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Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman. After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 1989-2007. Melbourne: Melbourne U P, 2009, xii, 292 pp. ISBN: 9780522855975 (pbk) AU$29.95
http://www.mup.com.au/uploads/files/mediarelease/EMRAfterCelebration.pdf
Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman's After the Celebration provides a survey-style account of contemporary Australian fiction, or Australian Fiction 1989-2007 as the subtitle goes. It is a welcome companion to The New Diversity: Australian Fiction 1970-1988 (1989), their previous book, the chapters of which were written individually by the co-authors, as is the case with this sequel.
It is always a thrill to read and review a long-awaited book, especially a study undertaken by two eminent scholars, one of whom has lately taken centre-stage in the Australian public literary debate. Democratic in intent, After the Celebration surveys the full gamut from 'rural apocalypse fiction' to the terrorist novel, including some genres that are largely neglected by Australian scholars such as crime fiction, SF, romance, and chick lit. Whereas some scholars of literary fiction may believe there are too many neglected Australian writers for a study such as this to be sidetracked by, say, chick lit, Gelder and Salzman apparently believe that 'commercial' fiction is as worthy of attention as its more literary counterpart.
And therein lies the first dilemma when attempting to write a conspectus of Australian fiction. Even though these two Melbourne-based scholars can afford the luxury of writing 248 pages to cover almost two decades of fiction (the book includes novels and short stories, although the latter are addressed in only five pages), they still risk being criticized for omitting certain authors and titles. Exhaustiveness in this kind of venture may be the ideal but it is selfevidently beyond reach. So I am not going to quibble over why they have mentioned Antoni Jach's The Layers in the City and Napoleon's Double while omitting his gem, The Weekly Card Game (1994). Just as I was puzzled to find that Christopher Koch's Out of Ireland (1999) and The Memory Room (2007), David Ireland's The Chosen (1997), Nicholas Jose's The Custodians (1997) and Philip Salom's Toccata and Rain (2004), to name a few, did not even merit a passing mention. And this is how tricky it gets: all nit-picking aside, is it possible to reflect Australian fiction aptly by dismissing such...