The Living Sea of Waking Dreams | Richard Flanagan #AUSfiction

 

I know there is a lot of love for The Living Sea in Waking Dreams out there already. 

It's not that I didn't love it, or even admire what Flanagan was trying to achieve, but it's not easy to read a book where you feel like you're being smashed over the head, not just with a hammer, but with the biggest, heaviest mallet that Flanagan could find, on every single page, at every single turn. With such a convoluted title, I was expecting more nuance and intellectual word play. Instead I got whack after whack of anger.

Flanagan has a lot to be angry about.

Last summer was ghastly for all of us in Australia. The bush fires were the worst we'd ever experienced. Our skies were grey with smoke and ash for month after month. The smell was inescapable, the heat was oppressive, the news catastrophic. It was easy to feel like it was the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning.

Writing a book while all of this is happening around you, can take its toll. It can be hard to find perspective. It can be hard not to rave and rant in absolute frustration. It can be hard to resist a good old preachy sermon. Flanagan did not resist.

There was nothing subtle in his story about vanishing body parts, a dying mother and a world in flames. The ghastly siblings, Anna & Terzo, who refused to let their mother die with any dignity or grace, were so implausible, I struggled to spend my time with them. Their brother, Tommy, was much nicer company and more realistically drawn, as was Anna's son, Gus. But then, Tommy was the actual carer. He was on hand in Tasmania to care for their ailing mother, while the other two simply jetted in and out whenever there was a problem to be solved. And Gus' response to a world on the brink of catastrophic climate change is to withdraw into a world of gaming and Youtube videos. 

Flanagan ranted several times about social media and smartphone use. Clearly he is not someone who properly understands these online tools. Nothing about the way his characters engaged with their online world actually reflected anyone I know. He had all the right words, but just like Mr Books & I discussing Tiktok or Snapchat or memes with our boys, we show our ignorance at every turn, much to their amusement.

I feel like I'm the one ranting now!

I didn't not like the book. 

It was an interesting read and an interesting concept, with all the vanishings that nobody noticed, that spoke for, or to, something even bigger and scarier that nobody is noticing either. However I felt no emotional connection to anyone in the story, except pity - a huge amount of pity, in fact - for the undying, lingering, suffering, decaying mother. I found myself talking out loud to Flanagan throughout the book, telling him to get out of the way of his own story.

I love it, though, when I discover the title in the story.

It wasn't enough for Terzo that their mother had not died. It wasn't enough that she lived in her sea of waking dreams. In Terzo's view, she had to live like us, rationally, in a rational universe.

Except of course, Terzo's world, or his idea of living, were not as rational as he thought.

In the end, though, the occasional insights and beautiful writing were not enough for me to rate The Living Sea of Waking Dreams particularly highly. 

It astonished her that he had a view as deeply held felt as hers and yet entirely opposite, and which he held with an equal conviction. And in the face of someone who would not be persuaded by her, she did not seek to see the world for a moment as he saw it but instead was simply angry with him that his world was not her world.

I'm in the process of putting together my best 20 reads of 2020. This one will not make the cut.

Epigraph: 

John Clare | Remembrances

To the axe of the spoiler and self-interest fell a prey;

And Crossberry Way and old Round Oak's narrow lane

With its hollow trees like pulpits, I shall never see again:

Inclosure like a Bonaparte let not a thing remain,

It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill

And hung the moles for traitors - though the brook is running still,

It runs a naked brook, cold and chill.

Opening Lines:

1.

Her hand.

2. 

It's impossible to say how the vanishing began or if it was already ended, thought Anna.

Other Opinions:

• The Conversation | 8th Oct 2020 | Tony Hughes-d'Aeth

The brilliance of Flanagan’s story and the deep power of this novel is in our witnessing of the end of the world. The death of Francie opens up a black hole in the family drawing Anna, Terzo and Tommy into its implacable singularity.

• The Guardian | 16th Oct 2020 | Beejay Silcox

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams [is] at its best when it balances its vehemence with its beauty, when it leaves space for the reader to wander and wonder – eucalypt leaves swinging down like “lazing scimitars”; a moth thrumming its “Persian rug” wings.

• Lisa @ANZ Lit Lover found more to like than I did.

UK Cover

I've been trying to take a photo of the beautiful green textured feather design on the hard cover underneath the glossy black dust jacket, that would do it justice. You'll have to take my word for it. It's much more interesting than the dust jacket image. The next time you're in a bookshop, carefully open the jacket and take a peek for yourself.

The Rain Heron | Robbie Arnott #AUSfiction

Thank goodness for Robbie.

After a spate of so-so books and DNF's, I finally landed on this beautifully imagined, eco-dystopian tour de force from my new favourite contemporary Australian writer.

My love affair with Arnott started last year, when I read his debut novel, Flames. This is a little of what I had to say about him at the time,

Like a teenager in full flight, it's a hard novel to define or pin down. Like a teenager, it's a debut with flights of fancy, bravado and wild schemes. It's on the verge of greatness, oozing potential and grand ideas. But unlike living with teenagers, I loved every minute of it and can't wait to see what Arnott does next!

Arnott has matured into a writer to watch. In The Rain Heron he has moved onto a stronger narrative structure on which to hang his story, although, dare I say, it was the shorter stories that began the book, that enthralled me the most. 

The first sighting of the rain heron, in all it's majesty and brutality, was mesmerising. Zoe's early life with her aunt, fishing for squid ink, is something I will never forget. Ren's life, precariously carved out, on the side of a mountain was so powerfully written, that I also felt like I had lived through every hardship and battle with nature that Ren had experienced. 

The invented world that Arnott has evoked feels so real. After the summer we've had in Australia, his dystopian vision of a world battling against itself and against nature in a fight for survival, feels much closer than it once did. In Arnott's world, as the climate and environment becomes more unpredictable and dangerous, humans react with equal savagery.

His nature fable takes us on a journey of survival and resilience, loss and hope that resonates even more strongly during these Covid times. A story that promises redemption through kindness is a story we all need to hear right now.

I'm a fan. A HUGE fan.

The Rain Heron is probably the best book I've read so far in 2020. Arnott takes you on a journey into his imagination - a place where the natural world is one of the main characters - a place exquisitely evoked with words and phrases to swoon over. Arnott’s writing weaves and swoops through beauty and brutality with ease. I was left breathless with wonder, eagerly anticipating his third book.

Facts:

• Flames was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award.
• Awarded the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists for 2019.
• Winner of the Margaret Scott Prize 2019 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes.
• Shortlisted for the 2019 NSW Premier's Literary Award.
• Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Award.

Favourite Quotes:

Thunder crashed through the walls; lightning licked trees; the wind grew fangs and chewed barns into splinters... 

...her body draped over the branches like a nightgown hung out to dry. 

Perhaps if he had been older, he wouldn’t have done it. With more winters in his bones he may have been kinder, less jealous, more contemplative. Or maybe not-inside this boy there was a bitter kink, and perhaps no amount of time or experience could have untwisted it.

Alternative Covers:

UK Cover

US Cover

About Robbie:

• I'm always fascinated to know how and when writers write. 
• I discovered this passage on Show Your Working over at Kill Your Darlings. The highlights are mine.

Describe your writing practice?

For the first few days of each week I get up at six and write for an hour and a half, then go to work. I usually finish around six, walk home, have dinner, and write for another hour or so until I can’t think anymore. That routine all goes to shit by the end of the week, though. Thursdays and Fridays I always plan on getting some writing done, but barely do any. I have a solid crack on either Saturday or Sunday, then start all over again.

How do you encourage inspiration to strike?

Whenever I don’t know how to solve a problem I’ve written myself into, or if I can’t think of something interesting to write about, I go for a walk without my phone.

The best advice I think I’ve ever heard came from Michelle de Kretser....She was talking about how plot is important, and character is important, but ‘literature lives in the sentences’. Nothing has ever resonated with me so much. Hearing that made me feel like I had a license to obsess over language.

 

Favourite or Forget:

• Unforgettable and a favourite and best read of 2020.

Truganini | Cassandra Pybus #AWW

Truganini: Journey through the apocalypse is an extraordinary read. 

Cassandra Pybus has compiled a thorough and very personal history of Truganini's life and times. I say personal, because what gives this book that little extra something special is Pybus' relationship to Truganini. As she says in her Preface, the 'rapid dispossession (of the original people of Tasmania), and its terrible aftermath, is the foundation narrative of my family.' 

This book has been a 30 year labour of love for Pybus, as she has searched for the right way to tell this story. Feeling very conscious about not speaking for someone who left behind no letters, diaries or direct speech of her own, Pybus chose to only use documents that contained first hand accounts from people who had actually met Truganini, 'people who saw and heard her with their own eyes and ears, then - ideally - made a contemporaneous record of it.'

Pybus was also conscious that most of these first hand accounts about Truganini, were written by men, 'pompous, blinkered, acquisitive, self-aggrandising men who controlled and directed the context of what they described.' She was determined to find the 'woman behind the myth.'

One of those pompous, blinkered, acquisitive, self-aggrandising men was George Augustus Robinson (1791-1866). His Australian Dictionary of Biography claims that he was a protector of Aborigines, however his diaries reveal a man far more self-interested and self-serving than this generous sounding title would imply. 

Richard Pybus and his wife (Cassandra's ancestors) arrived in Australia in 1829 and were given a 'massive swathe of North Bruny Island, an unencumbered free land grant, even while Truganini and her family were still living there.' Their other (white) neighbour on this island, Nuenonne land, was George Robinson.

This is where we first meet a young Truganini - in the journals, letters and notes made by the Harrison - at home on Bruny Island with her family.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like for people of Truganini's generation. To have been born into one world - a safe, familiar, world where you knew you belonged - but then to grow up in another - with alien rules and expectations, even while still living on your own country. To have the certainty of your birth right taken from you, subjected to judgement and harsh treatment and to be denied the solace of your own way of life A way of life now seen as inferior, if not completely denigrated and despised.

Robinson's diaries document this rapidly changing world for Truganini and her family. Whalers stealing the young girls and women, having to barter for goods (often with their bodies), the life-long effects of syphilis and other venereal diseases, dressing up in European clothes to impress governors, Christian leaders and journalists only to run off naked back to their home land, what was left of it...that is, until the influenza virus of 1829.

After the flu virus had ravaged the island, Robinson in his diary said,

only fourteen Nuenonne remained to receive the benefit of his proselytising. These traumatisied survivors were slashing their faces and bodies in grief, in no state to heed his Christian platitudes.

Naturally, Truganini's story is bound up with Robinson's story. He seemed to have taken on a fatherly role in her life. She also seemed to realise that by sticking by him, she was guaranteed a safer passage through this fast-changing world. So when Robinson left Bruny Island to take on a missionary role tracking remote clans on the west coast of Tasmania so he could bring them 'under his protection'. Truganini joined him, little realising that she would never live on Bruny Island, her home country, again.

Robinson was a curious fellow,

He reasoned to himself that his object in plunging into the wild was to shine the light of God into the darkness, while his wholehearted embrace of untamed nature revealed a passion for elemental experience much at odds with his evangelical posturing....it seemed as if he was in the process of becoming one of them....he shared the food they caught and was at pains to make himself part of their rituals and daily activity.

Although it's not easy to like him or even respect him very much by today's standards, Pybus reminds us of how he was seen by his contemporaries. His desire to protect, or broker a reconciliation with the original people of Van Dieman's Land was actually at odds with most of the other white settlers of the colony, who just wanted a clear field and a clear conscious to do what they wanted in this new land.

The bulk of the book is about the long, arduous treks that Robinson took around Tasmania, with his native guides, searching for the last surviving tribes. By the end, he had even travelled to the newly founded settlement of Melbourne on the mainland. Robinson's changing perspective and position in regards to whether he was proselytising or capturing, preserving or protecting, acting compassionately or purely for self-promotion, ultimately made him a man that Truganini and her friends could not trust completely, yet they had so few other options available to them for survival.

Having watched the people sing the land, he knew it was the wellspring of their spiritual life and their material culture. For them, land and life were indivisible. Until this bond was completely severed, he believed their souls would never be saved for God.

Pybus talked about the effects of Stockholm syndrome on the Indigenous population, especially how it could explain why the young women kept returning to abusive white whalers and sealers, even though they were treated so appallingly.

I learnt more than I ever want to know about the ghastly Black Line - the pincer movement decreed by Governor George Arthur that 'every able-bodied male - settler and convict - was required to muster into a militia' to capture and remove every single remaining Aboriginal from the new colony.

I learnt what a loathsome character John Batman was, not only in Robinson's eye, but in the eye's of many others and how a blind eye was turned towards his activities by those in charge, simply because he got stuff done. His particular habit of capturing young Aboriginal boys to 'rear them' was considered a very dubious practice by Robinson.

I learnt that Flinders Island was used to house the remaining Tasmanian Aborigines, so that on the 3rd February, 1835, Robinson was able to claim that 'he had cleared all the original people from the colony.'

I learnt that the painter, John Glover spent time with Robinson and some his native guides on the Nile River in January 1834. Glover spent several days sketching the group. He later used these in his paintings including The River Nile, Van Diemen's Land, from Mr Glover's farm | 1837 | below.

 

Robinson had truly believed that his removal of the original people of Van Dieman's Land was for their own good. He had wanted to protect them from murderous settlers, to bring them into God's grace and to bestow the great benefits of civilisation, as he understood it. Never did he think that his beneficent God would permit them all to die. Now the inescapable reality was that his intended sanctuary would become one great graveyard.

In 1839, Robinson took Truganini and some of the other guides, to the Port Phillip District, where he basically let them loose to fend for themselves. Things did not go well for them. 

We know that Truganini spent some time back on Flinders Island before being removed to an abandoned penal station at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart. It sounded like a ghastly place to live, yet somehow Truganini basically lived out her life there. From here, she was able to regularly visit Bruny Island, so perhaps that was enough reason. In 1872 she was the sole remaining person living there.

At the end, Pybus provides an extensive biography on Truganini's contemporaries, as well as a timeline and her various sources.

For those of us in the AWW blogging world, you may be as delighted as I was, to note that Pybus cited as one her online sources The Resident Judge of Port Philip. How wonderful that all the hard work and love we pour into our blogs can be appreciated and acknowledged in the wider world.

Truganini's story is compelling and heart-breaking. Pybus has honoured her story and returned the myth back into a flesh and blood woman.

Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree by Cassandra Pybus

From chaste kisses to lost innocence; from the bohemian world of sixties Sydney to the counterculture in San Francisco; from radical feminism to disillusion, Cassandra Pybus opens the door on her own remarkable life and transforms it into a mirror which reflects ourselves. Her candid and passionate journey through personal memory and history offers a meditation on place, on politics, and on the pain of disappointment and betrayal, interwoven with an unexpectedly heart-warming love story.

 A few years ago I spotted this little gem on the shelves of a second-hand bookshop. It was almost AusReadingMonth and I thought that it would be the perfect slim read to fill out my schedule. For reasons I can no longer remember, I didn't fit it into my schedule that year. Or subsequent years...until 2019.

It was a prompt from within the Griffith Review 63 (that I'm currently reading) that brought Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree to the top of my TBR.
Cassandra Pybus wrote a memoir piece for the Griffith Review titled Every Path Tells: Traversing the Landscape of Memory. I thoroughly enjoyed her writing and quickly realised that reading one of her books might help my Tasmanian box in the AusReadingMonth Bingo card.

Every Path Tells was an essay about the power of story telling, walking as meditation and the capacity of nature to soothe the soul. In Pybus' case, the natural environment was Tasmania, Lower Snug in particular, the home of her family and full of happy childhood memories.
However, at the start of the essay she finds herself, in her thirties, in Sydney, realising 'the simple proposition that my life was unfolding without my willing it.'

A trip back to Tasmania changed everything.

Suspended beneath Australia like a heart-shaped pendant of sapphire, emerald and tourmaline, Tasmania is where the world peters out in a succession of rugged peninsulas that ultimately crumble into the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean. Peering through the small window as the plane descended across the jagged Freycinet Peninsula into the tiny Hobart airport, I felt an inexplicable surge of pure satisfaction. It was as if Constantine Cavafy spoke directly to me: 'Arriving there is what you are destined for'.

Her descriptions of her walks are just lovely. I could almost smell the forests and feel the imprinted paths through them. I wanted to follow the desire lines to see where they might lead me too.

For Pybus, they led her home. To a strong sense of family and belonging, and to a second chance of love. For me, I gained a greater desire to see Tasmania for myself, to read more of Pybus' works and her bibliography has now added Heather Rose's Bruny and Robert MacFarlane's Understory to my wish list.

I confess that I knew next to nothing about Pybus. Reading about her interest in nature, feminism and history made me wonder how on earth this had happened. Surely with these common interests, I should have bumped into her writing somewhere before in the past 20 years.

For whatever reason, though, this was my first excursion into her writing and opinion.

Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree was a memoir told via unconnected essays-as-memory. In one of the early essays I recognised elements from the her Griffith Review piece that had been reworked. I'm fascinated by this process. As a journal writer from way back, the reworking of an old idea that has had to time to be re-evaluated with maturity, new knowledge, experience and perspective is something I have played with at various times in my writing life. I'm sure I will have more to say about this process when I get to the end of Helen Garner's, Yellow Notebooks though!

A curiosity was discovering that Pybus and Garner had been friends, or at least friendly. But no longer. She delicately revealed that there is no more possibility of a friendship. I will now be searching for C or P references in Garner's notebook!

Pybus' essays started in the 1960's with her high school years, her best friend, Chloe, their uni years, messy love affairs and Chloe's eventual and tragically dramatic suicide. She explored her parents back stories with sensitivity and love.

I responded to her discussions about not belonging and transitory migration. I also moved around a number of times as a child, and struggled to find a place to belong as an adult. Pybus discovered that she could reinvent herself over and over again as the past does not hold you. Whereas I found, that you could run from your past as often as you like, and try to reinvent yourself any number of ways, but the past would always come back. It may not hold you, but it will haunt you until you face it squarely head on. And accept it and yourself.

Pybus' second chance at love also resonated with my own story. Maybe one day I will have the resources to reflect on my own love story, to give it a writerly meaning and context. It's an idea that itches and scratches at me occasionally, but I have many reservations. Like Pybus I believe that we all tell stories to give shape to our lives, but not every story needs to be made public!

I thoroughly enjoyed her history pieces about Tasmania. Lower Snug, Bruny Island and the  Indigenous history of this area.

We cannot remake the past, but surely the promise remains that we can remake the future, if only we can find it in ourselves to acknowledge the injustice of the past - from which we have benefited - and make some recompense.

Her pieces on Port Arthur and the Chinese in Tasmania felt less convincing though. A bit too meandering, and at times they felt like a writer in search of a story, any story.

Reflections on the Vietnam war protests from someone who actually participated in them will always be interesting for those of us too young to really remember this time.

A few of her pieces were obviously early thoughts about a topic that later became books - White Rajah: A Dynastic Intrigue (after spending time in Sarawak with her her husband's work) - The Woman who Walked to Russia: A writer's search for a lost legend (or a travelogue through the Canadian wilds). This piece also considered the pros and cons of solo travel; sometime I have also had plenty of opportunity to ponder.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Pybus' hands and will happily read more by her in the future, especially if it's about Tasmania. Her connection to the home of her early years, shines through with an authenticity and heart that makes these pieces rise up above the rest.

Facts:

• Pybus won the Colin Roderick Award in 1993 for Gross Moral Turpitude.

Flames by Robbie Arnott

It's a long weekend in Australia, and for the first time in over a year, we've enjoyed a lazy, nothing-to-do-but-flop-around-the-house kind of weekend. It has been blissful. Even with the ghastly high temps and even higher humidity, or maybe because of, it has been the perfect time for reading, snoozing and listening to music as we sporadically clean and tidy the house.

Typing up reviews has been the furthest thing from my mind.

Lots of changes (the good, positive, life-going-forward kind of changes, but changes nonetheless) are coming our way this year - starting next week when B18 goes away to Uni.

The teenage years are not easy for anyone to live through, which is maybe Nature's way of making it easy for both teens and their parents to let go. But as tough as the last few years have been (and there were times when I thought my sanity would not survive intact), I wouldn't now swap them for anything.

Which brings me to Flames by Robbie Arnott. Like a teenager in full flight, it's a hard novel to define or pin down. Like a teenager, it's a debut with flights of fancy, bravado and wild schemes. It's on the verge of greatness, oozing potential and grand ideas. But unlike living with teenagers, I loved every minute of it and can't wait to see what Arnott does next!

The Tasmanian environment is one of the prominent characters throughout this genre-defying story which Arnott uses to stress the interconnectedness between us all. Fire, water, trees and the gods play their parts too.

Flames has a fablesque quality and is mythological in tone with different writing styles to suit each characters story. Arnott plays around with magic realism, an epistolary chapter, report writing and the fabulous chapter with the female private eye that reads like a Tasmanian Philip Marlowe, just to name a few. It should have felt disjointed and all over the place, but just like a teen, it somehow made sense and seemed like just the right thing to do at that time.

Through his various characters, Arnott explores the wild, raw nature of grief, mourning and love. We watch them come to terms with letting go of what they thought they knew as they learn to embrace the unknowable future and whatever it might bring. No matter how far apart you may seem to be, you are still family, you are still connected, and it will ultimately keep you afloat, if you let it.

Arnott is a young Tasmanian copywriter. Flames has been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, the Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction, and the Queensland Literary Awards: University of Queensland Fiction Book Award 2018.

Facts:

• Longlisted | 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.
• Winner | Margaret Scott Prize | Tasmanian Premier's Literary Awards 2019
• Shortlisted | Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2019
• Longlisted | Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction 2019
• Shortlisted | UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing | NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2019
• Shortlisted | Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book Award 2018
• Shortlisted | Kathleen Mitchell Award 2019
• Longlisted | ALS Gold Medal 2019
• Longlisted | Miles Franklin Literary Award 2019
• Longlisted | Voss Literary Prize 2019
• Shortlisted | Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize UK 2019

My #AusReadingMonth Possibilities

As many of you know, my TBR pile is out of control. A bigly number of those books are by Australian authors (I feel safe using bigly now that 1. we know that Trump actually said big league and 2. that bigly is a real work, although archaic and rarely used.)

I thought I'd list some of them, focusing on the state, territory or town that each is predominantly set in, to help our overseas #AusReadingMonth participants.

Since I haven't read any of these books yet, I'm using their blurbs and goodreads reviews to help me work out where they're set. If anyone would like to correct me, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Aunts Up the Cross by Robin Dalton (memoir) - Kings Cross, Sydney, NSW
The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough (historical fiction) - The Blue Mountains, NSW
The Dyehouse by Mena Calthorpe (fiction/classic) - Sydney, NSW
Mirror Sydney by Vanessa Berry (non-fiction) - NSW
The Timeless Land by Elenor Dark (fiction/classic) - NSW
Watershed by Fabienne Bayet-Charlton (fiction) - NSW, I think.
True North by Brenda Niall (biography) - NSW (& elsewhere)

Home by Larissa Behrendt (fiction) - NSW

1788 by Watkin Tench (history/memoir) - NSW

Everyman's Rules of Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany (fiction) - VIC
The Pea-Pickers by Eve Langley (fiction/classic) - VIC
Sisters by Ada Cambridge (fiction/classic) - VIC
The Danger Game by Kalinda Ashton (fiction) - Melbourne, VIC
The First Book of Samuel by Ursula Dubosarsky (historical fiction)- Melbourne, VIC
Conditions of Faith by Alex Miller (fiction/memoir) - Melbourne, VIC predominantly

A Child's Book of True Crime by Chloe Hooper (historical fiction) - TAS

The Commandant by Jessica Anderson (historical fiction/classic) - QLD
It's Raining in Mango by Thea Astley (fiction) - QLD
The Slow Natives by Thea Astley (fiction) - QLD
The White Earth by Andrew McGahan (fiction) - QLD
Omega Park by Amy Barker (fiction) - QLD
Journey to the Stone Country by Alex Miller (fiction) - QLD

A Dangerous Language by Sulari Gentill (historical fiction/crime)- ACT predominantly

Shallows by Tim Winton (fiction) - WA
Benang by Kim Scott (memoir/fiction) - WA
Coonardoo by Katharine Susannah Prichard (fiction) - WA

My Place by Sally Morgan (memoir) - WA

Island Home by Tim Winton (memoir/essays) - FREE - it covers various areas of Australia, although being Winton it will probably be predominantly WA based.

Maurice Guest by Henry Handle Richardson (fiction/classic) - FREE - an Australian writer with an overseas setting.

My Love Must Wait by Ernestine Hill (historical fiction/classic) - FREE - a fictional story about Matthew Flinders
Cabin Fever by Elizabeth Jolley (fiction) - FREE - an Australian writer with an overseas setting.
The Swan Book by Alexis Wright (fiction) - FREE - futuristic novel set in Australia

The Rose Grower by Michelle de Kretser (historical fiction) - FREE - an Australian writer with an overseas setting.
Dancing with Strangers by Inga Clendinnen (history) - FREE - all of Australia.
The Bush by Don Watson (non-fiction) - FREE - all of Australia.

As you can see, I actually need a year-long AusReading event to come close to reading all these books! Can you recommend any of these books? Which one should I tackle first?

My Top Ten all-time favourite Australian books.

A-Z of Convicts in Van Dieman's Land by Simon Barnard

The CBCA shortlist is a good way for schools and libraries to stock up on good quality Australian non-fiction.

The A-Z of Convicts fits this bill beautifully. Presented in an oversized hardback book with generous illustrations loaded with details, A-Z of Convicts packs in a lot of interesting information.

Barnard covers every conceivable convict topic from absconders to prostitution, bushrangers to tattoos. He explores their jobs, work conditions, punishments, how they lived and spent their leisure time.

The illustrations are based on records from the time. Barnard has included the convicts physical features (height, hair colour, tattoos etc) as described on their official records .

He also uses architectural plans to show cut-out diorama's of the ships, buildings & rooms common to this world.

The pages have an old-style look, but the actual pictures are crips, clean and easy to pour over. There is a glossary, a table of weights and measures and an extensive bibliography at the back.

Barnard grew up in Launceston, Tasmania. He obviously feels a close connection to his islands' history as this book has all the markings of a labour of love.

Suitable for 8+ readers, although some of the information will be better suited to an older age group.