Literary Brooding

After Kathy Acker: A Biography by Chris Kraus Hardcover Expected publication: August 31st 2017 by Allen Lane I read Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School, not long after it was released in Australia and to put it mildly the book had a profound impact on me. Here was this young woman, emerging from the safe suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia, who was several worlds away from what she was reading. What was in the pages was violent, sexual, explicit drawings and covered areas that were quite simply taboo in my world at that time. It was nothing I had ever come across before and was my first real foray outside of mainstream fiction. What was illuminating to me was a woman wrote this brutal and brazen book. The very few female authors I knew at that time wrote nice fiction. Even though I regret not keeping a copy of the book, it is a novel that I recall rather vividly.  It was a nice surprise to be allowed an opportunity to read a biography on Kathy Acker’s lif...

The Feel Of Steel by Helen Garner Paperback, 223 pages Published April 1st 2008 by Picador (first published November 10th 2007) I have to admit I really struggle to review Helen Garner's works. I find myself being quickly swept into the words on the page and I do not stop reading. I do not take notes, I just keep reading and soaking it all in.  In the Feel of Steel, Garner has given us an insight into some of the curly moments of her life, from the doubts one faces after a divorce, placing your mother in a nursing home and struggling to write words on the page. These insights are quite extraordinary with her honesty and vulnerabilities laid down. There is also some wonderful moments of observation that are really poignant and revealing.  I lost myself in the words, the scenes and the descriptions.  This is a wonderful book, just read it.   I could not find a website for Helen Garner but you view more of Helen Garner's works at Text Publishing . De...

Wish You Were Here by Sheridan Jobbins 330 pages,  Expected publication: August 29th 2017 by Hachette Australia Your heart is broken, your marriage is in disarray, your life is in chaos and years of self-doubt come crashing down all at once, what do you do? Well for Sheridan Jobbins in this slightly fictionalised memoir, her solution after a glorious scene of smashing the crockery is to go on a journey across the United States of America in a car called Betty. What is really nice is that you are invited as the backseat passenger as Jobbins looks for the reasons as how it all came to this point. Now there are many memoirs as to how men and women find their way of out a state of depression. For some they tell you about their descent into a world of drugs and alcohol and then crawling out the other side. This is not that kind of book and it is not ‘woe is me, look how much despair I am in and here is the magical cure’ kind of read. What we have is a really honest journey of...

I must get more organised and post these opinion pieces up a great deal quicker. Trouble is the 'to be read' pile keeps getting bigger and I keep picking up another tome rather than update the blog. Here is this weeks catch up session. Two Nights by Kathy Reichs  Kindle Edition, 336 pages, Published July 11th 2017 by Simon & Schuster Kathy Reichs has forged a successful writing career using one primary character Dr. Temperance Brennan and there is nothing wrong with that at all. However what does send a shiver up the publishing world's spine is when after some 18 plus books along comes a new character in a stand alone book. It is a bold move by Reichs as she could have continued to pump out Brennan novels until the cows came home and none of her fans would have minded. So the question is does Reich's new novel has what it takes?  In Two Nights we meet Sunday Night (yes that is her name) a former police and military officer who has become a semi recluse afte...