I reviewed Charlotte Wood’s new novel Animal People for the Age and it looks like it has already found its way online, on the SMH website (not sure if it was in their print version as well). It is definitely one of the best Australian books I’ve read this year, and I do encourage you to [...]

By Kent MacCarter In the preface on page six of Dupain’s Sydney, an art book featuring photographic plates of cityscapes, city dwellers and urban whatnot by acclaimed photographer Max Dupain, there is a photograph of the artist fussing with the aperture on his 4×5 large-format camera perched on a fully extended tripod. You can detect [...]

Affirm Press, 9780980790429 (Aus) Reviewed by Rachel Edwards Australia has seen an increase in the publishing, and the recognition of, short stories and their authors over the last few years. Cate Kennedy and Nam Le set the bar high, and Affirm Press are presenting reading audiences with some refined new voices through their innovative publishing of the [...]

I recently reviewed issue nine of the journal :etchings for Cordite Poetry Review. The focus of the review is the issue’s poetry, as that is Cordite‘s focus, but I mention the fiction and nonfiction also. It begins: ‘Love & Something is the sub-header of :etchings 9, and the something seems to stand for the multitudinous meanings the [...]

Spent the morning writing and editing. Checked my email. Read a press release on Tim Sinclair’s new poetry book Re: Reading the Dictionary. Clicked the link. Bought it. Downloaded it. Read it from A to Z. Loved it. Wanted to tell you about it right away. Each piece from ‘Afflatus’ to ‘Zombie, Philosophical’ takes a [...]

Scribe Publications, 9781921844140, July 2011, Australia Melanie Joosten’s debut novel is a taut and intimate psychological thriller. Clare meets Andi while on a working holiday in Berlin and they immediately share a strong attraction. At Andi’s behest, Clare decides to delay travelling on to Dresden, but their intense connection quickly morphs into a more sinister [...]

First, let me apologise for the recent lack of fully formed blog posts. From next week I may have a bit more time for that (staying in the country). I’m giving my paper in a couple of days in London and have been super busy with work, sightseeing and drinking too much. I promise I’ll [...]

My review of Eric Hazan’s The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps (translated by David Fernbach) can be found in the July issue of Bookslut. I completed the review while in Paris a few weeks ago. It begins: ‘I’m sitting in an apartment in the twelfth arrondissement of Paris, and because I’ve finished Eric [...]

Pulse Publications, 2010, 9780646540443 In naming her poetry collection The Geometry of Flight Angela Smith, like Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, ‘chose wisely’. More wisely, more selflessly, than perhaps she realised. She has given multiple doorways to her work with the single phrase: porticos that set the reader’s path through the work, paths that [...]

Text Publishing, June 2011 9781921758010 (trade paperback, ebook) Reviewed by Raili Simojoki If you’ve read any of Craig Sherborne’s writing, you’ll know not to expect a rosy-eyed view of the world. The Amateur Science of Love follows the grim journey of a love affair gone wrong. Colin leaves the unglamorous environs of his parents’ farm [...]