Number 3 chiller
‘Write what is going to keep you awake at night; write what you don’t understand; write to figure something out. Good novels are journeys into the unknown, for their authors as well as their readers.’ Toni Jordan in The Millions on the ideas behind fiction.
A project for the weekend: DIY telephone bookends.
Famous authors' last words. (What was ‘Moose…Indian’ all about?)
Norman Mailer insults your favourite writers.
Q: How many male novelists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: War is hell.
‘Now reissued in the Text Classics series, A Lifetime on Clouds is still the quixotic oddity it was in 1976: truly one of the world’s most unusual yet endearing coming-of-age stories.
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to Patricia Edgar, author of In Praise of Ageing, about the obstacles and opportunities of ageing.
You can listen to Patricia on Radio New Zealand, on 774 ABC Melbourne, on Drive with Tim Cox on 612 ABC Brisbane and on Life Matters on Read more
‘This book is like a master-class in perfection’: Garry Disher’s Bitter Wash Road, reviewed.
Alex Clark compares Margaret Drabble’s latest book—her seventeenth—to The Millstone, Drabble’s celebrated 1965 novel. Also from the Guardian is an interview with Margaret Drabble, in which she talks about, among other things, writing, drinking and depression.
The Read more
‘Disher has drawn both a vivid and visceral picture of a backblocks bush town, its inhabitants ground down by the stresses of isolation, hard work and irregular, relentlessly shrinking incomes.’ The Guardian reviews Garry Disher’s latest standalone novel, Bitter Wash Road.
‘This book positively domesticates the goldrush.’ Alison Bartlett reviews Clare Wright’s The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka in the Guardian.
Is this the year’s best literary Halloween costume? Probably, but these pets give it a run for its money.
‘Women are not marginal. Women are not a minority. And the narrative of struggle—with its implied denouement of failure—perpetuates the myth that women have only ever been knocking at the door of Australia’s story. Struggling, not angry.
