I was hoping to have my review of An Item from the Late News ready for today, but a headache intervened, and so did the internet going down for a while so I’m re-reading it… Ah well, it’s folly to rush the reading of any novel by Thea Astley anyway.
So I thought I’d post a roundup of contributions from other readers, and a few other bits and pieces.
First of all: contributions from other readers:
- Meg Broughton shared a guest review of Coda here at ANZLitLovers;
- Sue from Whispering Gums featured Thea Astley as a favourite writer in her Bill Curates series; and
- Bill reviewed Drylands at The Australian Legend and the short story ‘One of the Islands’.
A little hunt around the web unearthed these:
- Honouring Series: Thea Astley, brilliant to the last: Four people sat together at the first inaugural NSW Writers’ Centre event honouring Australian writers, on 23 August 2014. They were keen to discuss one woman, Thea Astley, who has impacted each of their lives. Author Felicity Castagna, Small Indiscretions, Literary critic Susan Sheridan, Author Debra Adelaide, The Household Guide to Dying, and Mark MacLeod;
- The Life of the Author: A review of Karen Lamb’s bio Inventing her Own Weather, at Inside Story;
- ‘A beach house to cry for’ at the Daily Telegraph, an article about Thea’s only child Ed Gregson, his purchase of a house at New Brighton between Ballina and Noosa and Thea’s reaction;
-
Thea Astley’s writing was convoluted and obtuse – and it made me fall in love with words by Toni Jordan at The Guardian (Did she really mean to use ‘obtuse’ about Astley’s writing? Obtuse means annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand. And Quora says it’s often used as a veiled insult for being stupid, simple minded, or willfully ignorant. Thea Astley’s red pen would have corrected this to obscure, I suspect.
- A review of The Fiction of Thea Astley by Susan Sheridan at Westerly.
Enjoy!
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
And I reviewed an Astley short story. You must be happy with the response you’re getting this time. Astley seems to be everyone’s favourite writer.
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By: wadholloway on August 20, 2020
at 2:05 pm
You did too, thank you… I have amended the post.
(I blame the discombobulating after-effects of Endone which is all I had in the house now that we can’t buy Panadeine).
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By: Lisa Hill on August 20, 2020
at 2:08 pm
Panadeine was the one medication that I needed occasionally to help my neuropathy – I can sympathise not being able to get it any longer it’s frustrating.
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By: Sue on August 20, 2020
at 5:38 pm
I am still reading An item from the late news! My review will hopefully be done by the weekend, but I’ll see!
As soon as I saw “obtuse” I thought “obscure” as well.
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By: whisperinggums on August 20, 2020
at 4:31 pm
Oh, and I’m sorry about your headache – I hope it’s better now. Is this still the eye issue?
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By: whisperinggums on August 20, 2020
at 4:32 pm
Not sure. The pain is, but the blurring seems to be both eyes. Maybe it is migraine, I’ve only ever had one once, and I don’t remember how it affected me…
I’m having trouble reading, even with glasses and have had to enlarge the screen a lot to do this.
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By: Lisa Hill on August 20, 2020
at 7:08 pm
I’m really sorry you are having all this trouble
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By: whisperinggums on August 21, 2020
at 11:55 am
Better today… I think the blurring (which was quite scary) was perhaps an after effect of the Endone. Last night I zapped the first stirrings of the headache with Panadol and zapped again at bedtime, and that seems to be better…
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By: Lisa Hill on August 21, 2020
at 12:53 pm
My father takes endone some nights with no effect (but he’s a medical miracle really) while my Mum had side effects like nausea.
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By: whisperinggums on August 21, 2020
at 1:16 pm
Hi Lisa, you have my sympathy. Nothing worse than a headache, I gather it is a migraine – so disabling. Take care.
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By: Meg on August 20, 2020
at 5:34 pm
The observation in the article the first link leads to, which notes that Astley said to write a novel you started with a metaphor, sounds somewhat similar to Marilynne Robinson’s method of writing as many metaphors as she can in order to start a story. Both writers have a distinctive style of writing. Fascinating.
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By: Sue on August 20, 2020
at 8:42 pm
That’s interesting… I wouldn’t have thought those two would have anything in common, but there it is!!
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By: Lisa Hill on August 21, 2020
at 12:43 am
I wouldn’t have thought so either – although both highly intelligent women and with an interest/background in religion perhaps they might have got on better than we think. I just found that fascinating that both start their novels by writing metaphors – who’d have thought?
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By: Sue on August 21, 2020
at 1:54 pm
Yes… it interests me, this information, because I’m almost finished Beachmasters and it confirms for me how each novel tackles current affairs that were obviously on her mind. This novel in particular strikes me as a response to an event that became a catalyst for a book…
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By: Lisa Hill on August 21, 2020
at 2:49 pm