Judith Armstrong

'A curious night at the Wheeler Centre' by Judith Armstrong

October 2011, no. 335 • 01 October 2011

The Wheeler Centre recently hosted ‘four provocative nights’ based on the assertion that Australian criticism of film, theatre, books and the visual arts is, in its own words, ‘failing us all’. The series was entitled ‘Critical Failure’. For ABR readers unable to attend, here is one person’s account of the books-related panel. There was certainly a sense of failure in the room at th ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Reading Madame Bovary' by Amanda Lohrey

October 2010, no. 325 • 01 October 2010

From a clutch of novels including the award-winning Camille’s Bread (1996), Amanda Lohrey has now turned to shorter literary forms, notably two Quarterly Essays (2002, 2006), a novella (Vertigo, 2008) and this new collection of short stories. At the 2009 Sydney Writers’ Festival she publicly confessed her new leaning, arguing the benefits of genres more easily completed by both writer and read ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Anastasia: A novel' by Colin Falconer

April 2004, no. 260 • 01 April 2004

What’s a nice girl called Anastasia doing in the Whangpoa River? Maybe she’s the daughter of the last tsar who everyone thought was dead, or maybe it’s just a girl who looks like a Russian princess and happens to have the same name. If the proposition sounds familiar, be assured by Colin Falconer that Anastasia Romanovs were thick on the streets of Shanghai after the White Russian diaspora o ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Reunion' by Andrea Goldsmith

May 2009, no. 311 • 01 May 2009

What’s the use,’ asks Alice before wandering away from her uncommunicative sister, ‘of a book without pictures or conversations?’ Grown-up readers can probably manage without the former, but it is unusual to find a novel with as little dialogue in it as Andrea Goldsmith’s Reunion, or one that so deliberately ignores the common injunction ‘Show, don’t tell.’ Yet Goldsmith has sever ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Grace' by Robert Drewe

August 2005, no. 273 • 01 August 2005

The scope of this novel could hardly be more ambitious. It ranges from the landing ten thousand years ago of prehistoric men in primitive rafts on the shores of what would one day be known as the Kimberley, to the apparition of a young asylum seeker off a leaky, sinking boat in roughly the same locality during the present inhospitable times. In other words, it meets the challenge of major issues b ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Lovesong' by Alex Miller

November 2009, no. 316 • 01 November 2009

Alex Miller has been named as a finalist in the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature, a rich award given triennially to a Victorian author for a body of work. It is hardly surprising that a writer who has twice won the Miles Franklin Award and frequently been the recipient of, or short-listed for, other prizes should be among this group of contenders; Lovesong is Miller’s ninth novel since the pu ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Ransacking Paris' by Patti Miller

June-July 2015, no. 372 • 29 May 2015

Patti Miller has written four books of or about memoir, one of which, The Mind of a Thief (UQP, 2012) won the New South Wales Premier’s History Award, and she has taught life writing for more than twenty years. Yet her most recent publication, Ransacking Paris, while enjoyable at one level, is disappointing at another. There is a serious mismatch between form and content, the jarring discrepancy ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Goodbye Sweetheart' by Marion Halligan

April 2015, no. 370 • 26 March 2015

Marion Halligan is a prolific writer, and this is not the first time I have reviewed one of her books. Once, when she branched out into the genre of lightweight crime – The Apricot Colonel (2006) and Murder on the Apricot Coast (2008) – I commented on the problem faced by Cassandra, the novel’s narrator. An editor-turned-author, she turns out books less highbrow than those she is used to edi ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Who We Were' by Lucy Neave

June 2013, no. 352 • 26 May 2013

The nub of this first novel is a good one. Even those who weren’t alive in the early 1950s will have heard of Joseph McCarthy. Fired by the tensions of the Cold War but with scant regard for hard evidence, the US Republican senator made his reputation by accusing numerous individuals of communist sympathies, possible disloyalty, and/or treason. Intellectuals of every kind were a particular targe ... (read more)

Judith Armstrong reviews 'Chasing the Light: A Novel of Antarctica' by Jesse Blackadder

April 2013, no. 350 • 26 March 2013

The 2012 centenary of the dramatic Scott–Amundsen race to reach the South Pole prompted several new non-fiction books on Antarctica. No fewer than five of them were reviewed in the December–January edition of London’s Literary Review, a welcome reminder of the superb Ferocious Summer (Profile Books, 2007) by Australian author Meredith Hooper, which won the Victorian Premier’s Award for Non ... (read more)