Among the delights at the end of winter are the return of afternoons and the arrival of ABR’s fiction-laden August issue. This month we publish the three shortlisted stories for the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize alongside reviews of a fresh harvest of fiction by Edwina Preston, Robert Drewe, Eleanor Limprecht, and Scott McCulloch. Julieanne Lamond and Brigid Magner look at new studies of Gail Jones and Joseph Furphy, respectively, while Gary Pearce writes on the Joyce centenary. In politics, Mark Kenny analyses the Albanese government’s first chapter as Paul Strangio forecasts the challenges awaiting Daniel Andrews at the ballot box and Patrick Mullins examines Aaron Patrick’s autopsy of the post-Turnbull Liberal party. Catharine Lumby reflects on the life of Frank Moorhouse, while Ian Dickson reviews the letters of poet Thom Gunn. There’s an interview with Michael Winkler, new poetry by Jennifer Harrison and Vidyan Ravinthiran, and much, much more!
Custom Article Title: An interview with Michael Winkler
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My sister died seventeen years ago and there aren’t many days I don’t miss her. I’d like us to be walking together beside the Murray River near our place in Merbein, hearing her laugh, and being renewed by the sunshine through the river red gums.
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Article Hero Image Caption: Michael Winkler (photograph supplied)
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Michael Winkler lives in Melbourne. His most recent book is Grimmish (Puncher & Wattmann), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award. He was the winner of the 2016 Calibre Essay Prize for his essay ‘The Great Red Whale’.
If you could go anywhere tomorrow, where would it be, and why?
My sister died seventeen years ago and there aren’t many days I don’t miss her. I’d like us to be walking together beside the Murray River near our place in Merbein, hearing her laugh, and being renewed by the sunshine through the river red gums.
What’s your idea of hell?
Being trapped. Physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, morally.
Article Subtitle: A wide-ranging look at the koala
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This is the third book dedicated to the koala that I have reviewed in ABR in the past fourteen years. That level of attention says much about the place we hold in our hearts for this endearing marsupial. It also relates to the fascinating natural and social history of the koala, along with the wildlife management conundrums it throws up. The koala is probably the most widely recognised of Australia’s animal species. It is also probably the most studied of our roughly 380 mammalian species, so there is a strong knowledge foundation around which to build a good story.
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Article Hero Image Caption: <em>Koala and young</em>, 1803, by J.W. Lewin (photograph via the State Library of NSW)
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Alt Tag (Featured Image): Peter Menkhorst reviews 'Koala: A life in trees' by Danielle Clode
Book 1 Title: Koala
Book 1 Subtitle: A life in trees
Book Author: Danielle Clode
Book 1 Biblio: Black Inc., $34.99 pb, 323 pp
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/Ryq41y
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This is the third book dedicated to the koala that I have reviewed in ABR in the past fourteen years. That level of attention says much about the place we hold in our hearts for this endearing marsupial. It also relates to the fascinating natural and social history of the koala, along with the wildlife management conundrums it throws up. The koala is probably the most widely recognised of Australia’s animal species. It is also probably the most studied of our roughly 380 mammalian species, so there is a strong knowledge foundation around which to build a good story.
The first two books I reviewed – by Stephen Jackson (2007) and Ann Moyal (2008) – are fine works that thoroughly cover the natural and social history of the koala as it was then understood. However, they are rather academic in their approach and thus narrow in their appeal. By contrast, Danielle Clode takes a more relaxed and engaging approach, deftly maintaining scientific accuracy and credibility as she brings us up to date with the rapidly expanding scientific literature. She ranges widely across koala ecology, evolution, anatomy, physiology, reproduction, diseases, and conservation. Further, she doesn’t hesitate to take the reader on side excursions into related topics such as the fossil history of marsupials, Holocene environmental fluctuations, the evolution of eucalypts, and Aboriginal prehistory. Do not be put off if this subject matter sounds technical – Clode is a master at popularising science and making the complex understandable.
Custom Article Title: A rubber cudgel of a word: The speciousness of resilience
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Article Title: A rubber cudgel of a word
Article Subtitle: The speciousness of resilience
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In his concession speech on election night, after a perfunctory Acknowledgment of Country and a fulsome acknowledgment of Australia’s defence personnel, past and present; after hymning our ‘functioning’ democracy with reference to Ukraine, and intimating that without him we imperil ourselves; after mentioning the ‘great upheaval’ of recent years but failing to use the words pandemic, floods, lockdown, bushfire, or climate change; and after reassuring us that he still believes in miracles, outgoing Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that ‘the one thing’ he had ‘always counted on’ was ‘the strength and resilience and character of the Australian people’.
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Alt Tag (Related Article Image): 'A rubber cudgel of a word: The speciousness of resilience' by Anwen Crawford
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In his concession speech on election night, after a perfunctory Acknowledgment of Country and a fulsome acknowledgment of Australia’s defence personnel, past and present; after hymning our ‘functioning’ democracy with reference to Ukraine, and intimating that without him we imperil ourselves; after mentioning the ‘great upheaval’ of recent years but failing to use the words pandemic, floods, lockdown, bushfire, or climate change; and after reassuring us that he still believes in miracles, outgoing Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that ‘the one thing’ he had ‘always counted on’ was ‘the strength and resilience and character of the Australian people’.
– that’s Ganesh to you – is pictured / with a broken tusk: why? / The tale was added / late on / to the Mahabharata.
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– that’s Ganesh to you – is pictured with a broken tusk: why?
The tale was added late on to the Mahabharata.
Vyasa, author requiring a scribe asked that noble child with an elephant’s head.
Only, replied the god, if once begun we do not cease … my pen mustn’t rise from the page.
So the poem became difficult: Vyasa improvised knotty passages
Pillaiyar had to pause and parse – while he, Vyasa, also took a breath. When the pen broke
Vyasa, as promised, kept unrolling that wonderfully embroidered carpet of verse ... The elephant-god had no choice.
He snapped off his tusk, dipped the end in ink and wrote with that. Since then, all writing, everywhere, has this character.
It can’t decide whether to speed up or slow down. It wants you to understand. Then it plays hide and seek. There are two people here, even before you arrive – playing tug-of-war.
Impulse and form. Breath and language. And since the pen is a torn-out tooth red between the lines you’ll taste blood
The ongoing war in Ukraine is not mentioned in Oliver Bullough’s new book, Butler to the World. That is not unexpected: it went to press before Russia invaded Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin’s illegal and reprehensible invasion looms large over this excellent new book about Britain’s role in enabling financial crime. The invasion is an acute example of the real-world consequences of this industry.
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Alt Tag (Featured Image): Kieran Pender reviews 'Butler to the World: How Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals' by Oliver Bullough
Book 1 Title: Butler to the World
Book 1 Subtitle: How Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals
Book Author: Oliver Bullough
Book 1 Biblio: Profile Books, $39.99 hb, 273 pp
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/OR06YG
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The ongoing war in Ukraine is not mentioned in Oliver Bullough’s new book, Butler to the World. That is not unexpected: it went to press before Russia invaded Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin’s illegal and reprehensible invasion looms large over this excellent new book about Britain’s role in enabling financial crime. The invasion is an acute example of the real-world consequences of this industry.
Thus, on 9 April 2022, Bullough wrote in a column for the Guardian: ‘the Kremlin is solely to blame for the horror it is inflicting on the Ukrainians, but its ability to wage war derives from the wealth it has accumulated. And that is something we share responsibility for, and something we should address as urgently as we are providing Kyiv with missiles to destroy Russian armoured vehicles.’
