Synopsis: Thinly veiled autobiographical account of David Malouf’s adolescence and early adulthood and his changing relationships with his eponymous best friend, Johnno and the town of his birth, Brisbane. A must for all Queenslanders.
My Take: I have a very warm spot in my heart for David Malouf. He’s the kind of writer that I would [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Australian'
“Johnno”, David Malouf
August 4th, 2009 · No Comments · Australian, Fiction, Literature, Queensland, biography
Tags:David Malouf
"Unpolished Gem", Alice Pung
July 12th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Asian, Australian, Non-Fiction
Synopsis: A Chinese family flees war and conflict in Vietnam and Cambodia for the Western suburbs of Melbourne. A young girl grows up Asian in Australia.
My Take: I had a typically ‘old Australia’ childhood in country Queensland. Cricket, football, fishing, “Australia All Over” with Macca on a Sunday morning. It was great fun, but it [...]
Tags:Alice Pung
“The Slap”, Christos Tsiolkas
June 28th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Australian, Literature
Synopsis: Man slaps boy. Mother sues man. The fragile and interdependent settlements of modern suburban life are disturbed.
My Take: “The Slap” is clearly a very special book. As the editor of The Australian Literary Review, Stephen Romei, has noted, the book has realised:
“a rare quadrella in publishing: it’s a page turner that sells lots [...]
Tags:Christos Tsiolkas
"Shut Up and Listen and You Might Learn Something", Edna Carew and Patrick Cook
June 24th, 2009 · No Comments · Australian, Non-Fiction, Politics, Quotes
Synopsis: The bite and bile of the greatest Treasurer Australia has ever had.
My Take: Published in 1990, this collection of Keating quotations comes from the golden era of PJK. The period before he became PM and was forced to moderate (at least to some extent) his more extreme instincts for public, rhetorical bloodshed.
Most of the [...]
"Joh Speak", Alan Price, Elizabeth Hancock and Erik Scholz
June 22nd, 2009 · 1 Comment · Australian, Non-Fiction, Politics, Queensland, Quotes
Synopsis: Collection of wit and wisdom from The Best Premier Queensland has ever had ™, Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Don’t laugh – Peter Beattie was still making pilgrimages to Bethany two election cycles ago…
My Take: Much like Joh himself, there’s nothing fancy to this book, just a collection of The Flying Peanut’s more memorable quotes. It did [...]
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"The Year of Living Dangerously", Christopher Koch
May 24th, 2009 · No Comments · Asian, Australian, Fiction, History, Literature, Politics
Synopsis: A dashing ABC foreign correspondent based in Indonesia, an earnest Chinese-Australian dwarf cameraman and a beautiful British embassy staffer become entangled in a Communist insurrection against President Sukarno. Ambiguous loyalties – romantic and political – proliferate.
My Take: This book deserves to be a classic of Australian literature. Tense plotting, an exotic setting and some [...]
Tags:Christopher Koch