Noted

In Thomas Hardy’s elegiac poem ‘During Wind and Rain’ there are “Clocks and carpets and chairs / On the lawn all day”. As any trawler of flea markets can attest, a terrible vulnerability attaches to private belongings exposed to public view. The pathos is heightened in Hardy’...

Kirsten Tranter, the daughter of famous poet John and formidable literary agent Lyn, has a literary background with bells on. Her first novel, The Legacy, shows her to be a novelist with a commanding talent – a tough plain-stylist who can people her...

Accounts of adult lives often lapse into flat chronicle mode. They can be partial in their truths – when not downright evasive – and constrained by concern for the sensitivities of the living, or the eagle eye of the defamation lawyer. But memoirs of childhood tend towards...

“In tragic life,” wrote George Meredith in Modern Love, a savage poetic account of the breakdown of his marriage, “No villain need be! Passions spin the plot.” Alex Miller’s eighth novel also tells the story of a marriage, in this instance between a young Australian...