Queensland Books

The well-known phrase 'for the term of his natural life' is used by Marcus Clarke to bring home the horrors of transportation and the Tasmanian penal system in the 19th century.
Richard Devine, an innocent man (under an assumed name of Rufus Dawes) convicted of a crime he did not commit, is sent for transportation and assumed killed in a shipwreck. In reality, he is heir to a vast estate (unbeknown to him) and the convolutions of the tale that evolve from this are wonderfully written; the gradual demolishing of Dawes, the unspeakable duality of Frere, the calculating guile of Sarah and the gullible innocence of Sylvia are woven together in a plot that does not end happily ever after. This I think, serves to underline the barbarism and futility of the transportation system.
Based on actual events, Clarke uses his 'hero' to illustrate the depravation and privations that prisoners (and their guards) had to endure. Graphically showing how degradation degrades and power corrupts, the narrative never dwells on gruesome details, instead it relies for effect on the imagination of the reader, which can be more terrifying.
A book that deserves a wider readership.

This was without question one of the most gripping novels I've read in many a day. I first ran across this work in a brief mention by British travel writer/popular historian James Morris, where he thought it akin to the gulag novels of post-Stalinist Russia in subject matter and philosophical content. Add to that a wealth of striking narrative detail, immensely memorable characters (Maurice Frere, Sarah Purfoy, and particularly James North leap to mind), some truly transporting (no pun intended) and incredibly creepy passages, mind-blowing plot twists and turns, and a persistent refusal to provide too pat solutions to characters' problems... Clarke wasn't better than Dickens or Eliot, but neither of the latter could have written this book.

Clarke's masterpiece was published in 1874, after being serialized in 1870-72. Critics have lambasted a few of the less believable elements and some of the pat characterization of a number of supporting characters, but these are flaws to be found in most novels of that time (and ours). Clarke redeems himself by taking the cliches and mannerisms of the nineteenth-century English novel and using them to illuminate a whole new society, one practically mythical to the metropolitan consciousness of the Victorian Anglophone world. This work is a great counterpoint to all those English novels of the day where the hero or villain gets packed off to the antipodes and returns mysteriously changed. The main thrust of the novel, though, was the need to tell the true story of (white) Australian society's beginnings. Clarke, in telling the story of the unjustly convicted Rufus Dawes (aka Richard Devine), provides a panoramic view of early Victorian Australia, from the hellish convict settlements of Macquarie Harbor and Norfolk Island to the nascent frontier towns of Hobart and Melbourne, from the aging memories of the "First Fleeters" (the original convicts who arrived in 1788) to the controversial Eureka Stockade Uprising of 1854. The narrative frequently moves at a deliciously whirlwind pace to accomodate the exciting interaction of characters and history.

Clarke's novel is generally cited as nineteenth-century Australia's greatest and points the way towards more nuanced examinations of the colonial experience in the twentieth century (Peter Carey's JOE MAGGS, about the "off-stage" life of Dickens antihero Abel Magwitch, is apparently very much in this vein). Don't read it just for this reason, though. Please be sure to find the longer, original version, as I was fortunate enough to do. Clarke was forced to produce a revised, shortened version for the original publication, one dictated by his editors that turned the novel into a much more "conventional" Victorian literary production (and has a longer title--FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE). I understand a TV series was made in the mid-80s with Anthony Perkins as North. If this was the case, then it badly needs to be remade on celluloid, because I can't seem to find the series. It's a magnificent novel whose flaws, I think, are amply counterbalanced by its unexpected joys.

It's a collation of events by various persons involved in the penal settlement of early Australia. Marcus Clarke has interwoven these events into a novel of fiction. These are stark facts; and show, as far as I've researched, very detailed. L.P. Hartely said it all,in this case.."The past is a foreign country.They do things differently there." The more you read on, the more you want to know..

LEt me set the record straight first...I have never read this book. I had seen the mini-series almost 10 years ago on CBC Canada. The series was very gripping and always left me waiting for the next in the sequence. Following the end of the series I was determined that I had to read this book. My last attempt to find it was in 1991 when I was told it was out of print and could not be found anywhere. Luckily I have just tripped across the information again and it prompted me to start looking again. Needless to say (but I must) I am thrilled to find it and now be able to finally read it. I hope it is everything that I know it is and more. It is an epic tale of grand proportions. Now if I can only find the video series AND a hard cover copy to add to my library!

Well, as an Australian living in the year 2000, reading this book, written in the 1880s, is an emotional experience.

For it is through works such as this that we can see our past. We can examine the nature of the beast that gave birth to us. Who we are. From whence we came.

If you want to understand why Australians are they way they are, and have the attitudes and language that they do, then give this book a read.

This book, as does most of her stuff, will turn your world view upside down. Do you feel secure in what you believe? How do you know? Like taking LSD in book form. Read 'Borderline', 'The Last Magician', 'Tiger in the Tiger Pit', for a similar experience. Janette - e-mail me

As is usually the case with Hospital, you start out slow and even a bit bored - but continue on and soon you find yourself saying "wow" at both the plot and the prose. "Spellbinding" is frequently used for alot of fiction in general, - for Hospital it fits. This is one you will sit down and read again as if taking a trip to a private magical place

There seems to be no end to the great stories that Mr. Hospital spins. In this, her fifth book, a young woman named Charade Ryan from the Australian rainforest travels to Canada, then to Boston in search of her English father Nicholas Truman. Her earthy mother, Bea Ryan, mother of ten children by as many men, at first offers little help in this young woman's quest as she advises her daughter to "let sleeping dogs lie." But as we have come to expect by now, in Ms. Hospital's stories things are seldom as they seem.

This writer's trademarks are all here: (1) the many references to other literary works and quotations from other writers: Captain Cook, Robert Oppenheimer, Primo Levi, Jorge Luis Borges, Claudine Vegh's I DIDN'T SAY GOODBYE: INTERVIEWS WITH CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST and finally THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND ONE NIGHT-- it becomes apparent that Charade is a modern day Scheherazade as she tells parts of her story night after night to the older MIT physics professor Koenig in an effort to make their affair last. (2) As always, Ms. Hospital writes about serious subjects: memory-- that the process of recollection is imperfect at best-- the Holocaust, a child's continuing effort to know her parents. (3) Of course, this author teases us with her prose-- "What quantumleaped me?"-- and (4) makes profound statements about relationships: ". . . a marriage has begun to end long before one partner moves out." "On the other hand. . . a marriage certainly does not end with the final decree of the divorce." And finally: "It is impossible to live with someone who is deeply and dangerously unhappy. And it is even harder to leave. . ."

This novel is at once cerebral but also deeply emotional. You won't be able to put it down.

If you want a trip to where the arcane world of new physics meets the tropical wonderland of northern Australia, Janette Hospital Turner will take you there. Her Australian character is in search of her father at a university in the United States and spins in and out of a professor's life like an electron knocked out of its orbit. The story also takes you into her past, and her family's past, to a dead man in the woods who she befriends, to rural Australia with all its toughness and lushness. A book to be savoured, not least for its kick-in-the-pants twist at the end.

This is a challenging book, but well worth the journey it takes you on. The themes are confronting, but the prose is so engaging and polished that the novel really shines. The work is deeply-layered - using contemporary realism as well as fairy tale and mythic tropes to explore issues around familial violence - both physical and emotional.

A well-deserved award winner.

Bourke has created a beautiful work which, like the music throughout the book, flows beautiful through the characters experience, minds, personalities and lifes. It is a wonderful read to loose yourself in. An emotional rollercoaster and a must read for all lovers of Australian Literature.

I was given this book by a friend after it got shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize in our region. I thought it was gong to be an entirely different reading experience. The blurb is ok - but it doesn't really give a strong idea of how beautiful the prose is. Or how well-drawn the characters are. The main character - Germaine - is a 16 year old girl who goes through some incredible traumas - the death of her mother, abuse by her father, etc. She's a very interesting young girl. Some of the most interesting and affecting writing in the book comes when she goes through pregnancy and motherhood of a young girl. These parts were accurate and moving as well as beautifully written. I think this book has some important things to say about living in Australia - both in urban and rural environments. About the seduction of violent men and the sometimes-brutal culture we live in, as well as the wilfull blindness of those who could help and the mentality of a 'victim'. Perhaps the most intriguing thing for me now is that I find it hard to think of Germaine as a victim, despite everything she emerges as an intelligent and interesting young woman surviving in extraordinary circumstances. The novel has a kind of mythic, fatalistic quality that is both appealing and appalling - in the sense that life often appals us with its traps and inevitabilities. Read it. You'll love her way with words - I can't wait for her next book!

Alex was an amazing man. I was privileged to meet and get to know him during the last year of his life. His wisdom, his honesty and his heart will never be forgotten my me or, I dare say, anyone who knew him. He gave me an autographed copy of his book and I have read it several times. This is not just a story, it's a remarkable man opening his heart, to share his experience, even though it hurt. He was never afraid of that pain, but faced it with courage, hope and a powerful love of life and the world and the people around him.

I heartily recommend this book, do read it.


Do Svidaniya, Rest in peace, Child of the Kulaks.

this book is sort of sad but it is also very suspicious and breathtaking i think that it is really good but its sad how many people die. two brothers go to china then to australian from russia.one dies but the other then returns to russia for a visit sixty years later!!!!

Alex Saranin's story is a vivid description of the first lost generation of Soviet Russia, millions of children lost their parents into the civil war, collectivization and other soviet human mills and it's aftermath. The great suffering endured by them and the waste of lives and souls is great evidence of these terrible whirling years into which a whole generation was engulfed.

This is a true story, and an amazing one. The "Ern Malley affair" was a famous literary hoax in 1940s Australia - without doubt, the greatest literary hoax of all time. It began when Max Harris, young editor of the Adelaide-based avant-garde magazine Angry Penguins, received a package from a certain Ethel Malley, containing the surrealistic poems of her brother Ern, a Melbourne garage mechanic, who had died recently at the age of twenty-five. Did Harris think they were any good? Did he ever! Harris at once pronounced Malley a genius, and a lavish special commemorative issue of Angry Penguins was devoted to Ern's poems. Then the truth came out. There was no Ern, and no Ethel either - Ern's "works of genius" had been cobbled together in an afternoon by two traditionalist poets, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, in an attempt to discredit the avant-garde.

Up to a point, they did: Max Harris was certainly never the same again, especially after the South Australian authorities decided that the Malley poems were obscene and dragged the young publisher through a public trial. The one-time enfant terrible of the University of Adelaide ended his days not as the great novelist, poet, or even literary editor he had imagined he would be, but as a canting, boorish newspaper columnist, churning out opinion pieces for Rupert Murdoch. (He also, in fairness, ran a chain of bookshops that weren't half bad in those pre-Amazon days; Max, with his cane and floppy hat, used to trawl the world - London! New York! the dealers all knew Max - for remainders, often good ones, which he used to ship back to Australia to pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap, as you do. I still think about Max from time to time: I never met him, never even came close, but he came from the same town I did, and as a child I used to hear his name again and again. He was a legend.)

Meanwhile, hoaxer-in-chief James McAuley, following his youthful jape, became the sort of arch-right winger who would nowadays be a cheerleader for Bush-loving Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and started a horrible fascist (sorry, "conservative") magazine called Quadrant; Stewart, ever the more interesting of the two, eventually moved to Japan where he got into Zen, big-time, and made rather cool collages; interviewed in later years, he never wanted to talk about the Malley business, and said that his old life in Australia all seemed like a dream. (Hell, so does mine.) I rather like the sound of Stewart.

But the story of Ern Malley was far from over. If Ern's fame as a great poet had been brief, his fame as a hoax just kept on growing, and has not abated to this day. The Malley poems confront us with crucial literary questions. With Malley, we are by no means a world away from "exquisite corpse" poems, from The Waste Land (that great modernist echo chamber of allusions), from the cut-ups and fold-ins of Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, from the whole panoply of surrealist techniques. When David Bowie glues together random strips of words to write his lyrics ("Serious moonlight, indeed!" as a friend of mine once exclaimed), he is very much in the tradition of "Ern." Are these techniques all to be condemned? And how much, in the end, does authorial intention matter, as opposed to the words on the page? There are lines in Malley that are better (more haunting, more simply memorable) than almost anything in "real" Australian poetry: "Rise from the wrist, o kestrel / Mind, to a clear expanse"; "My blood becomes a Damaged Man / Most like your Albion" (from a poem addressed to William Blake); "Princess, you lived in Princess St., / Where the urchins pick their nose in the sun / With the left hand"; "I have split the infinitive. Beyond is anything." Are the Malley poems really rubbish - or did the compilers of this hasty oeuvre, in mimicking surrealist techniques, inadvertently liberate a deeper world of meaning? In any case, Ern took on a life of his own, and soon became a cult figure, the missing genius of Oz lit. The artist Sidney Nolan painted his portrait.

I've often thought that the Malley affair is a classic Australian movie just waiting to be made. Recently, the story has formed the basis of Peter Carey's very much fictionalised account, My Life as a Fake (2002); but that is an ill-focused, slackly imagined book, far less compelling than the simple truth about the Malley affair. Heyward's book is the one to read, not least because it also includes the full text of Ern's legendary manuscript. Almost sixty years later, the enigma remains. As Ern put it, "I am still / The black swan of trespass on alien waters."

A brilliantly researched and wittily written chronicle of a great literary hoax. In the nineteen forties Australia's avant-garde arts magazine ANGRY PENGUINS received a package of poems from a woman calling herself Ethel Malley, purportedly the work of her recently deceased brother Ern. The magazine's editor was so overwhelmed with the poems that he published the entire oeuvre in a special edition of the magazine. Then word began to get about that neither Ethel nor Ern Malley actually existed, and that the poems were a hoax. The hunt for the culprits was on. The is a great read: a literary detective story, an intriguing picture of the cultural landscape of postwar Australia, and a book which confronts the reader with crucial questions about the elusive nature of aesthetic judgement.

The Ern Malley affair is still something of an embarrassment to literate Australians. Ern Malley was the creation of two poets, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, who wanted to show up what they regarded as the insufferable pretensions of an Australian literary magazine called Angry Penguins. They concocted the fictitious Ern, gave him an irresistibly romantic biography, wrote a dozen supposedly awful poems under his name, and sent off the result. To their glee, the editor Max Harris swallowed the bait and published a special issue in Ern's memory. Then the facts came out, and avant-gardists all over Australia were made to look stupid.

That would be it, except for the bewildering irony that the Ern Malley poems aren't nearly as bad and incoherent as their authors suggested. Well, not all the time. (Heyward helpfully reprints them as an appendix so you can judge for yourself.) They oscillate in the strangest way between genius and gibberish; I have one highly-educated Aussie friend who thinks that they're the most genuinely avant-garde poetry Australia has ever produced, and Heyward is inclined to agree. The Angry Penguin crowd claimed as much, saying that the authors had surpassed themselves in their attempt to turn off conscious control over their own work. They certainly contain some haunting, extraordinary lines ("I am still / The black swan of trespass on alien waters", "I have split the infinitive. Beyond is anything.") The fact that these lines were never meant seriously by their authors raises important questions about the usefulness of discussing intention in matters of literary criticism.

Heyward's story is lucidly and wittily told. There are no clear-cut villains and heroes. Max Harris comes across as appealingly open-minded and imaginative, as well as gullible. The hoaxers weren't cynical hacks but talented and serious poets in their own right. Amongst those taken in by Ern was Australia's greatest modern painter, Sidney Nolan, who (perhaps rightly) said that it didn't matter whether the poems were "authentic" or not, so long as they worked on some level.

A remarkable book, not only in its picture of mid-century Australian cultural history but also in the tricky questions it asks about sense vs. nonsense in art and the motives behind cultural battles.

Will Self, T.C. Boyle and Haruki Murakami wish they wrote stories as brilliant as ones written by Peter Carey. In fact, if you're in the UK, pick up Collected Stories for all-inclusive brilliance. Not as self-indulgent or inscrutable as Self, quieter than Boyle, more clever than Murakami (and I do like these guys), Carey shows his ability here in different ways than with his novels. He understands what short stories can and should be. Anyone who likes the form, or who often doesn't have time for a lot of fiction but wishes he/she did, might want to track this down.

The twelve stories in this collection were my first introduction to Peter Carey's fiction, and I was immediately dazzled by their imaginative verve. Surreal, allegorical, sometimes chilling, sometimes magical, and often enigmatic, these are powerful works in a medium which can often be too short to make an impact.

Many of the situations described in the stories are not of the concrete world we live in, but evolve with a nightmarish logic, invoking feelings that we all have experienced in dreams. Witness the "Report on the Shadow Industry" with its baffling but somehow deeply familiar description of a society buying boxes of "shadows" - are they consumable goods, or hopes, or dreams? Also fascinating is "Conversations with Unicorns", a strange fable of unicorns discovering truths about their own mortality. More disturbing still is "Life & Death in the South Side Pavilion", a surreal tale of a man minding horses, who finds that a horse dies every time he makes love, and is trapped in his situation by guilt and an unyielding authority figure. Allusions to intrusive and dominating political systems or other sorts of authority lend a sense of powerlessness and struggle to other stories including "The Fat Man in History".

Overall, these stories invoke a complex and elusive mixture of feelings of yearning and despair. A perfect, intense, short introduction to the work of this author.

"The Fat Man in History" collects but a few great stories by Peter Carey. After reading a few of these stories, you won't be satisfied knowing there are more out there -- therefore the preferred and complete collection is "Collected Stories." Check out my review of Carey's "Collected Stories" here which includes all of the stories found in "The Fat Man in History."

"Collected Stories" by Peter Carey.

Here are the complete (26) short stories of Peter Carey in a single volume, including those collected in the books "The Fat Man in History" (Crabs, Peeling, Life & Death in the South Side Pavilion, Room No. 5 (Escribo), Happy Story, A Windmill in the West, Withdrawal, Report on the Shadow Industry, Conversations with Unicorns, American Dreams, and The Fat Man in History), "War Crimes" (The Journey of a Lifetime, Do You Love Me?, The Uses of Williamson Wood, The Last days of a Famous Mime, A Schoolboy Prank, The Chance, Fragrance of Roses, The Puzzling Nature of Blue, Kristu Du, He Found Her in Late Summer, Exotic Pleasures, and War Crimes), along with 3 previously unpublished works (Joe, Concerning the Greek Tyrant, and A Million Dollars Worth of Amphetamines).

Peter Carey has risen to fame as a novelist, having gained notoriety from such works as Oscar and Lucinda (which garnered him the Booker Prize), Jack Maggs, The True History of the Kelly Gang, and My Life as a Fake. However, like most writers, his debut publications were short story collections and "Collected Stories" finds his mini-masterpieces all in one place. I started reading Carey during a brief residence in Melbourne (I'm a short story fan and was looking for an Australian writer to compliment my travels -- I think it was a travel guide that pointed me to Peter Carey). I bought "The Fat Man in History," but after being blown away by the first few stories, I returned it for the complete "Collected Stories" and never looked back.

Many of the stories have a surrealistic plot, such as "Do You Love Me?" in which the work of cartographers plays a role in the dematerialization of places and people, "Life and Death in the South Side Pavilion" in which a man attempts to shepherd a group of horses that keep dying by falling into a pool of water, "Peeling" in which a man's lover unravels into nothingness, or "Exotic Pleasures" in which captivatingly beautiful birds murderously overwhelm the world. Others center on human relationships, such as "Room No. 5 (Escribo)" in which a couple traveling in a foreign land fall in love in the midst of a military coup, "Happy Story" in which a man balances his love for his girlfriend with his passion for flying, "The Uses of Williamson Wood" in which a woman confronts her abuser, and "He Found Her in Late Summer" in which a man sacrifices himself for his lover. The stories are difficult to describe further because they're not really "like" many other authors I can think of. The language and character interaction are spare but powerful (reminiscent of Joe Frank -- see joefrank.com), the stories are brief, often divided into terse sections/chapters and focusing on the bizarre or fantastic (like Vonnegut), and there is a recurring theme of futility in impossible situations and suggesting a larger metaphorical meaning (evoking Kafka). Each tale leaves a strong emotional impression -- I found myself eager to read the next, but not wanting to finish too soon and exhaust the supply either.

Although "Collected Stories" is the complete collection of Carey's short works, it isn't as available (in the U.S.) as is "The Fat Man in History." But trust me, after reading a few of these stories, you won't be satisfied knowing there are more out there.

After reading this short story collection, I tried a few of Carey's novels. None ever matched the power of these short works. There have only been a few other authors whose stories made such a mark. I also happened to read "Letter to Our Son" by Carey while browsing in a bookstore -- a very short tribute to his son's birth, but also great little story that sticks in my memory.

It took me a while to get through Johnno, despite its less than 200 pages, but I must say I thoroughly enjoyed each page. The slowness was more a function of my available time than of the novel's quality. Johnno is a little gem, a wonderful chronicling of a young man's coming of age, and his relationship with Johnno, a slightly troubled young man, in Brisbane right after World War II. David Malouf is a wonderful writer. Each sentence is a work of art--but nothing is too precious, too anything. It's an enjoyable book that I highly recommend.

I read this book in 1997, having avoided studying it a dozen years earlier in school. Since leaving school I had inexplicably held out on reading what is regarded as the best work of fiction set in and about my home town of Brisbane. Once I started reading I could not stop. In amongst the beautiful prose and vivid description lies Johnno, a character we all know, love, loathe, and long for.

An excellent book. As it turns out I'm glad I held out until I was old enough to really appreciate David Malouf's style, which is rich, evocative and so very (tempted to say 'real', but this is fiction) believable.

In less than two-hundred pages, Malouf manages to capture the coming-of-age angst of the entire Australian post-war generation. Only Malouf could be telling the story of two youths and, virtually on the same page, effortlessly synthesize the realities of Australian experience with European philosophical themes, and connect them both to the whole tangled mess of our national identity. And yet for all its efficiency and high intent, 'Johnno' still reads like an affectionate and deeply-felt memoir, never shying away from the emotional, physical and sexual confusion of youth, nor from the contradictions inherent in what it means to be an 'Australian man'. But that's the genius of Malouf, and it's something we find him doing again and again: telling an apparently simple story about ordinary people, yet with this richly poetic, philosophical undercurrent which can suddenly reach up and pull you under. For Australian readers, this is a particularly important skill. Not only does Malouf deal with significant human issues, but he brings them home. He takes them out of the realm of abstract philosophy and makes them implicit in this place. This makes his work at once deeply personal and resolutely public in the best sense: he has something to share with all of us, something important, and he shares it beautifully.

I was a bit disappointed at first that this book spends almost no time on the sailing aspects of Hordern's trip, but concentrates on the interactions of Europeans with natives on the many islands he visits. However, it quickly becomes fascinating as he skillfully pulls together historical accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries with his own impressions of the places he visits. Lots of interesting historical information, lots of local color, and very well written - a wonderful read!

This book had me gripped from the start - you don't have to be a sailor to enjoy it. The historical sections are lively and interesting, and the accounts of the author's journey make you wish you were there. I particularly liked the account of his visit to Tikopia.

In this, his second book on sailing the Pacific, Miles Hordern takes us from New Zealand up to Vanuatu and through Torres Strait to Darwin. Where his first book (Voyaging the Pacific) focussed more on simply being at sea, this one includes the fascinating stories of the early Beachcombers. The way he combines their stories with his own experiences on this voyage are masterful. It's not often you get such interesting chunks of history presented in such a palatable form. As with Voyaging the Pacific, there are still the constant reminders that sailing a small boat around some pretty rough parts of the Pacific is a risky business but this is never over dramatised. It's simply a difficult but very worthwhile thing to do. I loved it. I also love the photo on the front cover, very evocative.

Pinney's account of jungle warfare in New Guinea and Borneo ranks among the finest war novels ever written. It's one minor drawback is that is is written in Australian English, and while the author does provide a glossary of slang terms, he omits common Aussie slang such as "whiteant". Any who have ever had the privilege of serving with Australians will immediately feel at home with the characters. These were a tougher bunch, having grown up in depression era Australia, but that old Digger self-sufficiency, distrust of authority, and biting humor shines through. Their speech will send hackles down the spines of the politically correct, but beneath the multi-hued skins of "boongs, murries, and burries" they see men much like themselves, locked in a struggle for survival, as much against nature as against the strange white and yellow armies fighting on their soil. Pinney's keen eye provides a myriad of details that move the reader from the blinding greens of the jungle, back to the routine of base camp, to a jungle pool covered with phosphorescent butterflies. He catches the wonder, the boredom, the fear, and the fatigue. Probably the best fictional account of war in the Pacific. If Mel Gibson ever wants to make an Australian World War II movie, this is it.

Peter Pinney kept a diary while fighting in New Guinea and Bouganville that would have got him court-martialed if it had been found. Fortunately for all of us, it wasn't, he wasn't, and we have been given an unbelievably realistic view of what it was really like as a private soldier in a commando unit fighting in the jungles of the Pacific.

The is "Survivor" without a TV crew and with very real risks to life and health. Like being in an ambush with enemy soldiers just feet away. If they happened to see you, you are dead. Yet he does this repeatedly and survives.

How does it feel to kill someone? Find out. How does it feel to lose a close friend? Find out. How do you fill the long periods of boredom between action? Find out. This is a truly amazing book.

One of the best books written on the subject, Peter Pinney writes easily and candidly about his experiences as a Signaller with the Australian Imperial Forces in PNG and The Solomons. Creeping through jungles, seeking the feared Japanese 'warrior', Pinney relates the thoughts and fears of his companions, from the pompous officers to the blood thirsty soldier and coward alike, he draws the characters with a simple, life giving ink and paints the steaming jungle backdrop with a magical brush.

Fact and fiction interweave, I suspect, but the resulting story is of high class.

Even if you are not interested in the subject, this is still a fantastic trilogy and one that at least every Australian should read!

This is a book with several stories. I have read the book about three years ago. I borrowed it from a library, but never saw the book since. The stories still haunt me though. I still dream of the king bait and thinking about the sheep makes me laugh. Though other stories like the one with the kite still scare me. The stories are beautiful and shocking and above all they really confused me (and that is a compliment :-). This book changed my view of life. I have no idea how, but the stories showed me the magic of life and the interconnectedness of all things.

A volume of short stories - each a new read. It includes a prequel story to the Bone People, in a short about the origins of Simon. Hulme is such a talented writer, she can tell a story eloquently from a variety of perspectives. Here we see her write even from the perpective of a whale. Another example of her abilities to shift modes is keenly expressed in a pair of shorts in this volume, which tell of the breakdown of a relationship first from the man's perspective, then the woman's - and still make it feel like two stories. Fascinating; educational. One would never believe that she is not actually either of those characters.

Hulme is a refreshingly honest, in-tune, extremely talented writer. This volume is out of print, but you can find used copies out there on web-based book exchanges. Heads up: word on the streets is that she's got a 3rd novel coming out very soon. The content is worth the work involved to find/purchase a copy.

A friend recently brought this for me in NZ - Victoria University Press (Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600 Wellington). ISBN 0 86473 019 5. Paperback. NZ$24.95.