Oh, AA Gill. My feelings about him are mixed. On the one hand, he is mordantly witty, and utterly bereft of filter or bullshit – my kind of writer. On the other hand, he can be brutal and acidic and so proud and self-satisfied that it’s incredibly off-putting. AA Gill is away is his first…
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A few years ago, Melbourne Books began compiling the country’s prize-winning stories and publishing them in an annual collection called, Award Winning Australian Writing (AWAW). Last year, they added poems to the mix. It’s such a wonderful idea I don’t know why it wasn’t done sooner. The series is now in its fifth year. There are…
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If you’ve got the workings of the ultimate cliché chick lit novel stashed in your bottom draw, then you’re too late. Gemma Crisp already wrote the most typical chick lit novel ever with her offering, Be Careful What You Wish For. Nina works in the giddy world of women’s glossies. Supported by her boyfriend Jeremy,…
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First published in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the sort of book I like to read at nighttime, under a blanket, with only a torch to light up the words on the page. The novella devolves upon the story of Dr Jekyll, a middle class…
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Granta is one of those literary journals you’re told to subscribe to when you study writing. It publishes the full gamut of linguistic genres – poetry, prose, fiction, non-fiction – in quarterly instalments. Usually the writing it features kind of makes a budding writer ashamed to call themselves a ‘writer’ while the understated beauty of…
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By now, we all know the story of JK Rowling, who, at the request of her publisher, published the Harry Potter books using her initials, instead of her full first name. Her publisher believed the book would appeal to boys, and thought boys wouldn’t want to read the book if they saw a woman’s name…
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Katherine Boo’s book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, is a devastating and important investigation of slum life in India. Stylistically, it’s near perfect: the writing is erudite, informative, intimate, and accessible. It is narrative non-fiction in the best possible sense: it reads like a novel, but avoids the trap of over-interpretation. Boo expertly balances an objective…
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Picking up a memoir about the porn industry, Not Your Ordinary Housewife, I didn’t expect the story Nikki Stern offered. I expected Stern to be a disadvantaged woman, struggling to make ends meet for the sake of her children. Instead, I found that Stern was involved in the adult industry in many different and varied…
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There are some books which stay with you for their amazing stories; some for their brilliant use of language. The ones which really stand out are those which combine both, and there is nothing more unsatisfying than to read a book which has the potential for both, but doesn’t quite reach the mark. Miral…
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Martin Amis is the Mick Jagger of the literary world. His leathery skin and faint monobrow would normally be viewed as unattractive qualities if taken individually but when paired with a defiant gaze and a freshly rolled cigarette Amis exudes charisma. It’s hard not to stare. It’s hard not to want to be him. It’s…
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Skagboys is the latest offering from Irvine Welsh, who burst onto the literary scene with the notorious Trainspotting (1993). Skagboys revisits the characters of Trainspotting, trailing them on a manic journey into the Edinburgh’s drug scene. Welsh describes it as a “why” book, investigating the characters, relationships and the broader society that the characters inhabit….
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There are some prize-winning books, which, to be honest, after reading, I haven’t felt any wiser as to why they received the accolades emblazoned on their covers. But it’s hard to miss what’s extraordinary about Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. It blew me away with Big Bang impact. It’s clear why this book won…
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Does any women have complete power over her choices? The agency and reproductive rights of women come into question in Maureen McCarthy’s YA novel The Convent. McCarthy writes in her “Author’s Note”: ‘History is so often told from the male point of view, with the female experience either ignored or trivialised.’ In The Convent, she…
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Charlotte Dawson, Charlotte Dawson…it took me a minute to place the name on the cover of the book. Puzzled, I turned the book over and the blurb informed me she was a judge on Australia’s Next Top Model. That was the one! Yes, I’d heard of her before, but having never had Foxtel and only…
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