Vivienne Kelly

In October 1843 the Russian writer Turgenev heard the opera singer Pauline Viardot perform in The Barber of Seville in St Petersburg; for the rest of his life, he remained in thrall to her in an apparently chaste relationship sustained within the framework of her existing marriage. The story of this devotion, and the view that such a love is impossible in the twenty-first century, are the pivots o ... (read more)

Sally Neighbour wrote this book as a direct response to the Bali bombing in October 2002. She was convinced, by that event and its aftermath, that fundamentalist Muslims’ hatred of Westerners was creating an unfamiliar world whose rules she and most Australians did not understand. We are in her debt. In clean prose, informed by meticulous research into a wide range of sources, Neighbour stitches ... (read more)

We’re all interested in people; misanthropy is not trendy. Contemporary interest in people may be manifested by the success of reality television, the media coverage given to celebrities, and books such as these, which set out to investigate people and what makes them tick. Robert Holden’s Crackpots, Ratbags and Rebels: A Swag of Aussie Eccentrics is a breezy trawl through a number of charact ... (read more)