In the series called “Writers on Writers” Australian Geraldine Brooks wrote about Tim Winton; a writer I greatly admire wrote about one of my very favorites. What a treat. To prepare for the memorable trip we made to Australia in 2009 I read some of the books on Reading Matters’ list of 10 of her favorite novels from Australia. I recall vividly how much I loved the ones I read...
This book called to me because of its title. A limberlost is a swampy region and was best known to me as the title of a book both my mother and my daughter loved, A Girl of the Limberlost, referring to a large swampy area in northeastern Indiana that has now been drained. After moving to Virginia, I was surprised to find there’s a trail near Skyline Drive called the Limberlost Trail which...
What a treat this audiobook memoir by Robert Drewe is! I loved his previous memoir, The Shark Net and especially his novel The Drowner. In this one published in 2012 he ranges around his life recounting moments that are enlightening, or nostalgic, or revelatory. Interspersed throughout is his description of a visit to the Montebello Islands with scientists who were reintroducing some species to...
The backdrop of this book is the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary with a mix of fictional characters and historical figures. It begins when the fictional Esme was a child spending hours under a work table in the building where James Murray and others worked to create the dictionary. They reviewed words suggested by volunteers for the dictionary, wrote definitions, and verified the...
Jane Harper’s first novel is a police procedural set in rural Australia a few hundred miles west of Melbourne in an area that had been beset by a drought of several years duration. The main character is Aaron Falk, returned to the town after 20 years absence for the funerals of his high school friend Luke, his wife, and son. Aaron and his father had moved to Melbourne when he was a teenager...
It is hard work to read a biography of a liar, a person who works to create myths about themselves. My previous experience of this was with Calamity Jane, that denizen of the Wild West who is buried near Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, S.D. When I read a short academic take on her life, I found it was an unsatisfying effort to separate facts and myth with no charm. This author, by contrast, is...
This one will be nominated to my list of favorites for the year. For the duration of the performance of the absurdist play “Happy Days” by Samuel Becket we get to know three women. It begins as one of the women is being seated and ends as the women make their way to the parking lot after the play. Somehow within these limits, a novel emerged with characters we come to know well along...
The enthusiastic response that I have seen to this book is wholly warranted. Its structure is unique and impressive, the tale it tells is engaging, and it relies on clear factual foundations. The story unfolds through three voices. One is the story of August, a modern-day Wiradjuri woman who after 10 years in the UK, returned to New South Wales on the occasion of her grandfather’s death to...
Gail Jones has once again hit on many wonderful moments for me, as she did in three other books of hers that I’ve read. This one is set first in Kalgoorlie, a gold mining area in Western Australia and later in Sydney. It is a busy novel, beginning with the non-fictional Paddy Hannon’s childhood in Ireland, before he spent 30 years prospecting in Australia, culminating in the discovery...
I came upon this book in a listing of “beach reads,” and having read two other Charlotte Wood books, I was surprised by that category. The Natural Way of Things is a feminist polemic and very affecting. The Weekend is centered on three women going to a beach north of Sydney over the Christmas weekend (beach weather in Australia). Sounds like a beach read so far. But no. The three have...