Emily Paull

This piece was written in aid of a feature in the POST newspaper, and thanks must go to David Cohen for turning it into something suitable for that publication.  If you would like to help, please consider signing this petition. On two separate weekends this month, West Australians have flocked by the thousands to gather together and celebrate the Perth International Arts Festival.  The first occasion was of course the incredible journey made by the Giants as they crossed Perth city; the second was the Perth Writers’ Festival held at UWA between the 19 th and the 22 nd of February (which was attended by 44 000 people, up from last year's 38 500).  Yet these events coincide with what I hope will be seen as a controversial and indeed upsetting decision on the part of state government to halve funding to the WA Premiers Book Awards.  The decision was announced on the State Library website in a perfunctory statement which reads, “The West Australian Premiers Award...

Mothers Grimm Danielle Wood Allen and Unwin (I own a copy courtesy the publisher) Since when was 2015 the year I was going to become interested in gender theory?  It seems almost completely by accident, my reading habits have started me on a course of thinking that has me fascinated in the portrayal of women in fiction and in culture in general.  I'm not complaining-- after all, I do believe in a need for feminism-- I've just never actively pursued it before. Take Mothers Grimm  for example.  This quartet of stories by Danielle Wood focuses on the idea of the Mother in fairy tales, arguing that 'There is a reason why the good mother is always six feet under.' And it's true.  Think of Cinderella.  The death of her mother is the beginning of her troubles, and her step mother is the biggest problem that she faces on her road to happiness.  In some manifestations of the story (i.e. NOT the Disney version), Cinderella's mother is actually the fair...

"Writer's block?  What is that?" she said, opening to a fresh page of her notebook and setting out her pens.  She had many of them, two black, one blue and one pink, all with the kind of ink that glides onto a page without having to scrape at it the way a biro does.  She was at the middle page of her notebook or thereabouts, and the previous pages of her notebook splayed open with the strain of a bent spine, revealing dark whorls of writing.  She was smiling at me, waiting for me to answer her, but her smile was fixed, and indulgent.  She wasn't stupid.  She knew what I meant when I said I had writer's block.   But she'd never experienced it.   "What do you do?" I said.  "What keeps you writing when you sit down and your mind freezes up like an old computer, so full of viruses that it can't even stay booted up long enough to write your first line?" "I believe in my ideas.  I know they are good ideas, and they deserve to be to...

The Snow Kimono Mark Henshaw Text Publishing, 2014 (I own a copy courtesy the publisher.) When Auguste Jovert receives a letter from a young woman claiming to be his daughter, he at first dismisses it and throws the letter away.  Too much time has passed.  He is an old man.  What use does he have for dredging up the past? But then, two unlikely things happen.  The first is that Jovert is hit by a car.  The second is that he is contacted by a neighbour, Mr Tadashi Omura, a former Japanese Professor of Law who wants to tell him a story.  That story, as much as Jovert resists it, worms its way under Jovert's skin, and causes him to realise that we can never truly see ourselves except through the eyes of others. In fact, this is a major theme of the novel, and the reason why Omura insists on telling his story to Jovert.  While Jovert is the central character of the novel, his is not the central story.  This story within a story frame remin...

A Time of Secrets Deborah Burrows Pan Macmillan 2015 9781743532997 (I own a copy, courtesy the publisher) 1943 is a dangerous time to fall in love... With the release of January's The Imitation Game , the intelligence efforts of the code-breakers at England's Bletchley Park are a hot topic of conversation-- but what about the intelligence agencies that existed right here in Australia?  This is the topic of Deborah Burrows' third novel, A Time of Secrets, which centres around an organisation known as APLO, modelled on a real life unit that was of AWAS.  It is the story of Stella Aldridge, a thirty-something widow from the United Kingdom whose background makes her useful to the Lieutenants in charge of the Destro mission in Malaya, as she is a fluent speaker of the Malay tongue.  When Stella overhears some army personnel speaking Malay and plotting to kill a Lieutenant for a bungled mission, she is drawn into a world of double agents, danger, top secret files and pos...

The Break Deb Fitzpatrick Fremantle Press, 2014 (I own a copy courtesy the publisher) Fed up with corporate greed and the humdrum lifestyle of the suburbs, Rosie and Cray pack in their jobs and possessions and move down south to Margaret River.  There, they surf and enjoy the solitude of nature.  Cray seems to love it, but Rosie struggles with the idea of isolation.  Meanwhile, Liza and Ferg's marriage is in trouble, and they think their son Sam has no idea but they're wrong.  When Ferg's brother Mike comes to town, battling demons of their own, things only get worse.  Is life in Margaret River as idyllic as it seems?  These are the questions the characters must ask themselves. Partly centred around a fictionalisation of the Gracetown cliff collapse that happened in the 1990s, this novel is the perfect mix of tense, family drama and powerful nature writing.  It is peopled with characters who are real, and interesting, and the interactions bet...

The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins  9780857522320 Doubleday Books Rachel rides the slow train to London every day on her way to work.  The journey takes her past a row of houses she knows well-- she used to live in one with her husband, Tom.  Now, Tom lives there with his new wife, Anna and their baby girl.  Rachel doesn't like to think about that house anymore.  A few houses down lives another couple.  To Rachel, their lives seem perfect.  She names them Jess and Jason.  But nothing is as it seems, and when Rachel witnesses 'Jess' kissing another man, she is drawn into a chain events that will have her find out just how far from the truth her little fantasy really was. Called by many sources 'this year's Gone Girl', The Girl on The Train is an intense psychological thriller where the plot is hinged on three duplicitous narrators.  First, there is Rachel, the eponymous girl on the train.  She's not really a girl at all, she's...