Download or read book Blueprints for a Barbed Wire Canoe written by Wayne Macauley and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-07-25 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Wayne Macauley's first novel, is a bitingly dark take on the great Australian dream. Fable-like, effortlessly readable and ultimately moving, it shows us the depth of Macauley's talent. Bram and his fellow residents are drawn by a dream: the promise of a freeway leading to a new suburb north of the city. The houses are built, but the freeway never comes. One by one, the dreamers leave, until only a small, hardcore group is left, including Bram, One-eyed Michael, and Michael's self-possessed daughter Jodie. As the disused houses crumble around them they barricade themselves in. They have a gun, a bulldozer, and a hellbent determination to stay till the end, whatever, whenever, that is. But the authorities have other ideas. Wayne Macauley is a Melbourne writer. He is the author of three highly acclaimed novels, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Caravan Story and The Cook. 'Wayne Macauley has the soul of a poet and his surreal novella is stunningly written...It is a satire of exquisite poise and confidence...If more Australian literature was of this calibre, we'd be laughing.' Age '[It was] like falling into a bale of barbed wire in the dark and fighting to get out till morning. The more I struggled, the more it got under my skin.' Bulletin 'A salutary fable about the horrors awaiting our disaffected modern citizenry...lasting visual images and resonant symbolism.' Sydney Morning Herald 'Bewitching...ethereal...hallucinatory...In an era when many Australian novelists are playing it safe...Wayne Macauley is an ambitious talent worth watching.' Wet Ink 'Tapping the hidden heart of a different Australia...this is original Australian writing at its best.' Courier Mail
Download or read book Demons written by Wayne Macauley and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2014-07-23 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demons is an extraordinary social satire whose ending will leave you reeling. It is the middle of winter. Seven friends travel to a remote coastal beach house for the weekend. Without phones, internet or television, they sit around the fireplace, telling stories, each exposing the foibles of humankind. But as a storm rolls in and torrential rain cuts the party off from the outside world, it soon becomes clear that some secrets are best kept hidden. Demons is an extraordinary novel by one of Australia's great writers. Wayne Macauley is the author of three highly acclaimed novels: Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Caravan Story and, most recently, The Cook, which was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Book Award, a Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. He lives in Melbourne. 'Macauley has ingeniously refurbished an old tale to capture the perplexing vacuity of a generation...a fierce and uncomfortable novel about contemporary Australian life that drives us to ask why we are who we are, as it simultaneously makes us wish we were better.' Weekend Australian 'Absorbing.' Saturday Paper 'Brilliant, thought-provoking.' Otago Daily Times 'Absorbing, thought-provoking and altogether quite brilliant.' BookMooch 'The novel [has] the potential to resonate with Australians in the same way as Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap, only it's darker and more complex.' Herald Sun/Courier Mail 'Demons is a compelling, can't-put-it-down book. Not because of any thrilling action, but because of its ordinary, troubled characters, their ordinary everyday struggles and the stories they tell. In a way the novel is like a collection of short stories, although every one of them leads us to understand more about the teller and the listeners as they start to hit uncomfortably close to home. Each story and how it is told offers fascinating insight into human nature in a humorous, yet sharp critique of contemporary society and its many flaws.' Surf Coast Times 'The pace is headlong; the disintegration relentless. Startling, discomforting, and not likely to be underrated.' Auckland Herald
Download or read book Suburban Space the Novel and Australian Modernity written by Brigid Rooney and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity’ investigates the interaction between suburbs and suburbia in a century-long series of Australian novels. It puts the often trenchantly anti-suburban rhetoric of fiction in dialogue with its evocative and imaginative rendering of suburban place and time. ‘Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity’ rethinks existing cultural debates about suburbia – in Australia and elsewhere – by putting novelistic representations of ‘suburbs’ (suburban interiors, homes, streets, forms and lives over time) in dialogue with the often negative idea of ‘suburbia’ in fiction as an amnesic and conformist cultural wasteland. ‘Suburban space, the novel and Australian modernity’ shows, in other words, how Australian novels dramatize the collision between the sensory terrain of the remembered suburb and the cultural critique of suburbia. It is through such contradictions that novels create resonant mental maps of place and time. Australian novels are a prism through which suburbs – as sites of everyday colonization, defined by successive waves of urban development – are able to be glimpsed sidelong.
Download or read book Blue Prints for a Barbed wire Canoe written by Wayne Macauley and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readhowyouwant 16 point large print. A black comedy set in a new housing estate on the outskirts of Melbourne. Bram and his fellow residents are drawn by a dream: the promise of a freeway leading to a new suburb north of the city. The houses are built, but the freeway never comes. One by one, the dreamers leave, until only a small, hardcore group is left - including Bram, One - eyed Michael, and Michael's self - possessed daughter Jodie. As the disused houses crumble around them they barricade themselves in. They have a gun, a bulldozer, and a hellbent determination to stay till the end, whatever, whenever, that is. But the authorities have other ideas. Blueprints for a Barbed - Wire Canoe, Wayne Macauley's first novel, is a bitingly dark take on the great Australian dream. Fable - like, effortlessly readable and ultimately moving, it shows us in full measure the depth of Macauley's talent.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel written by Nicholas Birns and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel provides a clear, lively, and accessible account of the novel in Australia. The chapters of this book survey significant issues and developments in the Australian novel, offer historical and conceptual frameworks, and provide vivid and original examples of what reading an Australian novel looks like in practice. The book begins with novels by literary visitors to Australia and concludes with those by refugees. In between, the reader encounters the Australian novel in its splendid contradictoriness, from nineteenth-century settler fiction by women writers through to literary images of the Anthropocene, from sexuality in the novels of Patrick White to Waanyi writer Alexis Wright's call for a sovereign First Nations literature. This book is an invitation to students, instructors, and researchers alike to expand and broaden their knowledge of the complex histories and vital present of the Australian novel.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature written by Jessica Gildersleeve and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, Australian literature has experienced a revival of interest both domestically and internationally. The increasing prominence of work by writers like Christos Tsiolkas, heightened through television and film adaptation, as well as the award of major international prizes to writers like Richard Flanagan, and the development of new, high-profile prizes like the Stella Prize, have all reinvigorated interest in Australian literature both at home and abroad. This Companion emerges as a part of that reinvigoration, considering anew the history and development of Australian literature and its key themes, as well as tracing the transition of the field through those critical debates. It considers works of Australian literature on their own terms, as well as positioning them in their critical and historical context and their ethical and interactive position in the public and private spheres. With an emphasis on literature’s responsibilities, this book claims Australian literary studies as a field uniquely positioned to expose the ways in which literature engages with, produces and is produced by its context, provoking a critical re-evaluation of the concept of the relationship between national literatures, cultures, and histories, and the social function of literary texts.
Download or read book The Plains Text Classics written by Gerald Murnane and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Patrick White Literary Award, 1999. Introduction by Wayne Macauley. There is no book in Australian literature like The Plains. In the two decades since its first publication, this haunting novel has earned its status as a classic. A nameless young man arrives on the plains and begins to document the strange and rich culture of the plains families. As his story unfolds, the novel becomes, in the words of Murray Bail, ‘a mirage of landscape, memory, love and literature itself’. Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. He has been a primary teacher, an editor and a university lecturer. His debut novel, Tamarisk Row (1974), was followed by ten other works of fiction, including The Plains and most recently Border Districts. In 1999 Murnane won the Patrick White Award and in 2009 he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. He lives in western Victoria. Wayne Macauley is the author of three novels, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe (2004), Caravan Story (2007) and The Cook (2011), and the short fiction collection Other Stories (2010). He lives in Melbourne. ‘Murnane is quite simply one of the finest writers we have produced.’ Peter Craven ‘A distinguished, distinctive, unforgettable novel.’ Shirley Hazzard ‘Gerald Murnane is unquestionably one of the most original writers working in Australia today and The Plains is a fascinating and rewarding book...The writing is extraordinarily good, spare, austere, strong, often oddly moving.’ Australian ‘A piece of imaginative writing so remarkably sustained that it is a subject for meditation rather than a mere reading...In the depths and surfaces of this extraordinary fable you will see your inner self eerily reflected again and again.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘The Plains has that peculiar singularity that can make literature great.’ Ed Wright, Australian, Best Books of 2015 ‘Murnane touches on foibles and philosophy, plays with the makings of a fable or allegory, and all the while toys with tone, moving easily from earnest to deadpan to lightly ironic, a meld of Buster Keaton, the Kafka of the short stories, and Swift in A Modest Proposal...A provocative, delightful, diverting must-reread.’ STARRED Review, Kirkus Reviews ‘Known for its sharp yet defamiliarizing take on the landscape and an aesthetic of purity historically associated with it, The Plains is uniformly described as a masterpiece of Australian literature. Look closer, though, and it's a haunting nineteenth-century novel of colonial violence captured inside the machine's test-pattern image—a distant, unassuming house on the plains.’ BOMB
Download or read book Caravan Story written by Wayne Macauley and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-07-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wayne Macauley is one of the artists removed from his home, given a new place to live and the chance to ‘give back to society’. In his strange new community, housed on a footy oval in a faraway town, he is told to create and be useful. He will write. Then he finds out about the rejection slips already written for the work he has yet to submit.
Download or read book The Great Gatsby written by Virginia Lee and published by Insight Publications. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insight Study Guides are written by experts and cover a range of popular literature, plays and films. Designed to provide insight and an overview about each text for students and teachers, these guides endeavor to develop knowledge and understanding rather than just provide answers and summaries.
Download or read book Simpson Returns written by Wayne Macauley and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A satirical and surreal twist on the Anzac legend of Simpson and his donkey
Download or read book The Best Australian Stories 2013 written by Kim Scott and published by Black Inc.. This book was released on 2013-11-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Best Australian Stories 2013, Kim Scott selects the year’s most outstanding short fiction. Featuring established favourites alongside exciting new voices, this diverse collection is a perfect companion for summer and an ideal introduction to Australia’s best contemporary writing. Previous contributors include Kate Grenville, Nam Le, David Malouf, Mandy Sayer, DBC Pierre, Frank Moorhouse, Peter Goldsworthy, Marion Halligan, Venero Armanno, Sophie Cunningham, Romy Ash and many more.
Download or read book Richard III written by Sue Tweg and published by Insight Publications. This book was released on 2011-11 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insight Study Guides are written by experts and cover a range of popular literature, plays and films. Designed to provide insight and an overview about each text for students and teachers, these guides endeavor to develop knowledge and understanding rather than just provide answers and summaries.
Download or read book Some Tests written by Wayne Macauley and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-29 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It begins with the normally healthy Beth—aged-care worker, wife of David, mother of Lettie and Em—feeling vaguely off-colour. A locum sends her to Dr Yi for some tests. ‘There are a few things here that aren’t quite right,’ says Dr Yi, ‘and sometimes it is these little wrongnesses that can lead us to the bigger wrongs that matter.’ Beth is sent on to Dr Twoomey for more tests. Then to another specialist, and another...Referral after referral sees her bumped from suburb to suburb, bewildered, joining busloads of people all clutching white envelopes and hoping for answers. But what is actually wrong with Beth—is anything, in fact, wrong with her? And what strange forces are at work in the system? As the novel reaches its stunning climax, we realise how strange these forces are. Unnerving and brilliant, Some Tests is about waking up one morning and finding your ordinary life changed forever. Wayne Macauley is the author of the acclaimed novels Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Caravan Story, The Cook and Demons. The Cook was shortlisted for a Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. ‘Macauley has published some of the most memorable fiction going in this country. His books and stories are satirical fables in which the properties are recognisably contemporary and Australian...His narratives [can] take off into the bizarre without ever losing their cool.’ The Age ‘A darkly surreal tale of how illness of any kind turns a person’s world inside out—and a philosophical lament at the alienating effects of modern medical systems. This is Macauley at his brilliant, poetic best, using the fable form to broadcast an existential wake-up call to his readers, asking us to reconsider how we live and die—but at the same time, as the best art does, reminding us that we do not suffer alone.’ Ceridwen Dovey ‘Some Tests is a completely unique offering among the recent spate of books about illness, death and Western medicine. With eerie touches of strangeness that quickly progress to the surreal, Macauley turns the mundane consultation into utterly compelling reading. You will never see a waiting room the same way.’ Readings ‘Despite its subject matter, humour and warmth are woven into the deceptively uncomplicated writing. There’s a large range of characters, but Macauley gives each of the important ones definition and life.’ Otago Daily Times ‘The novel raises timely and important questions.’ SA Weekend ‘Unnerving and brilliant.’ Outthere ‘Wayne Macauley is an entertaining satirist who mercilessly exposes Australian follies, and I like his novels very much.’ ANZ Lit Lovers ‘In his new novel, Some Tests...There is an anger here transformed into bemusement, which in turn finds a darker, more surreal form...Though Macauley’s allegorical prowess remains undimmed, this is perhaps the most straightforward and direct book he’s written...[A] compelling style...The shock of the familiar, vividly portrayed.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘Wayne Macauley’s eclectic new novel, Some Tests, tackles the topic of death in a surreal way.’ Guardian ‘For something that’s built on such a high concept idea, Macauley manages to bring a lot of tension out of the narrative. Its clear goals and problems are refreshing, the prose itself clear and unadorned—Macauley has a gift for rendering tedium in a very readable fashion.’ Kill Your Darlings ‘If there’s a test really worth taking, a choice really worth making, it’s to read Some Tests, and all of Macauley’s writing, and see where you end up.’ Australian ‘Some Tests is neither a didactic nor an angry book. It’s actually very funny...[It] is ultimately a strange novel, amusing and very often frightening. And also, potentially, instructive.’ Sydney Review of Books ‘Wayne Macauley is an Australian original. He writes in a tradition of dystopian satire – associated most famously with George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – but in a stripped-back and absurdist style. His work is a mixture of Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and J. M. Coetzee (in allegorical mode), though Macauley’s fictional worlds are always set in Melbourne or greater Victoria. The meaning or relevance of his dystopian satires are to be found locally too, in our country’s follies.’ Saturday Paper ‘A subtle and quietly moving novel about illness and death. Macauley’s stylised and artfully paced narrative, which gradually takes on a dreamlike quality, is a fine example of his ability to evoke the inchoate sense of dissatisfaction and existential disquiet that lurks beneath the surface of contemporary life.’ James Ley, Best Books of 2017, Australian Book Review
Download or read book Anne of the Iron Door written by Alan Loney and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Some Tests written by Wayne Macauley and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It begins with the normally healthy Beth - aged-care worker, wife of David, mother of Lettie and Gem - feeling vaguely off-colour. A locum sends her to Dr Yi for some tests. 'There are a few things here that aren't quite right,' says Dr Yi, 'and sometimes it is these little wrongnesses that can lead us to the bigger wrongs that matter.' Beth is sent on to Dr Twoomey for more tests. Then to another specialist, and another. Referral after referral sees her bumped from suburb to suburb, bewildered, joining busloads of people all clutching white envelopes and hoping for answers. But what is actually wrong with Beth - IS anything, in fact, wrong with her? And what strange forces are at work in the system?
Download or read book The Plains written by Gerald Murnane and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the families of the plains—obsessed with their land and history, their culture and mythology—and of the man who ventured into their world. First published in 1982, The Plains is a mesmerising work of startling originality. This handsome new hardback edition is introduced by Ben Lerner, author of the internationally acclaimed novels Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04, and a work of criticism, The Hatred of Poetry.
