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Book review – Conquist, by Dirk Strasser

July 19, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: Conquist

Author: Dirk Strasser

Publisher: Collective Ink/Roundfire Books, RRP: US$20.95

Dirk Strasser is well known in Australian speculative fiction circles, being one of the team who founded Aurealis magazine and the marquis awards of the same name (turning 30 next year!). Strasser is also a well-regarded writer, perhaps best known for the Books of Ascension, whose latest book is the historical fantasy Conquist.

The story conjures the colonial mindset of the ‘lost world’ tradition exemplified by H. Rider Haggard’s works, with the fabulist elements of the portal fantasy interrupting the historical setting. Interestingly it was first published in instalments in Aurealis magazine, the compilation going on to be a finalist in the Aurealis awards for best fantasy novel (won by Garth Nix’s Left-handed Booksellers of London – reviewed here) (note: the awards are run independently of the magazine). This review refers to the title being published this year.

Conquist is anchored in the Spanish invasion of South America, with the protagonist, Cristobal, leading a small force into Peru in search of gold and glory, the achievements of other Spanish conquerors goading him onwards. He is accompanied by Rodrigo, a childhood friend likewise in thrall to the allure of wealth to put paid to their life of poverty, and the freed slave Hector.

Cristobal faces more challenges than the overthrow of the Incans and sacking of the fabled city of Vilcabamba: he has a rival for command in the shape of Roberto, and a driven priest, Padre Nunez, looking to spread Christianity to complete the colonial triumvirate of god, gold and glory. Then there is the dubious assistance of Incan rulers Huarcay and Sarpay, the brother and sister looking to use the invaders to further their own ambitions.

As Cristobal’s force is lured through a one-way portal into a brutal landscape peopled by two warring races who have their own politics and beliefs to be encountered and navigated – bloodily, naturally. I don’t want to lift the lid on these factions, as the unveiling of their cultures and joint history is one of the delights of the book, but suffice to say their stereotypical appearances belie a deeper conflict and less than biblical accounting of good and evil.

The story is told in the third person, mostly with Cristobal as the viewpoint character but others also filling in backstory and plotting, and interposed with first-person jottings from Cristobal’s journal, which lives on in a museum.

In the main, Cristobal’s journal articles are introspective, not plot devices, mirroring his actions and exposing inner doubts and ambitions; he admits from the outset that colonialism – or at least the greed that drove it – is a disease by which he is as much infected as his men. The conceit of the found documents falls a little short due to the use of other points of view in the narrative that, at best, could only have been reported by witnesses to Cristobal, but this is not apparent from the writings. We are left to wonder how much of the narrative we have read could have been known to Cristobal and was recorded in the found document.

Cristobal is a flawed character, doubts about his colonial greed rarely surfacing, his sense of loyalty to the soldiers he commands admirable if perhaps propped up as much by ego as duty. How he came to command, the childhood that forged his desire, are allusions, their absence undercutting empathy for him. While the hero is able to come to terms with his own shortcomings, the realisation comes at cost to those around him. There is a peace brokered at story’s end, but it comes with a terrible price, with inhabitants forced to yield part of their culture in a forced co-existence.

Strasser is no slouch, and Conquist is bound to find an appreciative audience.

  • Conquist is to be released on 30 August 2024.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the author.

  • Jason Nahrung is a Ballarat-based writer and freelance editor. His most recent book is the vampire novella Cruel Nights. www.jasonnahrung.com

Book review: Feijoa, by Kate Evans

June 14, 2024 / / 3 Comments

Title: Feijoa — A Story of Obsession & Belonging

Author: Kate Evans

Publisher: Hachette/Moa Press, 2024; RRP $34.99

I picked this work to read and review primarily because I have two feijoas in my garden and I don’t know enough about them save my neighbour has one and I thought why not. It has been a puzzling journey. One is currently covered in fruit after five to six years of providing me with lovely exotic-looking flowers blossoming out from promising little green nubs that would then drop off the branch without going any further. The second was slashed back to its base by an overly enthusiastic gardening helper and ever since has done nothing more than slowly claw its way back from what seemed certain annihilation. Though tropical by nature, and despite my very unhealthy soil, they are doing better than I thought so I already knew it was not an ordinary tree, and this book was a chance to learn more. 

Feijoa: A Story of Obsession & Belonging is written, predictably, by a feijoa addict, one who says  in the opening lines that this fruit ‘feels like home to me’. This I get. Apricots are home to me, so this approach sounded very promising.

Though centred on the feijoa, this work is also part memoir and part travel, interweaving geography, history and cultural explorations with detailed descriptions of feijoa-based meals shared with others, a sprinkling of recipes in which feijoa is the main act, and a search for a garden lost to time.

The historical and cultural influence includes socio-economic and political history of countries and peoples where the feijoa played an important role in everyday life, and also in the wider political and economic spheres.

It also contains information about the medicinal and health use of feijoa from the indigenous peoples of different countries thousands of years old, to recent discoveries in scientific laboratories. There is also reference to the lack of acknowledgement of either this older knowledge or the peoples who shared it with others who came later. In her dedication the author writes, 

For the feijoa-lovers, from 4000 years ago to today.

Warning us that Feijoa extends far beyond the walls of scientific laboratories and our backyards, and into the lives of all the different cultures and lands on which feijoa grows and has been loved for thousands of years.

The author travelled widely in her investigations. The chapters are headed conveniently for each country she visited. This is not only a tidy way of ordering the social  and cultural contexts of the role feijoa played in each location but also allowed me as a gardener to compare what was described there with the environment mine are growing in. There I  discovered its amazing resilience and capacity to survive – which explained the miraculous survival of a near death experience of one of mine.

Kate Evans talks about her love of the feijoa

@ abc nightlife

Both memoir and non memoir components of Feijoa are supported by a substantial set of End Notes pp 287-307 containing a mix of citations and footnotes rather than being a traditional bibliography. Citations of published works are mixed with recollections or the addition of extra information supporting what is contained in the body of the work. Where political, historical, medical, cultural, social, economic, agricultural or any other non-memoir statements are made, what is said refers back to a searchable source.

Who would enjoy this work?

This work is definitely niche, even for gardeners, however it satisfies more than one niche, which means potential to please more than one reading interest.

Even if you don’t particularly like feijoa the book is interesting for its approach of exploring the world through an unashamedly besotted focus on one plant, going deeper than simply how to grow and cook it – though foodies would be interested in that too. There is useful information for gardeners thinking of getting or already having a feijoa in their garden. The travel and memoir sides are entertaining in their own right and the extended look into the wider contexts in which one piece of fruit sits was also interesting. It is also particularly pleasing for anyone who fits more than one – personally I found the combination of travel, memoir, cooking and gardening both useful and enjoyable.

The author, New Zealand’s Kate Evans, is an award-winning journalist and nature writer who has written for, among others, The Guardian, The Observer, National Geographic and Scientific American. She has also won national media awards for scientific and environmental journalism and feature writing. She has also worked as a TV producer, and a video journalist including at the ABC and the BBC and reporting from multiple locations internationally.

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell, June 2024

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Book review: The Fellowship of Puzzle Makers, by Samuel Burr

May 24, 2024 / / 1 Comment

Title: The Fellowship of Puzzle Makers

Author: Samuel Burr

Publisher: Orion/Hachette, 2024; RRP: $32.99

Samuel Burr is a TV producer who has worked on popular factual shows including the BAFTA-nominated Secret Life of 4-Year-Olds. Samuel’s writing was selected for Penguin’s WriteNow scheme and in 2021 he graduated from the Faber Academy. He previously studied at Westminster Film School.

The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers is a story concerning relationships and self-discovery. It has two interconnected threads following two main characters, Pippa and her adopted son Clayton.

The book opens with a prologue;  here the reader is introduced to Pippa, and Clayton makes an appearance as the baby in the hatbox that Pippa has found on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers.

Chapter One is the beginning of Clayton’s story – it is Pippa’s funeral some 25 years later. Burr interweaves the stories of Pippa and Clayton chapter by chapter to form a single story exploring the value of connecting with others.

On the bell curve of social normality, Pippa is something of an outlier, a setter of cryptic crosswords, an intellectual, single and alone. Pippa’s story is mostly concerned with her efforts to establish The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, which she begins as a way of engaging with like-minded people. It soon becomes much more.  

The Fellowship members live in a sort of commune and make a living by creating jigsaws, crosswords, mazes, and other games. Burr has managed to draw on that tradition of English intellectual eccentricity, one of understated ability, and quirky cleverness.

Samuel Burr on his writing routine

writer’s routine podcast

Clayton lives within the Fellowship, which by this stage is more a retirement home than enterprise. He is not a puzzle maker but a chef and de facto carer for the aging Fellowship members. Clayton is  a quiet and reserved young man. Loved and treasured by those around him, but as the first line of Chapter One says, “Clayton Stumper is an enigma”.  He has never questioned his parentage, and Pippa has never told him directly.

He is somewhat reclusive and not particularly adventurous. This changes after Pippa’s funeral.  As part of her legacy to Clayton, Pippa has set him a puzzle that will challenge him and take him out into the world to find himself and his parentage.

Burr’s writing is clear, clean, and uncomplicated. At times I thought it felt too sparse, too direct – telling the reader, especially in the first half – but perhaps this was necessary to establish the context for the second half.

This is an agreeable and pleasing tale with a touch of English eccentricity.

Reviewed by: Frank Thompson

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

It’s that time of the year again with the Pamela Miller Prize, our annual flash fiction competition.

May 21, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The winner of the Pamela Miller Prize 2024 will receive a certificate and $100 first prize, as well as publication in the Ballarat Writers newsletter and website. The winner will be announced at the Ballarat Writers July members’ night. 

The Pamela Miller Prize first ran in 2015, in memory of Pamela Miller, who was a very active and productive member of Ballarat Writers. She was a writer of short stories and poetry, and won the short story competition with ‘Murder at MADE’ in 2014. Early in 2015, Pamela wrote a very popular poem called ‘Bronze Heads—The Prime Minister’s Walk’ as part of a Ballarat Writers project during the Begonia Festival.

Entries open: Saturday June 1

Entries close: Sunday June 30

Ballarat Writers is accepting fictional prose entries of up to 500 words on the theme Fire.

Entry is free. 

This is limited to members of Ballarat Writers, so make sure you’ve joined or renewed your membership!

All entries must:

  • be original and unpublished
  • be written by a current member of Ballarat Writers (judging committee members cannot enter)
  • engage with the theme Fire, and be 500 words in length or less (not including the title)
  • be sent to competitions@ballaratwriters.com with the subject line ‘2024 Pamela Miller Prize Entry’.

As the competition will be a blind judging, please do not include your name or contact details on the entry. 

You can read more about the Pamela Miller prize here.

Good luck and happy writing!

Book review – Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones, by P.A. Swanborough

May 3, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones

Author: P. A. Swanborough

Publisher: Two Feathers Press, 2024; RRP: $25

Pam Swanborough was originally from Melbourne, Australia, and for many years lived in the UK. She currently lives in rural Victoria. In 2019, she was runner up in the Best Regional Writer / Best Fiction in the GMW Emerging Writers competition run by Writers Victoria. Swanborough, a member of Ballarat Writers, also completed an Associate Degree in Professional Writing and Editing in 2021 at RMIT, Melbourne.

Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones is set in Wales and represents a unique level of observation and understanding by the author regarding the layers of society and family relationships, often hidden but in full view for those who look hard enough. It’s set in the 1960s  although at times if feels like 1860. Rich in language and description, this novel follows the lives of the four women who live in a property called Ty Merched: Lizzy, who has just turned 100; her daughter Myfanwy; her granddaughter Sarah Maud; and her great granddaughter Jenner.

When their lives unravel, it forces the women to respond and with difficulty change their family dynamics. Jenner, who has less emotional collateral, is a mystical creature who finally, by her circumstances and actions, allows for a shocking secret to be disclosed. Family is central to the plot, and the cultural background of the small Welsh village and its residents is cleverly intertwined. The novel is full of tradition, old-world superstitions, and beliefs. A chorus of ghosts hover but remain at bay, increasing the emotional atmosphere of the story.

Rich in description, Red Gifts in the Garden of Stonesreads as a satisfying lyrical tale. There is little division between the landscape and the characters: they merge and blend together in a manner that invites the reader to follow the threads of the story whilst immersing themselves in  poetic and majestic prose.

The house rests in the folded hills like an old woman abed this spring-dawning morning, blinking her eyes at the first light. The sky cups its cloudy fingers over a pair of hen harriers as they fly their courtship race: rocketing from shade to light as they soar above the hamlet, the road, the chapel, the graves in the dewy damp.

This book is visual and beautifully written. The humour is rewarding and well expressed, and the use of metaphor is excellent. 

Swanboroughhas created a work of fiction that leaves an imprint on the reader’s mind — I could go to the village and recognise it , walk to the police station and then to Ty Merched. I see the ghosts crowding for a closer look and hear the chickens scratching in the straw.

Reviewed by: Heather Whitford Roche

Ballarat Writers Book Review Group, April 2024

Review copy supplied by the author

Book review: A Feather So Black

April 19, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: A Feather So Black

Author: Lyra Selene

Publisher: Hachette/Orbit, 2024; RRP: $32.99

Lyra Selene is the author of the YA duology Amber & Dusk.  A Feather So Black is her debut adult novel.  She lives in New England with her husband and daughter.

Fia is a changeling left in place of the stolen High Queen’s daughter. The High Queen trains her to be a weapon. Fia, although eight years old when left in the princess’s place, has no memory of before. She is obviously not human but she looks like the human princess, Eala, except for her sable hair and two different-coloured eyes. She has an affinity with the forest and plants. Her only friend is Prince Rogan, Eala’s betrothed. 

Rogan and Fia find a forgotten gate to Tir na nOg and set out over almost a year (they can only cross over one night a month at the full moon) to break Eala’s curse and free her. Fia also has to find a Treasure. Early in the story Fia has a Folk creature ask her to “Mend the broken heart. End the sorrow. Give what life is left, so we may see the morrow.” This neatly sums up Fia’s ultimate task. 

The fantasy element adheres closely to Celtic tales of the Fair Folk and I only wished I’d thought to look for a glossary first instead of making up my own pronunciation for Gaelic names such as Eala and Irian. (The glossary is at the back of the book and I didn’t find it until I’d finished the story.)

The romance is equally important to, and bound up in, their quests. Fia’s tasks are complicated by her feelings for Rogan and her growing feelings for the dark Folk Gentry, Irian, who while seeming more monster than man reveals a better understanding of Fia’s nature than anyone else. Fia also learns to understand and accept her own self as her character develops and deepens throughout the story.

There is sex and violence and all that the fantasy aficionado could ask for along with a strong and steamy romantic element.

The book is 466 pages long but the writing is evocative and a pleasure to read, as this excerpt shows:

“Inside the tiered grotto surrounding the greenhouse, the world had cracked open, letting light inside. Winter branches were furred with new leaves. Crocuses in red and purple lolled their heads. The air smelled of moss and fresh beginnings.”

I thoroughly enjoyed this tale and my only regret is that I now have to wait for the second instalment, A Crown So Silver, Book 2 of The Fair Folk.

Reviewed by: Marian Chivers, April, 2024

Ballarat Writer Inc Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

  • Marian Chivers has a lifelong interest in reading and writing with her work and study involving books from children’s literature to postgraduate studies.

Book review: Forgotten Warriors, by Sarah Percy

April 5, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: Forgotten Warriors: A History of Women on the Front Line

Author: Sarah Percy

Publisher: Hachette/John Murray, 2023; RRP $34.99

Dr Sarah Percy is an associate professor at the University of Queensland and former Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. She was also author and presenter of ABC radio series Why the Cold War Still Matters, and has written Mercenaries, another unconventional military history spanning multiple locations from medieval times to the present.

Forgotten Warriors is approached in the same way. What struck me about this work is how effectively the author tied together all the different strands across nations and recorded history to create a complex, cohesive picture of war itself and women’s roles in it. It is unstintingly relentless in its portrayal of what women can, and have done, destroying any notion that women don’t fight so comprehensively it was tempting  just to quote nothing but examples from this work. But a review needs more than just a list.  

The central theme of Forgotten Warriors, however, is not whether they were involved, but how women’s involvement in battle has been consistently and systematically concealed or misrepresented by military leaders since early recorded history. The book beginning with the example of the skeleton of a high-ranking Viking warrior surrounded by weapons and a horse being automatically identified as male for over a century until developments in DNA analysis revealed it, to widespread disbelief, to be female.

 In her research for Forgotten Warriors Dr Percy uncovers how large a role women have always played in conflict. Records show that female camp followers in European wars between the 15th to the 18th centuries, popularly described in history as wives and prostitutes, played essential support roles including feeding the armies, laundry and medical services, and fighting on the front line itself. Before them were Boadicea and Joan of Arc, and the millions of women who fought and died unnamed. Today women are fighting on the front lines in the Ukraine and Gaza, military and non military, on both sides and everywhere else a war is being fought.

The author identified a number of repeated reasons given for the belief that women do not belong in war. Among these were that it would destroy the bond of brotherhood between soldiers, that  women cannot fight, that their presence would distract male soldiers, that on the home front they would be taking men’s jobs, and finally that to acknowledge women as active participants in war was to damage the ‘feminine mystique’ necessary for peace time – at home and in the kitchen.

Watch Sarah Percy lecture on Forgotten Warriors

SAHR Lectures

What her research uncovers, however, is there are far more reasons why women are likely to be involved in war than not, that there is no real basis for the notion that women would sit passively aside while male family members, friends and neighbours went off to fight, or war came through their own front doors.

These discoveries are confirmed by what she details in Forgotten Warriors from when wars were first recorded. Some women, concealing their gender, were involved not for the above reasons but because soldiering was their chosen profession. The author also suggests homosexual or transgender women may also have found military life a safer option than civilian life. More telling is the fact that women were often conscripted, by military leadership bodies discovering repeatedly that wars could not be won without them.

There are countless stories of courage and of brutality, too many too repeat here. Some of the more dramatic include the hugely successful Russian Night Witches flying 24,000 missions using substandard bombers compared to their male counterparts, the terrifying Dahomey, and the Battalion of Death led by Maria Bochkareva. Google them.

Forgotten Warriors is not an easy read. I found it disturbing to find within it, for example, many instances where determination by military leaders to downgrade the input of women often involved putting them in dangerous situations, e.g., the  British women in WW2 who manned the huge anti-aircraft battery lights that spotlit attacking German planes. When enemy planes were caught in their sights the women became defenceless targets themselves, because women were not allowed to fire artillery while the men who did the same job could.

A confused sense emerges from history in Forgotten Warriors as it uncovers both military leaders and sometimes the men women fought beside, simply not being able to come to terms with the idea of women in wartime except in terms of needing to be protected, or inevitable victims of collateral damage. Being unable to openly acknowledge the need by women to fight for their own reasons, or essential contribution woman made when they were involved, leaves a gap it seems to have been too hard to traverse. 

During WW2 a high-ranking Russian official, Mikhail Kalinan, despite acknowledging that women’s involvement had strengthened the army and improved the behaviour of men, warned the women under his command that, post war,

Do not give yourself airs in your future practical work. Do not speak about the services you have rendered, let others do it for you. That will be better.

Betty Friedman, in her ground-breaking work The Feminine Mystique, would have loved ‘your future practical work’.

I want to stress, however, that the tone of Forgotten Warriors is one of serious military history and not a diatribe against men. Much of it is heartwarming, showing simple camaraderie between individuals fighting and suffering side by side. There are truly amazing, deeply human stories in there, celebrating both men and women at their best and worst in awful situations.

Target audience?

All those interested in military history and especially all those who believe women do not ‘belong’ in wars so they can test their understanding against what lies hidden beneath the other stories we have been told. 

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell, March 2024

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Book review – The Dawn of Language, by Sverker Johansson

February 16, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Dawn of Language: How we came to talk

Author: Sverker Johansson; Translation by Frank Perry

Publisher: Mac Lehose Press Quercus/Hachette Australia, 2021; RRP: $24.99 (pbk)

Sverker Johansson, Doctor of Philosophy in Physics and Master of Philosophy in Linguistics, was born 1961 in Lund, southern Sweden. He is a senior advisor at Dalarna University, has conducted research at CERN in Switzerland and participated in EVOLANG, the leading international conference for research on the origins and evolution of language, since 2006.

Frank Perry’s translations have won the Swedish Academy Prize for the introduction of Swedish literature abroad and the prize of the Writers Guild of Sweden for drama translation.

Johansson is clearly an accomplished user of language: The Dawn of Language is a readable, fascinating, and informative book. Frank Perry has produced a very credible English edition, although I have no idea what the Swedish version is like as I have no Swedish language. And, according to Johansson, languages are best learnt in childhood.  

A key structural approach in the book is the presentation of a hypothesis and then a close examination of relevant material, looking at both sides of the theory, to support or debunk the claim. In the closing pages of the book, Johansson admits that this book is a less academic version of an earlier work, one with more detail and attention to explaining the references. At 400-plus pages, leaving out some esoteric detail of this subject probably has made the book more broadly appealing.

The Dawn of Language is not a rainy Sunday afternoon escape from bleakness and boredom. It is a dense book, full of information, and slippery arguments regarding the origin of language; I say slippery as there does not seem to be a lot of solid data. Johansson has, however, made the analysis of what there is into an engaging story. Apparently, humans love a story, love a good gossip, going over the whys and wherefores of living. Johansson even postulates that this aspect of humanness  contributed to the evolution and development of language.

Passing the ‘chimp test’: delving into the birth of language with Sverker Johansson

steven poole @ the guardian, 2021

Ironically, the lack of definitive evidence surrounding the question of how we come to talk, with language, makes this book possible. One might consider the lack of evidence as thoughtless by the first users of language not to have recorded the incident and for subsequent generations not to have preserved these facts. Linguistic researchers, such as Johansson, are left with speculation and second-level evidence to piece together the past. 

Significant parts of the book are devoted to the story of human evolution and to the research of language in other primates. These are like subplots and do much to make the book more fascinating.

Johansson’s writing is refreshingly honest, and he shares with the reader his own curiosity and intellectual journey in trying to find an answer to the question of the origin of language.

There is a lot of material in this book, and I would suggest it deserves more than one reading, and I look forward to re-reading this book in the fullness of time.

Reviewed by: Frank Thompson

Ballarat Writers Inc Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Book review: Yeah, Nah!, by William McInnes

January 19, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: Yeah, Nah!: A celebration of life and the words that make us who we are

Author: William McInnes

Publisher: Hachette Australia, 2023

William McInnes is one of Australia’s most popular and well-known writers and actors.  He began his writing career with his memoir A Man’s Got to Have a Hobby.  In 2012 his book, co-written with his wife, Sarah Watt, Worse Things Happen at Sea, was named the best non-fiction title in the ABIA and Indie Book Awards.  He now has a dozen books to his name.

His acting credits include leading roles in Blue Healers, Sea Change, Total Control and The Newsreader.  He has won two Logies and two AFI/AACTA Awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.  William now lives in Melbourne after spending his formative years in Queensland.

Language is an important identifier of culture and community and William McInnes looks into the changes in the language of Australia.  This entertaining read is part memoir – a nostalgic look at expressions used in his childhood, his parents’ time and through to the present day.  The book consists of 11 chapters each examining a particular ‘time’, the language used and developed and McInnes’s thoughts and memories.  He begins with Simpler Times and Unprecedented Times (memory inducing for all of us).  He looks at Sporting Times and ends with Calling Time.  Occasionally, I thought he had lost his way but he always neatly brought it back at the conclusion of the chapter.

It becomes part manifesto in chapters like Men of Their Time where he and a best mate devise a list to guide young men in their early to mid-twenties, including their sons, on how to be a ‘good bloke’ and, I must say, if the young men of my acquaintance followed the list they would be on the right track.

William McInnes on his favourite Australianisms

@ ABC australia

McInnes is a wonderful storyteller with an insight into the human condition.  The book has some laugh-out-loud moments and a lot of quiet chuckles and smiles while still getting his point across.  As an example, a former girlfriend dumped him because he surfed like Herman Munster from a TV series in the 1960s.  Being of a similar age, I could really identify with a lot of his reminiscences.  When there was some lingo I hadn’t come across (he did grow up in a different state to me) he explains these terms neatly and succinctly. 

I would recommend this book for middle to older generations for the remembrance of a time past and the reminder that the world has moved on and so has our language.  However, it is still relevant for younger readers for some inside information into a previous time and proof that Australia is still a living language after giving the world “selfie”.  Yeah, Nah! is a particularly Australian term and I think is worth an unequivocal Yeah.  Read it in one sitting or dip into it a chapter at a time.  Make the time even if you’re flat out like a lizard drinking.  You won’t be sorry.

Reviewed by: Marian Chivers, January, 2024

Ballarat Writers Inc Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher.

  • Marian Chivers is a retired librarian with a lifelong interest in reading, writing and language with her work and study involving books from children’s literature to postgraduate studies.

Members Listing Page: information

December 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Current members of the Ballarat Writers Inc (BWI) who have an author page, small press or offer editorial and similar literary services, can have an entry in the BWI listings page.

T&Cs:

  • One entry per current member.
  • The listing allows for approximately 50 words, plus one thumbnail image of the author or a book cover to which you own copyright.
  • In your bio, please include your author name, genre/s, and any relevant information you want to advertise.
  • Make sure all wording and links are correct as we cannot guarantee to proof or edit your copy.
  • Allow 1-2 weeks for your listing to appear, although we will make best effort to post it as soon as possible.
  • It is your responsibility to notify us of any changes; please keep your listing up-to-date and relevant (ie: not full of dead links and old info).
  • Available to all current members.
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