Kate Ahearne

Kate Ahearne reviews 'Love Child' by John Bedford

September 1986, no. 84 • 01 September 1986

It must have seemed as natural to Penguin as money in the bank to ask Helen Gamer to provide a few enticing words for the cover of Jean Bedford’s new book, Love Child. Here, it would appear, is a book very much in the Garner backyard – short, domestic, ‘certainly not ‘loud’ or attention-seeking, but nicely crafted. ... (read more)

Kate Ahearne reviews 'One Crowded Hour' by Tim Bowden, 'We Have No Dreaming' by Ronald McKie, 'Mermaid Singing' by Chairman Clift, and 'Between the Flags and Other Stories' by Jane Hyde

July 1988, no. 102 • 26 August 2022

If your interest in Australian literature predates its current flavour-of-the-month status, no doubt there exists, somewhere in your dinner-party repertoire, a screechingly funny reminiscence from the long ago, that winds up with some pompous professor of literature, or some arrogant publishing mogul, delivering the punchline, ‘Australian literature? Guffaw guffaw. I didn’t know there was any ... (read more)

'Our Newspapers’ Literary Page: From the full to the demanding – and back' by Kate Ahearne

February–March 1986, no. 78 • 01 February 1986

There must be something horribly deformed about a society in which the lowest paid work is often the most demanding and the least dispensable. Why, for instance, is the wellbeing of our elderly not worthwhile enough for people to be paid to deliver Meals on Wheels? Who doesn’t believe that the nurture of children is an enormously responsible job? Does a rubbish tip attendant get better paid than ... (read more)

Kate Ahearne reviews 'Missus' by Ruth Park

September 1985, no. 74 • 01 September 1985

The idea of the sequel probably goes back to the earliest cave drawings in the bowels of the oldest hills. ‘What happened next?’ was surely .among the first words babies ever gurgled as parents grunted bed­time stories around ancient camp-fires. It is not given to the armchair anthropologist to know whether· ‘What happened before that?’ is quite so fundamental, but I suspect not – o ... (read more)

Kate Ahearne reviews 'Double Time: Women in Victoria – 150 Years' edited by Marilyn Lake and Farley Kelly

May 1985, no. 70 • 01 May 1985

The first idea I remember having about the past as history was that people were more brutish then and more unjust because they were more ignorant. History was progress. This was the enlightened age. I was about nine at the time, a boarder at a Catholic convent in Gippsland, but my naive notions of history were still shared by many historians. I had already devoured the ten volumes of Arthur Mees ... (read more)

Kate Ahearne reviews 'Room Service: Comic writings of Frank Moorhouse' by Frank Moorhouse

October 1986, no. 85 • 01 October 1986

Reading Frank Moorhouse is a bit like learning to cook silver beet in some newfangled way and discovering that for years you’ve been chucking the best bits out. Most of us, even at this distance from Einstein, are still wanting there to be An Answer, a firm Truth, no matter how complex or ambivalent, to set up against all those other ‘truths’ held just as firmly by everybody else. Moorhouse ... (read more)