reeling and writhing

Finally, in 2013, my review of The Rest Is Weight

Well, what a time that took! Hope you were not holding your breath waiting for my review of Jennifer Mills' rich and rewarding story collection, released in June last year.

Many things got in the way, including another delayed review...

But, here it is, at The Ember.

This excellent book, The Rest Is Weight, provoked an interesting observation from Peter Pierce at the Sydney Morning Herald:

Maybe the short story, not the novel, is the mainstream of Australian fiction. There are echoes of Lawson and Baynton here, as well as Carey. Mills is aware of the tradition to which she is indebted and in which she works adroitly and imaginatively. If the stories can feel like self-imposed tests of what Mills can do, they are also daring, unsettling and assured.

 

The only sad thing about this substantial and beautiful collection is that now we have to wait till Jennifer writes some more. So. Please Consider.

(Crossblogged at Mulberry Road.)

another review at The Ember: Tarcutta Wake

A busy time of year chez nous. And I am not blogging much, more's the pity.

However I do have a review of Josephine Rowe's new story collection from UQP, Tarcutta Wake, up at The Ember. Here is a taster:

I think when Josephine Rowe is older, we will be approaching these early collections as extended prose poems, reaching into each other. Reflecting on her second collection of stories, How A Moth Becomes A Boat, words like ‘painterly’, ‘highly visual’, and ‘cinematic’ spring readily to mind. Even on a repeat reading, where one is more receptive to small nuances, three stories is all it takes before you are seized once more by the urge to swallow that book whole.

Perhaps there are already academics out there sharpening their pencils at the prospect of tracking plot devices and mood shifts, shadows and shapes, as they roam through Rowe’s early works, including this latest collection, Tarcutta Wake. Rowe is that rare thing, a poet completely at home in prose which asks to be read aloud (like poetry should be). While facing down cliché, Rowe is capable of compounding an astringent and powerful vocalism from closely observed moments and often percussive sounds:

It is understood that a second key will not be cut, just as it is understood that you will not be staying long enough for it to matter. But three weeks now, most of February, and you’re wearing his clothes, smoking his cigarettes, sharing his bed and his razors. From his kitchen window you watch the freight trains thunder past, headed west. By the time you’ve eaten and dressed it will be twelve or one, hot as hell. You’ll listen to the telephones ringing out over the loudspeakers of the factories and Joe’s Storage from across the highway and, grinding your first cigarette of the day into his stainless steel sink, you will not understand why the sound of the freight trains breaks your fucking heart. ‘Stay’ - How a Moth Becomes A Boat

Read More

New Australian Stories 2.0 partnerships announced at Scribe

Australian independent Scribe Publishing is involving Varuna Writers'Centre and the Ned Kelly crime writing awards in its selections for their next volume of short stories, to be released in February 2011. There's a stellar cast of contributors in the first volume, which you can read about here.

For New Australian Stories 2.0 we are collaborating with two partners.

Firstly, our friends at Varuna, the Writers’ House, will be running the Varuna/NAS national short story competition, with the winners (judged by Peter Bishop, Cate Kennedy and Aviva Tuffield) to be published in New Australian Stories 2.0, and/or to be awarded a week-long residency at Varuna to work with Cate Kennedy, one of Australia’s finest writers of short stories.

Submissions to the Varuna/NAS competition open on 1 June and close on 30 June. Visit the Varuna website for more details: www.varuna.com.au

Secondly, we are teaming up with the Ned Kelly Awards to publish the winner of the S.D. Harvey Short Story Award in New Australian Stories 2.0. This award was established in 2009 in honour of Sandra Harvey, a respected journalist who worked both for the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC’s Four Corners program, and was fearless in her pursuit of the truth.

Applications for the S.D. Harvey Award close on 31 May. For more information about entering the award, go to: www.nedkellyawards.com/SDHarvey.html

goodbye noughties, then

It can't possibly be almost the end of the year, can it? Christmas shopping is in progress.In that spirit there's a list of top reads from the past year after the jump, in no particular order other than abecedarian, arranged by type.

If you're still hungry for selections and suggestions after trawling through mine, there are other lists, by other people, covering all five (six?) Readings stores and beyond. And there's a very comprehensive US/international roundup at The Millions, of course. I might not be back for a little while, as there's plenty of good book news around - follow the blogs here (scroll down for the feeds) and you won't be bored.

What I want for Christmas: Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier, Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, botanical prints I've had framed, which will be ready to pick up next Friday, a bottle of brandy and a month's supply of Zero lemonade.

AND...safe holidays for everyone.

long may you run

Well, there are prizes. And then, there are prizes.

And speaking of the other kind of prize, three hearty cheers for Sleepers and Steve Amsterdam's win. Not bad for the first novel out of their blocks, is it now. Not too shabby at all.

Someone after Pav's heart.

As noted on Twitter by Jason Ensor, Damien Broderick has published a new story, here.

Want to record and send a 5 min video through Twitter? YES YOU CAN.

Congratulations are due to Jennifer Mills for a nomination for the Blake Poetry Prize. GO JEN.

What would Oscar have wanted to say about Twitter if he was here? something like this, I think.
(In other news, Fry has discovered what he calls Goldilocks Miniblogging using his iPhone.

And congratulations to Mark Rubbo and his crew for the good ship Readings' happy birthday. Many pictures here, long may she sail.

sumer is icumen in

The State Library's Summer Reads blog kicks off this Friday - the launch was held last week, and the blog is nearly there. An even mix of fiction and non-fiction titles this year marks a definite shift away from the 2006 inaugural program, evocatively titled "20 Novels Set Close To Home". (I always thought that was going to be difficult to sustain indefinitely, myself.)

Titles to check out on the 2008 list include Toni Jordan's Addition and Sophie Cunningham's Bird (both of which I have read and liked), Nam Le's collection of stories, The Boat, and an anthology of Australian science fiction which looks pretty darn cool.

Who are these guys? do we know any of these names? speak now, or forever hold your peace. Link via ReadySteadyBook blog.

If you are interested in work in translation, it might be fun to follow ReadySteadyBook blogger Mark Thwaite's progress through the reading for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2009 - he will be blogging about it here.

Probably the very last interview for Studs here. And some notices, here.

MTV is taking the attitude that if it cannot beat illegal users of its material, it will join them. Link via ReadWriteWeb.

Finally - Peacay has some great shots of 'old' Sydney, here.

i know what you read on All Hallows

Carrie Frye has had a series of Halloween stories running over the past week at Terry Teachout's blog, as well as providing a link to the Britannica Blog's Haunted Library series.

Bridgeport Public Library: Some library staff members say they have encountered a ghost in the 6th or 7th floor stacks near the historical materials in this 1927 building. The entity, which they have nicknamed Lola, is said to be friendly and helps find missing items. Former Director Michael A. Golrick said that something opened the garage door that the delivery van uses three times during the night of February 22–23, 2006, causing alarms to go off. A policeman who searched the building during the second alert said he heard someone “turning pages” on the 6th floor.

The list reads like a US library X-Files, and it sounds like quite a few librarians want to believe the truth is out there. At the old Bernardsville Public library in New Jersey, the resident spook, Phyllis, was so active that staff issued her a library card, saying that Phyllis “was not put on our computer with the rest of us mortals, but her card is always available should she choose to use it,” while one fairly superstitious librarian in Pittsburgh has claimed that books play 'hide and seek' on the shelves.

There are, reassuringly, a couple of libraries on the campus of Pennsylvania State University that have more robust manifestations, including a 'grumbling voice' in the laptop library and 'transparent girls thumbing through books, disembodied glowing red eyes, bookcarts that move without anyone present, and all sorts of other phenomena'.
If there's a haunted Oz library out there, do share.

free to read, freely written

Robert Olen Butler gets down and dirty in all the voices in the latest Narrative magazine. In his piece, "Little Fuckers" he recasts some improbable and actual sexual encounters between historical figures in a stream of consciousness riff which occasionally does violence to the style of the originals.
I liked the Oscar Wilde with Walt, hehe, shades of D.H. Lawrence (though if you do not include full stops it is hardly Oscar at all, more like a fingerprint lifted from his half-empty champagne glass), I liked Aimee McPherson, I DID NOT like him channelling Peter Carey's Ned Kelly in the middle of Clyde Barrow though:

Here is my honest declaration to you, Miss Parker, I am a dangerous man to anybody who gets in the way of me taking what I want and pissing on the shoes of the government that has took everything the working stiffs have got, which also means that nobody messes with any woman who is with me.

Ahem. A subscription to Narrative, where you can read stories by Joyce Carol Oates and Tobias Wolff from time to time, is free.