Noted literary critic Peter Craven has named my new novel Mural among his best reads of 2024. In the Weekend Australian of 28 December, he called it a ‘dark and brilliant book’. It rubbed shoulders with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Until August, Salman Rushdie’s Knife, and Anne Carson’s poetry collection Wrong Norma. I was elated, of course, at having something I’ve written included in such esteemed company.
I’ve been recently contributing pieces to Pearls & Irritations, a terrific independent website that broadcasts the sorts of commentary and reporting that the populist mainstream media refuse to run these days. P&I calls itself an independent public-policy journal. It was set up by John Menadue AO, the former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet who worked for PMs Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. John was our ambassador to Japan 1977-80, and a former general manager of News …
Peerless literary critic Peter Craven says my new novel Mural is as ‘variegated and authentic as you could wish for’ in his review in Saturday’s Weekend Australian. In a six-column critique, he achieves the difficult feat of oulining the book’s hugely various elements, the complexities of its linking madness and intellect, urbanity and bewilderment, say. It wasn’t ever something that I aimed for when writing Mural, but Craven has detected the book’s several comic elements, bringing to mind for him …