Southerly 78–3, Violence ($26.95, PB)
In literary terms, violence provides a readymade drama, an impetus for action & reaction, shock, emotion, transformation—from Milton’s War in Heaven to Modernist aesthetics of shock to the contemporary thriller. Literature is also a site where violent experience is variously recorded, masked, performed & objectified. The work in this issue of Southerly is situated at the intersections where intense personal experience meets the force of pervasive operations including poverty, colonialism, gendered & racialised violence from the colonial period to the present. This issue of Southerly includes work that engages with violence across that spectrum in relation to both content and form.
Wild by Nathan Besser ($33, PB)
Jonathan Wild knows power like no one else in London. He arrived as a wide-eyed young man in 1703, dazzled by a metropolis brimming with trade, immigration & crime. Wild has stopped at nothing to secure his place in this great & monstrous London & within a few years, he became the city’s Thief-Taker General, one of the most feared & wealthy officials in town, charged with the capture & arrest of felons for reward—his power is matched only by the number of enemies he’s made along the way. Daniel Defoe is in trouble. Following a series of failed business ventures, the renowned pamphleteer, fiction writer & political operative is dead broke. With his creditors at his heels, and facing debtors’ prison, Defoe is too crippled with anxiety to write. That is, until he visits Newgate Prison with the intention of chronicling the stories of its inmates, & meets a young man with a deep hatred for Jonathan Wild & a story to tell.
Meanjin Vol 78 No 3 ($25, PB)
In the lead essay UNEARTHED—Last Days of The Anthropocene, James Bradley writes compellingly on the urgent crisis of climate change. ‘There is a conversation I do not know how to have, a conversation about what happens if we are headed for disaster. It is not a theoretical question for me. I have two daughters.’ Michael Mohammed Ahmad writes on how his thinking about literature, politics & race was shaped in Reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X as An Arab Australian. Khalid Warsame reflects on life & writing while making a complete reading of the works of James Baldwin. Essays, short fiction & poems from Glyn Davis, Karen Wyld, Fatima Measham, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Alex Cothren, Lal Perera, Jill Jones, John Kinsella, Gavin Yuan Gao, Ella Jeffrey, Lucas Smith and Phillip Neilsen.
Lucky Ticket by Joey Bui ($30, PB)
In the comic-tragic eponymous story, Lucky Ticket, the narrator, a genial, disabled old man, whose spirit is far from crushed, sells lottery tickets on a street corner in bustling Saigon. In Mekong Love, 2 young people in a restrictive society try to find a way to consummate their relationship. In Abu Dhabi Gently a migrant worker leaves Vietnam to earn money in the UAE in order to be able to marry his fiancé. White Washed depicts a strained friendship between two students in Melbourne, the Vietnamese narrator & a white girl. What does it mean to be Asian? What does it mean to be white? And what makes up identity? A highly original collection of stories by a talented young writer.
The Palace of Angels by Mohammed M. Morsi
Three young men, fired with idealism for Palestine’s second Intifada and fuelled by hashish, ventured on a clandestine transaction that left just one of them standing. Amidst the bombardment of Gaza in 2014, Farida & Fathi are caught in the clash of religious ideologies & the struggle to wrest or retain power. In their first pre-dawn encounter at a checkpoint queue, Adnan and Linah, on opposite sides of authority, had their minds convulsed and their eyes bloodied as a delirious young man was gunned down in the yellow-lit darkness of the night. These are stories of fighting for freedom by fighting with our defined selves. ‘... written with the urgency of breaking news & the delicacy of poetry.’—Geraldine Brooks. ($32.95, PB)
On D’Hill August and September can be rather drear months in the book trade as the publishers hold back the big guns for October and November. So we’re happy to have out in September, The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. Like her marvellous novel, Commonwealth, this is a family drama, tracing the lives of one Philadelphian family over many years. Narrated by the son Danny, he tells of his close relationship with his beloved sister Maeve and how they’ve made an obsession out of their disappointment when their step-mother inherits the enormous house (the Dutch House) they thought would be theirs. Their mother had left when they were children, appalled by her husbands’ wealth and the ostentation of the house she goes away, we learn later, to work with charity all her life. Patchett is more and more being compared to Ann Tyler, because of her incisive depiction of ordinary Americans (albeit this family is well off), their connections and lost connections, their fears and sorrows. All the characters, except the step-mother and perhaps her daughters, are likeable people, doing the best they can with the cards dealt them. An extremely satisfying read from an author we know we can depend on for a well-written and heartfelt story. Released this August is On Drugs by UWS academic Chris Fleming. Chris has been a customer of gleebooks since he was an undergraduate at Sydney University and for the last few years lived in Dulwich Hill, so I saw him often. On Drugs, is—I have to use the word—mind-blowing. Brilliant in its analysis, lyrical in its prose and intellectually rigorous (he can’t help himself!), this is a book about addiction, mental health and the desire so strong in Fleming to reinvent himself. ‘I loved the idea that one could simply swallow something and be transformed as a result; the notion transfixed me.’ Fleming’s writing is superb and to use another well-worn phrase, this book is searingly honest and very powerful for it. There’s no sentimentality, no self-pity and no lecturing. A memoir not to be missed. I’ve been banging on about children’s writers at Dulwich Hill Fair Day on Sunday September 15. The program can be found on the Inner West Council website, but I’ll dash it off here in brief. 10.30am Ursula Dubosarski (Ask Hercules Quick), 11.30am Josh Pyke (yes, the singer with a children’s book—Lights Out, Leonard), 12.30pm Lisa Siberry (The Brilliant Ideas of Lily Green), 2pm Zoe and Georgia Norton-Lodge (Elizabella books), 3pm Mark Mordue and Addison Road community centre (The Hollow Tree). See you there or be square! Morgan
Campfire Satellites: An Inland Anthology
Night air perfumed with fried chicken & sweat Charred mulga-root Tobacco & the faintest trace of water rising. From deep beneath our feet Songlines, highways, coffins, campfire satellites. In this new collection, four inland writers, Maureen O’Keefe, Gretel Bull, Linda Wells & Emma Trenorden tell stories made by country & about people made by place. ‘an intimate, irresistible conversation. These are strong voices, charged in various ways by the particular energy of central Australia.’—Jennifer Mills. ($15, PB)
Going Under by Sonia Henry ($30, PB)
Dr Katarina ‘Kitty’ Holliday thought once she finished medical school and found gainful employment at one of Sydney’s best teaching hospitals that her dream was just beginning. The hard years, she thought, were finally over. But Kitty is in for a rude shock. Between trying to survive on the ward, in the operating theatre and in the emergency department without killing any of her patients or going under herself, Kitty finds herself facing situations that rock her very understanding of the vocation to which she intends to devote her life. ‘From the first grim failed attempt to cannulate a vein, I knew Going Under was the real deal.’ Nick Earls
SLEEP by Catherine Cole ($25, PB)
In a small café in London teenager, Ruth, and elderly artist, Harry, recognise something profound in each other. They strike up a conversation that leads to regular meetings & takes them on a journey through their memories of traumatic times. Harry has much to tell about his childhood beside the Canal St Martin in Paris. Ruth has collected stories about her mother’s childhood in the Yorkshire Dales & London. How much has the stain of tragedy charged these memories with the pain of loss and what use can be made of the pain? Looking back on her special years with Harry, Ruth sees how shared memories—happy or sad—can reshape the ways in which we value the lives of others while fully living our own. Taking Harry back to Paris draws on a special relationship that will shape her own place in the world.
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