Allen & Unwin

Much has been written on Edna Walling’s gardens, first by herself, later by garden historians, although no detailed account of her early career has been attempted, and less still is generally known of her private life. With a play on Walling to her credit (1987), Sara Hardy presents an account of her private life (1895–1973) and of her early career.

Kerrie Davies’s Delta is touted as ‘the first ever biography on Delta Goodrem’. This is not entirely surprising, given that the singer–songwriter is only twenty years old. But Davies makes no secret of the mythical terms in which she views her subject: ‘[Delta] has raged against failure and exulted in the euphoria of success. Delta has felt the power of youth and the fear of death. And she has fallen in love, had her heart broken, and been betrayed. For Delta, this is just the beginning.’

To the outsider, the Anglican Church may well seem one of the more liberal of the Christian denominations. While the Roman Catholic Church refuses even to debate the issues, Anglicans have gone ahead and ordained both women and homosexuals to the priesthood. In Canada, one Anglican diocese has gone so far as to bless same-sex marriages. Theologically, the best-selling books of retired US bishop John Shelby Spong represent progressive Anglicanism at its extreme. Not only does Spong argue that the world view of the Bible is incompatible with contemporary scientific knowledge, but he also suggests that St Paul was gay and that Christians need not believe in god.

There is something peculiarly off-putting about a book whose opening sentence reeks of inaccuracy: ‘In 1952, the first Technicolor water spectacular film The Million Dollar Mermaid thrilled the movie-going world.’ I am not talking about anything arcane here; just the sort of factual stuff anyone can check on the Internet. Esther Williams, star of Mermaid, the Annette Kellerman biopic, had appeared in about ten films since Bathing Beauty (1944) that might have qualified as ‘water spectacular films’. Not to harp, but one’s confidence is further undermined in the foreword by co-author Barbara Firth’s uninflected boast that in 1964 she ‘was invited to join the Ladies Committee of the Sydney Opera House Appeal Fund, which was at that time the most prestigious committee in Sydney’, rising in time to be its ‘honorary public relations officer’.

Campaigning during the 1912 US presidential election, the great labour leader and socialist Eugene Debs used to tell his supporters that he could not lead them into the Promised Land because if they were trusting enough to be led in they would be trusting enough to be led out again. In other words, he was counselling his voters to resist the easy certitude that zealotry brings; to reject a politics that trades on blind faith rather than the critical power of reason.

Where are the great menopause novels? In The Change (1991), Germaine Greer described menopause as the ‘undescribed experience’, but then noted that it had in fact been described extensively, mostly ‘by men for the eyes of other men’. Wendy Harmer’s Farewell My Ovaries is written by a woman for the eyes of other women, but it does not really aspire to greatness. It is unashamedly ‘chick lit’ – or ‘chick-making-the-uneasy-transition-to-hen-lit’.

When five Chinese set themselves ablaze in Tiananmen Square in January 2001, Falun Gong made world headlines. Horrified disciples of the spiritual and qigong (like t’ai chi) organisation claimed that none of the five was a member and dissociated themselves from the tragedy, in which one person died. Today, Falun Gong still sees itself as a victim of a government conspiracy to discredit its 100 million faithful. Sydney-based Jennifer Zeng asks: why did police, some thirty fire engines and cameramen arrive within a minute? How did they get distant, mid-range and close-up images of the self-immolation from so many different angles unless it had been prearranged? Zeng suggests answers to these and other questions in Witnessing History.

Robert Ingpen is one of Australia’s best-known and most distinguished artists. Throughout his long career, he has illustrated scientific publications and numerous books for children and young people. He is the only Australian illustrator to have been awarded the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Children’s Literature. He has designed bronze doors, stamps, and murals, and has acted as designer for Swan Hill Pioneer Village, one of Australia’s first open-air museums. His recent work includes the design of a tapestry celebrating the sesquicentenary of the Melbourne Cricket Ground; illustrating a centenary edition of Peter Pan and Wendy; and holding an exhibition at the 2002 Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

Luke Davies is best known as the author of Candy (1997), a novel about love and heroin addiction. His poetry, meanwhile, has attracted attention for its characteristic interest in how we relate to an unknowable universe; it is also unusual in that it draws on a more-than-everyday understanding of theoretical physics. In this latest volume, which comes in two parts – a long meditative poem followed by forty short lyrics, both celebrating love – an awareness of the vast reaches of space remains, although its expression is now less factual and has acquired a new subtlety.