Jane Sullivan

Jane Sullivan is Critic of the Month

June–July 2014, no. 362 • 27 May 2014

When did you first write for ABR? September 1991. Which critics most impress you? As a journalist, I have been constantly thrown in the deep end and expected to review everything from books to shows to films to restaurants. I still admire some classic figures I idolised when I was starting out in England and didn’t know much about anything: Kenneth Tynan on theatre; Pauline Kael on film; Cliv ... (read more)

Jane Sullivan reviews 'Never Mind about the Bourgeoisie: The correspondence between Iris Murdoch and Brian Medlin 1976–1995' edited by Gillian Dooley and Graham Nerlich

May 2014, no. 361 • 29 April 2014

If you’re a bookish type of a certain age, chances are you went through your Iris Murdoch period. You binged on novels such as The Black Prince (1973) and The Sea, The Sea (1978); you immersed yourself in her world of perplexed, agonised souls searching for meaning, falling disastrously in love with absurdly wrong people, consoling themselves with a swim or a madrigal singalong. It’s less like ... (read more)

Jane Sullivan reviews 'In the Memorial Room' by Janet Frame

July–August 2013, no. 353 • 25 June 2013

This novel comes to us some forty years after it was written. Janet Frame (1924–2004) did not allow it to be published during her lifetime. Very probably she was anxious not to be seen as savaging the hands that had fed her: and it is indeed a gleeful, glorious savaging. ... (read more)

Jane Sullivan reviews 'The Love-charm of Bombs' by Lara Feigel

June 2013, no. 352 • 27 May 2013

My mother-in-law often spoke fondly of the Blitz. I had visions of her as a plucky young woman cycling down the bombed streets of London, going to work as a secretary to the stars of show business, enjoying ridiculously cheap hotel meals, and in the evenings going out on the town with an exciting boyfriend – perhaps a Turkish admiral, perhaps the man she later married. It always sounded as if sh ... (read more)

Jane Sullivan reviews 'The Seaglass Spiral' by Alan Gould

December 2012–January 2013, no. 347 • 28 November 2012

In his Introduction to The Seaglass Spiral, Finlay Lloyd reveals that an earlier version of this novel won an award for ‘best rejected manuscript’. It is a curiously back-handed compliment for a publisher to pay his author, and it is typical of an Introduction that seems cautious, even diffident, about its product. ... (read more)

Jane Sullivan reviews 'The Oldest Song in the World' by Sue Woolfe

July–August 2012, no. 343 • 09 July 2012

How can Australians write fiction about Indigenous Australia? It is one of the most contentious literary questions today. There aren’t any rules, but writers – particularly white writers – are driven by a strange mix of passion and caution. ... (read more)

Jane Sullivan reviews 'Martin Amis: The Biography' by Richard Bradford

May 2012, no. 341 • 24 April 2012

I once had a vague fantasy that Martin Amis and I should get married. He was cool and handsome, and we had so much in common. We were about the same age; we had both read English at Oxford. My father worked as a cartoonist at the New Statesman when Martin was literary editor. I was mad about books and writing; Martin, in his early twenties, was already a famous novelist. Perfect match. ... (read more)