Between the Battles: A Novel

Helen Nolan, Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005, 224 Pages, Paperback, $29.95: Reviewed by Tony Smith in the June 2005 issue.

When narrator of Between the Battles, Holly Gow lands in Saigon on New Year's Eve, 1967, she immediately has misgivings. Recruited by the US Post Exchange (PX) in Sydney, Holly approaches Vietnam with a sense of adventure, but disembarking at Saigon airport she feels a sense of panic, realising she is one girl among hundreds of soldiers -- 'men, wall-to-wall'. (p 4) While Siobhan McHugh's Minefields and Mini-Skirts: Australian Women and the Vietnam War (1993) notes that some one thousand Australian women worked in Vietnam during the war and three died there, they were not afforded a presence in the popular imagination then or since. It is the relative rarity of 'round eye' women in Vietnam ... read more.
 

Blue Moon

Carolyn van Langenberg, Briar Hill: Indra, 2004, 336 Pages, Paperback, $27.95: Reviewed by Zora Simic in the June 2005 issue.

Carolyn Van Langenberg gives good title and it's only now, having just finished her ambitious trilogy of novels -- Fish Lips (2002), The Teetotaller's Wake (2003) and Blue Moon (2004) -- that I fully appreciate this particular skill. Looking back, they tell me everything and nothing I need to know about what happens between the covers. The titles evoke the author's key preoccupations -- families, dreams, cultural encounters, passion, love, sexuality, grief, nostalgia, location, dislocation -- without giving too much away. Indeed, Van Langenberg is all about the slow unravelling of a story, a person, a life, a country, a century. She invites readers to make connections between people, between ... read more.
 

Calico Ceilings: The Women of Eureka

Susan Kruss, Wollongong: Five Islands Press, 2004, 106 Pages, Paperback, $21.95: Reviewed by Paul A Pickering in the June 2005 issue.

By the end of 1854 there were more than 3,600 women on the Ballarat goldfields. For a number of reasons the stories of these women have not often been told in the overwhelmingly 'male' narrative of mining and rebellion in Victoria's golden triangle. In this interesting collection Susan Kruss has attempted to give the 'women of Eureka' a voice through the medium of historical poetry. The intersection between history and fiction has not always been an easy or satisfactory one. A lot of paper has been wasted on bad fiction and distorted history. These difficulties, however, are not apparent in this collection. Kruss is a trained historian -- a product of the LaTrobe history department -- and ... read more.
 

Dance Hall and Picture Palace: Sydney's Romance with Modernity

Jill Julius Matthews, Strawberry Hills: Currency Press, 2005, 342 Pages, Paperback, $32.95: Reviewed by Jane E Hunt in the June 2005 issue.

Surprisingly little has been written about modernity in Australia. Art historians have focused on 'modernism', though the term is often used in a limited and misleading way. A number of historians have also considered women or gender in relation to modernity. But modernity itself is rarely the subject of scrutiny. Jill Julius Matthews' Dance Hall & Picture Palace: Sydney's Romance with Modernity thus offers a refreshing new direction in Australian cultural history. Matthews professes that 'This is a tale of modern romance'. (p 1) But the book consists of more than one story, and the 'stories do not fit neatly within the boundaries of the nation continent'. (p 2) There is an unavoidable ... read more.
 

Fish Lips

Carolyn van Langenberg, Briar Hill: Indra Publishing, 2001, 200 Pages, Paperback, $29.95: Reviewed by Zora Simic in the June 2005 issue.

Carolyn Van Langenberg gives good title and it's only now, having just finished her ambitious trilogy of novels -- Fish Lips (2002), The Teetotaller's Wake (2003) and Blue Moon (2004) -- that I fully appreciate this particular skill. Looking back, they tell me everything and nothing I need to know about what happens between the covers. The titles evoke the author's key preoccupations -- families, dreams, cultural encounters, passion, love, sexuality, grief, nostalgia, location, dislocation -- without giving too much away. Indeed, Van Langenberg is all about the slow unravelling of a story, a person, a life, a country, a century. She invites readers to make connections between people, between ... read more.
 

Foreign Matter

Ouyang Yu, Melbourne: Otherland, 2004, 82 Pages, Paperback, $24.95: Reviewed by Tim Metcalf in the June 2005 issue.

Ouyang Yu won the 2003 Fast Books Prize for Poetry with Foreign Matter, self-published by his Otherland Press. From a prolific author across several genres, this book was not written for the reader reclining at ease on their 'gilded cloud'. Indeed, this reviewer found assimilating the text an uncomfortable task. Foreign Matter predominantly concerns the state of belonging, unfortunately parlous, of its Chinese born author to the Australia he emigrated to in 1991:a contemporary convict sent from China by my former self. (p 68)Anger and disappointment are the most pervasive emotions in sequences with titles such as 'Writing Poetry: An Un-Australian Activity', 'Citizenship', 'Democracy', and ... read more.
 

Haunted Earth

Peter Read, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003, 272 Pages, Paperback, $39.95: Reviewed by Anne Elvey in the June 2005 issue.

The third in a series, which began with Returning to Nothing and was followed by Belonging, Peter Read's Haunted Earth is an attempt to explore, and in so doing take seriously, spiritual dimensions of Australians' relationships to place. While always linked for Read with the colonial displacement of many Indigenous Australians, the 'haunting' of Haunted Earth is not restricted to this. Ranging from the ghosts of Gore Hill cemetery on Sydney's north shore, to parents' memorials for their dead children, mutton birding families of Babel Island, the grain country of Young, New South Wales, the sinking of the Armidale during the second world war, and a ritual for leaving drought ravaged land, ... read more.
 

Joyflight

Cate Kennedy, Carindale: Interactive Publications, 2004, 64 Pages, Paperback, $23.00: Reviewed by Helen Hagemann in the June 2005 issue.

Joyflight is Cate Kennedy's second collection following on from Signs of Other Fires published by Five Islands Press, 2001. This lyrical work touches on the personal, family biography, and Irish history. Kennedy's poems all share a concern for lived experience, and convey the social mores and fabric of rural life, whether at home or abroad, stylized or imagined. Her poems have a unique metaphysical quality, where landscapes offer different perspectives. Many poems convey the motif of flight, allowing the reader to go beyond rooms, the flat landscape, 'beyond gravity', to more interesting and lofty observations. What is joyful about these poems is that a reader's knowledge is extended when ... read more.
 

Neem Dreams

Inez Baranay, New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2003, 278 Pages, Paperback, $22.95: Reviewed by Ch A Rajendra Prasad in the June 2005 issue.

Inez Baranay's Neem Dreams narrates the story of four individuals -- Pandora, Andy, Jade, and Meenakshi -- whose personal traits and experiences reflect global ailments and strengths -- such as greed and hatred, activism and frustration, compassion and sacrifice. Baranay's characters, portrayed with uncompromising frankness, strive to find meaning and purpose for their lives in the shade of the neem tree which, in the novel, symbolises the innate strength of the 'Orient' -- India. Pandora is an Australian 'feminist scientist' who comes to India inspired by her discovery of an upcoming grassroots neem project in India and its motto of 'honoring tradition'. Jade is a New York business woman ... read more.
 

Piping Shrike: The Green Room

Students of UniSA, Magill: University of South Australia, 2004, 112 Pages, Paperback, $16.95: Reviewed by John de Laine in the June 2005 issue.

The University of South Australia's creative writing program continues its impressive and brave 'piping shrike' series of student anthologies with The Green Room, a page-turning collection of short stories and poems from eighteen exciting new writers. Beyond the boundaries of assessment, the creativity and editing judgment shown here demonstrates just how industry-ready these students are; indeed major publishing houses might be wise to take note of names. A no bull cover design places modest green lettering over a hospital white background. Inside, the contributions are arranged in six parts, each part titled inventively by way of random quotations from within a selected work. It's a ... read more.
 

Russian Anzacs in Australian History

Elena Govor, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005, 310 Pages, Paperback, $44.95: Reviewed by Robert Crawford in the June 2005 issue.

Elena GovorRussian Anzacs in Australian History UNSW Press2005310pp.ISBN 0-86840-856-5As number of ex-Diggers dwindles, an inverse growth in interest has developed in the story of Anzac. Elena Govor's recent addition to this growing body of work, Russian Anzacs in Australian History, joins John F. Williams' German Anzacs and the First World War in revealing a neglected side of the national legend. As the title suggests, Govor's study is an examination of the 969 men from the Russian Empire who enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force. Relaying this forgotten chapter in Australian history not only requires a thorough researcher; it demands a first-class storyteller. Fortunately, Govor ... read more.
 

Scraps of Heaven

Arnold Zable, Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2004, 246 Pages, Paperback, $29.95: Reviewed by Mads Clausen in the June 2005 issue.

Peopled with unforgettable characters and with writing as rich as the book's blackforest cake, Arnold Zable's Café Scheherazade was not only an impressive novel, but also a much deserved commercial success. By bringing the experiences of post-war Jewish immigrants to life, from the deluge of the Holocaust to the bustle of present-day cafés in Acland Street's 'avenue of old-world dreams', Zable created an exhilarating paean to the redemptive power of storytelling. His most recent novel covers much of the same terrain, but where Café Scheherazade depicted the Jewish disapora's crossing of actual boundaries; Scraps of Heaven is rooted in one particular time and place and instead deals ... read more.
 

Sounds Irish: The Irish Language in Australia

Dymphna Lonergan, Adelaide: Lythrum Press, 2004, 146 Pages, Paperback, $30.00: Reviewed by Val Noone in the June 2005 issue.

Dymphna Lonergan's short linguistic study, though rushed and incomplete, deserves wide attention because it establishes that the Irish language had a far greater influence on Australian English than has been previously recognised in the dictionaries. In addition, this book, which is not historical in method, could trigger a partial revision of the history of the Irish in Australia by its claim that the Irish language has a longer and stronger presence here than historians such as Patrick O'Farrell had judged. However, the book ends abruptly without a conclusion about these or any other points. Sounds Irish: the Irish Language in Australia, whose publication has been assisted by funds from ... read more.
 

Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants

A James Hammerton and Alistair Thomson, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005, 388 Pages, Paperback, £14.99: Reviewed by Shirleene Robinson in the June 2005 issue.

Between the 1940s and the 1970s, as most Australians are aware, more than a million British migrants known as 'ten pound Poms' emigrated to Australia as part of a somewhat desperate post-war strategy to fill the nation with 'white' migrants. Some returned home to Britain after their compulsory two years, disillusioned about what they had found in Australia. The majority permanently embraced life on the other side of the world. In Ten Pound Poms, A. James Hammerton and Alistair Thomson use an extraordinary volume of first-hand accounts to map the diverse experiences of this huge mass of migrants. At first, some readers might be surprised to find that Hammerton and Thomson refer to this ... read more.
 

The Boy in the Green Suit: A Memoir

Robert Hillman, Carlton North: Scribe Publications, 2003, 232 Pages, Paperback, $30.00: Reviewed by Lynne Barwick in the June 2005 issue.

The role of narrative in the construction of self has been debated in the humanities for some time now. For Robert Hillman the centrality of narrative is clear. Throughout The Boy in The Green Suit, Hillman details how stories have defined and propelled his life. He suggests that narrative breeds more of the same: 'Any child can pick up a yarn that draws together fragments of daydream, threads of ambition, only to find much later that it has become the initial paragraph of a life story'. The starting point for Robert's story is a green island his father has described. It is a boy's paradise; home to a multitude of bare breasted and sexually pliant sirens. All it requires, thinks Robert, is a ... read more.
 

The Dog Rock

Miriel Lenore, Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2005, 116 Pages, Paperback, $19.95: Reviewed by Tony Smith in the June 2005 issue.

The production of history is no straightforward matter. At every stage, from research to interpretation to communicating findings, there are historiographical debates. Some scholars admit artefacts and physical evidence while others are sticklers for footnotes and documentation. Some insist that the appropriate term is 'histories', because divergent viewpoints are valid. In any case, the popularity of historical fiction and romance certainly suggests that many readers long to be immersed in a past era and happily embrace characters created for that specific purpose. Miriel Lenore does not pretend to write in the way that professional historians do. Indeed, many readers would probably prefer ... read more.
 

The Literary Lunch: Selected Stories

Geoffrey Dean, Hobart: Roaring Forties Press, 2004, 196 Pages, Paperback, $20.00: Reviewed by Bianca Ferguson in the June 2005 issue.

Multi-award winning Australian writer Geoffrey Dean proves once and for all, in his collection The Literary Lunch, that he is a writer in the true sense of the word. It is not mere 'stories' he writes, but people, lives, conditions. Dean reveals ordinary lives that are less than ordinary, and, for the majority of us, lives that never will be known first hand. He hints that the things we dismiss as unnecessary, as futile, or worthless are in fact more worthwhile and important than they initially seem. One of my favorite stories is 'Clown/Juggler/Magician and the Literary Barbecue'. It is about an entertainer who sees a literary barbecue as the perfect opportunity to sell his entertainment. ... read more.
 

The Teetotaller's Wake

Carolyn van Langenberg, Briar Hill: Indra Publishing, 2003, 230 Pages, Paperback, $22.95: Reviewed by Zora Simic in the June 2005 issue.

Carolyn Van Langenberg gives good title and it's only now, having just finished her ambitious trilogy of novels -- Fish Lips (2002), The Teetotaller's Wake (2003) and Blue Moon (2004) -- that I fully appreciate this particular skill. Looking back, they tell me everything and nothing I need to know about what happens between the covers. The titles evoke the author's key preoccupations -- families, dreams, cultural encounters, passion, love, sexuality, grief, nostalgia, location, dislocation -- without giving too much away. Indeed, Van Langenberg is all about the slow unravelling of a story, a person, a life, a country, a century. She invites readers to make connections between people, between ... read more.
 

Thinking Australian Studies: teaching across cultures

David Carter Kate Darian-Smith and Gus Worby eds, St Lucia: UQP, 2004, 440 Pages, Paperback, $34.95: Reviewed by Anette Bremer in the June 2005 issue.

Thinking Australian Studies is a very welcome edition to an area of study not rich in publications; its 24 essays offer histories of the field, examples of Australianist practice and speculations on Australian Studies' future. The volume brings together a diverse array of Australianists; the contributors, hailing from a range of cultural backgrounds, are a combination of better and lesser-known names, practitioners at an earlier stage of their career and those of more established standing, as well as a mix of academics working within and outside of Australian academic institutions. This catholicity of its contributors is one of the strengths of Thinking Australian Studies. The volume offers ... read more.
 

Unbroken Blue

Jan Borrie, Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005, 176 Pages, Paperback, $29.95: Reviewed by Sylvia Alston in the June 2005 issue.

This book left me struggling to find words to describe it; the writing style is more than prose, it is lyrical, it is metaphysical -- put simply, it's pure magic. The language flows around, over and inside the reader, stirring the imagination, teasing the emotions; it is tender and sweet one moment, poignant and painful the next. Ms Borrie has drawn her characters lightly and lovingly -- even the unlovely ones are compellingly real. Despite feeling a certain empathy towards some of the nicer characters, the reader is fully aware of their blind spots and waits for them to come face to face with reality. Unbroken Blue is essentially a story about a family with all its faults and foibles ... read more.