Review of All About Love by Lisa Appignanesi

Lisa Appignanesi has written ten novels, several books of non-fiction (including Freud’s Women and Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present), and is general editor of the Small Books on Big Ideas series of Profile Books. She was one of the founding members of the Writers and Readers publishing cooperative, and is currently Chair of the Board of the Freud Museum. One of her many interests is memory, and she has written a novel and a memoir based on her research and involvement with the Brain and Behaviour Laboratory at the Open University. She is also the president of English PEN.


This distillation of her biography (see her official website) shows a woman interested in the human mind, behaviour, and expression. Her latest book, All About Love: Anatomy of an unruly emotion, allows her to expand on all of these subjects. She really engages in a conversation with her readers, discussing Freud’s ideas and referring to philosophers and writers through the centuries. Numerous works of literature are analysed, from Ian McEwan to Proust to Tolstoy. It is an entertaining as well as an informative book.


Continue reading at M/C Reviews 'words'.

Review of Understanding Troubled Minds by Sidney Bloch

The first edition of Understanding Troubled Minds: A guide to mental illness and its treatments came out in 1997, and was written by psychiatrists Sidney Bloch and Bruce Singh. They had just finished a textbook of psychiatry for medical students and realised that a version for the general public was needed. They wanted to provide a ‘clear, well-informed , objective assessment of the nature of mental illness and its treatment’ (viii) and Bloch, in this thoroughly updated second edition, has maintained and continued that goal.


Perhaps every household should have a copy of this book. The stigma of ‘madness’ is persistent, with news reports of disturbed people attacking members of the public doing little to alter fearful attitudes. The book methodically and clearly describes the variety of mental illness experience, how conditions are diagnosed and treated, and what drugs and psychotherapies are generally used. Bloch writes well, and includes many examples of literary references to mental illness, as well as case studies and personal experiences by public figures. This makes it an approachable reference book without jargon.


Continue reading at M/C Reviews 'words'.

Review of Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson

Hans Keilson was a Jew born in Germany who, in the mid-1930s, went into exile in the Netherlands with his wife, and was active in the Dutch resistance. He was a psychiatrist as well as a writer, and died at the age of 101 in May this year.

Comedy in a Minor Key was originally published in 1947. There are two other novels, Life Goes On (1933) and The Death of the Adversary (1959, republished 2010), plus an important clinical study on trauma in children.

Comedy in a Minor Key is a slim novel, barely one hundred pages in length. On the cover of this new Scribe edition is a park bench, the significance of which becomes clear late in the text. The story involves Wim and Marie in the Netherlands during wartime, a couple who hide a Jewish perfume salesman, who they know as Nico. He stays with them for almost a year before developing an infection that worsens into pneumonia, and kills him. This we learn in the first two pages. Since they have been hiding him, he doesn’t really ‘exist’, but now they have to do something with his ‘non-existent’ body.

Continued at Transnational Literature.

Review of Southerly: India India

To describe this issue of Southerly as a cornucopia of literary riches is an understatement. In his editorial, David Brooks describes it as a ‘show bag’ in the quintessential Australian sense, as he thought this was fairer than attempting to be representative in such a large field as Indian/Australian literary relations.

However, not all the contents are related to the theme of India and David Brooks comments in his editorial that the theme does not consume the entire issue, and that this is usual for the journal. I also think it helps to vary the content, and maintain the reader’s interest, by interspersing non-themed pieces through the journal. Like mixing the poems, stories and essays instead of having them grouped together, it works well.

There are eighteen poets represented, eight short stories and eight essays, plus more in the wonderfully named Long Paddock (http://southerlyjournal.com.au/long-paddock/70-3-india/) the online only section of the journal on the new website. All the reviews for this issue are also placed online due to space restrictions.

The theme was chosen because of the intense interest Indians have in Australian literature, an interest which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be reciprocated to the same degree in Australia for Indian literature (a point noted by Paul Sharrad in his essay, discussed later). Which makes this issue all the more important for continuing and extending that literary conversation between us, and making more readers aware of its richness and diversity.

I read the issue in the order in which the editors presented the works, beginning and ending with poems: Judith Beveridge’s dignified ‘The Deal’ and ‘Little’ from Devadatta’s Poems, through to Ali Alizadeh’s political and angry ‘Election Announced’ and ‘The Bubble’. On the Contents pages, however, everything is arranged according to category, including the ‘Long Paddock’. There is a pleasing balance in the distribution of poetry, stories and essays, exercising and stimulating the mind as it changes gear from one form to another. The poems and stories are particularly strong in this issue, and the essays have an eclectic selection of subjects: Aboriginal and Dalit women’s subjectivity; Mary Louisa Skinner, neglected Australian author; Aboriginal theatre; bogans; immigrant identity in a Hazel Edwards’ novel; and others. It’s of course impossible to address every piece in this review, so I shall focus on a select few that I feel particularly noteworthy.

Continued at TEXT.

Review of The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke

Meghan O'Rourke's mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer on Christmas day in 2008. She was fifty-five years old.

She had been diagnosed in May 2006, just as she and her husband were moving to Westport to take up new positions in a private school: she as headmaster, he running the language program.

Meghan O'Rourke is a poet and writer of criticism and essays. Her memoir of the dying and death of her mother is challenging and painful. She is frank about the effects on herself, and her concerns about no longer being mothered, but she recognizes her own self-centeredness as well.

Continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

Review of The Pen and the Stethoscope edited by Leah Kaminsky

Leah Kaminsky writes in her Introduction that ‘Every patient has a story to tell, if only you take the time to listen’ (xi). Not all of the pieces selected for The Pen and the Stethoscope reflect this directly, but most are good examples of showing what it means to be a doctor, and care for the sick.



There are three non-fiction pieces that are outstanding for the quality of the writing, the insight and the sensitivity with which their truths are revealed. Danielle Ofri in ‘Intensive Care’ tells us the story of her time with Dr Sitkin, an intensive care specialist who was loud and irreverent. He made jokes about patients, was intimdiating to other staff and to the interns, and went from bed to bed in the ward round saying ‘Dead. Dead. Dead’ because those patients were very sick—metastatic cancer, multiple amputations, multiple organ failure—and dying slowly but no one wanted to own up to it. He explained:

I have nothing against dying—it’s a noble process—but it should be done at home or in a regular medical bed. Not in the ICU. This is the place to give intensive care when there is a possibility of meaningful recovery. We’re not a hospice here. (63)

Continued at M/C Reviews 'words'.

Reading 2012

13. Undercurrents: A Therapist's Reckoning with Her Own Depression by Martha Manning.

12. Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir by Mark Vonnegut.

11. The Rules of Inheritance: A Memoir by Claire Bidwell Smith. (R)

10. Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama by Yayoi Kusama.

9. The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House. (R)

8. Speech Matters: Getting Free Speech Right by Katharine Gelber. (R)

7. How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing by Paul J Silva.

6. Sex Drive: In pursuit of female desire by Dr Bella Ellwood-Clayton. (R)

5. Woolgathering by Patti Smith.

4. Phantom by Jo Nesbo. (R)

3. Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford. (R)

2. A Gift for My Sister by Ann Pearlman. (R)

1. Currawalli Street by Christopher Morgan. (R)
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2011 Reading

77. Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens.

76. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

75. Mawson's Forgotten Men edited by Heather Rossiter.

74. Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.

73. Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest.

72. Tony Abbott: A Man's Man by Susan Mitchell.

71. If You Want to Write: A book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland.

70. Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See.

69. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson.

68. All About Love: Anatomy of an unruly emotion by Lisa Appignanesi.

67. The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner.

66. Blue Nights by Joan Didion.

65. Perfect People by Peter James.

64. Understanding Troubled Minds by Sidney Bloch.

63. Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier.

62. Americana by Don DeLillo.

61. Desert Boys by Peter Rees.

60. The Naked Eye by Yoko Tawada.

59. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman.

58. One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner by Jay Parini.

57. Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner.

56. Lettah's Gift by Graham Lang.

55. Cambridge by Caryl Phillips.

54. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

53. In My Time by Dick Cheney.

52. The Enigma of Arrival by V S Naipaul.

51. The Long Goodbye: a memoir by Meghan O'Rourke.

50. Words by Jean-Paul Sartre.

49. Mountains Belong to the People Who Love Them by Lesley Synge.

48. Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson.

47. Stepping Out by Catherine Rey.

46. India India. Southerly Volume 70, Number 3, 2010.

45. Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot.

44. Trumpet by Jackie Kay.

43. A Gap in the Records by Jan McKemmish.

42. Split Second by Catherine Coulter.

41. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

40. Greene on Capri:A Memoir by Shirley Hazzard.

39. Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women: Stories by Mary Rechner.

38. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet.

37. Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun by Liza Bakewell.

36. Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage by Michael Otterman and Richard Hil with Paul Wilson.

35. Bento's Sketchbook by John Berger

34. A Deniable Death by Gerald Seymour

33. A Man You Can Bank On by Derek Hansen

32. That Paris Year by Joanna Biggar

31. The Map of Time by Félix J Palma

30. By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham

29. Madness: An American History of Mental Illness and Its Treatment by Mary de Young

28. Generation X: Tales for an accelerated culture by Douglas Coupland

27. The Dog Who Came In From the Cold by Alexander McCall Smith

26. Nothing To Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes

25. Player One: What is to Become of Us by Douglas Coupland

24. The Chronology of Water: A Memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch

23. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

22. Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

21. A Train of Powder by Rebecca West

20. Obesity: The Biography by Sander L Gilman

19. Where the Bodies are Buried by Chris Brookmyre

18. Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives by Brian Dillon

17. Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett

16. The Redeemed by M R Hall

15. Gatherers and Hunters by Thomas Shapcott

14. Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

13. True You by Janet Jackson

12. An Exclusive Love by Johanna Adorján

11. Toys by James Patterson

10. Mia Culpa by Mia Freedman

9. The Forgotten Son by Diane Chamberlain

8. Barbara Hanrahan: A Biography by Annette Stewart

7. Silencing the Self Across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World by Dana Crowley Jack and Alisha Ali

6. Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones

5. 13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro

4. Beneath the Shadows by Sara Foster

3. Gone by Jennifer Mills

2. How Fiction Works by James Wood

1. The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean

Review of Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage

In 2010, there was a session at the Brisbane Writers Festival entitled ‘What do Iraqis think?’, with Richard Hil and Paul Wilson. They are two of the three authors (the other being Michael Otterman) of the book, Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage, which details what life is like for Iraqis since the invasion in 2003 by US and allied forces. We were all seated in a small but cosy space in the State Library of Queensland, with a view of the river behind the writers, and we were hearing things that were anything but cosy or comfortable.



These discomforting things are described thoroughly and well in the book, leaving no doubt as to the toxic effects of the war. Is this why there has been so little discussion of this volume in the mainstream media? Apart from that session at the festival, I have not read any full reviews or seen any articles or interviews in any Australian newspapers or journals. The website of Michael Otterman lists media attention, and I note some articles published in New Zealand and in New Matilda online. Otherwise, silence.

Continued at M/C Reviews: Culture and the Media.

Review of Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun by Liza Bakewell

First of all, this is a beautifully presented book, with an eye-catching and humorous cover. How a book looks and feels, before the reader even opens it up, is important. The reader’s senses are alive immediately.

Liza Bakewell is a linguistic anthropologist but Madre is not an academic tome; more like a dance through the linguistic history and difficulties of a word in the Spanish language that does not just mean ‘mother’. Madre, it becomes clear, can take on all sorts of meanings depending on the context of its use.


And most of the time Bakewell writes with fun and energy, using interesting phrases and descriptions that catch the attention and hold it. From the first page I liked the way she describes houses as ‘salty white and sandy brown’ with ‘lawns trimmed and polished as fine as I imagined the proprietors themselves’ (11). She introduces her friends and colleagues throughout the book in a way which makes them real on the page, and presents dialogue fluently and naturally.


Continued at The Compulsive Reader.

Review of Obesity: The Biography

The dustcover of Obesity: The Biography shows a painting by Benjamin Marshall of a famously obese Englishman, Daniel Lambert. When he died in 1809, at the age of thirty-nine, he was five foot one inch in height and weighed 739 pounds. Sander L Gilman records that a wall had to be demolished in order to remove him from his room (3). He notes that he 'came to represent the freakish nature of fat'--he was apparently recommended as a sightseeing stop if you were visiting London--but he was also described as a temperate eater and drinker, perhaps as an affectionate rather than accurate observation. The brief story of Mr. Lambert is a human touch and an interesting one in an otherwise frustratingly uneven text that lacks cohesion. Gilman writes in detail about the people through history who wrote on the body and its size, and all the likely influences upon it, and how attitudes and approaches to weight changed. These influences could be both external, such as culture and religion, or internal, such as matters of self-discipline, or mental or physical illness. Some of these writers were obese themselves, and wrote autobiographical accounts of their struggles with weight control, detailing their hypotheses on diet and exercise.   Continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

Review of Madness: An American History of Mental Illness and Its Treatment by Mary de Young

…throughout history the line between sanity and madness often has been negotiable, and more often than not has been inscribed by gender, race, socioeconomic class and sexual orientation. (26)

The sociologist Mary de Young has written a lucid, literary, extremely approachable history of mental illness in America, paying close attention, as the above quotation indicates, to the social context as well as the medical. If such a history can be 'enjoyable' then this is it; the reader is taken through the definition of madness, the experience of it through narrations and pathographies, or first person accounts, and how it was viewed, handled and treated through colonial days to the present. She describes and explains asylums, the patients who inhabited them, and the treatments to which they were subjected over the centuries, from the humoural approach of the ancients to electroconvulsive therapy, surgeries (of body and brain), and of course psychopharmacology.

Review continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

Review of Gatherers and Hunters by Thomas Shapcott

Thomas Shapcott’s long last story has the innocent title ‘Sunshine Beach’. There’s nothing innocent about it. All of his stories, in fact, have innocuous titles, but inside them are great currents of emotion and difficult truths. But the novella made me realise just how fine his storytelling is, and how much wisdom is contained within.

Charlie Branson is the main character, and I kept reading his name as Charles Bronson, the tough guy actor with the sculptured rock face, as if he keeps trying to ‘tough’ out the change in his life. Charlie is a widower, his wife Miriam having died suddenly while overseas at a conference. Shapcott shows him clearing every physical object out of his life after her death: the house is sold, the furniture disposed of, even the photograph albums thrown away. He clears out a lot of his own clothing and bins paperwork, until there is nothing left.

Ghosts. No, out with them all. Everywhere he looked, even with so much of the household furniture already sent off to children, in line with Miriam’s will, and with all those ‘might come in handy’ bits and pieces (from long pieces of timber to what seemed like every piece of electric gadgetry ever invented) at last bequeathed to the Salvos, in each room of the house Charlie still found himself looking into a mirror, not a tunnel, of remembering. And what made it worse, each memory associated with each stick of furniture or property was as if each moment of the past were still now. Everything lived still in a perpetual present tense. He had not realised that furniture had this power. (124)

And then he goes back to the holiday town of his early adolescence, Caloundra, where he had experienced ‘glorious times’ (125). He buys a unit, furnishes it with any old pieces he can pick up, and reminisces about Beatrice. She was his brother’s friend, a special girl he got to know when he was fifteen, who now seems to glow with the light of nostalgia, lost youth, longing. He has thrown away the memories that pain him, and grasped with both hands the ones he thinks will comfort.

Continued at Transnational Literature, Volume 3, Issue 2, May 2011.