Book Description

This moving book examines Australian front-line soldiers' reactions to their ordeal in World War II. Based on the letters and diaries of more than 300 soldiers, its focus is the stress they faced and how they coped with it. Johnston paints a picture of survival and surrender in the surreal conditions in which these soldiers lived and fought. ... Read more

Book Description

Kathleen Fitzpatrick's 'magnificent book of memories', as Manning Clark described it, is a classic work among Australian memoirs. 'Hughenden', the seaside mansion of her grandparents, provided the 'solid bluestone foundations' of Kathleen's somewhat unsettled childhood. The puzzled observations and alert curiosity of a highly intelligent child are vividly recreated in these beautifully written recollections. They paint an evocative picture of middle-class life in Melbourne in the early years of the twentieth century.

Major themes include the awakening of Kathleen's feminist consciousness, her discovery at the University of Melbourne of her true vocation as a historian,and her unhappy experiences as a 'colonial' at Oxford University. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Solid Blue Foundations
What an unusual life in those times,how marvellously told.A must for those interested in a life full of awakenings to alllevels of life, childhood, teens, leavingthe apron strings of home and an academic life.Loved the descriptive 'sea voyage' Melbourne to the "homeland", England, something we will never experience.A autobiography along with the best. ... Read more

Book Description

Artful Histories is an original account of modern Australian autobiography that radically revises current theories of autobiography and discusses a remarkably broad range of popular and literary texts written over the last three decades. In his challenge to post-structuralist theories of autobiography, particularly in terms of autobiography's relationship with fiction and history, David McCooey analyses the nature of the self, the question of intent and the role of narrative. He discusses the ways in which the autobiographer makes sense of his or her life through a developing but continuous awareness of the narrative quality of experience. The book explores themes around the mythology of childhood, education, sexuality, the discovery of hidden histories, the trauma of displacement and death and, finally, the importance of place in the Australian imagination. ... Read more

Book Description

A haunting fusion of literary memoir and true crime from an internationally acclaimed novelist, Robert Drewe, whose literary stature in Australia is comparable to that of Richard Ford or Cormac McCarthy, is already capturing a wider world with work the Sunday Times of London calls "spellbinding" and the Independent "cinematically immediate, crackling with an intensity of sense." In The Shark Net, his first major work of nonfiction, he uses his lyrical sensibility to combine a deeply disturbing chronicle of multiple murder with a starkly intimate picture of his own adolescence.

Perth has been called the most isolated city in the world, but Drewe's family lived in what was thought a comfortable, tidy little suburb on the "good" side of the Swan river. Appearances were deceiving. Across the river, living rather differently, was Eric Cooke, a man with a hare lip, seven children, and a habit of slipping over the river at night to murder whom he chose--including a friend of Drewe's. Drewe recreates the eerie unreality of a community held in terror for five years and events that marked him for life. This picture of the dark life hidden in the blandest of suburbs will resonate in America today as much as, or more than, anywhere in the world.

"Deft, nuanced, and beautifully structured--the equal of the novels that have made Drewe one of Australia's most loved and celebrated writers."--Peter Carey, Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Sand, sharks and suburbs
The Shark Net is one of those rare memoirs that succeed in being almost as haunting to the reader as the events it describes are to the author himself. It is Robert Drewe's story of his childhood and early adulthood from the late '40s to the early '60s in the Western Australian city of Perth, then as now a city defined by a deep awareness of its geographic isolation.

The story that unfolds bears some similarity to John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Both books elegantly weave a tale of real-life mayhem into descriptions of the social fabric of an isolated city. The difference is that Berendt's tale of the anachronistic charms of Savannah, Georgia is far more light-hearted than Drewe's grim account. The Shark Net is built around a series of random serial murders that erupt into the narrative to create an overpowering sense of menace. It is also a much more personal book, in which Drewe tries to confront his memories of these murders and other tragedies that intruded into his formative years in sunny Perth. The killer and his crimes directly touched on Drewe's life at several points, not least of which is that one of the random victims is a close boyhood friend, despite it being Drewe who had once unwittingly met the killer.

Drewe also re-creates his family life, but not wholly lovingly. He documents with painful understatement the emotional inhibitions of his parents, and the decline of their marriage. His father was an emotionally unexpressive man whose few passions include a near religious dedication to his employer, the Dunlop rubber company. His only expressed reaction to the news that his son is about to become a teenage father is concern about the company's reaction. The book ends with Drewe being surprised by his eagerness to leave provincial Perth to work on a big city newspaper in Melbourne.

This is riveting book, that will grip Australian readers and those overseas. Its tone is of a man who in middle age is now compelled to look back on events with a mixture of sadness and greater understanding. It is quite complex in structure, with several flashes forward in time and interludes into the mind of the killer, but uses a clear prose style that keeps the story moving along effortlessly. It is also beautifully evocative of a time and a place. This is the book that Robert Drewe had to write for himself, and we should all be grateful that he has done so.

Laughter, pain , and a real life serial killer.
There have been some great "teenager growing up" books - and I thought this funny/sometimes sad book is a stand out in a very strong genre.

I know Robert Drewe is one of Australia's best, and best liked writers. It turns out he lived what seems an ordinary childfhood, in quite extraordinary settings. His father was the bombastic company man for Dunlop in West Australia - a regional big cheese, odious but tasty. That brings young Drewe into contact with interesting people such as the tennis stars Dunlop sponsors, like Hoad and Rosewall.

And also with a serial killer who was knocking off Drewe's friends, while working for his dad. Hell of a back drop.

The young Drewe is hardly the sensitive youth.He has the balanced perspective of a 16year old male who understands there is no more exciting prospect in life than copping his first feel.Maybe that gets to what I like most about this book -- Drewe's memories and insights of the ordinary things most of us recognise.

Sort of thing where you laugh out loud, look down and realise, hey that's also a knife he stuck in your gut.

It's a very enjoyable, satisfying book.He uses the serial killer skilfully to give it a wonderful construction. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Australian Journal of Politics and History, published by University of Queensland Press on September 1, 2002. The length of the article is 466 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Australia, a Biography. (book review)
Author: W. Ross Johnston
Publication: The Australian Journal of Politics and History (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2002
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Volume: 48Issue: 3Page: 416(1)

Article Type: Book Review

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Reviews (6)

A fascinating adventure!
Daisy Bates appears to be delusional at times in recounting her adventures with the Aboriginese but this is still one of the most fascinating reads I've had in a long time! If you were to separate her tales from the fact that she lived on her own among the indigenous peoples of Australia during a time when it was shocking for a woman to do so, there would still be an incredible story of courage and perserverance.This is an account worth reading!

A contrarian's view of Daisy Bates in the Desert.
Daisy Bates, a controversial woman who has attained almost mythical status in Australia, was an inveterate liar, constitutionally incapable of seeing herself in the world as it really was.Instead, she created a better world in her own mind and assumed that everyone else recognized her world as real.As Julia Blackburn reconstructs what she believes to have been Daisy's life in Australia's western desert, and her seemingly futile efforts to protect and preserve the aborigines and their culture, she presents a plausible personality with whom the reader can, to a great extent, identify.

Blackburn is successful in making Daisy's dream world seem like an understandable response to the privations and hardships she faced in her early life alone.In Part I, Blackburn describes what Daisy has said about her life, and follows it with what Blackburn has discovered to be the truth as a result of her documented research.In Part II, she allows Daisy, as she understands her, to speak to the reader herself, and we "live" with her in the desert for many years, watching as her original dedication becomes a mission and then a mania, and her insecurity grows into delusion and eventually paranoia. A woman who seems to have accomplished nothing of lasting significance, Daisy might have achieved some of her goals if she had only bent a little.Part III tells of Daisy's life after she leaves the desert.

Blackburn brings Daisy's Australian desert camp to life--the blinding sun, the heat of day and cold of night, the ghostly arrivals and departures of the shy aborigines, the birds and animals who were often Daisy's only company, and the changes wrought by the railroads, settlement, missionaries, and unfeeling governmental bureaucrats.Though she presents Daisy sympathetically, she is not Daisy's apologist, offering no defense, other than Daisy's own personality, for her extreme and solitary viewpoint.Unlike other readers, I found this a very poignant story of a woman who, at the end of a life of the utmost privation and dedication to saving a culture, realizes with sadness that it has all been for naught.Clearly, she never had a clue that most of her failure was her own fault.Mary Whipple

If you enjoy fantasy and poetry this book is for you
The author is highly imaginative and tells a lot about her own life inthis mish mash. We never learn much about Daisy Bates. the author writes" her body shudders like a dying rabbit and her new husband wakes andstares at his new wife..." But the author is really describing her ownchildhood dream of an old man with his legs wrapped around her neck!!!Blackburn's "very personal interpretation" of the life of DaisyBates seems to include Blackburn trying to overcome some of her ownchildhood traumas and problems with men. If little is known about DaisyBates' feelings towards her husband, I'd rather have that than a lot ofsilly conjecture and fantasy. The prose is very good, very flowery and highflown, but it doesn't help tell the story of Daisy Bates. Like otherreviewers, I will have to research Daisy, yes even after reading her"biog". It didn't feel balanced at all.

A poor hybrid of the author's life & a biog. of Daisy Bates
Too much novelistic improvisation and repetitionruin this book. Julia Blackburn is clearly more interested in Julia Blackburn than in Daisy Bates. Julia Blackburn's ideas and dreams are constantly inserted just whenyou think you might get to read something about Daisy Bates!JuliaBlackburn presents Julia Blackburn as a dreamy, visionary person, whiledescribing Daisy Bates as a Liar over and over and over again, and thengiving Daisy an "imaginary" life... It could have worked if JuliaBlackburn weren't so in love with herself--- I bought this book becauselife among the Aborigines sounded interesting. But it's really too muchabout Julia Blackburn and she bores me. I read a lot of novels, biogs,poetry, and history, and this books tries to capture it all and while attimes it is eloquent, it often feelsfalse and flat.

Very intriguing book
In spite of the two star review already posted on this book, I found it to be a great book.Really well written...lovely prose...insightful...made me want to know more about Daisy and so I went into research in greater depth. I think this book would make an excellent study for any women's literaturecourse. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Australian Literary Studies, published by University of Queensland Press on October 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1377 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Intimate Empire: Reading Women's Autobiography.(Review) (book review)
Author: Delys Bird
Publication: Australian Literary Studies (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 2000
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Volume: 19Issue: 4Page: 447

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description

Russell Braddon wrote The Naked Island in 1950. By 1968 it had been reprinted eleven times and sold one million copies in Britain alone. As the author states, 'It was written to tell the world what sort of people the Japanese can be. It was written to explain what they did in the war and what they might well do again.'

There are numerous books on the war in the East but this is one of the greatest. Often hilarious, even amidst the horror, this is the story of what the Japanese did to those they captured. It is written in prose all the more effective for its dry understatement and sharp observation by a man who never lost his will to live even in the most terrible circumstances. Braddon's story is however not that simply of a prisoner of war. In his comments on the equally brutal Japanese treatment of native workers and indeed any who were not Japanese, he reveals the hollow reality of the 'Greater Asian co-prosperity sphere' promised by the Japanese, and attempts to understand how one group of human beings could behave in such a way towards another and the inhuman ideology and fanaticism which drove the Japanese on.

Even today the subject of Japanese war guilt is never far from the headlines and it was only last year that a deal on compensation was arrived at for surviving POWs. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Read it!
The Naked Island

The autobiography of a young australian soldier who spent long years in captivity as prisoner of war of the Japanese.
The first part is the description of the military life in Malaya before the attack of the Japanese with many ironical notes on that tedious life from the point of view of a soldier.
The second part is the description of the useless fight of the Australian and British troops against the overwhelming enemy and then the attempt to escape the capture.
Then the third, and most interesting part, is the description of the life during three long years of captivity in the different prisons where the writer was imprisoned and in the jungle camps where all prisoners were forced to work without food, facing malaria, beri beri and death for starvation.
A book I would really recommend.
Are you looking for another absolutely interesting book about a similar experience?
Read the famous "Behind bamboo" by Rohan Rivett

excellent, poignant,harrowing read
One of my first introductions to Australian and Far East reading of WW11, thoroughly enjoyable, could not put it down until it was finished.Would recommend this book to all generations. Has given me the taste to find outmore about the Far East and familiarise myself with further Australianliterature.Thought only John Pilger could write riveting literature, Iwas wrong!

Definitive book on captivity in the hands of the Japanese
This is an unforgettable book: informative, educational, poignant and often delightfully humorous.It is a tribute to the British and Australian Forces used as slave labour in the construction of the Burma/SiameseRailway and their ability to live with dignity, compassion and decencyunder the most deplorable conditions imaginable.This book leaves anindelible impression on the reader and should be required reading for eachsuccessive generation.

a very moving read
it is amazing that with all the hardship that these guys went thru, human nature can still make the best of an awful situation.

harrowing account of POW life under the Japanese
One of the best books I have read on the war in the pacific. Quiteharrowing and it unbelievable what these men went through at the hands ofthe Japanese.

Essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand thejapanese pysche and mans courage ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Australian Studies, published by University of Queensland Press on September 1, 2001. The length of the article is 8344 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Voyeurs or scholars? Biography's role in labour history.
Author: Harry Knowles
Publication: Journal of Australian Studies (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2001
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Page: 63(17)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Australian Academic & Research Libraries, published by Australian Library and Information Association on September 1, 2000. The length of the article is 2917 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Derek Fielding a biographical sketch.(Biography)
Author: Earle Gow
Publication: Australian Academic & Research Libraries (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2000
Publisher: Australian Library and Information Association
Volume: 31Issue: 3Page: viii(11)

Article Type: Biography

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Australian Journal of Politics and History, published by University of Queensland Press on September 22, 1997. The length of the article is 541 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Northern Territory: Dictionary of Biography, volume 3. (book reviews)
Author: Jennifer Harrison
Publication: The Australian Journal of Politics and History (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1997
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Volume: v43Issue: n3Page: p447(1)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description

Since 1966, the Australian Dictionary of Biography has provided concise, informative, and fascinating descriptions of prominent men and women who contributed their vision and energies to a growing nation.The subjects come from all walks of life--from premiers, generals, and bishops, through artists, actors, authors, farmers, engineers, and schoolteachers, to prostitutes, bushrangers, and murderers--providing a representative cross-section of Australian society. While biography necessarily focuses on the individual, the sweeping range of these personal stories illuminates large themes in Australia's recent history, including immigration, rapid industrialization, urbanization and suburbanization, war (WWII, Korea, Malaysia, and Vietnam), material progress, conservative and radical politics, and the loss of isolation and innocence. Maintaining the ADB's tradition of scholarship, this volume covers the period 1940-1980, from Pik-Z. ... Read more