Culture Street

DENISE TART

Kate Grenville’s The Secret River changed my life. Firstly, there’s the subject matter – fiction based on truth - around the white invasion of Australia and the frontier wars that followed. It is fascinating that the settler family on which the story is based is the author’s. What terrible moral dilemmas they faced and it is only now that this side of Australian history is being explored in fiction. As a white Australian, with family lines stretching back into the early 19th century rural history of NSW and Victoria, it prompts me to wonder what role my own ancestors may well have played.
And then there’s Grenville’s beautiful literary style. I’ve learned much from her clean, evocative prose. Though she uses dialogue sparingly, the characters and action leap from the pages. Thanks Kate Grenville for this moving and controversial book!

JENNY CROCKER

I read Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time in my 20s and I’ve been a slave to his writing ever since. The book grabs you by the throat at the start with its panic-inducing scenario of a child lost in the supermarket and never found, but then it goes into some remarkable territory, combining a sprinkling of magic realism with the ordinary magic of human life. The themes of time, innocence and experience are dealt with so profoundly they changed the way I see the world.

MADELINE OLIVER

Middlemarch has been very influential for me. It’s a truthful account of the experience of marriage for men and for women, which is an unusual topic. Many stories end with the sound of wedding bells (including The Painted Sky!), but George Eliot shows us how the compromises marriage demands can be the subject for a compelling moral drama leading to greater self-knowledge for the characters, and perhaps for the reader. I’d like to write about that.

JANE RICHARDS

From the first page of this book when Maugham confides to the reader that he has a story to tell about some friends of his, yet he is not sure that he should - I am hooked. Larry Durrell, a handsome young man returns from war traumatised and determined to find some meaning from his experiences. This was the first book I read that floated the powerful idea that choosing a different path is a valid choice, despite the pain it may cause those around you. The messy, complicated lives of this small group of friends, with all of their frailties and egos, are compelling and Sophie breaks my heart each time I read it. The setting of 1920s and 30s London and Paris is also entrancing.

JANE ST VINCENT WELCH

The Little Black Princess, by Aeneas Gunn was published in 1923. I was about eight and it was the first ‘big book’ I ever read. I have no idea why my mother gave it to me to read. Perhaps she identified with Aeneas Gunn’s story about a woman living in Far North Queensland because we also lived on a somewhat isolated property 40 miles from Walcha in the New England. I remember being curled up on the back verandah being completely taken away by the exploits of the puzzling stroppy little Aboriginal girl, Bet Bet, who Aeneas befriends in the story. I was fascinated by the landscape, the dramatic storms and seasons and how Bet Bet knew her country. The concept of a different way of knowing country was totally new to me, as was the idea that adults could learn from children - how good was that! I remember being really concerned and worried towards the end of the book about what would happen to Bet Bet when Aeneas was going to leave. There was an underlying threat for both of them from the tribal and white societies about their relationship. It wasn’t till years later that I worked out why and what that was all about.
After I finished this book, emerging from it like a dream I couldn’t wait for that feeling again.

Books

Alice Campion selects Five Books of Influence

DENISE TART

JENNY CROCKER

MADELINE OLIVER

JANE RICHARDS

JANE ST VINCENT WELCH

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