Rebecca Starford

Rebecca Starford is the co-founder and publishing-director of Kill Your Darlings and an editor at Text Publishing. She has written for Guardian, Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Australian newspapers. She was a founding member of the Stella Prize steering committee.

Rebecca Starford reviews 'Love and the Platypus' by Nicolas Drayson

June 2007, no. 292 • 01 June 2007

The naturalist has been something of a recurring figure in recent Australian historical fiction: there is Ingrid in Jessica White’s A Curious Intimacy (2007), Lindsay Simpson’s Lady Jane in The Curer of Souls (2007), and now the real-life William Caldwell, from Nicolas Drayson’s Love and the Platypus. The novel opens in 1883 with the young British naturalist arriving in Queensland. In search ... (read more)

Rebecca Starford reviews 'The Black Russian' by Lenny Bartulin

February 2010, no. 318 • 07 October 2022

A purveyor of second-hand literature-cum-reluctant sleuth is an attractive proposition. We first met Jack Susko in Lenny Bartulin’s first novel, A Deadly Business (2008). Susko, a one-time employee of the notorious Ziggy Brandt, had finally established a legitimate (albeit struggling) business, Susko Books. Rarely troubled by customers, Susko was entertained by the music of Miles Davis and Muddy ... (read more)

Rebecca Starford reviews 'What Does Blue Feel Like?' by Jessica Davidson and 'Grieve' by Lizzie Wilcock

July–August 2007, no. 293 • 26 August 2022

According to a recent government survey of child and youth health, around five per cent of young people over the age of twelve suffer from a major depressive illness. Sources of such depression, according to the survey, include stressful events, trauma and heredity. Increasingly, the origin of the illness remains unknown. These disconcerting figures indicate the need for intelligent and accessible ... (read more)

Rebecca Starford reviews 'The Ghost's Child' by Sonya Hartnett

October 2007, no. 295 • 01 October 2007

The style of Sonya Hartnett’s storytelling has changed considerably since she published Trouble All the Way (1984) at the age of fifteen: her finely groomed prose is much tighter than it was then. Her tales brim with nuance and, though straightforward, are disarmingly sophisticated; her weighty symbolism, saturating the most desiccated of landscapes, is one of the finest in our national literatu ... (read more)

Rebecca Starford reviews 'This Is How' by M.J. Hyland

July-August 2009, no. 313 • 01 July 2009

Early in M.J. Hyland’s new novel, This Is How, Patrick Oxtoby joins his landlady, Bridget, in the lounge room. They watch a game show, and Patrick feigns interest in the contestants’ fortunes. It is an awkward scenario he wishes Bridget would talk more and he prattles on, making a faux pas. ‘You’re in a strange mood,’ Bridget says, eyes on the television. Bewildered, Patrick excuses hims ... (read more)

Rebecca Starford reviews 'The Low Road' by Chris Womersley

December 2007–January 2008, no. 297 • 01 December 2007

The resounding metaphor in The Low Road is that of a bullet wound and ‘the shock waves it sends through the body, often creating a cavity ahead of where the bullet stops. Almost as if the body accommodates the object’s anticipated trajectory and manufactures its very own injury.’ Chris Womersley’s intentions are suitably applicable to this laparoscopic image: to examine the cycle of crime, ... (read more)