The Bookshelf

Derided, disparaged and cursed to the heavens, book critics are depicted as literature’s grand villains – as frustrated creators and gleeful wreckers. But what do critics really do? And why are they necessary for a healthy literary ecosystem? James Jiang, Beejay Silcox and Christos Tsiolkas join Kate and Cassie as part of a panel discussion at Canberra Writers' Festival - five Aussie critics - making the case for criticism.

Niall Williams’ Time of the Child might just be the big ‘feel-good book of the year’—but there’s more to it than that. This is a beautifully written Irish story, full of ordinary lives described in painfully funny detail. Also, Scottish writer Ali Smith and her too-real-to-be-allegorical Gliff; and in Alan Moore's The Great When, we're presented with a hallucinatory vision of an alternative London, anchored in post-World War ll realism.

BOOKS

Ali Smith, Gliff, Hamish Hamilton

Alan Moore, The Great When, Bloomsbury

Niall Williams, Time of the Child, Bloomsbury

GUESTS

Garth Nix, sci-fi and fantasy writer whose books include the Old Kingdom series, Angel Mage , and  The Left-Handed Booksellers of London; his latest is a middle-grade novel, We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord

Chris Hammer, crime writer whose books include Scrublands, Silver, and The Tilt. His latest, featuring his characters Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic is The Valley 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDKazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me GoAldous Huxley, Brave New WorldClaire Keegan, Small Things Like TheseFintan O'Toole, We Don't Know OurselvesLarry McMurtry, Lonesome DoveChris Whittaker, We Begin at the EndC.S. Robertson, The Trials of Marjorie Crowe

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Craig Tilmouth, Ann-Marie Debettencor
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

The Dressmaker’s backstory, a universe of stars to expand our ideas about nature writing, and fragments and tricks galore: Kate and Cassie read Inga Simpson’s The Thinning, Brian Castro’s Chinese Postman and Rosalie Ham’s Molly with guests Ella Jeffery and Amanda HampsonBOOKSInga Simpson, The Thinning, HachetteBrian Castro, Chinese Postman, GiramondoRosalie Ham, Molly, PicadorGUESTSDr Ella Jeffery, poet and lecturer in Creative Writing at Griffith University, Qld; ABC Radio National ‘Top 5 Arts’ candidate; currently examining insecure housing as a theme in 21st-century literatureAmanda Hampson, novelist whose latest series feature tea ladies in 1960s Sydney . . . solving crime. The first, The Tea Ladies, won the 2024 Danger Award for Best Crime Novel. The second is The Cryptic Clue; and the third – The Deadly Dispute – will be published in April 2025. There will be five in the series.Other books mentioned:Patricia Wrightson, The Nargun and the StarsJohn Marsden, Tomorrow when the War BeganJames Bradley, Deep Water: The World in the OceanRichard Powers, PlaygroundRobert C. O’Brien, Z for ZachariahCormac McCarthy, The Road Miles Franklin, My Brilliant CareerA B Facey, A Fortunate LifeMarcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural LifeRuth Park, works Helen Garner, WorksJohn Birmingham, He Died with a Felafel in his HandAndrew McGahan, worksBernadette Brennan, Brain Castro’s Fiction: The Seductive Play of Language

CREDITS

Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullaghProducer: Kate Evans, Sarah CorbettSound engineer: Harvey O'Sullivan, Peter Climpson, Emrys CroninExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown

The latest from double Miles Franklin Award winner, Michelle de Kretser, Theory and Practice, a novel that evokes the 1980s and Virginia Woolf. Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet plays a French literary game in A Case of Matricide; and summer days under the light of a strange star in Norway in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Third Realm.

BOOKS

Graeme Macrae Burnet, A Case of Matricide, Text

Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice, Text

Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Third Realm, (Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken), Harvill Secker

GUESTS

Clare Monagle, Professor of Mediaeval History, Macquarie University – who specialises in the history of ideas, and theology in the Middle Ages

Mark Mordue, freelance music writer and poet whose latest book is the biography, Boy on Fire - The Young Nick Cave. He is also co-director of the Addi Road Writers Festival 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED Daphne du Maurier, RebeccaHelen Garner, worksC.J. Sansom, Shardlake seriesUmberto Eco, The Name of the Rose Jack Gilbert, Collected PoemsJuno Gemes, Until Justice Comes: Fifty Years of the Movement for Indigenous Rights 

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Tegan Nicholls, Ann Marie de Bettencor
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie read Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow, a pandemic-set novella that details the healing powers of a pet rabbit for a family dealing with tragedy. Plus, Native American writer Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, a beautifully crafted novel about a love triangle and everyday life in a farming community in North Dakota, and the latest from Yuwaalaraay storyteller Nardi Simpson, The Belburd, a poetic montage of life and death.

BOOKS 

Melanie Cheng, The Burrow, Text 

Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red, Corsair 

Nardi Simpson, The Belburd, Hachette 

GUESTS 

Steph Harmon, Culture Editor, The Guardian 

Tom Wright, theatre writer and adaptor; Associate Director, Belvoir Theatre 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDNardi Simpson, Song of the CrocodileEmeric Pressburger, The Glass PearlsClaire Kilroy, Soldier SailorAlan Murrin, The Coast Road Dan Hogan, Secret Third Thing

​CREDIT

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Craig Tilmouth, Beth Stewart
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Twins, pumas and a colonial western in Robbie Arnott’s Dusk; gay lives, racial politics, class, theatre and exquisite writing, in Alan Hollinghurst’s Our Evenings; and writing between the myths, rumours and religious speculation of a mediaeval woman pope in Emily Maguire's Rapture.

BOOKS

Robbie Arnott, Dusk, Picador

Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings, Picador

Emily Maguire, Rapture, Allen & Unwin

GUESTS

Huw Griffiths, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Sydney – with a special interest in Shakespeare and contemporary gay literature. His books include Disavowing Authority in the Shakespeare Classroom and Shakespeare’s Body Parts: Figuring Sovereignty in the History Plays

Meredith Lake, presents Soul Search on ABC Radio National as well as Mornings on ABC Alice Springs. She is also a historian of religion, whose latest book is The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History  

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDJon Ransom, The GallopersMax Porter, worksCynan Jones, worksArelhekenhe Angkentye - Women’s Talk, Poems of Lyapirtneme from Arrernte Women in Central AustraliaKim Mahood, Craft for a Dry Lake; Position Doubtful; Wandering with Intent

CREDITS 

• Presenter, Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Roi Huberman, Ann-Marie Debettencor
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

The Bookshelf is a program for dedicated readers and those who wished they read more.

Many people have been awaiting the release of Intermezzo, the latest book by Irish writer Sally Rooney, which explores love, grief, growing up, playing chess, understanding and misunderstanding family...Kate and Cassie begin the show with this one, with additional input from millennial author Madeleine Gray. Also, under the sea with Richard Powers in his new novel Playground; and searching the American South with Gayl Jones in The Unicorn Woman, with guidance from historian Ethan Blue.

BOOKS

Sally Rooney, Intermezzo, Faber

Richard Powers, Playground, Hutchinson Heinemann

Gayl Jones, The Unicorn Woman, Virago

GUESTS

Madeleine Gray, critic and writer whose debut novel, Green Dot, was published in 2023 and is now being adapted for screen. Winner of the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year at the 2024 ABIAs

Ethan Blue, Associate Professor of History at the University of W.A., where he specialises in histories of punishment, migration and incarceration.  Author of The Deportation Express: A History of America through Forced Removal https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-deportation-express/hardcover

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDBonnie Garmus, Lessons in ChemistryReginald Rose, Twelve Angry MenMiriam Toews, Women TalkingJulia Langbein, American MermaidRosemarie Garland-Thomson, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body Neil Stephenson, Termination ShockEleanor Catton. Birnam WoodZora Neal Hurston, There Eyes are Watching GodLangston Hughes, worksW.E.B. Du Bois, worksRichard Wright, worksElla Baxter, Woo WooAnne Carson, Eros the BittersweetPercival Everett, JamesIvan Chaar Lopez, The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and IntrusionFelicity Amaya Schaeffer, Unsettled Borders: The Militarized Science of Surveillance on Sacred Indigenous LandsFrederick Jamieson, The Political UnconsciousMargaret Drabble, worksThomas Hardy, works

CREDITS

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Harvey O'Sullivan, Simon Branthwaite
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown

Novels from France, Poland and India – with politics, sanatoriums, automata and horror in the mix too. Kate and Cassie read French writer (and provocateur) Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation (but can they get to the end of the book? There’s the question); while Polish reader and publicist Anna O’Grady joins them to discuss Nobel Prize winning writer Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story; and academic, novelist and memoirist Kári Gislason joins them to review Tania James’ Loot.

BOOKS

Michel Houellebecq, Annihilation, Picador

Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, Text

Tania James, Loot, Harvill Secker  

GUESTS

Anna O’Grady, Publicity Director, Simon & Schuster. Born in Poland, both her parents and grandparents were connected with the Polish publishing industry

Kári Gislason, Professor in Creative Writing & Literary Studies, Queensland University of Technology. His books include The Promise of Iceland, the novel The Sorrow Stone and Saga Land (co-authored with Richard Fidler). His latest is the memoir Running with Pirates

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDThomas Mann, The Magic MountainSamantha Harvey, OrbitalCarys Davis, ClearJennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena ReyDebra Dank, We Come With This PlaceTegan Bennett Daylight, The DetailsGerald Durrell, My Family and Other AnimalsKarl Over Knausgaard, My Struggle seriesAnna Jacobson, How to Knit a Human

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans  + Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Harvey O'Sullivan + Simon Branthwaite
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Sex parties, corruption and dark dark deeds in not-quite-Nigeria, in Akwaeke Emezi’s Little Rot; aspiration, real estate and misguided philanthropists in New York, in Rumaan Alam’s Entitlement, and ordinary people living extraordinary lives, and all those untold stories, in Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything. 

GUESTS

Gretchen Shirm, critic and writer whose books include the short story collection Having Cried Wolf and the novels Where the Light Falls and The Crying Room.

Stephen Long, Senior Fellow at the independent policy research organisation, The Australia Institute. Before that he was a senior reporter for the ABC’s investigative journalism program, Four Corners, as economics correspondent and national finance correspondent.

BOOKS

Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot, Faber Rumaan Alam, Entitlement, Riverhead Books Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything, Viking Penguin 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDBarbara Kingsolver, Demon CopperheadTaffy Brodesser-Akner , Long Island CompromisePorochista Khakpour, TehrangelesAndrew O'Hagan, Caledonian RoadAlice Robinson, If You GoSusie Boyt, Love and MissedPaul Lynch, Prophet SongJoseph Stiglitz, The Road to Freedom - Economics and the Good Society 

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans +  Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Tegan Nicholls + Simon Branthwaite
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown