Literary Canon Ball

In episode 25 we discuss Anne Garreta’s Sphinx.

Published in 1986 in France before being translated in 2015 into English, Sphinx is the tale of two lovers in Paris. The narrator, a scholar turned DJ and A*** a dancer. The plot is straightforward enough, two people meet, the fall in love, there is a tragic ending. What makes Sphinx more compelling is the linguistic constraint that slowly reveals itself in the English translation and ...

In episode 25 we discuss Lee Kofman’s Imperfect. A blend of memoir and cultural critique, Kofman’s Imperfect, which in a neat trick of typography could also read as I’m Perfect, considers our conceptions of physical perfection and asks what it means to live in a body that differs from the norm.

Thanks to Affirm Press and Lee for sending us these copies Imperfect.

Show Notes

Imperfect review: Lee Kofman's examination of bodies and ...

In episode twenty-four, we discuss This Little Art by Kate Briggs.

What is it to translate another writer’s words? What is to consume a translation? Taking as her starting point her own translations work, Briggs explores these questions and so much more in her genre-bending novel length essay This Little Art.

Witty and thoughtful and with as many questions as answers, This Little Art is an original and layered discussion of the art o...

When One Person Dies the Whole World is Over is a diary comic chronicling the year in the life of its author and illustrator, Mandy Ord. Published this year by Brow Books, it is billed as ‘funny, sad and perfectly magnetic’, with illustrator Oslo Davis describing it as ‘unashamedly personal’.

When One Person Dies tries to find meaning in the everyday. From moments of levity too soon forgotten to life changing loss, Mandy Ord gives t...

‘The story of a girl who was so poor that all she ate was hot dogs. That's not the story, though. The story is about a crushed innocence, about an anonymous misery.’ This is how Clarice Lispector describes The Hour of the Star, the novella she published shortly before her death in 1977.

Colm Tóibín writes that reading The Hour of the Sun is ‘like being brought backstage during the performance of a play and allowed odd glimpses o...

In episode 21, we discuss An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen.

Shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize, Krissy Kneen’s An Uncertain Grace is a novel told in five separate but linked parts.

Virtual storytelling, shared consciousness, gender fluidity, love and romance, jellyfish and rising oceans, An Uncertain Grace is novel that draws together elements of sci-fi and erotica and poses some big questions around gender and sex and the impac...

In episode twenty, we’re doing something a little different. We don’t have just one book to discuss, we have a whole year of reading and books and reading related goals to reflect on. And, of course, we’ve got a bunch of stellar recommendations for you that should see you through those long lazy summer afternoons.

So, let’s talk books. We read a pretty interesting mix this year, from This One Summer, a graphic novel from Jillian Tam...

In episode 19, we discuss Alison Whittaker’s Blakwork.

A mix of memoir, reportage, fiction, satire, and critique, Alison Whittaker’s Blakwork is an original and unapologetic collection from which two things emerge; an incomprehensible loss, and the poet’s fearless examination of the present.

Whittaker, a Gomeroi multitasker from the floodplains of Gunnedah in NSW, has been published in the Sydney Review of Books, Seizure, Overland, W...

In episode eighteen of Literary Canon Ball we discuss Maria Tumarkin’s essay, No Skin.

A finalist in the 2015 Melbourne Prize for Writing, Maria Tumarkin’s essay, No Skin, is an exploration of traumascapes and our complex relationship with the places of trauma. From the holocaust to Princess Diana to Jill Meagher, Tumrakin explores this idea that she cannot seem to shake, wondering about portals and meaning and undeniable power.

A wr...

In episode seventeen, we discuss Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen.

Published in 1974, Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen is the story of Adah, a young Nigerian woman, mother and wife who follows her husband to London in the pursuit of an independent life free from strict cultural traditions.

Adah’s desire for equality and her struggle for self-confidence and dignity are themes that are reoccurring in Buchi’s work, and Second ...

In Episode 16 of Literary Canon Ball we discuss Eileen Chang's Lust, Caution.

Eileen Chang is considered one of the most influential modern Chinese writers. Her work, which often deals between the tensions between women and men, has been described as ‘finely honed’ and ‘remarkable’.

This month we’re discussing her 1979 novella, Lust, Caution. Described as a ‘gripping, intensely atmospheric story of love, espionage and betrayal in...

In episode fifteen of Literary Canon Ball we discuss Janet Malcolm's Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers.

Janet Malcolm is an award-winning American writer and journalist and the author of more than ten books, including the much revered, The Journalist and the Murderer.

But it is Malcolm’s 2013 collection, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers that we’re discussing today. The collection, much of ...

In the fourteenth episode of Literary Canon Ball we discuss N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season.

The Fifth Season is a science fantasy novel written by N.K. Jemisin and published in 2015. The winner of the 2016 Hugo Award, The Fifth Season takes place on a supercontinent called the Stillness where every few centuries catastrophic climate change throws the society into chaos.

The first volume in Broken Earth series, the New York Times...

In episode thirteen we discuss Leland Bardwell's short story collection, Different Kinds of Love.

Leland Bardwell was a writer of poetry, plays, novels and short fiction. Different Kinds of Love, her only short story collection, was originally published in 1987 and rereleased in 2011.

From unfinished housing estates left to literally rot to courtrooms, train stations and hospitals, Bardwell explores an Irish society weighed down ...

In Episode Twelve we discuss Clare Wright's award-winning book, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. 

A well-worn foundation story of modern Australia and the so-called ‘birthplace of Australian democracy’, the stories of the Eureka Stockade and the goldminers who rose up against an oppressive government linger in our national story. And yet, for too long those stories were missing half their characters. Where were, where are the sto...

In episode eleven of Literary Canon Ball we discuss Why God Is A Woman by Nin Andrews. 

Published in 2015, Why God Is A Woman is a collection of prose poetry from Nin Andrews about a magical island where women rule. But the story of this female utopia is told from the memories of a man, exiled from the island, who looks back with both nostalgia and bitterness.

Hit play to listen to our chat.

Why God Is a Woman review

WHY GOD...

In the ninth episode of Literary Canon Ball we discuss, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. Originally published in 1989, Like Water for Chocolate is a classic of Mexican literature written by screenwriter and novelist Laura Esquivel.

Part cookbook, part steamy romance, part family drama and all magic realism, Water for Chocolate tells the story of Tita the youngest daughter of the all-female De La Garza family around the...

Ghosts, haunted houses, snow people come to life, talking dogs and frogs and an interesting new perspective of a very old Christmas story. Jeanette Winterson’s Christmas Days, a collection of twelve short stories features all those things and more. The more includes a dozen recipes interspersed between the stories, little vignettes that not only give us a recipe but also give us an insight into Winterson’s Christmases. 

Published in...