Archive
The 1967 Referendum, or When the Aborigines Didn’t Get the Vote by Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus with Dale Edwards and Kath Schilling
Just what is the difference between a reviewer and a critic? It seems a question of status, based in turn on the frequency and quality of the reviewing. On the other hand, the critic is suggestive of reflective articles and/or books, whereas the reviewer is offering a first reading, a virginal reading so to speak, without the opportunity for prolonged reflection. Nor properly should there be such aftermath reflection, because the review presents itself, by definition, as a first response.
... (read more)The Silence Calling: Australians in Antarctica 1947–97 by Tim Bowden
Like much else about this novel, its title The Chosen is not the relatively straightforward affair it may, at first, appear to be. One assumes for the first hundred pages or so that the ‘chosen’ are those citizens of the small NSW Southern Tablelands town of Lost River who have been chosen by a randomising computer program to have their lives represented in the commemorative tapestry being woven as a civic project along with two other pet Town Council proposals, a new jail and a high-temperature incinerator. It’s a mode that critic Ken Gelder has called ‘dark pastoral’.
... (read more)