Viking

Jim McNeil was a two-bit thug. A liar, a thief, a recurrent wife-beater and bully, probably a murderer, definitely a racist, he was a man in whom psychotic rage was seldom remote. Contradictions were elemental to his character: he was intelligent and charismatic, yet obdurate and ratty. Violence and menace defined him, but he was at heart a coward. He meticulously planned armed robberies, but frequently bungled their execution. He was nicknamed ‘The Laughing Bandit’, but his smiling demeanour was born of contempt for the people he traumatised and of disbelief at the ease with which he could snatch wealth. As the subtitle of Ross Honeywill’s aptly named biography makes clear, McNeil was also a playwright of subtle instinct and luminous talent. His is a Jekyll–Hyde conundrum well worth this contemplation.

Bob Ellis’s lightly edited journal alternates between two main timelines spanning 27 June 2007 to 8 November 2008: that is, from the run-up to the last Australian federal election to Barack Obama’s victory. Ellis’s insomniac musings over these sixteen-odd months are brilliant and shambolic, irritating and moving. The book is essential reading, but you have to work hard for the gems.

Some stories deserve to be told more than once. Retold, they cannot be the same. Even when the teller is the same person, the shift in time and experience will make the story new. In The Ghost at the Wedding, Shirley Walker returns to the material of her autobiography, Roundabout at Bangalow (2001), in order to focus more closely on the saddest and most powerful memories therein: those of the young men of her family who served in two world wars.

Thirty-four years after the former colony of Portuguese Timor experienced the horrors of invasion by the Indonesian army, the story of the killing of the five television journalists known as the Balibo Five – a persistent subtext of that history – has found new life in the forthcoming feature film Balibo, directed by Arenafilm’s Robert Connolly. In reviewing Tony Maniaty’s related book, I must declare a vested interest: his book Shooting Balibo: Blood and Memory in East Timor has appeared on bookshelves two months earlier than a book of my own, on which that film is based.

While the children’s picture book is a relatively recent literary phenomenon, most picture book authors still tap into the strong traditions of oral storytelling. Multi-award winning author Mem Fox is particularly good at this. Fox’s picture book texts are firmly grounded in the three R’s – the traditional rhythms, rhymes and repetitions found in children’s songs and verses throughout the ages. This, combined with Judy Horacek’s inspired illustrations, was what made Where is the Green Sheep? (2004) such a success.

Nolan On Nolan: Sidney Nolan in His Own Words, edited by Nancy Underhill, is an important publication which elucidates the importance of literature and poetry in Sidney Nolan’s creative process. The collection also highlights the painter’s relationships with a diverse range of celebrated artists and writers, including Benjamin Britten, Robert Lowell, Samuel Beckett and Patrick White. Drawn from archives in Britain, Australia and the United States, the publication does much to rescue the artist from his overly valorised years spent with John and Sunday Reed at Heide. In place of the artist’s well-documented Australian associations, here we find Nolan the internationalist.

Set during the Depression, Peter Yeldham’s eighth novel follows the adventures of Belle Carson and her son Teddy. Despite having enjoyed considerable renown throughout Sydney’s bohemian enclaves, Belle’s ambitions as an actress were never fully realised. Determined that the same fate should not befall her son, she turns her back on her husband and their steady life in Gundagai to introduce Teddy to the glittering city.

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 both immemorial and contemporary.

If you are regretting the passage of another summer and feeling nostalgic about the lost freedoms of youth, Sonya Hartnett’s latest novel, Surrender, may serve as a useful tonic. In Hartnett’s world, children possess little and control less, dependent as they are on adults and on their own capacity to manipulate, or charm ...