Reviewing of Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry
“I’m incredibly grateful when someone takes the time to review one of my titles. Far too many important books fly under the radar so I like to play my part too. I tend to admire authors who take the road less travelled – their works are often all the more valuable for that. I like to think I’ve spread the word about a unique book as well as validated and encouraged the writer. When reviewing, I keep the prospective reader most in mind - can I help them to figure out: is this the book for me? As a distinct genre, it has its pleasures: bossy perhaps, yet deeply mindful, and sometimes witty and wicked.”
Upriver cover and Social Alternatives.
Hungerford, Alice. Upriver: Untold Stories of the Franklin River Activists. Upriver Mob, 2013
“An extended radio documentary in textual form; a pastiche of voices and viewpoints; a grand assemblage of witnesses and forest advocates. Her book is … an extension of her youthful activism as well as a work of oral history… beautifully designed and strongly visual… Upriver provides an abundance of material … to analyse: the ethics of economic development; the role of government and legislation in the management of a nation’s natural resources; Australia’s record of protecting its World Heritage areas; and the characteristics of a successful campaign including the spontaneous creation of a culture of protest in songs, banners and other artwork. …Upriver ensures that the Aboriginal community’s involvement in the campaign will be better known. She highlights the power of spiritual connection with the land in all protesters. She reveals how Non-Violent Action (NVA), the philosophy and campaign strategy that the Tasmanian Wilderness Society adopted, worked in practice… superb Australian storytelling.” - In Social Alternatives Vol 34 (2) 2015.
The author and her Asian students in a West London school, 1977
Contemporary Asian Australian Poets edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey & Michelle Cahill. Puncher & Wattmann, 2013
“The poets in this anthology guarantee to shake us into a more profound, informed global alertness… richly rewarding… both in academic circles and to general readers… As a (sometime) high school teacher, I have a particular interest in poetry that speaks to formative minds… a significant proportion of whom identify with Asian ancestry… The anthology contains the kind of material teachers will dive into with alacrity… if a teacher sifts through the offerings, s/he will discover particular poems about identity, gender, globalism and race that fit curriculum needs. … Set to knock on doors and wake mainstream Australia up to the richness of the Asian voices in its midst. We tend to remember the poems we study in high school. Teachers who engage with this anthology will find much to inspire younger minds. One can imagine a future when, as adults, today’s students recall the poets who influenced them: Balasubramaniam, Bobis, Boey, Ho, Jaireth, Lim, Musa, Pham, Raffel, Ratnasingham, Shen, Ten. … a remarkable contribution to Australian literary and cultural life. ” - In Transnational Literature Vol 6 No 1 Nov 2013.
Woollett, Laura Elizabeth. The Love of a Bad Man. Scribe, 2016
“Why do some women find themselves in the orbit of a murderous male and then try to please him as he exploits, enslaves, rapes, tortures and/or kills his – female – targets? Woollett sets herself the challenge of re-imagining their lives as the maelstrom closes in.… To take the collection on its own terms, it’s about love, the wild engine of it when hitched to unhinged individuals and causes alike… This raises an important question – does she [Woollett] intend to make the reader sympathise with the couples, and with the female consort in particular? In showing the mundane nature of their concerns – their bad skins, their petty vanities, their cravings for excitement – Woollett, like her subjects, avoids confronting what violence against another human being actually means.… Clever at characterisation, at dialogue, at ambiguity – but is her parade of misery, delusion, warped eroticism and adventurousness intended to illuminate the causes of human darkness, or simply to titillate? Is she pushing us into voyeurism, making us, with our healthy capacity for empathy, collaborators? Who is manipulating whom?
On reflection, I concluded that Woollett deliberately creates a spaciousness in which a reader can think for herself. Surely these fictional biographies are meant to make us question our assumptions about innocence and guilt, love and its mythical power for good, intentions and motivations, cause and effect?” - ‘Songs of Compulsion’ in Australian Women’s Book Review Vol 27 1 & 2, 2015/16.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal (then known as Kath Walker) with Indigenous and non-Indigenous students from the mainland who the author brought to visit in 1975. Lesley is back left. Oodgeroo insisted on mixed groups of student visitors, saying, ‘We’ve got to learn to get along.’
Lesley’s first review (1995) was published in an arts broadsheet from the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. At the time, she felt that Indigenous writers were struggling for recognition and reviewed four new works: a novel by John Muk Muk Burke (Bridge of Triangles), oral histories of Murrie drovers by Herb Wharton (Cattle Camp), and two biographies about poet and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
“The greatest joy for me in reading Cochrane’s biography [Oodgeroo] was the discovery that Oodgeroo’s talents and generous life went far beyond what I had glimpsed though the small window of my youth…. It brought back many memories of my visits to her “Sitting-down place”, Moongalba, on Stradbroke Island, across Moreton Bay from Brisbane.” - ‘Black Marks, White Pages, in Boardwalk Magazine, Autumn 1995.