Rachel Buchanan
Rachel Buchanan is the curator of the Germaine Greer Archive, University of Melbourne, and a former ABR Fellow.
Bring back Carmen. Bring back Cheryl. Bring back Natasha. I would even have accepted a bit of Bronwyn as a relief from the relentless maleness of this year’s federal election campaign. The female politicians who were household names less than a decade ago – Carmen Lawrence, Cheryl Kemot, Natasha Stott Despoja, Bronwyn Bishop and Pauline Hanson – have been disgraced, marginalised or relegated ... (read more)
Do families aid creativity or do they stifle it? Does art require freedom and solitude, the luxuries of long, introspective walks on beaches and bottles of red for one, or can art arise from the chaos and banality of domestic life with a spouse and children?
Alice Haskins, the female lead of Melbourne playwright Joanna Murray-Smith’s third novel, is a forty-year-old writer who occupies a gorgeo ... (read more)
If this is love, then we are all in trouble. Addiction, infidelity, cruelty, violence, obsession, depression, repression, jealousy, impotence, the neglect of children and a whole lot of hysterical personal correspondence are features of the love affairs conducted by the eight writers who are the subject of this disconcerting book.
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When I was seven, a teenage orphan called Katherine came to stay with us for the summer holidays. Katherine had short red hair, freckles and brown eyes. She loved play-fighting and running, and hated wearing dresses and skirts. The only skirt I ever saw her wear was the navy blue one that was part of her school uniform. When the school holidays ended, Katherine stayed and became our foster sister. ... (read more)
Melbourne woman Kate Holden’s memoir of being a heroin user and of working as a prostitute to fund her habit opens with a quote from Virgil: ‘To descend into hell is easy. But to return – what work, what a labour it is!’ The quote is at odds with the life story Holden constructs in this brave, explicit, and extremely well-written book. Far from being a kind of hell, Holden represents prost ... (read more)
I was halfway through A Mother's Story when my oldest daughter asked how I would review it. 'Will you talk about the writing, mum, or the content?' she said. 'You could bring personal experience into it because you are a mother too. You'll read it differently from me.'
Lily is fourteen. She is rarely interested in the same books as me and she has never asked about my writing. In fact, she can be ... (read more)
Silent Shock is an ambitious, important book. It is a work of history, a work of journalism, and a forensic exposé of hideous corporate negligence, all woven around the lives of one modest Melbourne family.
Former journalist turned lawyer Michael Magazanik was one of the dozens of lawyers, barristers, and researchers who worked on a recent class action against Grünenthal, the manufacturer of th ... (read more)
David Syme made his name and his fortune in newspapers – specifically The Age – and his life’s course might be compared with the workings of a gigantic web offset press.
I have watched such machines at work. They start off slow; the rolls of naked newsprint snake by gently, round and round. When the presses roar to life the noise is astonishing; the paper is stretched like the thinnest of s ... (read more)
New Zealand coins often sneak into Australian purses. Both currencies bear the queen’s, and some coins have common colonial symbols on the front (Cook’s Endeavour on the Kiwi fifty cent, for example), but these coins only work by stealth. They have value if they can pass as Australian. Recognised for what they are – foreign objects – their currency evaporates.
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