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Absolutely Revolting

March 2011, no. 329

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Contents Category: Young Adult Fiction
Custom Article Title: Anna Ryan-Punch reviews 'Six' by Karen Tayleur
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Six people. Five seatbelts. Six teenagers involved in a horrific car crash. But who has died?
Book 1 Title: Six
Book Author: Karen Tayleur
Book 1 Biblio: Black Dog Books, $18.99 pb, 204 pp, 9781742031552
Book 1 Author Type: Author

Six people. Five seatbelts. Six teenagers involved in a horrific car crash. But who has died? After this reader-catching prologue, Karen Tayleur’s Six jumps backwards to follow the teenagers through half of their final year at high school. Sarah, though organised and dutiful, has doubts about her future career path. Her best friend, the possibly psychic Poppy, has recently added stressed-out athlete Nico to her long string of boyfriends. Sarah’s secret crush, Finn, and his long-term girlfriend Virginia have pretended to break up. And Cooper? Cooper’s just creepy. One summer day, a discovery in the woods and a few bad choices link five of the six teenagers. School, relationships, license tests, upcoming exams and parties dominate their everyday lives, but the memory of that day remains. And when Nico starts to receive anonymous I Know What You Did Last Summer-style text messages, he realises that a sixth person shares knowledge of their secret.

Read more: Anna Ryan-Punch reviews 'Six' by Karen Tayleur

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Contents Category: Picture Books
Custom Article Title: Stephanie Owen Reeder reviews eleven new children's picture books
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The latest crop of children’s picture books highlights the ability of this versatile genre to cover everything from the ever-popular animal tale, to sparkling stories about fairies, to introspective contemplations on the meaning of life.
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The latest crop of children’s picture books highlights the ability of this versatile genre to cover everything from the ever-popular animal tale, to sparkling stories about fairies, to introspective contemplations on the meaning of life.

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Contents Category: Poetry
Custom Article Title: David McCooey reviews 'A Cool and Shaded Heart' and 'Ethical Investigations' by Noel Rowe
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Noel Rowe, poet and critic, was something of an enigma to me. It is hard to believe that he was still in his thirties (just) when I met him in 1990 at the University of Sydney, he a lecturer, I a postgraduate student. Noel seemed to have an enormous wealth of experience, though he was never showy with it ...
Book 1 Title: A Cool and Shaded Heart
Book 1 Subtitle: Collected poems
Book Author: Noel Rowe
Book 1 Biblio: Vagabond Press, $33 pb, 192 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: Ethical Investigations
Book 2 Subtitle: Essays on Australian literature and poetics
Book 2 Author: Noel Rowe
Book 2 Biblio: Vagabond Press, $33 pb, 240 pp
Book 2 Author Type: Author
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Noel Rowe, poet and critic, was something of an enigma to me. It is hard to believe that he was still in his thirties (just) when I met him in 1990 at the University of Sydney, he a lecturer, I a postgraduate student. Noel seemed to have an enormous wealth of experience, though he was never showy with it. In 1990 he was still a member of the Catholic religious order the Marist Fathers. (He left in 1992.) He had grown up on a farm, and prior to becoming a priest he had intended to be an actor. He had travelled, and he seemed like a far more senior academic than his recently acquired associate lectureship now indicates. (Like most students, I was largely ignorant of the profoundly hierarchical nature of academia.) Despite the fullness of his life, Noel always seemed essentially young, if youth can be defined by an openness to experience. It seems too cruel that such a man should have died at the age of fifty-six, of cancer, in 2007.

Read more: David McCooey reviews 'A Cool and Shaded Heart: Collected poems' and 'Ethical Investigations:...

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Contents Category: Australian History
Custom Article Title: Luke Morgan reviews 'The Garden of Ideas: Four Centuries of Australian Style' by Richard Aitken
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When Bouvard and Pécuchet suddenly become enamoured of landscape design in Flaubert’s novel of 1881, and decide to remodel their own garden, they are bewildered by the ‘infinity of styles’ that are available to them. After much deliberation and research, they decide to install an Etruscan tomb with an inscription ...
Book 1 Title: The Garden of Ideas: Four Centuries of Australian Style
Book Author: Richard Aitken
Book 1 Biblio: Miegunyah Press, $64.99 hb, 255 pp, 9780522857504

When Bouvard and Pécuchet suddenly become enamoured of landscape design in Flaubert’s novel of 1881, and decide to remodel their own garden, they are bewildered by the ‘infinity of styles’ that are available to them. After much deliberation and research, they decide to install an Etruscan tomb with an inscription, a Rialto, a Chinese pagoda, a mount, and topiary in the shape of peacocks, stags, pyramids, and armchairs. Despite these ‘improvements’, however, when Bouvard and Pécuchet proudly unveil the garden for the first time at dinner, their guests fail to respond as they had hoped; that is, according to predetermined categories of response, which include the Melancholy or Romantic, the Exotic, the Pensive, the Mysterious, and the Fantastic.

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Contents Category: Story
Custom Article Title: 'Half a house on a truck near T——', a new story by Wayne Macauley
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Now you won’t believe this one, but I’ll tell it anyway. There was a man, a roof tiler, and he was happily married to a woman called Nicole who worked part-time as a nail technician; they had three kids: Nina, Aiden and Jess....
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Now you won’t believe this one, but I’ll tell it anyway. There was a man, a roof tiler, and he was happily married to a woman called Nicole who worked part-time as a nail technician; they had three kids: Nina, Aiden and Jess. For nine years the marriage was fine, as fine as a marriage can be in a world going to hell in a handbasket, but then Steve lost his job. Nicole still had three days at the salon, so that was all right, but then she got laid off too. They started arguing, screaming, throwing things. Nicole said: I can’t do this any more Steve you’ve got to go. Steve said sure I’ll go but I’m not just going to give you the house and the kids and everything – and so began the long and painful process of unpicking the knot and dividing the spoils.

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