is quite dazzling. She goes from strength to strength in her command of the crafts of narrative. The book is an enquiry into escape, not just any escape, but escape in an almost metaphysical dimension, in which losing oneself is the only way to find oneself. The novel appears to divide into two novellas, linked by the appearance of the villain, and I use the term advisedly, in both. However the two stories are so closely linked in theme, in motifs and in structure, that they are more like twin pictures that form a diptych.
Book 1 Title: Vanishing Points
Book Author: Thea Astley
Book 1 Biblio: Heinemann, 234 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Display Review Rating: No

The play of mirror images in this new work of Thea Astley is quite dazzling. She goes from strength to strength in her command of the crafts of narrative. The book is an enquiry into escape, not just any escape, but escape in an almost metaphysical dimension, in which losing oneself is the only way to find oneself. The novel appears to divide into two novellas, linked by the appearance of the villain, and I use the term advisedly, in both. However the two stories are so closely linked in theme, in motifs and in structure, that they are more like twin pictures that form a diptych.

Read more: Marie Maclean reviews 'Vanishing Points' by Thea Astley

Write comment (0 Comments)
Margot Luke reviews A Fence Around the Cuckoo by Ruth Park
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Fiction
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: A fence around the cuckoo
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

In this first volume of autobiography, Ruth Park covers her New Zealand years – childhood, adolescence and early challenges of adult life. Episodic and frequently leapfrogging in its chronology, the book is firmly held together by a number of recurring and interweaving themes: the urge to write and the difficulty of acquiring an appropriate education; family relationships, at once close and hedged about with barriers; poverty and the Great Depression; and finally the problem of being ‘different’ combined with the joy of discovering kindred spirits.
Book 1 Title: A Fence Around the Cuckoo
Book Author: Ruth Park
Book 1 Biblio: Penguin, $29.95hb, 0670846791
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/a-fence-around-the-cuckoo-ruth-park/book/9781925773385.html
Display Review Rating: No

In this first volume of autobiography, Ruth Park covers her New Zealand years – childhood, adolescence and early challenges of adult life. Episodic and frequently leapfrogging in its chronology, the book is firmly held together by a number of recurring and interweaving themes: the urge to write and the difficulty of acquiring an appropriate education; family relationships, at once close and hedged about with barriers; poverty and the Great Depression; and finally the problem of being ‘different’ combined with the joy of discovering kindred spirits.

Read more: Margot Luke reviews 'A Fence Around the Cuckoo' by Ruth Park

Write comment (0 Comments)
Robert Hood reviews Exit Points by Nick Gray
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Fiction
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

As novels such as Lucky Jim attest, universities provide a fertile setting for excursions into bizarre humour. Even at the best of times they seem somewhat divorced from reality, so sending them further off the planet by depicting them through the jaundiced eye of satiric exaggeration fits nicely.

            Exit Points by Nick Gray is set in a university. But it is not about tertiary education as such. The novel – often hilarious, usually funny, sometimes ludicrous – is an extravagant attack on the structures of reality, undertaken in an academic context for the reasons I’ve already suggested. Like Alice in Wonderland – towards which it nods deferentially – Exit Points digs a way at ordinary human assumptions until the reader is dropped into the chaos of thoroughly enjoyable nonsense. But, as in Alice, we remain aware that reality is the real issue here, even though its structure might be utterly discredited.
Book 1 Title: Exit Points
Book Author: Nick Gray
Book 1 Biblio: Brolga Press, 218 pp, $19.95 hb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Display Review Rating: No

As novels such as Lucky Jim attest, universities provide a fertile setting for excursions into bizarre humour. Even at the best of times they seem somewhat divorced from reality, so sending them further off the planet by depicting them through the jaundiced eye of satiric exaggeration fits nicely.

Exit Points by Nick Gray is set in a university. But it is not about tertiary education as such. The novel – often hilarious, usually funny, sometimes ludicrous – is an extravagant attack on the structures of reality, undertaken in an academic context for the reasons I’ve already suggested. Like Alice in Wonderland – towards which it nods deferentially – Exit Points digs a way at ordinary human assumptions until the reader is dropped into the chaos of thoroughly enjoyable nonsense. But, as in Alice, we remain aware that reality is the real issue here, even though its structure might be utterly discredited.

Read more: Robert Hood reviews 'Exit Points' by Nick Gray

Write comment (0 Comments)
Meg Sorensen reviews The Web by Nette Hilton and Amy Amaryllis by Sally Odgers
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Children's and Young Adult Fiction
Review Article: Yes
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: From the Word Go
Article Subtitle: Books for younger readers
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

You often bring baggage to a book. Previous books. Gossip. The author’s photograph. The design or picture on the cover. Tabula rasa I am not. As a reviewer, I do endeavour to wipe the slate as clean as possible, but there’s always the odd smudge. In the case of Nette Hilton’s The Web, I found my hackles rising on sight. What was this! A rip-off comic strip version of E.B. White with loopy drawings à la Quentin Blake?
Book 1 Title: The Web
Book Author: Nette Hilton
Book 1 Biblio: Angus & Robertson, $7.95pb
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/0J5yvE
Book 2 Title: Amy Amaryllis
Book 2 Author: Sally Odgers
Book 2 Biblio: Angus & Robertson, $8.95pb
Book 2 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600):
Book 2 Cover (800 x 1200):
Display Review Rating: No

You often bring baggage to a book. Previous books. Gossip. The author’s photograph. The design or picture on the cover. Tabula rasa I am not. As a reviewer, I do endeavour to wipe the slate as clean as possible, but there’s always the odd smudge. In the case of Nette Hilton’s The Web, I found my hackles rising on sight. What was this! A rip-off comic strip version of E.B. White with loopy drawings à la Quentin Blake?

Read more: Meg Sorensen reviews 'The Web' by Nette Hilton and 'Amy Amaryllis' by Sally Odgers

Write comment (0 Comments)
Free Article: No
Contents Category: Letters
Review Article: No
Show Author Link: Yes
Show Byline: Yes
Article Title: Letters to the Editor
Online Only: No
Custom Highlight Text:

Dear Editor,

Ron Pretty’s review of Jane Interlinear & Other Poems raises a few lexical points with me. One is my spelling of ‘til’ for ‘till’. While I recognise that the dictionaries are unanimous, what I see and hear is a straightforward and widespread contraction of ‘until’, with neither the suggestion of agriculture (till) nor the redundant apostrophe (‘til) which Stephen Murray-Smith forbids in Right Words. Today’s solecism is tomorrow’s orthodoxy.
Display Review Rating: No

Dear Editor,

Ron Pretty’s review of Jane Interlinear & Other Poems raises a few lexical points with me. One is my spelling of ‘til’ for ‘till’. While I recognise that the dictionaries are unanimous, what I see and hear is a straightforward and widespread contraction of ‘until’, with neither the suggestion of agriculture (till) nor the redundant apostrophe (‘til) which Stephen Murray-Smith forbids in Right Words. Today’s solecism is tomorrow’s orthodoxy.

Read more: Letters to the Editor - September 1992

Write comment (0 Comments)

More Articles ...