Reviewed by Richard Tutin Sport has a special place in the hearts and minds of many Australians. While some just enjoy watching their favourite sports heroes in action, others, like Adam Zwar, take it to a different level. Zwar recounts memorable moments from his life while tying them to the cricket season that played out
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Bain Attwood is an experienced historian who currently occupies a Chair of History at Monash University. The professor knows what he is writing about. In 2010, his book Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History won the Ernest Scott Prize for the most distinguished contribution to the history of Australia
Reviewed by Ian Lipke This novel by Robert Cox introduces its readers to a man called Tom Birch, one of those almost forgotten identities who lived in a fertile part of middle and eastern Tasmania. As always in attempts to resurrect a person, long dead, there must be considerable research combined with a lot of
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve It is no wonder that this latest book by Ann Patchett has inspired unanimous praise and enthusiastic responses from those who have read this as a ‘hugely enjoyable conversation with a particularly brilliant friend.’ She is one of the current 250 members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve To celebrate the 200th birthday of the Sydney Botanic Gardens, Wakefield Press has produced a book that is a delight on many levels. It is a detailed tribute to Margaret Flockton’s work, her life, and her position in Australia’s art scene – and her courageous journey from England to forge her
Reviewed by Antonella Townsend I laughed, I cried laughing … I cried! I could leave it there, but for the sake of this not being the shortest review in the history of reviews, I will give a brief explanation. I laughed to the point of tears because Michael McIntyre is clearly one of the funniest
Reviewed by Gerard Healy What a fascinating, controversial and notable memoir/political manifesto by John Marsden, the well-known Australian author of the Tomorrow When the War Began series. In this book he looks back over his own schooling, his long teaching and writing careers and his establishment of two independent schools in country Victoria. Quite a
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Robert Wainwright is a veteran journalist who has now written fourteen books. As has been his custom, he focusses on the people behind the major news of the day. In this case, it is a time over 140 years ago. There has been much written about the career of ‘the nightingale’,
Reviewed by Antonella Townsend “How on earth had I landed in bed with an elderly, loquacious blind man in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands?” A famous blind Argentinean writer, an American student, driving an old Morris Minor, touring the Scottish Highlands. Interesting plot. But this narrative is more biography than fiction. The student
Reviewed by E. B. Heath ‘… all history is contemporary history … all serious study of the past is informed by the problems of the historian’s own time.’ Benedetto Croce On reading the prologue in Don Longo’s biography of Austin Gough, it occurred that Longo was being dramatic in an effort to incite readers’ curiosity.
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Tom Keneally – a man whose sallies have launched a thousand laughs, whose writing is read by multitudes with fascinated absorption, whose satire has seared the dignities of politicians uncounted – has written another book. Its name? A Bloody Good Rant! The eighty-five-year-old rooster is no Spring chicken, but his crowing
Reviewed by Ian Lipke When I first read the story of Larrimah, I formed the opinion that once again someone had taken the stereotypical characters of a bush town and attempted to cash in on the gullible American market. Present in large number were the old standbys: drunken men and women in sun-suffused conditions that
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Lutheranism retains more than respectably large congregations five hundred years after Martin Luther and his followers founded the movement. Yet the Luther name has always carried some sort of atmosphere, not as specific as a slur, but rather a feeling of grubbiness somehow. This leaves Luther a man of great interest.
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Malachy is very difficult to read at times, as a reader’s tears blur the text which beautifully relates the birth and subsequent traumas baby Malachy and his family endured. Impossible not to be moved by the shock of realising that the little newborn is not facing a joyous childhood, carefree and
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Down around the Snowy ‘where the pine-clad ridges raise/ their torn and rugged battlements on high’ there’s a barney going on, and it’s a beauty. No confinement to angry words but rather ‘a fisticuffs at dawn’ sort of brawling. And the reason for all this ill-will remains blithely ignorant of all