June 2, 2019
The chthonic realms explored in Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Underland’
Culture
Cave systems, mines, urban sewers, mycelial networks, moulins and more
Geordie Williamson
By this author
October 1, 2017
The ghost of creativity spurned
Culture
Richard Flanagan explores a different kind of darkness in ‘First Person’
March 1, 2019
Tracking time: Gerald Murnane’s ‘A Season on Earth’
Culture
Forty years on, the author’s second novel is reunited with its lost half
November 1, 2016
The antipodes of the imagination
Culture
JM Coetzee’s ‘The Schooldays of Jesus’ is defined by its strangeness
November 1, 2015
In conscious exile
Culture
Rediscovering the novels of Randolph Stow
October 1, 2014
‘Acute Misfortune’ by Erik Jensen
Books
Black Inc.; $32.99
May 1, 2014
The return of Elizabeth Harrower’s ‘In Certain Circles’
Books
A long-lost novel sees the light after 40 years
September 1, 2013
Alex Miller’s ’Coal Creek’
Australian Literature
Some writers’ imaginations are roused most strongly by the view from their doorsteps. John Updike created a literary cosmos from the small-town, middle-class Protestant America of his youth. Irishman John McGahern spent a lifetime turning …
April 1, 2013
The competing sides of Clive James
The clown v. the critic
October 4, 2012
The Best of Australian Literature 2012
Patrick White
Let’s prick the bubble of contemporaneity for once. Two lost books by a centenarian author were published in 2012. Happy Valley is the first reissue of Patrick White’s 1939 debut, a novel that was later so effectively quashed by its creator …
October 6, 2011
Fiction masterpiece
Culture
JM Coetzee - ‘Summertime’, 2009
August 5, 2010
Strange beasts
arts
Sonya’s Hartnett’s ‘Midnight Zoo’
June 30, 2010
‘Indelible Ink’ by Fiona McGregor
Society
On meeting Marie King, the heroine of Fiona McGregor’s fourth novel, I was reminded of Brett Whiteley’s painting of an ageing society hostess. His subject is impeccable at first glance – coiffed and glossy, as though time itself is being held back …