Keywords: Fiction
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
It never looks like hard work. I’ve just rolled my sleeves up while I stare at an old shoe in the corner of the room for hours. I’ve sweated a day in my life as I skewer a stare right through the Friday morning waitress – the brick wall behind her.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
- 01 August 2014
3 Comments
In his native Japan, the name Haruki Murakami has immense currency. In the first week of its release his latest novel Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage sold more than one million copies. Coming from a traditional culture where assimilation and social order has been a historical imperative, perhaps the book's themes go beyond the intimate to acknowledge the soul-eating, conformist nature of society.
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INTERNATIONAL
Initially I was uneasy about Abbott's strong anti-Putin rhetoric. Why was Australia so upfront, so early? I thought he was jumping to conclusions too soon. It is clear now though that his response was based on the same satellite imagery intelligence that John Kerry and Hilary Clinton cite as evidence that it was a Russian missile fired from Russian-supported insurgent territory. He was right, and Bill Shorten is correct to support him.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Brian Matthews
- 18 July 2014
20 Comments
Life in Orwell's Airstrip One is graceless, demeaning and inhumane for all but those entitled to preferment. Surveillance is increasing, ruling-party secrecy and monopoly on information is rigid, refugees are demonised and language is reduced to sound bites and slogans. The leadership is disjoined from and cynical about the natural world. Just as well it's fiction because it sounds awful doesn't it?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 12 June 2014
1 Comment
Augustus and Hazel meet in a support group for cancer sufferers. During the course of their ensuing romance they both prove to be pragmatic about their own mortality. They share frank discussions about God and the afterlife, and gain little comfort from them. It's an inherently sad story, but to parallel the individual horror of their cancer with the experiences of Anne Frank during the Holocaust is a step to far.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
There are efficiencies in the fictions of right. The glee, that honest toil of looting other lives. Each tumble clears the view, just a bit. Years are nothing, what's rebuilt doesn't work — just as effortlessly as the dirty little system before that so many died to defend. But don't worry, time is a grader. Alongside the quacking of historians all mistakes will be buried under new initiatives.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
The succubus of medieval legend is a female demonic being, sexual intercourse with whom can result in sickness or death. This resonates uneasily with the attitudes of contemporary 'men's rights' movements who view women as social and sexual aggressors. The greatest irony confronting the 'succubus' of Under the Skin is that the femaleness that she had wielded as a weapon proves also to be what marks her out as a victim.
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AUSTRALIA
- Brian Matthews
- 23 May 2014
6 Comments
In the specialist’s waiting room, I usually while away the hours with quality BYO literary fare. But one day I had left my book in the car, and I searched the reading rack for reading matter on subjects more interesting than the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s Australian holiday. Succumbing at last to extreme boredom I got up, slid Soap World from under its ragtag competitors, and all was revealed.
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