An incomplete tribute that may please some Hazzard fans but leave others adrift.
A Sri Lankan–born Australian novelist offers a brief paean to a much-admired fellow Australian writer.
De Kretser (The Life To Come, 2017, etc.), who moved to Australia with her family in 1972, fell in love with the novels of Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) because they “spoke of places from which I had come and places to which I longed to go.” They also offered a view of Australia that was cleareyed about such problems as sexism and racial prejudice, which helped the author come to terms with living as an Asian woman in a white-dominated country. Moreover, Hazzard’s novels revealed a deep engagement with history and especially imperialism, a topic with which de Kretser was intimately acquainted. Hazzard was also a keen craftsperson who “read her work aloud to herself to get the rhythms right” and consciously sought to create high literary art. De Kretser writes that “movement of poetry infiltrates [Hazzard’s] prose,” and she offers examples from various, often unnamed, novels of the “precision, swiftness [and] taste for compassion” with which Hazzard used adjectives, described places and characters, and expressed political views. De Kretser’s book is strongest in its very personal, often moving appreciation for Hazzard’s work. As literary criticism, the narrative is flawed. De Kretser provides only bits and pieces about Hazzard’s life and brief reflections about important novels like The Bay of Noon, which was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010, and The Great Fire, which won the 2003 National Book Award. She offers little biographical, historical, critical, social, or political details and no cited references that would help those not already acquainted with Hazzard and/or Australian 20th-century literature more deeply appreciate this important novelist. As a result, the book reads more like a disconnected collection of poignant private musings than a text meant to educate readers who might be interested in exploring Hazzard’s life and work.
An incomplete tribute that may please some Hazzard fans but leave others adrift.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-948226-82-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
On a quest to discover the origins of an exquisite embroidered robe and amulet she found in London, British textile expert Paine chronicles her journeys from Pakistan to Bulgaria through some of the world's wildest outposts of civilization. Determined to track down the source of a tribal dress that protects women against evil spirits, Paine ventures as a lone, vulnerable woman through remote areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Turkey, and Bulgaria she travels armed only with photos of the embroidery, five kilos of luggage, a bottle of vodka, the Afghan amulet around her neck, and cash sewn into her bra and socks. She wends her way by bus, jeep, and hitchhiker's luck through police checks and villages where camels and Kalashinkovs are everyday sights and women's embroidery and crimson sunsets are the only vibrancy in a barren rockscape. A widow in her 60s, Paine stays in homes with bullet-ridden mud walls and in hotels without water, electricity, bedding, phone, or cutlery where she barricades her door to keep out lecherous nocturnal visitors. Babies cry at the sight of her and men either pelt her with rocks or gallantly protect and then assault her. She sneaks into Iran through a Khomeini-crowned gate and is smuggled into Iraq, where Saddam has a bounty on Westerners' heads. Under the protective guises of widowhood, motherhood, and local costume, she enters women's domestic sanctums to view their handiwork. In lyrical prose she describes lands ravaged by extreme seasons and political turmoil, where men discuss nuclear weapons and dowries, and women, hidden by veils, have 18 children while supporting their families. Ultimately, Paine's textile quest, which is solved with a twist, merely provides a pretext for a fascinating and beautifully written account of an odyssey through extreme physical, cultural, and spiritual wildernesses. Paine displays the courage of a frontierswoman and the prose of a poet, making this indispensable for hearty travelers. (3 linecuts and 5 maps)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11236-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Pedestrian mini-biographies of three women who are household names among members of the Cuisinart set. Although Reardon (Oysters: A Culinary Celebration, not reviewed) clearly esteems her subjects, all of whom she met while preparing this book, her narratives lack the necessary spark to make them more than the sum of their many — and not always interesting — details. While she records meetings among the women, she does not weave the three biographies into a coherent whole exploring the US culinary scene. Instead, she follows M.F.K. Fisher from youth through three husbands (material about her menage a trois with husband number one and future husband number two made it into The Gastronomical Me), the Depression-era beginnings of her writing career, and friendship with Julia Child, whom she met as a co-contributor to a book on provincial French cooking. Child's career took off while she lived in Paris, where she met Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, who wanted to produce a "big book" introducing American audiences to French cooking. Joining in with the willingness to work and the enthusiasm that later endeared her to television audiences, Child was instrumental in shaping what became the landmark Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The least appealing portrait is that of Alice Waters, who comes across as self-absorbed. Converted to fine dining during a student trip to France, Waters tried, on returning to Berkeley, to persuade fellow activists there to spruce up their menus, arguing that even striking French communists were discriminating eaters. With determination, she and her mostly novice employees made a success of their imaginative restaurant in Berkeley's "gourmet ghetto," and by the time The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook was published in 1982, Waters was, as Reardon notes, "So In, We Could Die." Strictly for the adoring fans of these culinary celebrities. Others will find it indigestible.
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-57748-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
