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The After Life: A Memoir by Kathleen StewartThere’s no doubt in my mind that this memoir is excellent. The prose is literary with a reflective tone, and I enjoyed the fact that this book is not structured with a blow-by-blow commentary of the author’s life.Published 1 May, 2008 
The After Life: A Memoir (Kathleen Stewart, Vintage, $34.95, tpb, ISBN 9781741667271, May) **** There’s no doubt in my mind that this memoir is excellent. The prose is literary with a reflective tone, and I enjoyed the fact that this book is not structured with a blow-by-blow commentary of the author’s life. Instead Kathleen Stewart, an acclaimed writer of novels, short stories and poems, focuses on one year: 1976. She invites readers to accompany her as she herself revisits and reflects upon this tumultuous year in which a number of events (mostly awful) played out: her relationship with a guy she refers to as Martin, her brutal rape, her mother’s desertion, her own suicide attempt and subsequent period in a psychiatric hospital. Oh, but that’s not all. Heck no. The year is rounded off with the suicide of her father, an autocratic man whom I found quite detestable. Stewart’s mother is presented as a remarkable yet flawed woman—nothing seems to please her. By the end of the book I didn’t like her. Neither did the doctor in the psychiatric hospital! The two women had such a disturbing, tension-filled relationship. This book is very bleak. Very good, but very bleak. Julia Jackson is a freelancer reviewer and works at Readings in Carlton This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker More from Non-Fiction Book Reviews
This is a clever idea; a book that troubleshoots on any issue or problem to do with food and cooking.15 November, 2008 
Brian Fletcher is emeritus professor of history at the University of Sydney and the author of several books on colonial Australia.15 November, 2008 
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I’m not a parent, but if I had an adolescent in the house I would be racing out the door to buy Teenagers, Alcohol and Drugs: What Your Kids Really Want and Need to Know about Alcohol and Drugs.15 November, 2008 
Brian Thacker is no newcomer to the writing of a great travel narrative, having previously penned such greats as Rule No. 5: No Sex on the Bus, Where’s Wallis? and I’m not Eating any of that Foreign Muck.15 November, 2008 
Featuring an impressive line-up--including Tim Winton, David Malouf, Patrick White, Les Murray and Judith Wright--Literary Activists explores the role of literary writers in Australian public life.15 November, 2008 
Robert Reid’s book about the biggest, boldest, baddest crocodiles in North Queensland is something of a tragedy; not because it’s brimming over with the corpses of a terrifying number of one of the world’s most feared predators, or because of the small(er) number of people meeting their end in this predator’s jaws, because it is dull.15 November, 2008 
Every so often a book comes along that illuminates a topic without being a dryly factual history or a loosely constructed popular narrative built around a few key points.15 November, 2008 
Humour is, as the editors note, ‘in the eye of the beholder’.15 November, 2008 
Whether he is pushing an out-of-petrol Rolls Royce along a London backstreet after having attended the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, or defending a complex education policy argument, the humanity of Kim E Beazley is strongly evident.15 November, 2008 |
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