Perfect time for me to read this book. Just moved to Canberra so feeling some nostalgia for Sydney. Vanessa writes beautifully and captures her fascination with the minutia and oddities of Sydney. ( )

Most of the reviews I’ve seen of Vanessa Berry’s Mirror Sydney are written by Sydneysiders, or by people familiar with the city if not the alternative city she evokes. Bradley Garrett at the SMH is a recent arrival from London, so for him the book offers an opportunity to explore his new home. Louis Nowra in The (paywalled) Australian finds the book Proustian; Tom Patterson at The Newtown Review of Books is unabashed about the homage to the city he loves.

But what if the reader isn’t a Sydneysider? What does the book have to offer someone not familiar with the city?

I think what it offers is a different way of looking at the built environment. Berry is a rebellious flaneur, presenting ragtag and piecemeal suburban Sydney, most often in dingy and abandoned places off the beaten track. She’s interested in the recent past in suburban ‘ruins’ where change and development swamp, but don’t entirely obliterate, what was there before. She finds these places disruptive…

Think of everything that makes up a city like Sydney. The land underlying it, the hills and valleys and waterways, then the buildings and the infrastructure, the roads and the railways. Then the living beings which animate the urban scene, the people, the animals, the trees. Then think of the details in between, all the layers, all the particulars, intricate and ever-changing.

This is a practically impossible exercise. Cities are complex entities, made up of details in unlimited abundance. (p.209)

It’s these details that explain why the book is illustrated with hand-drawings for each chapter, not exactly maps, but not collages either. (You get a sense of them from the cover design). Taking photos simply wouldn’t work. The book celebrates its idiosyncratic focus with highly selective images for each chapter. The reader begins to see with Vanessa Barry’s eye.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/12/10/mirror-sydney-by-vanessa-berry/ ( )

‘Conjuring up a shadow city of forgotten fantasies and dreams, Mirror Sydney offers similar pleasures to David Ulin’s walker’s Los Angeles or Iain Sinclair’s dispatches from a rapidly changing London. I found my heart jumping with joy as it brought parts of my lost city back to life.’ Delia Falconer ( )