Non-fiction

Why was Elizabeth von Arnim so quickly and thoroughly forgotten? I wonder if the answer instead lies in the honesty with which she writes about women, the double standards to which they are habitually subjected, and the men whose unthinking or appalling behaviour so often shapes their life trajectories.

Democracy, John Keane tells us, is the friend of contingency.

Rees is open about her personal connection to her parents’ papers, which does complicate the book.

‘Buried Not Dead is a study in the forces that can both create the conditions for art and cultural flourishing, as well as the conditions for its inhibition and decline.’

The point being there is something incongruous about a biography that looks for answers in the past of a person who, herself, believed she was always in a state of becoming.

Three years into Charmian Clift’s stint of weekly essays written for the Melbourne Herald and Sydney Morning Herald, there is…

The suggestion to ‘turn to the voices and perspectives of non-white writers, comedians and politicians’ as a corrector to white privilege, shines light on the relative absence of those with no access to the media at all and whose everyday struggles are much more indicative of what antiracism in practice really looks like.

The longer I spent with these essays, the more I enjoyed the connections Berry creates between humans and nonhuman animals in real life, their diffusion into products for human consumption, and their symbolism.

In these three books, mothers write back, documenting their personal experience and that of others, from the scientific and the sociological to the artistic. They all beg the question: is it possible to be successful both as a mother and do other things beside childcare and housework? In the act of writing, they answer as one, yes!

In permitting the reader ample space for introspection, Kofman’s narrator is as good a listener as she is a writer. And like any good listener, her role is not to leap to the rescue with answers or advice.