Archive
How do you get a first novel up and running? Random House has done so with a show of faith unusual amongst Australian publishers ... and faith can move mountains of books. The Last Time I Saw Mother is handsomely produced and has an equally handsome print run of 20,000. It’s been sold into the shops in numbers and its author – Manila-born Sydney-based copywriter, Arlene J. Chai – has had her name linked with Amy Tan and Jung Chang. The back cover has a brisk encomium from Bryce Courtenay, who encouraged her to write. Effective marketing indeed, although one reviewer has commented on an element of cultural cringe.
... (read more)Australia is not the science-fiction capital of the world; in fact we are probably not even on the map. This unfortunate fact would change if we could produce more writers like Paul Collins.
... (read more)Now over seventy, Benoîte Groult of the fierce name and fiercer disposition, has written a delightful story about sex and desire that is sure to turn heads. Its central character is a woman named George – as in Sand, and she is small and chic like that writer. (If you thought that George Sand was a formidable hulk of a woman with coarse hair and thin lips, this book points out that she was a little woman, with tiny feet, apparently.) The other half of the story is Gavin Lozerech, or at least that’s what he’s called for the purposes of this retelling of their passionate, life-long love affair. George toyed with Kevin, Tugdual and Brian Boru before she chose the pseudonym Gavin, as in the Gawain of the Breton cycle.
... (read more)Ten years ago, as I prepared to leave for three months in New York, an Australian friend resident in the USA sent a brochure about a new kind of portable typewriter which she said might be worth my buying. The machine could memorise a whole line of type which could be corrected by being viewed in sections through a panel capable of displaying sixteen letters or spaces. When I reached New York, she warned me off that model. An even better version would be available before I left town, one able to memorise an entire page.
... (read more)Quite a few years ago, when the future was far more important than the days gone by and the past hadn’t acquired that elusively seductive voice to beckon me with the urgency that it does now, I tended to be rather flippant about the notions of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’. ‘Home’ simply meant where I was at any given time. To an extent such a shallow definition can be attributed to my early experiences of travel and the consequences of the constantly changing landscape which confronted a young backpacker who didn’t feel the necessity of a cultural anchor. I simply moved from one country to another, with the restless compulsion of the Wandering Jew, to satiate a curiosity sparked off by a trip to the exotic wilderness of the Khyber Pass when I was a child.
... (read more)Wildlife film-makers Richard Southeby and his wife Nicole Vander are filming a duck hunt at Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, where Greenpeace demonstrators plan to make their presence felt. Their fanatical leader, Simon Rosenberg, has a flowing beard and deeply troubled eyes. His idea is to get his troops in front of the guns, really provoke the shooters and obtain maximum publicity. Remind you of anyone? But then in the early stages of filming, Nicole is blown away into the swamp by an unseen assassin. Who’s responsible? Greenpeace crazies? Duck hunters? Or an international hired hitman known as the Jaguar? You guessed right.
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