Browsing ABR - Australian Book Review by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 699
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New Pearls in the Magic Garage. "Magic Garage", by John Donnelly. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)John Donnelly’s "Magic Garage", with a stunning cover by Amelia Mollett, comes as a welcome surprise. Donnelly the insider prefers to avoid the foreigners’ Jakarta. Knowing his way around, he takes you off the highways and ... -
A Tense and Surging Affair. "Scraping through Stone", by Judith Fox. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Richard I’s crusade to the Holy Land provides a dramatic backdrop for Fox’s New Age ‘fable about the mysteries of passion and faith’, in which Sibylla and Dominic grow up separately in England and Scotland before their ... -
After the Academy.
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Having elderly parents is a common condition of middle age, and so is the compulsion to examine your life so far and see how you feel about the shape of it. And for women, middle age means adjusting once and for all to the ... -
The Cow-pat Agenda. "Fields of Discovery: Australia's CSIRO", by Brad Collis. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)If you are looking for a rattling good yarn of national success that is, for a change, neither military nor sporting, "Fields of Discovery" is your book. Rich with Eureka moments, Brad Collis has created a great read. The ... -
Spanish Epiphanies. "Night Train to Granada: From Sydney's Bohemia to Franco's Spain: An Off-beat Memoir", by Grahame Harrison. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)This is not a travel book. Grahame Harrison snapped the minute photographs of Spain that cover this book’s jacket in the 1950s. Inside is the memoir he waited half a century to write: about his experiences in Granada under ... -
Not So Tickety Boo. "Rich Kids", by Paul Barry. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Paul Barry’s "Rich Kids" tells the story of both One.Tel, the telecommunications company launched by Jodee Rich and Brad Keeling in 1995, and Imagineering, a software company, which was founded by Rich in 1981 and also ... -
Coetzee's Siberian Wastes. "Youth", by J.M. Coetzee. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)In "Youth", the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee (who has recently taken to the Adelaide Hills) continues the project he began some years ago with "Boyhood". We are told by the publishers that this is a novel; indeed, ... -
Worms and Fishes. "Lifeboats for Victoria: The Story of Lifeboats and Their Crews in Victoria 1856-1979", by Marten A. Syme. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)It is the story of these boats and their communities that we have here, told for the first time by Marten Syme in his crisp, impeccably researched, beautifully illustrated and produced little book. For a short book that ... -
Lord of the Flies with Grown-Ups. "Batavia's Graveyard", by Mike Dash. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)The Batavia, the finest ship of the Dutch Golden Age, left Amsterdam for the colony of Java in October 1628 on its maiden voyage. Approximately three hundred men, women and children were on board. It was wrecked on Houtman’s ... -
Unnatural Nature. "The New Nature", by Tim Low. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Are there any areas of wilderness remaining in Australia, indeed in the world? In his latest book, Tim Low, one of Australia’s most thought-provoking natural history writers, answers with an emphatic ‘no’. He also claims ... -
Battle of September 11. "September 11 and the Agony of the Left", by Gregory Melleuish and Imre Salusinszky. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)At present, there is no more important subject for serious reflection than September 11 and its consequences. Those consequences range across a wide spectrum, from the military and diplomatic at one end — practical action ... -
Mighty Monash. "War Letters of General Monash", by Tony Macdougall (ed.). [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)This little book — 224 pages of modest but well-made paperback — may seem at first sight to be a mere shortened reissue of "War Letters of General Monash", edited by Frank Cutlack, and issued in 1934. They were written ... -
Silver Mysteries. "Patrick White and Alchemy", by James Bulman-May. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Bulman-May’s goal is to show that the major novels are in fact comprehensively based on this particular branch of medieval enquiry. Now, given that none of the biographical material indicates that White had any particular ... -
Scabs in the Cloth. "Ladies Who Lunge: Celebrating Difficult Women", by Tara Brabazon. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Tara Brabazon’s "Ladies Who Lunge: Celebrating Difficult Women" is a collection of essays on feminism and popular culture. Addressing a range of subjects — including aerobics, wrestling, Miss Moneypenny, Anita Roddick and ... -
Cinemadope. "Philosophy Goes to the Movies: An Introduction to Philosophy", by Christopher Falzon. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Christopher Falzon, a philosopher at the University of Newcastle, has written what seems to me, overall, an admirable introduction to philosophy. His selection of philosophical themes is balanced and judicious, and his ... -
Tales for a Dry Country. "The Very Super Adventures of Nic and Naomi", by Venero Armanno and Anna Pignataro and "Quetta", by Gary Crew and Bruce Whatley and "The Magic Hat", by Mem Fox and "Old Tom's Holiday", by Leigh Hobbs and "A Year on Our Farm", by Penny Matthews. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Virginia Lowe reviews several children's books here: picture books that relate the dryness of Australia and the joy of the rainy season; stories of forging unusual friendships; the familiar tragedy of shipwrecks; and the ... -
National News.
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Graeme Powell recounts his meeting with Christina Stead in 1975; Stead subsequently decided to bequeath her manuscripts and papers to the National Library of Australia. -
Abiding Arabs in Australia. "Arab-Australians Today: Citizenship and Belonging", by Ghassan Hage (ed.). [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)This important collection raises fundamental questions about citizenship and belonging in an historical era in which identity is even more ethnicised than it used to be, and where struggles over access to citizenship, ... -
Patrick White, Sidney Nolan and Me.
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)One evening in 1957 I tuned into the Third Programme and caught a dramatised excerpt from a book. It was a party scene in which the authorial tone was so sardonic, and the petty snobberies and pretensions of nineteenth-century ... -
Two Stylists. "Homage to John Forbes", by Ken Bolton (ed.) and "David Malouf: A Celebration", by Ivor Indyk (ed.). [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-06)Literary reputation, especially the posthumous kind, is a deliquescent thing. If it’s not going to melt away, then work is needed from friends and publishers, even critics. Forbes, while not exactly ignored in his lifetime, ...