For dessert we ate hot puff pastry with a filling of grated apple cooked with butter, eggs and lemon. It pleased the guests, although one of them asked about the filling and seemed shocked that the ingredients were so rich, which is to say (she implied by her look), unhealthy...
Society & Culture
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Gail Bell | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Nation ReviewedMy mother-in-law is bracing herself for loss. As moving day approaches, appetite and sleep have deserted her. She is shrinking in size. Her voice is going. The family, rallying to help, creep back and forth like cat burglars wrapping keep-sakes that rightfully belong on the...
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Anna Funder | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Nation ReviewedSpeaking before going onstage at the Sixth Annual New York Burlesque Festival in 2008, Angie Pontani tried to encapsulate her genre of performance. “Some people say it’s, like, how many ways can you think of to take your clothes off,” she admitted, patting cream on her face...
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Emily Maguire | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Monthly Essays“Shame!” someone shouts. Jeffreys pauses and looks up towards the back of the auditorium as another voice calls out, “Absolutely!” It’s unclear whether the interjections are aimed at Jeffreys or those she is speaking about. She continues: “Anti-sex work feminists have chosen...
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Nicolas Rothwell | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Monthly EssaysStalker, which was made under the Soviet Union’s studio system in 1979 with limited resources, tells a science fiction tale in stylised fashion. The stalker of the title is a professional guide, who leads two pilgrims into a forbidden “Zone” where the laws of nature...
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Peter Conrad | Books | September 2010 | Society & CultureAt the Royal Albert Hall in 1996, Kylie Minogue had an awe-inducing glimpse of the vacuum that she exists to fill. Nick Cave, after clubbing her to death in the video for ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’, one of his Murder Ballads, had enticed her into appearing at the...
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Jana Wendt
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September 2010 | Society & Culture | Theatre
We are approximately an hour into Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure – first performed in 1604 – when a phone rings on stage. The appliance is lying on the bedside table of a starkly lit Novotel-like hotel room, glass-walled bathroom and toilet included. It occurs to...
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Robert Forster
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September 2010 | Society & Culture | Music
What do Sarah Blasko, Silverchair, The Grates and Jimmy Barnes all have in common? Their latest albums were all made outside Australia using overseas producers. Other bands such as Powderfinger and Bridezilla brought in the overseas producer, while Tame Impala, The John Steel...
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Luke Davies | September 2010 | Society & Culture | FilmA man perches awkwardly on the edge of a single bed talking to his two sons, Boy (James Rolleston) and Rocky (Te Aho Eketone-Whitu). He has just returned home from seven years in prison doing time for robbing a service station. “You know this used to be my room?” he asks. Boy...
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Inga Clendinnen
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Books | September 2010 | Society & Culture
The Israeli novelist David Grossman leapt to international attention in the late ’80s with the release of his See Under: Love, translated into several European languages. Now comes To the End of the Land (Jonathan Cape, 592pp; $55.00). I used to think...
