Jack Marx

"Australian Tragic" by Jack Marx, offers an interesting collection of short non-fiction tales, describing the many, rarely heard, and often deeply sad stories of Australian's who have met an untimely death, or survived a series of misfortunes. Some of the stories concern famous folk, and others, average Australians. The pieces cover examples of extreme tragedy, poor luck, mental illness and general stupidity. It is well research and a very easy read. A must for anyone with an interest in the lesser known aspects of Australian cultural history.… (mehr)

A number of short essays on famous, infamous and forgotten moments from Australian history, "Australian Tragic" explores the dark side of Australia.

Some of the lesser-known tales stay with me, such as that of the mother who cracked at a bad time for her baby daughter, and others, of which I was already aware, were fleshed out, such as the tragic tale of the Luna Park fire, and what Moloch had to do with it. And then, there were the tales of people who turned out to be far more famous than you would think.

As Marx notes in his introduction, there are no doubt many other tragic stories in Australian history that are waiting to be rediscovered. Whether it's Marx or someone else discovering them, I'm looking forward to reading them.… (mehr)

The blurb of this book really really intrigued me - and it's true there are stories that I've heard of, some I knew a lot about, some simply rang a bit of a bell. There were others that I knew absolutely nothing about. As the blurb goes on to say, they range across our past and our present: the heartbreaking story of the fire at Luna Park; the unstoppable opportunist who snatched innocent men and women from Palm Island to be part of P.T. Barnsum's 'Greatest Show on Earth'; a world-class boxer who lost his battle with alcohol and ended up in an unmarked American grave; Steve Irwin, who was written off as a joke by the media, only to be hailed as a hero by the same media on his sudden death; and a man who heroically survived a war to find himself crushed and defeated by events much closer to home.

Sounds intriguing doesn't it. A real page turner. And most of the stories are intriguing, or enlightening, and there were some moments of real analysis and taut observation (such as the Steve Irwin story), but mostly, I found the book hard going. I think, in the end, the over-melodramatic storytelling style dragged the whole thing out. It made the reading of most of the stories overly difficult and the style took away too much from the content. Which is a pity. There's some history in this book that should have stood out more.… (mehr)