ANZAC Challenge May - June

Here's our May thru' June choices:

Australia: Garry Disher, Amy Witting, Alex Miller
New Zealand: Anthony McCarten, Juliet Marillier, C.K. Stead

Back to main thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/211009
ANZAC Jan/Feb thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/211011
ANZAC Mar/Apr thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/219627

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Garry Disher
(1949-)

Garry Disher is one of Australia’s best-known authors. He was born on a farm in South Australia, and decided in childhood to become a writer, influenced by a love of reading, his father’s original bedtime storytelling, and the isolation of farm life. He later gained a BA degree from Adelaide University, and worked and travelled widely in the UK, Europe and Africa after graduation.

On his return to Australia he graduated with a Masters in Australian History at Monash University, in Victoria, but was also writing short stories for competitions and literary magazines, and on the strength of these was awarded a creative-writing fellowship to Stanford University in California.

Back in Melbourne, Disher taught creative writing for many years, to supplement his writing income. A full-time writer since 1988, he’s published 50 books: general/literary novels, crime thrillers, story collections, fiction for children and teenagers, anthologies (as editor), creative writing handbooks and Australian History textbooks.

His crime novels are rapidly earning an international reputation, with editions published in the USA, England, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Italy, Spain and Hungary. Chain of Evidence and Wyatt won crime novel of the year awards in Australia, and several of his other titles were shortlisted. His latest Wyatt thriller, The Heat was released in October 2015.

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Amy Witting
(26 January 1918 – 18 September 2001)

Amy Witting was the pen name of an Australian novelist and poet born Joan Austral Fraser. She was widely acknowledged as one of Australia's "finest fiction writers, whose work was full of the atmosphere and colour or times past" . She was born in the Sydney suburb of Annandale, and was brought up as a Catholic. She has "melancholy memories of a repressive family life" and remembered the nuns at her school, St Brendan's College, as being "obsessed with the torments of hell". She suffered from tuberculosis as a child.

She went to Fort Street Girls' High School. She studied languages at the University of Sydney where she met, among others, James McAuley (academic, poet, journalist, literary critic), Harold Stewart (Australian poet and oriental scholar) and Dorothy Auchterlonie. Subsequently she gained a Diploma of Education at Teachers College and became a school teacher. Her tuberculosis recurred in her early adulthood, resulting in her spending time in a sanitorium which "gave her, for a time, the peace and solitude she always craved"
For most of her working life, teaching English and French, and making a living took priority and writing was done only in her spare time. Already established Australian writer Thea Astley, who taught with Witting at Cheltenham Girls High School, was impressed by one of her stories, Goodbye, Ady, Goodbye, Joe, and encouraged her to submit it for publication. It was published in The New Yorker in April 1965. Indeed, the poet Kenneth Slessor told Thea Astley to "tell that women I'll publish any word she writes".
In the early 1980s, Witting returned to writing poetry in earnest, publishing a number of poems in literary journals, especially Quadrant; her first poetry collection, Travel Diary, was self-published in 1985. In 1989, I for Isobel was published by Penguin, and proved an outstanding critical success. She followed this with a collection of short stories, Marriages (1990), and a further poetry collection, Beauty is the Straw (1991), which absorbed the content of Travel Diary. Witting’s late-career emergence as a major Australian writer was recognised with her Patrick White Award in 1993. She continued to write with considerable energy until the end of her life, publishing four further novels: A Change in the Lighting (1994), Maria's War (1998), Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop (1999), and After Cynthia (2001), two further short story collections, In and Out the Window (1995), and Faces and Voices: collected stories (2000), and a volume of Collected Poems (1998).

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Alex Miller
(1936 -)

Alexander McPhee "Alex" Miller is one of Australia’s greatest writers, a multi-award winning Australian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and, in his early days as an author, a playwright. Miller is twice winner of The Miles Franklin Award, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He won the overall award for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Ancestor Game in 1993. He is twice winner of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Conditions of Faith in 2001 and for Lovesong in 2011. In recognition of his impressive body of work and in particular for his novel Autumn Laing he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2012. His eleventh novel Coal Creek won the first Australian literary award of 2014, the Prize for Fiction in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

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Anthony McCarten
(1961 -)
Anthony McCarten is a New Zealand-born novelist, filmmaker and playwright. He lives in London and Los Angeles. A double Academy Award nominated and double BAFTA winning screenwriter and film producer of the film The Theory Of Everything, as well as a celebrated novelist, he received early international success with his play Ladies Night. Translated into twelve languages, it remains New Zealand's most commercially successful play of all time, and it continues to play worldwide. In 2001, it won France's premiere theatre award for comedy, the Molière Prize. In 2015 he was inducted as a Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors.

McCarten's novels have been translated into 14 languages. His first novel, Spinners (Picador, 2000), was voted one of the top ten novels of that year by Esquire magazine. His third novel, Death Of A Superhero, won the 2008 Austrian Youth Literature Prize and was a finalist for the 2008 German Youth Literature Prize. "Not since Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum has the pains of growing up been rendered this powerfully." Blick, Zurich. "A fantastic novel and a small revolution for the literary form." Der Spiegel (Online).

The sequel novel to this story, In The Absence Of Heroes was published in 2012, and was a finalist for the 2013 New Zealand Fiction Prize and was Longlisted for the 2014 Dublin International IMPAC Literary Award. Also in 2013 came Brilliance, the Gilded Age story of Thomas Edison, the legendary inventor of the first commercially practical incandescent light, and his transforming friendship with the giant of the late nineteenth-century financial world, J.P.Morgan.
In 2011, his adaptation of his own novel Death Of A Superhero had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, won the 2011 Les Arcs European Film Festival Audience Choice Prize and Young Jury Prize, and the Audience Award and ‘Special Mention’ of the Jury at the Mamer-en-Mars European Film Festival.
McCarten produced and wrote The Theory of Everything (2014), concerning the life of Prof. Stephen Hawking, and his first wife, Jane Hawking. He first initiated talks with Jane to acquire the rights to her autobiography, Travelling to Infinity, in 2004, and shortly after began work on the screenplay, which took its inspiration from her book. On January 15, 2015 the film received 5 Academy Award nominations, with McCarten earning two as producer and screenwriter in the categories of Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. He won two BAFTA awards for his roles as producer Best British Film and screenwriter Best Adapted Screenplay.

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Juliet Marillier
(1948 -)

Juliet Marillier is a New Zealand-born writer of fantasy, focusing predominantly on historical fantasy. Marillier taught music at the high school and university levels and has also served as a choral conductor and opera singer. Her lifelong interest in myth, legend, folklore and traditional music is a strong influence on both style and theme in her writing. A passion for early British history, reflecting her Celtic ancestry, is evident in her choice of settings.Juliet Marillier achieved international recognition in 1999 with the publication of her award-winning novel Daughter of the Forest. This is the first book of the Sevenwaters Trilogy, a historical fantasy set in Ireland and Britain in the ninth century, and is loosely based on the traditional fairy tale, The Six Swans. The second book in the series, Son of the Shadows, won the 2000 Aurealis Award for best fantasy novel.
Juliet Marillier's second series is based on the first Viking voyage from Norway to Orkney, and weaves history and folklore into a saga of adventure, romance and magic. The series is made up of two novels, Wolfskin and Foxmask.
Juliet is a member of the druid order OBOD and of the Australian Greens Party, reflecting her commitment to environmental causes

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C. K. Stead
(1936 -)
Christian Karlson "Karl" Stead ONZ, CBE is a New Zealand writer whose works include novels, poetry, short stories, and literary criticism. One of Karl Stead's novels, Smith's Dream, provided the basis for the film Sleeping Dogs, starring Sam Neill; this became the first New Zealand film released in the United States. Mansfield: A Novel was a finalist for the 2005 Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize and received commendation in the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the South East Asia and South Pacific region. He won the 2010 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for 'Last Season’s Man'.
C. K. Stead was born in Auckland. For much of his career he was Professor of English at the University of Auckland, retiring in 1986 to write full-time. He received a CBE in 1985 and was admitted into the highest honour New Zealand can bestow, the Order of New Zealand in 2007.
In August 2015, he was named the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2015 to 2017. "Poetry has been somewhere near the centre of my consciousness for the past 70 years, so this affects me more than any other honour I could have," he said.

Born in Auckland in 1932, Stead began writing poetry while still at school and was first published as a student.
He has had novels translated into 11 European languages and as an academic has an international reputation as an expert on 20th century poetic Modernism. He is also well-known as a critic of New Zealand literature.

He was Professor of English at the University of Auckland from 1967 to 1986 when he stopped teaching to write full time, and is still Professor Emeritus. His daughter, Charlotte Grimshaw, is also a writer.

Fellow poet and Stout Memorial Fellow at Victoria University, Greg O'Brien, said Stead would consider poetry his "heart and soul".

"Carl is still writing as youthfully as ever," O'Brien said. "The work is still full of teeming energy."

I didn't do so well in Mar/Apr, so I hope to do better this time around. I've read quite a bit of Garry Disher's work, both adult and YA. I'm hoping to start his 'Wyatt' series.
Amy Witting was a writer I hadn't come across before, that was until I was looking for a wider range of writers for this challenge. I felt she deserved a look especially as she has two books in the Text Classics series.

I have several of Alex Miller's books on the book pile, I started Lovesong a few years back and was enjoying it but never finished for some reason, so I'll try again.
I've read McCarten's Death of a superhero and its sequel. I'd like to try his Spinners as it was recommended to me a few years ago.

I've still not read anything by Marillier, so this will possibly be my chance. CK Stead, well I've read My name was Judas and liked it, would like to read either Mansfield: a novel or Smith's Dream.

We have Daughter of the Forest in the library and since I am in a fantasy frame of mind this spring I may read it next month.

This should be a good ANZAC month for me. I am interested in all of these authors. I've read a few, but not all.

I'm a big fan of Juliet Marillier and I will definitely be reading one of her books. I am always a sucker for a good fairy tale re-telling and she is so good at it. I think Daughter of the Forest is a good one, if you haven't read any of hers yet.

I've read Mansfield: an novel and I liked it. It was an interesting (fictional) look at Katherine Mansfield's life, had a sort of Paris Wife feel to it.

Here's my tentative list:
Kickback
I for Isobel
Death of a Superhero
Wolfskin

Was looking at a review of My Name Was Judas here on LT and I'm just going to put a portion of the review - which incidentally has more to do with the author than the story - here and see what you all think. I will state for the record that this has not been my impression of New Zealanders in general. What do you think?

The other remarkable thing about this book is that a New Zealander like Stead should be writing a non-domestic story at all, let alone with such elan. New Zealand literary circles, such as they are (we New Zealanders, on the whole, don't go in for reading in a big way), are usually at pains to assert their domestic cultural credentials, and New Zealand literature which doesn't is viewed by the defensive Kiwi literati as either worthless or a bit too big for its boots. This "cultural cringe" factor leads to mostly worthy but humourless and dull output, which is probably *why* New Zealanders don't read much, come to think of it. Stead is one of New Zealand's foremost living writers, so perhaps he can get away with it, but in any case such an openly outward looking perspective is to be celebrated, especially when done so well.

Great looking list. I've started Kickback and it's ok so far, I know the series develops as he's still writing it. I really liked his stand alone crime novel Bitter Wash Road, it is more recent.

I loved Death of a superhero.

I read My name is Judas and enjoyed it. That review is doing the 'tall poppy' thing. I can't understand it, NZers can write what ever they like. Most NZ readers don't tackle the dryer types of literature, that's true but it's true everywhere else as well. Oh well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

The pressure is off me this month as I am trying to keep to the authors on my TBR shelves. The only one waiting is Alex Miller's, Journey to the Stone Country and I will try and read one of my Patrick White books from last month's list. I recommend In the Absence of Heroes by Anthony McCarten. I thought this was excellent and I have read My Name is Judas and Mansfield both good, as well as Lovesong, Coal Creek and I for Isobel, all worthwhile reads.
'We NZers as a whole, don't go in for reading in a big way'! I can't agree there. Has he been to any of the Writer's Festivals? No I don't agree with these comments at all.
Hmm... I see he is English, so what knowledge is he basing his perception on.

I've dived into the second Wyatt book, Paydirt after finishing up Kickback and have Daughter of the Forest ready to go.

I read my first Gary Disher - Bitter Wash Road, which, when I got ahold of my copy, was titled Hell to Pay. Mystery, police procedural, police corruption, great sense of place. Loved it!

I've read Wolfskin by Juliet Marillier. It was pretty good - not my favorite by her. I also read Kickback, which was OK. I hear the series gets better, so I will most likely read another at some point. I for Isobel was well written and really interesting. It would make a great book club discussion book, I think.

I've just finished Anthony McCarten's Spinners, his first novel I think and found it thoroughly entertaining. It starts with an alien abduction in a small Taranaki beachside town and goes on from there.

Last night I picked up Garry Disher's Deathdeal, the third Wyatt book and I'm still at the front end of Daughter of the Forest. Also read a few pages into C.K. Stead's Smith's Dream so will be continuing with that as well.

Jenn, the Wyatt books so far continue straight on from each other, so with the third he's still recovering from the events in book #1, but now carrying the fallout from book #2. I'm enjoying them for what they are.

So I've finished both Deathdeal & Crosskill by Garry Disher and will continue this series but at present I'm in queue for the next two books at the library.

I've also finished Smith's Dream by CK Stead which is the second book I've read by him. It's a bit dated but one I've long wanted to read as the film Sleeping Dogs is based on the book. Now I can say that the film pretty much follows the plot of the book. There's some discussion on revolution, communism and US intervention etc etc, what you'd expect from a political novel written in the early 1970s. I really liked the descriptions of the Coromandel in the book.

I'm enjoying Daughter of the Forest and will concentrate on this one now.

So I finished Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier and really enjoyed it and will be reading more by her. I also now have the next two Wyatt books by Garry Disher home from the library so will continue with that series through to next month.
I did have an e-book by Amy Witting out from the library and an Alex Miller book on my tbr pile, but I can't see myself getting to them any time soon. I'll start putting together next month's thread asap.

I just finished Foxmask, which is a sequel to Wolfskin. I liked it. I was planning a re-read of Daughter of the Forest, but I don't know that I will get to it this month. I have 2 books I'd like to finish before the end of the month, and it's getting short. :)