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Eleanor Dark is one of the great novelists of Australia’s mid-twentieth century, along with Christina Stead, Katharine Susannah Prichard, and Patrick White. The modernity of her writing is still stunning. But it has always been difficult to grasp her oeuvre whole. Her novels have seldom, if ever, all been in print at once, and some have virtually disappeared from sight, while the popular success of The Timeless Land (1941) overshadowed the achievements of her other works. Oh, for a ‘standard edition’ of all her titles! Somehow her career lacks a satisfying shape or trajectory, as if it amounts to less than the sum of its often brilliant parts. As G.A. Wilkes put it in 1951, ‘The kind of novel she can write well … no longer satisfies her; the kind of novel she wants to write, she has not yet achieved.’

The Woman in the Lobby lacks the satirical punch of Fabulous Nobodies (1989) and the blithe esprit of Wraith (1999) that has made Lee Tulloch such a diverting storyteller. This overlong novel, entertaining in places, engages in some of the lowest common denominators of popular fiction – fashion, drugs and lots of sex.

Camilla Noli’s novel about a cold, narcissistic personality is not pleasant reading. It is, of course, a tall order to write about a woman whose will to power is so all-consuming that she is prepared to kill her children to reassert her need for control. Narrated in the first person, it is quickly apparent that the speaker is hardly sane. Her anger exacerbated by her need for sleep, she burns with rage at the demands of her two small children. Her wilful young daughter, Cassie, a miniature version of herself in all but appearance, seems especially to provoke her resentment, even hatred. 

Born in Fiji, Lisha Miller was given away to her grandparents when she was a few months old. Miller’s separation from her immediate family during her youth created intense feelings of unworthiness that continued to haunt her throughout adulthood. Yearning for Acceptance is based on these experiences.

Not just another depressive

Dear Editor,
Barcroft Boake has suddenly become trendy, with a fictionalised (shudder) account of his life (Where the Dead Men Lie, by Hugh Capel) just published, as well as a Collected Works, Edited, With a Life, the review of which by Patrick Buckridge (July–August 2008) suggests that the old misconceptions about the poet, based on a biased account by A.G. Stephens, on which Clement Semmler based his biography, are in danger of achieving the status of fact.

Boake had a lot to be sad about. His much-loved mother died when he was thirteen; he had been apprenticed to a bankrupt who conned him out of a large inheritance; an employer neglected to pay him; and a couple of love affairs went bust. But to write him off as a depressive, with death his ‘single theme’, is to fly in the face of the reality I discovered when researching the biography that won the Walter Stone Award in 1986.

In Tasmania’s Wilderness Battles, Greg Buckman provides a history of the environment movement in Tasmania. He focuses on the various battles that have taken place between environment activists and those developers that have viewed Tasmania’s wilderness as being purely a source of profit.

Buckman opens with the Lake Pedder battle in the 1960s. This battle was waged between activists and the Hydro Electric Commission, and was significant for ‘its radicalising influence on the Tasmanian environment movement’. Buckman moves on to describe disputes over the Franklin River, the Farmhouse Creek forest and the Gunns pulp mill. Buckman concludes by arguing that Tasmania needs to adopt a more ‘enlightened view of wilderness’.

It seems astonishing that one of the most important studies ever undertaken on Mozart should have taken almost eighty-five years to reach the English language. Hermann Abert’s monumental, and indeed famous, work was first published in 1924 and was originally intended as an updated edition to that other monumental work of Mozart scholarship undertaken by Otto Jahn, published in four volumes between 1855 and 1859.

On 19 June 2008, at a gala dinner held at the State Library of New South Wales, Steven Carroll was announced as the winner of the 2008 Miles Franklin Award for his novel The Time We Have Taken (HarperCollins Australia). On accepting the Award, Steven Carroll said:

It’s an extraordinary thrill and an honour – but it’s also daunting to be joining a long list of authors whom you’ve either studied or admired for years. The Miles Franklin comes with the gravitas of a whole literary tradition, and you feel that weight almost instantly.

In A Good Death, Rodney Syme outlines his case for the legalisation of euthanasia. Drawing on his experience working with seriously ill patients over several decades, Syme (a medical practitioner) advances the controversial argument that ‘physician-assisted death’ is a humane response to ‘intolerable and otherwise unrelievable suffering’.

The art gallery of South Australia has assembled a cast of expert contributors for the catalogue that accompanied its recent exhibition of European decorative arts. Empires & Splendour: The David Roche Collection, is the most expensive publication to date from AGSA and was published with assistance from David Roche.