Books

Current Issue Janet Malcolm’s 'Forty-one False Starts'

The Queen of Not-nice

By Amanda Lohrey

Philip Roth would later famously declare that fiction couldn’t keep up with the new reality while orthodox journalism came under attack as the medium of a phony objectivity that mostly served the ruling elites. Since it was not possible to account for every aspect of the truth of a situation, it followed that even the most dispassionate reportage was unavoidably a constructed “sto

Current Issue HarperCollins; $29.99

'The Lucky Culture' by Nick Cater

By Mark Latham

In a 361-page work, one would have expected these people to be identified and dissected – outed for their unsavoury contribution to left-wing aloofism. There is, after all, little point in throwing around labels unless they can be supported by detailed research, giving examples of the offending elites and the things they have been elitist about. I had great expectations for the intel

‘Burial Rites’ by Hannah Kent

By Alexandra Coghlan

The popular fascination with Nordic murder mysteries takes a historical turn in Burial Rites, the debut novel from Australian author Hannah Kent. In 1829 servant Agnes Magnúsdóttir became the last woman to be beheaded in Iceland. Preserved in national legend as a witch and a whore, Kent’s altogether more equivocal Agnes exists beneath the slats of official correspondence: in the sum of folkloric tales, personal encou

Anna Krien’s ‘Night Games’

Behind Play

By James Button

It’s a courtroom drama that begins where most end, with the verdict. Justin Dyer is the defendant on six charges of the rape, attempted rape and indecent assault of Sarah Wesley. The jury files into court. The foreman stands to speak, the document in his hand shaking. Not guilty, he declares of the first charge. “Justin buckles and lets out a

The slash pile

The cheap thrills of fan fiction

By Linda Jaivin

Ever imagined Paul Keating and Germaine Greer getting it on to the rhythm of Keating’s Redfern speech? Jennifer Byrne has. Brendan Cowell has done it with a bhang lassi–infused Aussie cricket team. Noni Hazlehurst, Toby Schmitz and I have done it t

By James Salter

‘All That Is’

By Robyn Annear

The back-cover blurb for All That Is misleadingly highlights the protagonist Philip Bowman’s experiences as a World War Two naval officer and his subsequent career in book publishing. In fact, these form but a sketchy backdrop to the novel’s real s

‘All the Way’ by Marie Darrieussecq (trans. Penny Hueston)

By Bethanie Blanchard

In an era when even supermarkets stock the sadomasochistic confections of EL James, it seems strange that a literary work exploring erotic themes would elicit anything more than the lifting of an eyebrow. But the sexualisation of children is truly our last taboo, and Ma

JM Coetzee’s ‘The Childhood of Jesus’

To Hell with Self-help

By Craig Sherborne

It’s tempting to imagine Jesus as an annoying child, a know-it-all, uncomplicatedly divine. In JM Coetzee’s latest novel, The Childhood of Jesus (Text Publishing; $34.99), it’s not clear if Jesus is truly present as a character or not. There

‘Inheritance’ by Balli Kaur Jaswal

By Peter Pierce

There was no distinctive literary voice in Singapore till after the painful break with Malaysia in 1965. Then, among others, emerged the novelist Catherine Lim and the poet, academic and literary godfather Edwin Thumboo. Now, in the latest generation, a new yet polished

'The Office: A Hardworking History' by Gideon Haigh

By Robyn Annear

At my workplace not long ago, an elderly poet inadvertently hung his walking stick on the photocopier’s keypad and, instead of one copy of his mint-new poem, ended up with 413 of them. Gideon Haigh’s latest book is a bit like that. The success of TV shows

Martin Amis’ 'Lionel Asbo: State of England'

Top Dog

By Anna Goldsworthy

At the end of his recent biography of Martin Amis, Richard Bradford poses a question, as if to justify the toil of the previous 382 pages: “Significance: Is He a Great Writer?” “The short answer to this question is yes,” he continues – too swiftly? �

'The Dinner' by Herman Koch

By Catherine Ford

When Serge Lohman, the Netherlands’ favourite candidate for prime minister, dines at an exclusive restaurant with his younger brother Paul, we know there’s scrofulous business ahead in Herman Koch’s grim and perturbing novel, The Dinner. Paul Lohman, Koch’s misa

'The Sex Lives of Australians' by Frank Bongiorno

By Peter Pierce

Thankless work, but someone had to do it: Frank Bongiorno has written a history of the sex lives of Australians. Blessedly, our intimacies usually remain private. Guessing about others’ is fruitless, whatever the apparent evidence of happiness, misery or children. Bongiorno has concentrated instead on the enlistment of and interference with sexual behaviou

'The Recluse' by Evelyn Juers

By kieronb

One of Sydney’s most enduring myths is the story that the nineteenth-century heiress Eliza Donnithorne was the model for Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. The daughter of an official of the East India Company who eventually settled in Newtown, Eliza was said to have been left at the altar by a mystery fiancé and to have spent the rest of her days in seclusion. Every decade

'Canada' by Richard Ford

By Christine Kenneally

I don’t think there’s a single moment of happiness in Richard Ford’s latest novel, Canada. Or joy, mischief or warmth. The word ‘love’ appears a lot in the first of the saga’s three parts, but it doesn’t generate much heat. And why should it? Not

'The Watch Tower' by Elizabeth Harrower

By Michelle de Kretser

Elizabeth Harrower’s fiction obsessively circles the workings of power within the domestic sphere. Watchfulness, cruelty and the suffering of the innocent feed her work, as her titles hint: The Long Prospect, The Catherine Wheel. Harrower’s characteristic

'HHhH' by Laurent Binet

By Catherine Ford

Not too many first novels come at you like this one. Laurent Binet’s debut, based on the true story of the British and Czech mission to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Nazi secret services, in Prague in 1942, is virtuosic, combative and impatient with fict

Winning Enemies

By John Birmingham

The humiliating retreat from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, into cantonment at the airport, is widely regarded as the modern nadir of the British military. On 2 September 2007, a bugle sounded ‘Advance’ to signal the withdrawal, and a convoy carrying the last few hundred stragglers of Her Majesty’s 4th Battalion away from Basra Palace lurched forward. The British had not just lost control