Michael Williams

Michael Williams reviews True North: Contemporary Writing From The Northern Territory edited by Marian Devitt, Loose Lips: UTS Writers’ Anthology edited by Lauren Finger et al. and Best Stories Under The Sun edited by Michael Wilding and David Myers

February 2005, no. 268 • 01 February 2005

Why are there so few new and exciting voices in Australian fiction? Why do Australian novels so consistently fail to capture the imagination of the reading public? What was the last Australian book you really liked? Where is the next generation of Australian authors going to come from? Who are three Australian writers under the age of thirty or forty? Any reader of weekend newspapers will be fami ... (read more)

Michael Williams reviews ‘Griffith Review 8: People like us’ edited by Julianne Schultz, ‘Heat 9: Star dust’ edited by Ivor Indyk and ‘Island No. 100’ edited by David Owen

September 2005, no. 274 • 01 September 2005

Hands up if you subscribe to an Australian journal. Keep them up if you subscribe to more than one. More than two? If you read them? Cover to cover? Half? More than two articles an issue? Hands up if you look forward to them. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something that makes me terribly tired when faced with the prospect of Australia’s literary and political journals. I stand in front of ... (read more)

Michael Williams reviews ‘The Ballad Of Desmond Kale’ by Roger McDonald

February 2006, no. 278 • 01 February 2006

How much do you care about sheep? I mean really care about sheep. Because The Ballad of Desmond Kale is up to its woolly neck in them. It’s an unusual and inspired variation on the classic Australian colonial novel of hunters for fortune, for identity and for redemption. The historical record is filled with accounts of early settlers grappling with the hostile and unpleasant environment. The bat ... (read more)

Michael Williams reviews 'Stanley and Sophie' by Kate Jennings

May 2008, no. 301 • 01 May 2008

How many books should an author have under their belt before they indulge in a piece of frippery? When John Steinbeck wrote Travels with Charley (1962), about his journeys across the country with his poodle, it must have been hard not to see it as a comedown from The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Adding the subtitle (‘In Search of America’) can’t have been enough to convince anyone that this was a ... (read more)

Michael Williams reviews 'Swan Bay' by Rod Jones

April 2003, no. 250 • 01 April 2003

Reading Swan Bay, one is quickly struck by a sense of the familiar. A damaged, misanthropic man meets a damaged, unbalanced woman. He attempts to penetrate her almost mystical reserve and, in the book’s central flashback sequence, she recounts the past that has almost destroyed her. Back in the present, the truth of her account seems uncertain. The two achieve some sort of equilibrium. This narr ... (read more)

Michael Williams reviews 'The Ballad of Desmond Kale' by Roger McDonald

February 2006, no. 278 • 01 February 2006

How much do you care about sheep? I mean really care about sheep. Because The Ballad of Desmond Kale is up to its woolly neck in them. It’s an unusual and inspired variation on the classic Australian colonial novel of hunters for fortune, for identity and for redemption. The historical record is filled with accounts of early settlers grappling with the hostile and unpleasant environment. The bat ... (read more)

Michael Williams reviews 'Dead Europe' by Christos Tsiolkas

June–July 2005, no. 272 • 01 June 2005

So often, the language used to discuss Australian literature is that of anxiety. A.A. Phillips’s ‘cultural cringe’, coined in 1950, is never far from the critical surface as readers and commentators grapple with questions of national and literary identity. The report of the 1995 Miles Franklin Award’s judges offers one such example: [N]ovels about the migrant experience seem to us to be ... (read more)