Emily Paull

If reading this book is anything to go by, Tom Hungerford was a larrikin with a heart of gold.  The Western Australian literary imagination (and the topic of my thesis) owes much to this man.  This three collection set of short stories follows three periods in Hungerford's life; his boyhood in the semi-rural paradise of South Perth, his coming of age at war and his growing political cynicism in the time after.  He wrote it all down, chronicled it if you will, I guess to make sense of it all. It is a best loved book. So why couldn't I love it? I read the first section, Stories from Suburban Road with enough interest.  Hungerford's descriptions of familiar places and feelings hit home for me, and I found myself delighting in the self realisations that reading the work brought.  In one story, 'Professor Murdoch and the Old White Road', I was excited to learn that the setting was in my own suburb!  And I laughed as Hungerford wrote of himself as a young w...

I remember distinctly the first time I read Picnic at Hanging Rock. It was in year 10, Mrs. Griffiths' class.  In my mind, she is an amalgam of all my favourite teachers at once.  Each term we were required to read at least one book.   Romeo and Juliet.   Then something from a box of classics she had stored under her board- I chose Mansfield Park , my first Austen.  Some other book that didn't stay with me.  And in there, either second or third term, I don't remember- Picnic at Hanging Rock.   Reading it that first time, I remember thinking that it was rather quaint and silly. The year is 1900.  A group of girls set out from Appleyard College in Victoria to have a picnic at the Hanging Rock in Mount Macedon, accompanied by the lovely Mademoiselle du Poitiers and the acerbic Greta McCraw. Three senior girls, Irma Leopold (an heiress), Marion Quade (a mathematics whizz) and the ethereal Miranda go to measure the base of the rock, with detesta...

Sisters.  The relationship between them can be so... complicated.  I've often tried and failed to describe that mixture of love, hurt, jealousy and idolatry that accompanies having a sister.  But Julia Lawrinson has not failed.  Her book, Bye, Beautiful does this as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Image Source Sandy Lansing is the middle child.  Her older sister Marianne is the golden child- beautiful, trendy, popular and desirable.  Her younger brother Laurence can do no wrong.  Wedged between them, Sandy feels invisible.  When her police officer father moves to a small country town to be the new Sargeant, Sandy must start over.  But compared to her siblings Sandy does a rotten job of fitting in.  And then there is Billy- Sandy's first crush.  Of course, Billy is immediately attracted to Marianne, whose engagement to a boy in Perth seems to be of little consequence, much the same way that Billy's mixed blood...

I made reference in an earlier blog post which I did about the first Hunger Games book to the fact that I like these books because of the comment that they make on the reality television phenomena.  This point was articulated particularly well by Mark Naglazas in his review of the film, which I have since seen.  At the time of writing that review, I was beginning to grasp an idea of how to interpret the books, the idea being that these books make some sort of comment on the way we live now while seemingly being completely disconnected with reality.  This is a feat which many books, particularly Young Adult books strive for and don't always achieve.  The reader is also an important part in this making of meaning, because while the writer may intend to say one thing, a reader is responsible for taking what they will out of it.  And I am a reader like everyone else. So, on the one hand, you could say that in the first two Hunger Games books, a character named Ka...