Sophie Cunningham
Autor von Melbourne
Über den Autor
Sophie Cunningham is an author who won the ninth Australian Book Review Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay. Her essay was entitled, Staying with the Trouble. It is about the epic walk up Broadway in New York. The Calibre Prize is worth $5000 and is intended to `encourage brilliant new essays mehr anzeigen and to foster new insights into Australian culture and society. Cunningham's winning essay is published in the April 2015 edition of ABR. she also made the shortlist for the 2015 Chief Minister's Northern Territory History Book Award with her title Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy. This same title made the shortlist for the Nita B Kibble Literary Award 2015 and the Waverly Library Award 2015 shortlist. (Bowker Author Biography) weniger anzeigen
Werke von Sophie Cunningham
Zugehörige Werke
Getagged
Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1963-12-26
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- Australia
- Wohnorte
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Berufe
- novelist
editor
non-fiction author
adjunct professor - Beziehungen
- Nicholls, Peter (1) (father)
- Organisationen
- Meanjin
RMIT University
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
Sophie Cunningham's newest book This Devastating Fever (2022) — described at the SMH as a great novel of enduring significance and enormous beauty — is receiving rave reviews everywhere so I thought it was a good time to review her debut novel Geography which turned up a couple of years ago in an OpShop. Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, South East Asia (2004), Geography is nearly two decades old now, but it's aged well and remains compelling reading.
By coincidence I see this morning that Stu from Winston's Dad has reviewed Sandor Marai's Conversations in Bolzano which is about Casanova, the (in)famous libertine whose name is synonymous with womaniser. Geography is about a woman Who Should Know Better who goes weak at the knees over An Unworthy Man. Like all Catherine's friends in the novel, the reader wants to stop this train wreck of a 'relationship'... but does not lose patience with its vulnerable narrator...
It is a measure of Sophie Cunningham's skill as an author that she makes an absorbing tale out of this. Set in two time frames in transnational settings, Geography signals from the outset that the relationship has ended, but we do not know if Catherine is over it, or if she's going to fall under Michael's spell again. And the thing is, it's not about the things that make a relationship great. As her loyal friend Marion says in bafflement:
It's just lust. (BTW, the language is 'earthy' and there's a lot of episodes that take place in bed. And other places, notably a bathroom sink which *chuckle* sounds rather uncomfortable to me.)
Marion's partner Raff says (p.87)
This self-deprecating joke has serious intent because Raff is genuinely concerned about Catherine. In the household they share with Catherine in inner-city Melbourne, these two are expecting a baby to add to their family, of which Catherine is a much-loved member.
With rare exceptions, there's a bit of a dearth of nice men in contemporary fiction, but there's a nice available man called Tony who is waiting patiently for Catherine, and Catherine's brother Finn in New York is also a nice man like Raff. The playful dialogue between these siblings sparkles with humour and shared understandings. Dialogue is a real strength in this novel.
The other strength of Geography is its settings.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/04/16/geography-2004-by-sophie-cunningham/… (mehr)
By coincidence I see this morning that Stu from Winston's Dad has reviewed Sandor Marai's Conversations in Bolzano which is about Casanova, the (in)famous libertine whose name is synonymous with womaniser. Geography is about a woman Who Should Know Better who goes weak at the knees over An Unworthy Man. Like all Catherine's friends in the novel, the reader wants to stop this train wreck of a 'relationship'... but does not lose patience with its vulnerable narrator...
It is a measure of Sophie Cunningham's skill as an author that she makes an absorbing tale out of this. Set in two time frames in transnational settings, Geography signals from the outset that the relationship has ended, but we do not know if Catherine is over it, or if she's going to fall under Michael's spell again. And the thing is, it's not about the things that make a relationship great. As her loyal friend Marion says in bafflement:
'Just don't wake up one morning to find five years have gone by and you're still hooked. He's not real, Catherine. You don't know him. Nothing is more alluring than a man you make up in your head.'
'Of course he's real.'
'No, he's not. He's drama and chaos. He's Los Angeles. He's good sex. ' Marion stared at me in exasperation. 'You don't get it, do you? With real boyfriends you do things. You hang out after you have sex. You talk about stuff. All you've done with this guy is f___, get a postcard or sit by the phone in a range of exotic locations. It is not a relationship.' (p.98)
It's just lust. (BTW, the language is 'earthy' and there's a lot of episodes that take place in bed. And other places, notably a bathroom sink which *chuckle* sounds rather uncomfortable to me.)
Marion's partner Raff says (p.87)
'You're not still interested, are you?' He looked at me. 'Jesus, you are. Women, I'll never understand them. It's the nice men like me that always get passed over.' (p.87)
This self-deprecating joke has serious intent because Raff is genuinely concerned about Catherine. In the household they share with Catherine in inner-city Melbourne, these two are expecting a baby to add to their family, of which Catherine is a much-loved member.
With rare exceptions, there's a bit of a dearth of nice men in contemporary fiction, but there's a nice available man called Tony who is waiting patiently for Catherine, and Catherine's brother Finn in New York is also a nice man like Raff. The playful dialogue between these siblings sparkles with humour and shared understandings. Dialogue is a real strength in this novel.
The other strength of Geography is its settings.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/04/16/geography-2004-by-sophie-cunningham/… (mehr)
"Melbourne" by Sophie Cunningham is one of series of books covering the history, ambience and culture of some of Australia's major cities. Each book has a slightly different feel, determined by the author's perspective and history within their city. The original version of this book was written after the Black Saturday Fires and was published in 2011. This update includes a new forward by the author. Cunningham describes her life and upbringing in Melbourne's inner-city suburbs (think Carlton, Fitzroy and alike) and adventures out to Monash University at Clayton. She examines politics, First Nation history, architecture, the environment, AFL the arts, and most importantly the cities contribution to writing and publishing. Her book is set out across a year, season by season - the changing weather being a feature of Melbourne. As a relative newcomer to the city (my 16th year) I was enthralled by the history, background and hidden secrets of the place I now call home. I had previously read the Adelaide and Brisbane books in the series and have enjoyed them all for different reasons. A great read for Melbournians and history buffs.… (mehr)
Some minor quibbles aside, it’s an interesting tale because it explores the inter-generational effects of a war-damaged childhood. I like the way Az is rendered as an optimistic character who can accept the deficiencies of her parent without blaming her, and then ‘moves on’. ‘Bird’ herself is an exotic creature of the imagination, flitting from man to man and one career to another (including 1950s movie starlet, ’60s junkie party girl and (as you might well guess from her nickname) a singer who hangs out with the jazz greats. She seems incredibly sexy and free-spirited which is why it seems so bizarre that she should end up with a shaved head and monk’s robes.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2008/12/12/bird-by-sophie-cunningham/… (mehr)
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2008/12/12/bird-by-sophie-cunningham/… (mehr)
Auszeichnungen
Dir gefällt vielleicht auch
Nahestehende Autoren
Statistikseite
- Werke
- 18
- Auch von
- 2
- Mitglieder
- 239
- Beliebtheit
- #94,925
- Bewertung
- 3.6
- Rezensionen
- 7
- ISBNs
- 46
- Favoriten
- 1
It seems almost inevitable that a book which follows something as brilliant as Calvino's masterpiece, will be a disappointment. And yet This Devastating Fever held me captivated from beginning to end. I could not have chosen a better book to follow Invisible Cities. It is that good.
This Devastating Fever has two storylines which blur into each other. There is an author called Alice in the 21st century, who shares some personal and professional history with Cunningham herself; and there is Leonard Woolf in the 20th century, about whom Alice has been trying to write a book for twenty years.
Interspersed with other things, of course, because she has to earn a living. But she is also distractible. It is lockdown in Melbourne which makes her get on with it.
Leonard Woolf (1880-1969), is of course the husband of the eminent modernist author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). Long ago I read her books but not his, and I have on the TBR a bio of Leonard (by Victoria Glendinning) but not of Virginia. Well, we all know about her, don't we? Or we think we do. Cunningham's extensively researched novel shows us otherwise.
Virginia Woolf was among the innovative women writers who pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a literary device in the early 20th century. Wikipedia says that her first novel The Voyage Out was published in the same year as Dorothy Richardson's Pointed Roofs (1915, Pilgrimage #1, see my unenthusiastic review) and that Woolf showed in this early novel, techniques used in later novels, including the gap between preceding thought and the spoken word that follows, and the lack of concordance between expression and underlying intention, together with how these reveal to us aspects of the nature of love.
Did I know that Cunningham was, in such a sophisticated way, channelling Woolf with that same technique when I shared the excerpt that depicted self-censoring in my Sensational Snippet? No, I did not. This Devastating Fever is a book that will bear re-reading, for sure. There is much to explore in a second reading: through the prism of Alice's fraught efforts to finish her stalled novel during the pandemic, Cunningham interrogates the past and the present. Through Leonard's time in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), she casts her perceptive eye over colonialism and its aftermath. She expresses her characters' fears about the world order during tumultuous geo-political times and what feels like the end of days in a looming catastrophe.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/07/30/this-devastating-fever-2022-by-sophie-cunnin...… (mehr)