Arts & Letters: Books
POLITICS
New Labor Dreaming: Troy Bramston’s 'Looking for the Light on the Hill'
Maxine McKew
Coming from New South Wales, a state that has made an artform of decapitating leaders, Bramston doesn’t always follow the logic of his own...
More ...The Other Biography: Jacqueline Kent's "The Making of Julia Gillard"
Christine Wallace
If attention from biographers augurs well for a politician’s career, then Julia Gillard looks good for the Lodge when Kevin Rudd’s day is...
More ...
WORLD
When the Centre Cannot Hold: Joan Didion’s 'Blue Nights'
Inga Clendinnen
Along with many others, I was first drawn to Joan Didion when I read her 1967 essay ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’. It presented a...
More ...SOCIETY
Coming Of Age: Robin Boyd’s ‘The Australian Ugliness’ Fifty Years On
Peter Conrad
In 1960, when Robin Boyd published his attack on the stylistic cowardice of our suburbs, it took courage to call Australia ugly. The...
More ...Case Histories: Hans Keilson’s 'The Death of the Adversary' and 'Comedy in a Minor Key'
Inga Clendinnen
Hans Keilson, a retired psychiatrist of German birth who lives in Amsterdam, was four months away from his one-hundred-and-first birthday...
More ...Cooking with Love: Recent Food Books
Alan Saunders
Comparisons between food media and pornography are a bit tired by now - the term "gastro-porn" has been around for 20 years - but...
More ...
CULTURE
Age of Innocence: Frank Moorhouse’s 'Cold Light'
David Marr
Edith Campbell Berry has crashed to earth in Canberra circa 1950. She is no longer wanted abroad. All her years at the League of Nations...
More ...
WORLD
The Magic of Exile: Anna Funder’s 'All That I Am'
David Marr
To those who fled the Nazis in the middle of the 1930s, the British gave only temporary protection. Their visas stipulated “no political...
More ...
SOCIETY
Clean As You Go: A Correspondence with Clive James
Paola Totaro
Unfortunately my health is indecent at the moment. I’m in Addenbrooke’s being seen to but I should be back in London next week and I’ll...
More ...
CULTURE
'Her Father’s Daughter' By Alice Pung
Brenda Walker
Alice Pung’s first book, Unpolished Gem (2006), was the work of a young, amusing and astute writer. While Her Father’s Daughter again makes...
More ...
CULTURE
'Sarah Thornhill' By Kate Grenville
Delia Falconer
Each of the three books in Kate Grenville’s loose trilogy – The Secret River (2005), The Lieutenant (2008) and now Sarah Thornhill – is an...
More ...
SOCIETY
A Grand History: John Hirst on Mark McKenna’s 'An Eye for Eternity'
John Hirst
Mark McKenna’s An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark (Miegunyah Press, 816pp; $54.99) is a challenging biography because it will...
More ...
MEDIA
Too Much Information: Andrew Charlton on Lindsay Tanner’s 'Sideshow'
Andrew Charlton
Recently I had dinner with a group of friends including a well-known political journalist. When I told him I was working my way through the...
More ...
WORLD
Parallel Lives: Mark Twain and his Autobiography: Volume 1
Peter Robb
A big book by Mark Twain became a bestseller in the US following its publication last November, a hundred years after its author’s death....
More ...
SOCIETY
'Hand Me Down World' By Lloyd Jones
Delia Falconer
“I was with her at the first hotel on the Arabian Sea. That was for two years. Then at the hotel in Tunisia for three years. At the first...
More ...
SOCIETY
Magical Thinking: Aravind Adiga on VS Naipaul’s 'The Masque of Africa'
Aravind Adiga
For over 40 years now, VS Naipaul has met, interviewed and annoyed people in dozens of countries to produce a body of travel writing that...
More ...
POLITICS
Man of Wood: Robert Manne on John Howard’s 'Lazarus Rising'
Robert Manne
Having wrestled with this long and boring book for six entire days, I was astonished when I finally realised how little I had discovered...
More ...
SOCIETY
Shadow Play: Peter Robb’s 'Street Fight in Naples: A Book of Art and Insurrection'
Sebastian Smee
The first time I read Peter Robb’s Midnight in Sicily was also the first time I travelled around Sicily. The first and only. I remember at...
More ...
SOCIETY
Lest We Forget: Hugh Lunn’s 'Words Fail Me: A Journey through Australia’s Lost Language'
Peter Conrad
Hugh Lunn, vegging out as he sunbakes in his popularity, has come up with an unstrenuous new method for manufacturing a book: why not...
More ...
SOCIETY
Under the Bridge: Delia Falconer’s 'Sydney'
Drusilla Modjeska
Returning to Sydney can be an ambivalent experience. And it was for me, this winter, after three months in London. Ducks were swimming on...
More ...
The Shortlist Daily
7 February 2012
Twitter
@THEMONTHLY @SLOWTV
