Year: 2019
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Reinventing our lives: surviving with the help of literature
When I was in Dublin in September I bought some wonderful books. A favourite is the intriguing, personal and beautifully written Hidden City: Adventures and explorations in Dublin by Karl Whitney (Penguin, 2014). (I’ve lent it and others to friends and can’t take a photo of its cover or some other favourites at the moment!)…
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John Clanchy’s brilliant new novel ‘In Whom We Trust’
The best historical novels vividly evoke the past while illuminating the present. Award-winning writer John Clanchy’s new novel In Whom We Trust exemplifies this. Set in a country town in Victoria just before and during World War I, the plot is narrated through the viewpoints of Father James Pearse and two orphans who came to…
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Jules Clancy’s new e-book, Love Your Waistline and Your Food
Jules Clancy (pictured) was living in Cooma when I first discovered her blog, https://thestonesoup.com and I was working at the National Rural Health Alliance. Jules was a good example of an enterprising rural woman and I shared much of her nutritional and culinary advice as well as her blogs and books with my readers. She…
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Savouring time – First Class train travel and first class reading
In the days when we had time for afternoon tea … I used to go into the Co-op Bookshop at ANU in the 1990s, in those days when workers had time for afternoon tea and when the university bookshop used to sell a wide range of high quality books, not today’s electronic gadgets and toys…
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Only Marcus knows: Sex in fiction
‘The sex in your novel I can understand,’ said a friend as we stood in adjoining lanes in the shallow end of Civic Pool. ‘The sex in A.S. Byatt’s novel you’d need a PhD in English Literature to understand.’ ‘I’ve got one of those,’ I said, pulling my goggles into place. ‘Can I borrow it?’…
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Thinking women, hope and regeneration
Am I advocating escapism? It’s been hard to find anything uplifting to say in the last few weeks. The last time I read John Milton (1608-1674) was in English (Hons) many years ago. But I just came across a quotation from Paradise Lost that seems like a sanity-saver in the world we’re enduring now. ‘The…
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After She Left – Penelope’s adventure with the idea of patience
At a quarter of a century between novels, and not for want of trying, I now have the authority to write about the value of patience and persistence. I wrote the first draft of my new novel After She Left over ten years ago. It was the creative component of a PhD. The theory component…