February highlights
February of course is back-to-school month, but with the new Liberal government signalling education is in need of ‘pulling its socks up’, as it were, it’s salient that two new books address issues that will surely only be perpetuated under Minister Pyne. Marion Maddox, in Taking God to School, considers the surprising impact that Christian groups are having on what was once the proudly free and secular public school tradition. David Gillespie, meanwhile, in Free Schools, considers whether the backing given to the private sector in our school system actually benefits no one, least of all the students themselves.
Another title certain to create a little controversy this month is a new book about the place of the Anzac legend in the Australian consciousness. In Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession, James Brown, a former military man himself, argues that the eulogising aspects of our commemorations occlude our awareness of serving officers in contemporary war zones, thereby rendering those who should be the pride of our nation into a rather marginal position in our society.
This month we also have a couple of quite interesting literary autobiographies. Mandy Sayer has The Poet’s Wife, a sequel of sorts to Dreamtime Alice, documenting her marriage to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. And the American novelist Gary Shteyngart – of Super Sad True Love Story fame – has a hilarious but also deeply affecting memoir of his emigration to the United States from Russia as a child, and how he slowly shrugged off the tag his mother only half-jokingly gave him growing up, which provided him the title for his memoir: Little Failure.
From the fiction offerings, we have two fine novels in translation: Patrick Deville’s Plague and Cholera from the French, and Danish author Jonas T. Bengtsson’s A Fairy Tale. Hanif Kureishi is always a singular reading pleasure, so The Last Word is eagerly anticipated. And fans of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series have the ninth, and perhaps last, instalment to devour: The Days of Anna Madrigal. Our reviewer declares it to be ‘a joy, and those of us who have followed the lives of this group of San Franciscans for so many years will be genuinely touched’.
Finally, two offerings of a South Pacific theme: Nancy Horan, who wrote an acclaimed novelisation of the life of Frank Lloyd Wright a few years ago, has now re-created Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson’s life in Samoa in Under the Wide and Starry Sky; and the latest GriffithREVIEW is a New Zealand-themed issue entitled Pacific Highways – a fascinating collection of essays, memoir, poetry, visual art, fiction and reportage from ‘across the ditch’.
