Dean Biron

Dean Biron reviews 'The True Story of Butterfish' by Nick Earls

July-August 2009, no. 313 • 01 July 2009

Though born and bred in Brisbane, I had never read anything written by Nick Earls prior to this assignment. The closest I had come was a book reading over a decade ago when Earls amused the audience with excerpts from his Bachelor Kisses (1998), before the late Grant McLennan beguiled them with an acoustic rendering of The Go-Betweens song of the same name. The Go-Betweens connection remains palpa ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'The SBS Story: The challenge of cultural diversity' by Ien Ang, Gay Hawkins and Lamia Dabboussy

February 2009, no. 308 • 01 February 2009

Movie Of The Week. The MacNeil–Lehrer Newshour. Helen Vatsikopoulos. Andrea Stretton. Tales From a Suitcase. Pria Viswalingam. Italian Serie A Football. Annette Sun Wah. These are just a few examples of SBS programs and personalities that helped me – and no doubt many others – negotiate the fetid swamp that was Australian television in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, the swamp is a lot bigger an ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'The Age of Consent: Young people, sexual abuse and agency' edited by Kate Gleeson and Catharine Lumby

September 2019, no. 414 • 16 August 2019

Much talk around the abuse of children centres on the desire (or demand) for justice. Unfortunately, justice is not easy to attain. To begin with, it tends to require a justice system. This introduces all manner of creaking bureaucracy and complicated, sometimes outmoded laws. Justice outcomes are also hugely influenced by race, gender, and inequality. Nor does it help when our political leaders l ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'The Van Apfel Girls are Gone' by Felicity McLean

June–July 2019, no. 412 • 23 May 2019

From the ill-fated explorations of Leichhardt and Burke and Wills through to the Beaumont children, Azaria Chamberlain, and the backpacker murders in New South Wales, the history of Australia is peppered with tales and images of people going missing. And, as the First Peoples might well have been able to warn us, few of those stories turn out well. Felicity McLean’s first novel situates this fa ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'Old Scores' by David Whish-Wilson

January–February 2017, no. 388 • 20 December 2016

For the most part, the burgeoning 1980s nostalgia industry in Australia tends to overlook the fact that back then the states seemed to be engaged in a kind of Sheffield Shield of venality, competing to see which would prevail as the most politically debauched. One might have thought of the Queensland of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Terry Lewis and the New South Wales of Abe Saffron and Roger Rogerson a ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'Black Teeth' by Zane Lovitt

August 2016, no. 383 • 25 July 2016

Like James M. Cain's 1943 novella Double Indemnity – better known from Billy Wilder's influential film version of the following year – Black Teeth begins with a dubious-sounding insurance deal. The prologue also features a thickly overgrown Melbourne garden, which provides a better metaphor for the tangled, sometimes stifling narrative that follows. ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'One' by Patrick Holland

June–July 2016, no. 382 • 23 May 2016

The work of Brisbane-based author Patrick Holland is reputedly influenced by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, whose Tabula Rasa cemented his standing as one of the so-called 'holy minimalists' of late-twentieth century music. Reading Holland's new novel, One – based on the hunt for the Kenniff brothers, bushrangers operating in Western Queensland circa 1902 – the influence of Pärt's sparse, bell ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'Beams Falling' by P.M. Newton

October 2014, no. 365 • 01 October 2014

Beams Falling is a good example of its kind: a sweaty, grimy Sydney-based noir. I wish that were higher praise, but there is an endless procession of local crime fiction out there – much of which seems to emanate from Sydney – and the competition has not set the bar overly high. ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'Three Crooked Kings' by Matthew Condon

May 2013, no. 351 • 27 April 2013

In April 2012, barely a week after Queensland had elected a conservative government to office for the first time in twenty-six years, Campbell Newman announced the abolition of the state-funded premier’s literary awards. The decision, despite disingenuous claims to the contrary, was entirely symbolic, coming as it did before Newman’s Liberal National Party had been officially sworn in or had a ... (read more)

Dean Biron reviews 'Promise' by Tony Cavanaugh

July–August 2012, no. 343 • 09 July 2012

Promise is set on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, although it might as well be Siberia so far as any claims to historical or social verisimilitude are concerned. Just about every stereotype ever devised in the name of crime fiction has been assembled here, resulting in a story so over the top as to stretch credulity beyond breaking point. ... (read more)