What a delectable (and delectably weird) book this is. I fell in love with O'Neill's [b:Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers|29848070|Their Brilliant Careers The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers|Ryan O'Neill|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460006993l/29848070._SY75_.jpg|50209168], in which he invents 16 Australian writers to give us their biographies, in turns sad, witty, trenchant, a Chinese puzzle box of a book. The Drover's Wives is much in the same vein but perhaps a bit more accessible to people without as much knowledge of the country's literary history.

The book opens with the original Henry Lawson short story, a key text in the invention of Australian literature, the relation of white people to the land in the 19th century, but also a work that raises questions about the nature of the Australian experiment. O'Neill then comes up with 99 variations on a theme, ranging from a TV sitcom script to an emoji narrative, a TV guide listing, a Joycean reinterpretation, a crossword, an absurdist play, and so on. This book would be good even for highschool students of the text. Although there are further puzzles to be found within (as in his other book, O'Neill has some wicked fun with in-jokes in the index) many of the interpretations are straightforwardly funny or clever.

An interesting satirist whose career I will follow closely. ( )

Quirky an clever. I loved the Children's Book, Glaswegian, Backwards, N+7,The Bush Ballad and Sitcom. ( )

A bit of a lark. A bit like the 21 versions of Stairway to Heaven, including one by Rolf Harris.

Strangely I even got the wrong Lawson short story....I thought it was the one where the wife walked the flock/ herd around in circles so as to kill off the grass ahead of the bush fire.

Did enjoy the space invaders version !

So there

15 August 2018 ( )