Past Programs
Books - Authors - 2006
Writers on writing: Kate Grenville, Geoffrey Atherden and Mark Tredinnick
24/12/2006
In the newly released The Little Red Writing Book: A Manual for Fiction Writers, Mark Tredinnick says, 'When you write, you talk on paper. When it's good you sing.' So today on The Book Show we're going to find out how to sing. In other words what makes good writing? How is it done? What are the tricks of the trade? We're take a behind the scenes look at the writing process and examining two very different writers manuals with three very different writers. And to help us we have Mark Tredinnick in Canberra, and in Sydney, Geoffrey Atherden and Kate Grenville.
Writers on writing: Kate Grenville, Geoffrey Atherden and Mark Tredinnick
08/12/2006
In the newly released The Little Red Writing Book: A Manual for Fiction Writers, Mark Tredinnick says, 'When you write, you talk on paper. When it's good you sing.' So today on The Book Show we're going to find out how to sing. In other words what makes good writing? How is it done? What are the tricks of the trade? We're take a behind the scenes look at the writing process and examining two very different writers manuals with three very different writers. And to help us we have Mark Tredinnick in Canberra, and in Sydney, Geoffrey Atherden and Kate Grenville.
Alex Miller: Truth in Fiction and History Read Transcript
30/11/2006
Today on The Book Show we're going to hear an edited version of a lecture called Written In Our Hearts: Thinking About Truth in Fiction and History, by writer Alex Miller. He was speaking at a Victorian Writers' Centre lecture at the State Library of Victoria earlier this week.
Alex Miller was born in London in 1936, his father was from Glasgow and his Mother was Irish and he emigrated alone to Australia at the age of 16. After working as an itinerant stockman on cattle stations in Central Queensland and the Gulf Country - evidence that, for a writer, everything is research, even if you don't know you're doing it at the time.
After travelling around for a while, he graduated from the University of Melbourne in English and History in 1965. He was co-founder of the Anthill Theatre and a founding member of the Melbourne Writers' Theatre. So he has had a life with a capital 'L', and had many chances to listen to stories beyond the confines of the writer's study. He's won the Miles Franklin Award twice: with his 1993 novel The Ancestor Game and then again in 2003 for his novel Journey To The Stone Country, and he was short-listed in two other years. So by any measure Alex Miller is one of Australia's outstanding novelists.
First we'll hear an edited version of his lecture Written In Our Hearts: Thinking About Truth in Fiction and History. When I spoke to Alex after the lecture, I said I was struck by that image of his great-grandfather's thumbprint on his grandfather's birth certificate, and I asked him if the knowledge that he came from people who were not readers and whose history wasn't written, was at the forefront of his mind when he was studying history?
Michael Frayn: The Human Touch
26/11/2006
Michael Frayn is a novelist and a playwright who has always presented widely varying kinds of work. Did you ever see his farce Noises Off? A very funny slapstick, and different from his two most recent plays, Copenhagen, about a meeting between two of the founders of quantum mechanics, and Democracy, about the East German spy who worked for Willy Brandt. In the 1960s his first two novels won major prizes, and his latest one, Spies, won him the Whitbread novel award in 2002.
Now I hope you don't take this the wrong way but, in a way, reading his new book is like being cornered at a party by a guy who has been smoking dope and is feeling very profound, and one idea leads to another in a very short space of time. Because in The Human Touch, Michael Frayn returns to his roots in philosophy (that's what he studied as a lad), this time in a non-fiction exploration of questions that have underscored most of his fictional work – the relationship between existence and human consciousness. It's a book which takes at its core philosophy – what can we know? What is real? What do we mean by the self – and would the universe exist if there weren't people here to observe it and measure it and worry about it? He even says 'reality is the child of man's imagination'.
Michael Frayn spoke to me late last week from our studio in London, and I told him then that this book is a surprise and a bit of a mystery for people who are used to reading his comic novels and seeing his plays. So why did he write this book now?
Janette Turner Hospital: Rooted Cosmopolitanism
24/11/2006
What is Rooted Cosmopolitanism and what does it have to do with medieval literature and what does it have to do with contemporary Australian fiction?
Rooted Cosmopolitanism is the subject of Janette Turner Hospital's address which launched this year's Byron Bay Writers' Festival. And it is also, as it turns out, a phrase which describes herself.
Janette Turner Hospital is one of Australia's literary diaspora. She currently resides in the US, where she's the Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. But Janette has been a traveller since birth. She's perhaps best known for her most recent work Due Preparations For The Plague, which is actually a way into writing about the subject of terrorism. However, she clearly loves thinking and speaking about wanderers, as well as wandering herself. In this particular literary excursion she begins with the writings of the first millennium and progresses to March, the novel about the America Civil War which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for Geraldine Brooks, and along the way she follows the flight of a sparrow across a hall.
Robert Dessaix talks about Twilight of Love
22/11/2006
This week we've started a new First Person reading – Robert Dessaix is reading Twilight of Love: Travels With Turgenev. We wanted to talk to Robert about his relationship to the life of this Russian writer.
Robert first read Turgenev as a youth. For this book he's travelled to the places in Europe where the great Russian writer put down roots. He's trying to glimpse this 19th century Russian aristocrat whose ideas, about love in particular, have been turning themselves over inside Robert for most of his life. On the Book Show, we've tried to speak with our First Person writers if we could over the year, and Robert joined Ramona from the ABC's Hobart studios.
Michael Frayn: The Human Touch
20/11/2006
Michael Frayn is a novelist and a playwright who has always presented widely varying kinds of work. Did you ever see his farce Noises Off? A very funny slapstick, and different from his two most recent plays, Copenhagen, about a meeting between two of the founders of quantum mechanics, and Democracy, about the East German spy who worked for Willy Brandt. In the 1960s his first two novels won major prizes, and his latest one, Spies, won him the Whitbread novel award in 2002.
Now I hope you don't take this the wrong way but, in a way, reading his new book is like being cornered at a party by a guy who has been smoking dope and is feeling very profound, and one idea leads to another in a very short space of time. Because in The Human Touch, Michael Frayn returns to his roots in philosophy (that's what he studied as a lad), this time in a non-fiction exploration of questions that have underscored most of his fictional work – the relationship between existence and human consciousness. It's a book which takes at its core philosophy – what can we know? What is real? What do we mean by the self – and would the universe exist if there weren't people here to observe it and measure it and worry about it? He even says 'reality is the child of man's imagination'.
Michael Frayn spoke to me late last week from our studio in London, and I told him then that this book is a surprise and a bit of a mystery for people who are used to reading his comic novels and seeing his plays. So why did he write this book now?
Lionel Shriver
08/10/2006
We Need To Talk About Kevin—that's the title of Lionel Shriver's prize winning novel about motherhood gone awry. And we're not just talking a little bit awry, we are talking about a mother who brings a mass murderer into the world. Kevin is one of those (all too common these days) American teenagers who kills his classmates. And this book takes the form of a series of letters from his mother Eva. In these letters Eva wonders what went wrong and was it her fault.
And with yet another school shooting in the US overnight, in an Amish community (although this time it appears not to have been a disaffected student), you wonder why schools are targeted.
We Need To Talk About Kevin won Lionel Shriver the 2005 Orange Prize For Fiction. Lionel Shriver was also a guest at the recent Brisbane Writers' Festival which is where I caught up with her.
She began our session with a reading. It's about a day of mother and son bonding and I should warn you ends up with some coarse language.
Spotlight on Scotland: Dilys Rose and Ewan Morrison
06/10/2006
Now to Ewan Morrison and Dilys Rose, two Scottish writers whose professional experience may or may not have included moments like this.
They were in Sydney as part of a cultural exchange organised by the Varuna Writers' Centre and spoke to me at the Sydney Writers' Festival.
Ewan Morrison's book is a collection of short stories called The last book you read and it's a debut, but Ewan has done a fair bit of writing before. After graduating from the Glasgow School of Art he wrote art criticism and screenplays. He's also worked in television. His first novel has already been submitted for publication and his second is on the way.
But we begin this Spotlight On Scotland session with Dylis Rose, who is almost an elder stateswoman of Scottish writing. She was born and brought up in Glasgow, but lives in Edinburgh. She's published five collections of short stories, including Our Lady of the Pickpockets, Red tides, War dolls, and Lord of illusions. She's also written several books of poetry, written for stage, and collaborated with musicians and artists, as well teaching creative writing at Edinburgh University.
We begin this Spotlight On Scotland with Dilys Rose reading three of her character studies, which were written in collaboration with a visual artist.
And the conversation comes with a coarse language warning.
Qiu Xiaolong, Chinese crime writer
04/10/2006
Chinese writer Qiu Xiaolong uses real cases as the basic plot for his crime novels. But they are unquestionably novels, and today we are going to meet Chief Inspector Chen in Xiaolong's latest book.
'A Chinese Recipe For Murder' was the name given to the session at the Brisbane Writers' Festival where Xialong and I met.
Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai. And has lived in the United States since 1989—in other words, since the Tiananmen Square massacre, which features strongly in his writing; it was because of the massacre that he couldn't return home. As well as detective fiction, Xiaolong publishes poetry, translations and literary criticism. The two books in the Chief Inspector Chen series, which are available in Australia, are Death of a red heroine and A loyal character dancer.
As you'll hear it's a very stylised form of writing, which is interesting, because the style is a Western one in an Asian setting. But this is just one of the many cultural clashes. The summary executions are somewhat chilling and the institutionalised police and political corruption are troubling—but the food is great.
And so that is where we began our conversation.
Qiu Xiaolong reads from his book Death of a red heroine at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. It's a domestic scene, in a typical Chinese household with a typical Chinese couple: Detective Yu (who's Chief Inspector Chen's partner) and his wife. The couple have just finished a crab dinner.
Lionel Shriver
03/10/2006
We Need To Talk About Kevin—that's the title of Lionel Shriver's prize winning novel about motherhood gone awry. And we're not just talking a little bit awry, we are talking about a mother who brings a mass murderer into the world. Kevin is one of those (all too common these days) American teenagers who kills his classmates. And this book takes the form of a series of letters from his mother Eva. In these letters Eva wonders what went wrong and was it her fault.
And with yet another school shooting in the US overnight, in an Amish community (although this time it appears not to have been a disaffected student), you wonder why schools are targeted.
We Need To Talk About Kevin won Lionel Shriver the 2005 Orange Prize For Fiction. Lionel Shriver was also a guest at the recent Brisbane Writers' Festival which is where I caught up with her.
She began our session with a reading. It's about a day of mother and son bonding and I should warn you ends up with some coarse language.
Mathematician Sir Roger Penrose and The Road To Reality (transcript available) Read Transcript
26/09/2006
In the second of our major feature interviews from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we bring you one of the major thinkers in the world of science, Sir Roger Penrose.
Crime writer Peter Robinson
22/09/2006
A recent visitor to these shores was the very successful English crime-writer Peter Robinson, who despite having based himself in Canada for many years now, still sets his crime series in the UK - crafted around the character of Detective Inspector Banks.
But writing a series of this sort raises all sorts of questions about the development of a set of characters and procedures, the commitment of an audience to him.
Radio National's Kate Evans caught up with Peter Robinson during his time in Australia.
Norwegian star writer Asne Seierstad on the legacy of the Balkan war
17/09/2006
Asne Seierstad is a Norwegian writer and newspaper and television journalist who was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. She has worked as a war correspondent, first in Russia between 1993 and 1996, then in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
You may already know her as the author of her bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul. In that book she related her experiences in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime. She met a bookseller there and asked to write about his family. She moved into his flat for three months to collect material from the 12 family members who lived there. Her portrait of the family patriarch was not flattering, and he threatened to sue her following the publication of the book.
She has also written of her time in Iraq in A Hundred and One Days: A Bagdad Journal. But in the interview you are about to hear, recorded last month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we're talking about another book, set in a complex political and moral landscape. It's called With Their Backs To The World: Portrait From Serbia. The book itself has an interesting history. It is an updated version of her first book, and it's fascinating, not only because it's a forensic portrait of a cross-section of Serbian characters (and I say characters because she has the novelist's touch for description and story), but also because she visits these people again and again, and that's unusual, for a correspondent like Ĺsne Seierstad, to maintain relationships long after the journalistic caravan has moved on, as it were.
Edmundo Paz Soldán on cyberterrorism, globalisation and political oppression
17/09/2006
Edmundo Paz Soldán is a prolific novelist but a relatively new name to English-speaking audiences. The Bolivian writer has just released his sixth novel, but it's only the second to be translated into English. The book is called Turing's Delirium, and it tells a very modern Bolivian story – but a story that also conjures terrible ghosts of the past.
An old dictator, Montenegro, has been democratically returned to power in Bolivia, mere decades after a bloody anti-communist reign. New Bolivia is now a player on the global stage, but a poor player, easily abused. Edmundo Paz Soldán's tale is set in the fictional city of Rio Fugitivo, where the local power company has been privatised and bought by a multinational firm. Far from this bringing benefits, the price of electricity has skyrocketed and there are constant blackouts.
This sets the scene for a battle between angry young people who use computers to hack and vandalise these new global enemies, and the state – in particular the codebreakers of the old regime who work in a place called The Black Chamber. Part of this story is told through the mind of a dying man ... Albert, the founder of The Black Chamber. His mind is slipping. He's a beligerent and evil old bastard who's determined to live, but who's losing his grip on reality.
Edmundo Paz Soldán on cyberterrorism, globalisation and political oppression
14/09/2006
Edmundo Paz Soldán is a prolific novelist but a relatively new name to English-speaking audiences. The Bolivian writer has just released his sixth novel, but it's only the second to be translated into English. The book is called Turing's Delirium, and it tells a very modern Bolivian story – but a story that also conjures terrible ghosts of the past.
An old dictator, Montenegro, has been democratically returned to power in Bolivia, mere decades after a bloody anti-communist reign. New Bolivia is now a player on the global stage, but a poor player, easily abused. Edmundo Paz Soldán's tale is set in the fictional city of Rio Fugitivo, where the local power company has been privatised and bought by a multinational firm. Far from this bringing benefits, the price of electricity has skyrocketed and there are constant blackouts.
This sets the scene for a battle between angry young people who use computers to hack and vandalise these new global enemies, and the state – in particular the codebreakers of the old regime who work in a place called The Black Chamber. Part of this story is told through the mind of a dying man ... Albert, the founder of The Black Chamber. His mind is slipping. He's a beligerent and evil old bastard who's determined to live, but who's losing his grip on reality.
Norwegian star writer Asne Seierstad on the legacy of the Balkan war
11/09/2006
Asne Seierstad is a Norwegian writer and newspaper and television journalist who was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. She has worked as a war correspondent, first in Russia between 1993 and 1996, then in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
You may already know her as the author of her bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul. In that book she related her experiences in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime. She met a bookseller there and asked to write about his family. She moved into his flat for three months to collect material from the 12 family members who lived there. Her portrait of the family patriarch was not flattering, and he threatened to sue her following the publication of the book.
She has also written of her time in Iraq in A Hundred and One Days: A Bagdad Journal. But in the interview you are about to hear, recorded last month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we're talking about another book, set in a complex political and moral landscape. It's called With Their Backs To The World: Portrait From Serbia. The book itself has an interesting history. It is an updated version of her first book, and it's fascinating, not only because it's a forensic portrait of a cross-section of Serbian characters (and I say characters because she has the novelist's touch for description and story), but also because she visits these people again and again, and that's unusual, for a correspondent like Ĺsne Seierstad, to maintain relationships long after the journalistic caravan has moved on, as it were.
The dystopian worlds of Rupert Thomson
10/09/2006
Now to an author who changes characters' worlds overnight and sits back to see how they reconstruct their lives... In Rupert Thomson's latest book Divided Kingdom, an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night by armed soldiers, soon learning that he is the victim of a radical experiment - the Rearrangement.
Occuring in a totalitarian, near-future England, the Rearrangement has seen the country's entire population forcibly reorganized into four autonomous republics—not according to race, creed or religion, but according to psychology, or the four humours: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine.
Placed in an orphanage, and given a new name, Thomas Parry is soon transferred to a new family in the Red Quarter. Later, he takes a clandestine job with the government and risks being charged with 'undermining the state' when he crosses borders and goes in search of his past and his true self.
Rupert Thomson's earlier novel, The Book of Revelation, makes for an even more disturbing read—a male dancer starts out for cigarettes on a sunny day and winds up shackled to the floor where three hooded women make him their sex slave for 18 days. This novel has now been made into a film by Australian director Ana Kokkinos, starring Tom Long, Greta Scacchi and Colin Friels. The film is currently screening in Australia.
Rupert Thomson was a guest of the 2006 Melbourne Writers' Festival this August where he spoke with Rhiannon Brown.
The dystopian worlds of Rupert Thomson
05/09/2006
Now to an author who changes characters' worlds overnight and sits back to see how they reconstruct their lives... In Rupert Thomson's latest book Divided Kingdom, an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night by armed soldiers, soon learning that he is the victim of a radical experiment - the Rearrangement.
Occuring in a totalitarian, near-future England, the Rearrangement has seen the country's entire population forcibly reorganized into four autonomous republics—not according to race, creed or religion, but according to psychology, or the four humours: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine.
Placed in an orphanage, and given a new name, Thomas Parry is soon transferred to a new family in the Red Quarter. Later, he takes a clandestine job with the government and risks being charged with 'undermining the state' when he crosses borders and goes in search of his past and his true self.
Rupert Thomson's earlier novel, The Book of Revelation, makes for an even more disturbing read—a male dancer starts out for cigarettes on a sunny day and winds up shackled to the floor where three hooded women make him their sex slave for 18 days. This novel has now been made into a film by Australian director Ana Kokkinos, starring Tom Long, Greta Scacchi and Colin Friels. The film is currently screening in Australia.
Rupert Thomson was a guest of the 2006 Melbourne Writers' Festival this August where he spoke with Rhiannon Brown.
Dutch writers off the air
04/09/2006
Just this past weekend a Dutch radio program about books that's been heard nationally in The Netherlands for the past seven years ended, due to funding cuts to public broadcasting there.
Maria Zijlstra talks to the presenter of that now-defunct Dutch literary radio program Knetterende Letteren as well as to the Dutch writer Tessa de Loo, two of whose books have, so far, been translated into English.
Simon Armitage (Edinburgh International Book Festival)
01/09/2006
To Edinburgh now, to an evening in which Simon Armitage delighted the audience with readings from his latest collection. Through them we get a glimmer of some of the varied subjects that caught his attention – and then he'll settle in for a talk with me.
Simon Armitage – poet, novelist, and librettist for the Edinburgh International Festival Opera The Assassin Tree – is originally from West Yorkshire, which you can hear in his speech and in the language of some of his poems. And then again, he has written his version of Homer's Odyssey too – a gorgeous take on that fundamental poem of human storytelling – which started out as a play for BBC Radio. His new book of poems is Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid.
Australian landscape, innocence, families and justice in Mark O'Flynns' <em> Grassdogs</em>
10/08/2006
Another one of the books launched at Byron Bay was Grassdogs by Australian author Mark O'Flynn.
Mark was the winner of a Varuna Manuscript Development Award and comes at this novel from a world of playwriting, theatre and poetry. And it's a triumph of compassion. The main character, Edgar, is a damaged boy who is orphaned too soon and who never really has a chance to get life right. There is a really delicate sensibility in this book, in that it allows you to see the world from Edgar's point-of-view. And from this point-of-view, a lot of things we take for granted don't actually make much sense.
Richard Hawke: Speak Of The Devil
16/05/2006
In the realms of exciting genre fiction, most people would concede that, while the Brits have always had a great line in police and spy stories, America can probably lay claim to the best in gumshoe icons ... those film-noir private eyes with a vernacular that is dark, seductive and irreverent.
Of course, the modern private eye may well have more to contend with than just marital infidelities and the occasional messy murder. In the anxieties that have gripped post-9/11 America, where everyone seems to be spying or being spied upon, the waters are much muddier for private detectives ... the stakes seem to be higher, conspiracy and corruption are more likely to be the objects of investigation, and lines between private eye, FBI and policeman are less clear.
Now enter Fritz Malone, a much updated private detective, with just enough 1940s trench-coat charm to make him sufficiently recognisable and edgy. Fritz is the creation of New York novelist Richard Hawke, whose new novel, Speak Of The Devil, is the first in a series that will unleash this Irish-German gumshoe on New York City.
Before we hear Richard Hawke's conversation with Michael Shirrefs, here he is reading from the start of Speak Of The Devil ...
Dame Fiona Kidman
02/05/2006
Dame Fiona Kidman is a major figure in New Zealand's literary culture. A writer of short stories, novels, poems, plays and non-fiction works, she talks to Ramona Koval about her novel Songs From The Violet Café, about the persistence of lost children in her stories and about the common literary themes shared by writers from New Zealand, Canada and Australia.
Danny Katz: M.O.T.H.E.R
27/04/2006
Now to someone for whom the job of the writer is somewhat less profound, but just as funny. Here's Danny Katz, columnist for The Age and The West Australian, with his tribute to the most wonderful word in the world (apart from spleen, knuckle, and squeegee).
Richard Hawke: Speak Of The Devil
23/04/2006
In the realms of exciting genre fiction, most people would concede that, while the Brits have always had a great line in police and spy stories, America can probably lay claim to the best in gumshoe icons ... those film-noir private eyes with a vernacular that is dark, seductive and irreverent.
Of course, the modern private eye may well have more to contend with than just marital infidelities and the occasional messy murder. In the anxieties that have gripped post-9/11 America, where everyone seems to be spying or being spied upon, the waters are much muddier for private detectives ... the stakes seem to be higher, conspiracy and corruption are more likely to be the objects of investigation, and lines between private eye, FBI and policeman are less clear.
Now enter Fritz Malone, a much updated private detective, with just enough 1940s trench-coat charm to make him sufficiently recognisable and edgy. Fritz is the creation of New York novelist Richard Hawke, whose new novel, Speak Of The Devil, is the first in a series that will unleash this Irish-German gumshoe on New York City.
Before we hear Richard Hawke's conversation with Michael Shirrefs, here he is reading from the start of Speak Of The Devil ...
Hilary McPhee on Truman Capote
26/03/2006
Hilary McPhee is a writer and publisher (including internet publishing) and former chair of the Australia Council. She will be a regular contributor on all kind things in public debate across the book world.
Her distinguished career includes co-founding and directing McPhee Gribble Publishers, an independent publishing company with a reputation for developing new authors. Her book Other People's Words was a memoir of a life in publishing. Today Hilary is discussing the film Capote, depicting the writing of Truman Capote's groundbreaking work In Cold Blood.
Hilary McPhee on Truman Capote
20/03/2006
Hilary McPhee is a writer and publisher (including internet publishing) and former chair of the Australia Council. She will be a regular contributor on all kind things in public debate across the book world.
Her distinguished career includes co-founding and directing McPhee Gribble Publishers, an independent publishing company with a reputation for developing new authors. Her book Other People's Words was a memoir of a life in publishing. Today Hilary is discussing the film Capote, depicting the writing of Truman Capote's groundbreaking work In Cold Blood.
Tony Birch: Shadowboxing (transcript available)
12/03/2006
Tony Birch was last in this studio when we spoke last year on Books and Writing about teaching creative writing. That's what he does as a day job at the University of Melbourne. He is a poet and a writer of short fiction and creative non-fiction. He is here today on the publication of a collection of stories called Shadowboxing.
Tony Birch: Shadowboxing
07/03/2006
Tony Birch was last in this studio when we spoke last year on Books and Writing about teaching creative writing. That's what he does as a day job at the University of Melbourne. He is a poet and a writer of short fiction and creative non-fiction. He is here today on the publication of a collection of stories called Shadowboxing.
Shadowboxing is an autobiographical walk through the life of young Michael and his family – a family of battlers living in the mean streets of Fitzroy in the Melbourne of the 1960s. These are stories told simply, but with great power. There is the drink and the beltings given to wives and children and the slow crumbling of the suburb as the old houses give way to bulldozers and the commission flats. But there is also the wonder of childhood and the first blossomings of boyhood and the kind of redemption possible with the coming of manhood and understanding.
