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Absolutely Revolting

January–February 2022, no. 439

Welcome to ABR’s summer-sized first issue of the year. Diaries and letters abound, with Lisa Gorton delving into the final instalment of Helen Garner’s published journals, and Brenda Niall reflecting on Martyn Lyon’s epistolary collection of letters sent to Robert Menzies during his prime ministership. In poetry, ABR is delighted to publish the stunning poems shortlisted for the 2022 Peter Porter Poetry Prize, as well as reviews of new collections by Tracy K. Smith, A. Frances Johnson, and David Musgrave. Elsewhere, in historical musings, Mark McKenna looks at Doug Munro’s chronicle of the scandalous stand-off between publisher Peter Ryan and historian Manning Clark. And in fiction we have reviews of new works by John le Carré, Louise Erdrich, Hannah Kent, and Wole Soyinka. Plus much more!

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Nicole Abadee reviews These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
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Contents Category: Essay Collection
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Article Title: Finding shelter
Article Subtitle: Ann Patchett’s companionable essays
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In These Precious Days, her second essay collection (after This is the Story of a Happy Marriage in 2013), celebrated American writer Ann Patchett sets out to explore ‘what matter[s] most in this precarious and precious life’. Patchett is the author of seven novels, including Bel Canto (2001), which won the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction, and her most recent, the internationally acclaimed The Dutch House (2019). When the pandemic struck in early 2020, Patchett did not have a novel in progress and decided that 2020 was not the time to start one. Instead, she wrote essays, something she has always done when she doesn’t have a novel on the go.
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Article Hero Image Caption: American author Ann Patchett (photograph by Heidi Ross)
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Alt Tag (Featured Image): Nicole Abadee reviews 'These Precious Days' by Ann Patchett
Book 1 Title: These Precious Days
Book Author: Ann Patchett
Book 1 Biblio: Bloomsbury, $29.99 pb, 336 pp
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/QO0vVz
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In These Precious Days, her second essay collection (after This is the Story of a Happy Marriage in 2013), celebrated American writer Ann Patchett sets out to explore ‘what matter[s] most in this precarious and precious life’. Patchett is the author of seven novels, including Bel Canto (2001), which won the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction, and her most recent, the internationally acclaimed The Dutch House (2019). When the pandemic struck in early 2020, Patchett did not have a novel in progress and decided that 2020 was not the time to start one. Instead, she wrote essays, something she has always done when she doesn’t have a novel on the go. Eventually she wrote the title essay about providing shelter and solace to a friend undergoing cancer treatment. It meant so much to her that it needed ‘a solid shelter’, so she crafted this book around it. It is a collection of twenty-two essays (plus an introduction and epilogue) – some of them new, some reworked versions of previously published work – in which she ‘grapples with’ themes that preoccupy her in work and life: ‘what I needed, whom I loved, what I could let go, and how much energy the letting go would take’.

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Barnaby Smith reviews Campese: The last of the dream sellers by James Curran
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Contents Category: Sport
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Article Title: Campese’s goosestep
Article Subtitle: The Paul Keating of Australian rugby
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The Australian team that won the 1991 Rugby World Cup must rank as one of our most charismatic national sport teams in modern times. The side that defeated England in the final at London’s Twickenham Stadium included several players now regarded as undisputed greats of global rugby: John Eales, Tim Horan, Jason Little, Michael Lynagh, and captain Nick Farr-Jones. There were also stirring ‘underdog’ stories: players who seemed to rise from nowhere that year to play starring roles, such as fullback Marty Roebuck and wing Rob Egerton. In Tonga-born flanker Viliami Ofahengaue, there was an early hint of the changing demographic of élite rugby players in Australia.
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Book 1 Title: Campese
Book 1 Subtitle: The last of the dream sellers
Book Author: James Curran
Book 1 Biblio: Scribe, $32.99 pb, 256 pp
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/DVBZDq
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The Australian team that won the 1991 Rugby World Cup must rank as one of our most charismatic national sport teams in modern times. The side that defeated England in the final at London’s Twickenham Stadium included several players now regarded as undisputed greats of global rugby: John Eales, Tim Horan, Jason Little, Michael Lynagh, and captain Nick Farr-Jones. There were also stirring ‘underdog’ stories: players who seemed to rise from nowhere that year to play starring roles, such as fullback Marty Roebuck and wing Rob Egerton. In Tonga-born flanker Viliami Ofahengaue, there was an early hint of the changing demographic of élite rugby players in Australia.

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Gabriel García Ochoa reviews Horizontal Vertigo: A city called Mexico by Juan Villoro, translated by Alfred MacAdam
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Contents Category: Mexico
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Article Title: To go big is to go home
Article Subtitle: Mexico City as palimpsest
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In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, the planet Trentor is the capital of the Galactic Empire. Seen from space, Trentor is nothing but city: there are no rivers, trees, or any other natural features, only an endless urban landscape, a metropolis that has taken over the planet. Landing in Mexico City feels like landing in Trentor: the size is overwhelming, and its apparent infinity challenges most people’s understanding of a city. Juan Villoro calls this sensation ‘horizontal vertigo’. The term is borrowed from a description of the grazing lands of the Argentine pampa, and Villoro chose it as the apt title of his chronicle of Mexico City.
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Alt Tag (Featured Image): Gabriel García Ochoa reviews 'Horizontal Vertigo: A city called Mexico' by Juan Villoro, translated by Alfred MacAdam
Book 1 Title: Horizontal Vertigo
Book 1 Subtitle: A city called Mexico
Book Author: Juan Villoro, translated by Alfred MacAdam
Book 1 Biblio: Pantheon Books, $62.99 hb, 357 pp
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/vnW9eN
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In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, the planet Trentor is the capital of the Galactic Empire. Seen from space, Trentor is nothing but city: there are no rivers, trees, or any other natural features, only an endless urban landscape, a metropolis that has taken over the planet. Landing in Mexico City feels like landing in Trentor: the size is overwhelming, and its apparent infinity challenges most people’s understanding of a city. Juan Villoro calls this sensation ‘horizontal vertigo’. The term is borrowed from a description of the grazing lands of the Argentine pampa, and Villoro chose it as the apt title of his chronicle of Mexico City.

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Carol Middleton reviews This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: In their voicesteps
Article Subtitle: The unmistakable Miriam Margolyes
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The title of Miriam Margolyes’s memoir, This Much Is True, strikes a declamatory note, well suited to the octogenarian actor whose greatest asset is her voice, with its diverse accents, timbres, and moods. It also proclaims that we are not going to have the wool pulled over our eyes, or to be frustrated by authorial modesty, tact, or political correctness.
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Article Hero Image Caption: Miriam Margolyes as Nell in <em>Endgame</em> by Samuel Beckett at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2009 (Donald Cooper/Alamy)
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Book 1 Title: This Much Is True
Book Author: Miriam Margolyes
Book 1 Biblio: John Murray Press, $49.99 hb, 447 pp
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/NKXvAN
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The title of Miriam Margolyes’s memoir, This Much Is True, strikes a declamatory note, well suited to the octogenarian actor whose greatest asset is her voice, with its diverse accents, timbres, and moods. It also proclaims that we are not going to have the wool pulled over our eyes, or to be frustrated by authorial modesty, tact, or political correctness.

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Kieran Pender reviews Law in a Time of Crisis by Jonathan Sumption
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Contents Category: Law
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Article Title: ‘The laws are not silent’
Article Subtitle: Examining how law and history intertwine
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When World War II began, a defence regulation was issued in Great Britain that enabled the home secretary to imprison anyone who they reasonably believed had hostile associations. One such interned individual, Robert Liversidge, objected to his detention and challenged the validity of the home secretary’s decision. In the subsequent case, Liversidge v Anderson, the House of Lords adopted a deferential approach, holding that in a time of war it was inappropriate for the courts to subject the home secretary’s decision making to much scrutiny. But in a thundering dissent, Brisbane-born Lord James ‘Dick’ Atkin disagreed. ‘In England, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent,’ he wrote. ‘They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace.’
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Book 1 Title: Law in a Time of Crisis
Book Author: Jonathan Sumption
Book 1 Biblio: Profile Books, $39.99 hb, 250 pp
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/0J2MEL
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When World War II began, a defence regulation was issued in Great Britain that enabled the home secretary to imprison anyone who they reasonably believed had hostile associations. One such interned individual, Robert Liversidge, objected to his detention and challenged the validity of the home secretary’s decision. In the subsequent case, Liversidge v Anderson, the House of Lords adopted a deferential approach, holding that in a time of war it was inappropriate for the courts to subject the home secretary’s decision making to much scrutiny. But in a thundering dissent, Brisbane-born Lord James ‘Dick’ Atkin disagreed. ‘In England, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent,’ he wrote. ‘They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace.’

Read more: Kieran Pender reviews 'Law in a Time of Crisis' by Jonathan Sumption

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