Author Archives: australianfantastic

Review of the novel “When the Moon was Ours” (2016) by Anna-Marie McLemore

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by Mira Kalcker

„This is the thing I learned from loving a transgender boy who took years to say his own name: that waiting with someone, existing in that quiet, wondering space with them when they need it, is worth all the words we have in us.”

McLemore, (page Number to be added)

The final sentence of Anna-Marie McLemore’s Author’s Note in When the Moon Was Ours speaks for the whole of their brilliant, partly autobiographical novel. When the Moon was Ours tells the story of Sam and Miel, best friends living in a small town and each with more secrets than most teenagers carry. Sam paints moons he hangs all over the town and Miel grows roses from her wrist that everyone knows about. But beneath this, even more secrets are hidden. For Sam, it is his gender identity, the fact that almost no one knows that the body beneath his clothes has been assigned female at birth. Miel’s secrets, on the other hand, lie even deeper than that, buried in the pages you need to read for yourself if you want to uncover them.

The novel is something completely different from all the books I have read so far, even though my bookshelves are filled with Young Adult Literature. And it makes me wonder and even a little bit frustrated that this so important and unique novel is widely unknown. While one could argue about the slow pace of the plot, McLemore explores topics that are incredibly relevant, not only for our time but especially for young adults who grow up in this world and do not quite seem to fit in anywhere.

The most obvious theme is the one of Sam’s gender identity. Samir or Samira? is the question that is being constantly asked throughout the novel. McLemore’s husband himself is transgender and as the quote from the beginning of the article already tells, they were by his side when he found himself. This makes their work so credible, writing about something that they are clearly knowledgeable of, and as they say, they also talked to their husband about his journey. Sam struggles throughout the novel with all factors, from societal to his own feelings but ultimately comes to a conclusion which is nicely done.

However, what I personally did not really like is that they introduced the concept of bacha posh to this conflict. “Bacha posh is one way of adapting to a rigid social environment where having a son is a must for any family desiring prestige and security. Families that can’t produce a son sometimes resort to this deception, dressing up one of their girls as a boy and presenting her as a male offspring to society.” (Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/global/2011/nov/30/afghanistan-girls-dressing-as-boys). According to McLemore, this concept is mainly practiced some regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan and ends with the bacha posh returning to women when they are of age. Sam inhabits this role when he and his mother repeatedly experience cultural discrimination. While I appreciate the idea to represent a wider range of cultural concepts, I am simply not sure how brilliant McLemore’s idea truly was. Personally, I miss the credibility for why they took up bacha posh in their novel, what their connection to it is. It simply seems really random, even in the Author’s Note. Naturally, one might wonder how easily the bacha posh can later move into the role of a woman, as McLemore says, however I see tying bacha posh so tightly to being transgender as slightly problematic. It seems like an easy, overly simplified answer to the question how bacha posh impact the girl’s (or in this case, boy’s) gender identity. Especially since performativity, gender roles etc. are such an incredibly complex topic, I cannot help but think that McLemore bit off more than they can chew.

But the idea of bacha posh already points to another theme, McLemore discusses: transculturality. “When the Moon Was Ours” gently and xy speaks of what it means to grow up as a generational immigrant, from cultural practices, such as food or tales, to discrimination the characters experience. Miel is Latine [1], just as McLemore themself, Sam is Pakistani. The author also points to the idea that marginalised people always have to try harder in order to be accepted. For example, Sam’s mother is widely liked despite being Pakistani because she does exceptional work for the townspeople. Aracely, Miel’s sister and a healer, on the other hand, is quick to be judged, even though she does help people as well but within a cultural practice. Naturally, the cultural topics reach even deeper but that is something you will have to find out for yourselves. Concerning discrimination, When the Moon was Ours also touches upon internalised homophobia and how blinding it can be.

Another theme that When the Moon was Ours explores is how to find one’s own identity outside of a fixed community. McLemore does so by introducing the Bonner sisters who represent a fierce unit, a unit that has already gotten cracks when the plot of the novel begins. Developing uniquely in a fixed environment is an issue most people face growing up. Finding individuality can be scary because it usually means that the relationships we have with the people around us change. This means that we lose security and have to face our true selves. McLemore quite cleverly works this issue into her story and it becomes even more apparent through a second read.

All in all, and despite my criticism, I strongly recommend When the Moon was Ours to anyone who wants to think a little more outside of the boxes. A little magical fairy tale, a little coming-of-age story and a lot of diversity is what I would describe When the Moon was Ours as. And I personally think this is a beautiful and powerful combination.

[1] The genderneutral term “Latinx” is likely more well-known to our readers. However, most Latine people do not appreciate the term and use the more linguistically appropriate “Latine” – including McLemore.

Cargo (2017): Australian Horror and Aboriginal Culture

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by Robin Burger

Cargo is a 2017 Australian Netflix original horror film based on a 2013 short film of the same name. However, it is debatable whether it really can be described as horror since while it is certainly a “zombie movie”, it shifts away from typical horror film elements in favour of emotional storytelling, making it more of a drama film set in a horror environment rather than a brutal, gory zombie horror film, similarly to The Cured, an Irish “zombie drama” from the same year.

The film is set in rural Australia during a zombie virus pandemic where infected people completely turn 48 hours after being bitten, which is what happens to Kay and later on her husband Andy who is bitten by her. Together with their baby daughter Rosie Andy now tries to find people to take care of and raise Rosie when he turns, and soon teams up with Thoomi, a young Aboriginal girl who was kidnapped and caged by a man named Vic who uses healthy humans as bait for zombies. Thoomi’s father has already turned when she and Andy first meet and she hopes to find the “Clever Man” – a shaman who she believes could cure her father, whom she tries hiding from the rest of her community since they would most likely kill him.

The exact origin of the virus is unknown, however there is quite a plausible theory as to how it started spreading; there are numerous references to a company collecting natural gas via fracking on native Aboriginal land which is opposed by the Aboriginal community as shown by their flag at a fracking station which has “Frack off!” written on it as well as the Clever Man talking about how man was poisoning the Earth, making man sick as well, so it does seem likely that the virus originated in the gas and then spread through the air, or perhaps it is more symbolic as humans, being part of nature, poison themselves while poisoning it.

It is also noteworthy that the word “zombie” is not used in the movie, putting it in the same category as the American TV show The Walking Dead in which the concept of zombies is not known to the characters, implying both are set in a universe in which media using that word simply does not exist.

The 2013 short film of the same name has a similar storyline, but it does not feature any Aboriginal characters, while the 2017 version has a remarkable extent of Aboriginal representation as shown by Thoomi and her community who are hunters fighting against zombies – as some of the only humans successful in fending them off. During the film there are multiple scenes depicting Aboriginal customs, such as putting on white face paint to keep away ghosts and hitting one’s head with a stone after a tragic incident, believing that the heartache would stop as well once the physical pain stops. There is also a scene in which Thoomi teaches Andy Aboriginal words, after calling him “gubba” (“white fella”), which is actually a quite commonly used term in Australia, dating back to the colonial period when English convicts would call each other “guv’ner” (governor), which Aboriginal Australians picked up and turned into “gubba”, referring to white people. The film also briefly depicts an instance of racism when Vic follows Thoomi who was just freed by Andy, calling her a “black bitch” as they are hiding from him, and while “gubba” is not at all a derogatory term for whites, Thoomi’s way of using the word might indicate bad experiences she or her people have had with white people in the past (perhaps also related to the fracking taking place on native Aboriginal ground), which would also explain her initially slightly frightened reaction to Andy.

Cargo manages to fuse a classic horror movie trope with an emotional story and criticism of society, while depicting real issues Aboriginal Australians have to face in modern day Australia.

Adding to the Aboriginal representation, the film is dedicated to Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, an Aboriginal Australian singer who passed away shortly before it was released.

“The Fall of the Jade Sword” (2017) and the History of Asian Australians

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by Lisa-Marie Richter, Adesua Atamah, Ben Königsfeld, Kathleen Reiswich

We have recently read the short story “The Fall of the Jade Sword” by Stephanie Lai and two of its central topics have caught our attention. The hero addressed in the short story is named Jade Sword and we were interested in the Jade Sword as a physical object rather than just as a superhero’s name. Furthermore we were wondering how Asian immigration is represented in the story and why as it is addressed several times. In fact, the author Stephanie Lai is Chinese Australian, which makes the inclusion of Asian immigration to Australia in her story an even more intriguing subject for analysis.

The Jade Sword

In ancient China, jade was considered the most precious stone due to its symbolism of purity and moral integrity. This stone was famous for its persistence and magical properties, and was engraved and polished into several objects from jewelry to desk ornaments. Jade was first used around 6000 BCE, and green was the preferred color for a long time. However, in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, there was a fashion for white jade with a brown tinge, and again in the 1st century BCE, when a pure white jade became available from Central Asia as a result of the Han Dynasty’s expansion in 206 BCE – 220 CE.

We think that the name of the hero fits very well because the hero carries “children to safety, […] [stops] robbers in their tracks, [… ] [and rescues] the crew of an airship as it tangled on one of the new Skyscrapers in Melbourne” (“The Fall of the Jade Sword” 125) and those action fit the characteristics of a Jade Stone. The hero can be considered as persistent and pure and is always there when somebody is in need.

Asian Immigration

“We are in a different country,” she says,”and there are always new advances to make. What kind of warrior would you be if you were to stop here, where you are? There is no room for us here if we cannot adapt.“

(“The Fall of the Jade Sword” 133)

The characters in the story are constantly trying to adapt to the Australian culture and we can conclude that immigration is a main topic in Jade Sword. They think that if they cannot adapt properly, they are in the wrong place. Asian-born people currently make up roughly 12% of the population, however this varies greatly across the country. Queensland and Tasmania have the greatest shares of Australian-born people, whereas Sydney and Melbourne are Australia’s most cosmopolitan cities.


Depending on the migratory stream via which they came, Asia-origin migrants fell into two types, each with a very distinct settling experience.


They have primarily arrived from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and India. Humanitarian and family reunion migrants have generally been low-skilled and non-English speaking with the exception of nations such as the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and some have endured high and continuing rates of unemployment and welfare reliance. They have primarily migrated from Vietnam, the Philippines, and, in recent years, Mainland China.


The whole story is built around characters with Chinese roots. Starting with the names such as “Mok-Seung” or “Can Sin-Man”. What we considered very interesting were the different versions of the news. In the story there were two types of news addressed. On the one hand the Australian news and on the other hand the Chinese Broadsheet and they depicted the same topic but from different viewpoints. They show how differently the (early) Chinese Australian community is perceived by different groups.

How Suspense is Created in Grace Chan’s “Of Hunger and Fury” (2020)

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by Benedikt von Laufenberg

In this blog post, I want to discuss Grace Chan’s short story “Of Hunger and Fury“ (2020) by focussing on three different aspects. First, it should be illustrated how the village in which the mysterious incidents occur is set apart from the rest of the world. Second, I want to show how verisimilitude is created by mentioning various details and how this verisimilitude increases the mysteriousness of other elements in the story. Third, I want to investigate the relation between dreams and waking life and how this relation highlights the increasing tension of the story.

The story begins with a young couple visiting the wife’s family in Malaysia: “It’s late in the day when we drive east from Kuala Lumpur in our rented Proton. (…) I turn to the passengers window. The shopping malls and housing estates are far behind us now (p.78).“ They leave a metropolitan area behind to drive to a more rural area in which the wife’s family lives: “We drive down the main street of the village under a swollen bruise-purple sky. It’s not even five o’clock, but all the shops have drawn their rollers. Their doors are plastered with talismans: yellow strips of paper, thick with black writing (p.79).“ “Shopping malls and housing estates“ (p.78) become “talismans“ (ibid.), thereby indicating a shift of scene which changes the atmosphere and the tone. This passage is highlighted by an incident: while driving there, the husband hits something on the road but does not bother to stop (cf. p. 78).

Within the story, various details are mentioned that increase the verisimilitude: “She [the mother] smells like imitation Chanel, just as she always did (p. 80) or “Behind a fly screen, the door of my parent’s bedroom is ajar. The smell of unwashed clothes wafts out. A swaddled shape slumps in the rattan armchair, facing the curtained window. It could be my father, it could be a mountain of blankets. I think about pushing the door open, bringing a basin of water, washing his gnarled hands – hands that lashed a bamboo cane, too many times, and drew bloody welts on my little legs. I step back, ashamed (p.83).“ This abundance of details, with special focus on smells, helps to place the reader within the story. One is drawn into the narrative, which is important for every fictional narrative but might be of special importance to narratives which have mysterious elements in it. Once one is drawn into it, one is readier to accept the mysterious elements.

Dreams play an important role in the narrative. While the first dream section (cf. p. 82) is relatively short, compared with the other passages, the dream sections become longer and its contents also has an effect on the waking life, but more about that later. In the first dream section, the wife encounters the girl who has been presumably murdered. At this point it is still possible to read the dream section as what it first appears to be: a dream with no bearing on reality. The second dream section, however, has an effect on reality and is much longer. In it, the narrator has a “amber bracelet“ (p. 87) on her arm which she tries to wash away the next day. Thus, the reader no longer has the option of reading the section as literal dream passages unless the reader is willing to concede that the narrator might be unreliable. In any case, the tension of the narrative increases because the dreams with their mysterious content become more prevalent.

In this blog post, I have shown that the setting of the narrative in the village is set apart from more metropolitan areas. Moreover, I have demonstrated that the focus on details increases the verisimilitude and thus helps to ground the reader in the narrative. Lastly, it was illustrated how dreams contribute to increase the tension.

Works Cited

Chan, Grace. Of Hunger and Fury in „Black Cranes – Tales of Unquiet Women“. ed. Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn. Omnium Gatherum Los Angeles CA: 2020

Jewish Australian Speculative Fiction Event

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by Sevgi Osman

After reading The Time of The Ghosts by Gillian Polack, I decided to participate in an event organized by my lecturers, where Jewish Australian authors gathered and talked about speculative fiction, specifically Jewish Australian speculative fiction. Since I was very interested in getting to know the author herself and what motivated her to write the book, I decided to listen, take notes, and afterwards write a blog post.

The event started with everyone introducing themselves. Gillian Polack started introducing herself by saying that as an author, she wrote eleven books. Next, Jack Dann introduced himself as someone who wrote over 75 books and won many awards which I found very impressive. Jason Franks introduced himself as an author who was born in South Africa but went to Australia later. Nonetheless, he wrote books that had a considerable number of Australian words in it, which is why he considers himself a Jewish Australian writer. Lastly, Rivqa Rafael, also a Jewish Australian writer, said that she has only written short stories and is an award-winner. She also studied psychology as well. Looking at all authors in one, they’re all very diverse but have one thing in common: writing Jewish Australian speculative fiction!

After the introductions were over, the lecturers of my Blogging Australian Speculative Fiction class asked the first question, which is: Do you, as an Australian speculative writer, see yourself as Jewish-Australian? Polack started by saying that she does see herself as Jewish Australian but had an identity struggle at first. Dann answers by telling us how he can consider himself Jewish Australian even though he is an Atheist. The other two writers, Franks and Rafael, also see themselves as specifically Jewish Australian although Franks didn’t consider himself to be that until he lived there and had also moved around (living, for example, in Japan for a time) and didn’t see himself as Jewish until recently.

Continuing the discussion, the question of how they deal with critique because of being a Jewish writer and what makes being a Jewish writer so different arose. Gillian Polack had to deal with bullying while growing up because of being Jewish. For her, writing speculative fiction means that she can express her feelings through telling stories. She was taught to tell stories, for example, about family history; what happened to her ancestors. They all agree that by writing Jewish speculative fiction one can improve the world a little bit more, because there is always someone out there who is going to relate to the stories and learn from it. Then there is Jack Dann, whose writing is not all Jewish-themed but he sees it as an overall exploration. At first he didn’t start writing about Judaism because he felt like he was in danger for being Jewish. He thought that if people perceived him as a Jew, they were going to point a gun at him. All four of these creative authors explain that they see Jewish speculative fiction as approaching tragedy through the realms of fantasy and science fiction.

Rivqa Rafael mentioned that Polack’s writing is a mirror to her experience, that she writes her stories by remembering her past. Gillian Polack has mentioned that she didn’t have it easy growing up: she was being put on the spot as a Jewish author, people have asked her to deny the Holocaust and bothered her since she was of a very young age. As a medievalist, Polack had to answer quite a lot of weird and antisemitic accusations, for example that she supposedly “drinks babies blood”, or killed Christ. As difficult as it may have been from a young age, Polack does not let others make her feel uncomfortable for being Jewish. She sees her writing as therapeutic and wants to share her life through fiction.

All in all, speculative fiction is now breaking boundaries and awards are being presented, which makes Jewish Australian writers more visible. All four of these Jewish Australian authors share a mutual opinion about their writing: it is the journey to discovery, especially since it is also a part of a Jewish cultural tradition to tell stories and use humour to talk about hurtful things to cope with their past. But all authors are unique and never write in the same forms, they all share their different experiences and put them into little stories for others to read and relate. This was an overall wholesome event and I enjoyed listening to successful authors talk about their work and share their thoughts on Jewish Australian writing. By having read The Time of The Ghosts and seen where these Jewish Australian authors got their motivation to write from, I am looking forward to reading more Australian speculative fiction in the future.

10 Questions with Gillian Polack on The Time of the Ghosts – and one bonus!

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Before we move onto the second phase of our student blogging, let’s end our series of blog posts about Gillian Polack’s The Time of the Ghosts with an interview with Gillian herself!

1. Why is the novel entitled The Time of the Ghosts – which ghosts were you thinking of when you named it? And what makes now the time of the Ghosts?

I love making bad jokes. I ought to apologise for this, but I find my own tendency to bad jokes amusing, so I won’t. My working title for the novel was “One Cup of Tea at a Time” because that was pretty much how my heroes saved Canberra. This wasn’t catchy enough to sell the novel, nor did it make me chuckle inside.

The “Time of the Ghosts” is a time when Canberra is haunted, my characters are haunted … and I am haunted. (I was trying to see Canberra from ways that reflected my own culture and mainstream Aussie culture kept rudely haunting me.) I had to ask a friend to give me a ghost tour. This friend is bicultural (Indigenous Australian and European Australian) and was able to help a great deal. Since haunted Canberra gave me the solution to my own haunting, The Time of the Ghosts was perfect. (Not all my titles have this kind of history.)

2. We noticed that there was a lot of ‘mapping’ in the novel – the gardens were mapped, the magic was mapped. Any particular reason for mapping to play such a prominent role?

Well-spotted. I actually have an annotated street directory of Canberra. I can take pictures of it if you want to see it. I superimposed a Ptolemaic universe and all the important Canberra hauntings on the city and I used that as a base for the movement in the novel. Earth in that universe is around Commonwealth Bridge. Every single bit of ghost or haunting or creature that I added, fitted the Ptolemaic universe imposed on Canberra.

I did this because Canberra is a planned city and the people who did the planning were Theosophists. I also did this because I wanted a reason for Sebastian to be able to find Melusine. It gave me a sense of creating a tiny world that was coherent. Other alternate Canberras I’ve written about are not nearly this coherent.

3. In general, a lot of our students felt that the cover we had gave the wrong impression of the text. How do you feel about it? How much say did you have in it?

I had no say in the current cover. It was designed to fit sales paradigms for Amazon. I had some say on earlier covers by other publishers, but not as much as I’d like.

There was a reason for this. Some novels are really hard to do cover designs for, and my novels almost always feel into that category. When I get an exceptional cover that reflects the novel and is lovely in its own right (and I’ve had several of those) I want to throw a party.

I’m better off than some of my friends, having said that. Russian editions of Australian fantasy novels of 20 years ago have particularly bad covers. Three friends of mine who write fantasy trilogies used to show us their covers and, while we envied the translations, we did not envy the unicorns and the palm trees and the totally wrong characters.

4. In The Time of the Ghosts, you have a positive vision of a bushranger playing a big part in assisting our protagonists. We found this super interesting, since bushrangers are looked at more and more critically these days. Why did you make this choice?

There are many bushrangers linked to my region. In the 19th century, it was known as the Monaro, and there were turf wars by bushrangers at various times. Also, Jackey-Jackey’s treasure is actually supposed to be buried on Black Mountain. That’s where I began.

I’ve been interested in bushrangers since I was in primary school. When I was in Grade Six, I did a project on Ben Hall. “The Streets of Forbes” (a song) is still one of my favourites. I was never a fan of Ned Kelly and John Dunn was a mass murderer, so I didn’t depict Jackey-Jackey as a good bloke because of being in love with the notion of bushrangers.

I researched his life (which was fun) and realised that I couldn’t possibly depict the actual person. He was complex and fascinating and doesn’t easily fit in descriptions such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. He was polite to people and didn’t cause as much damage as many and he actually stood up for human rights in some difficult circumstances. There was enough charm in the real person and conscience in the real person to make his character credible. He made a good ghost. The Clarke brothers, on the other hand, have only ever been loved by their family. That family lives around Araluen way (not too far from me, very close to Jackie French). They stopped chatting with me when the novel came out…

5. Lil, at one point, describes that she sees convincing non-Australian ‘myths’ etc. to leave Australia as part of her task – yet Melusine goes to Australia because she perceives it as empty at first. Can you tell us about this development in her character?

When Australia was settled by Europeans, a doctrine known as Terra Nullius was established. It was nasty. It assumed that there were no humans here ie that settlement was just fine. It became the way that Australia was depicted – even if people knew that there have been humans here for tens of thousands of years, they tended to assume that most of the land was empty or that the people were fading or in some way lesser. It’s a pretty horrible doctrine. It was, however, part of what made Melusine feel that Australia was empty at first, and why she discovered she was wrong.

The other part of it came straight from my childhood. I grew up with Holocaust survivors who were friends of my parents and grandparents and who dropped in for a cuppa. Melbourne is one of the places that many survivors came to. More, proportionately, than went to the US. When I was an adult, I finally plucked up the courage to ask them, “Why Melbourne?”

There was no doubt that they had to flee. So much of Jewish history contains other people forcing Jews to flee or die, that I’ve known about that element since I was about six. I didn’t understand why this very British and somewhat racist country was a desirable destination.

The answer was distance. We were as far from the Shoah as it was possible to get. Australia was not well-known to Europeans in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s only recently that Europe has started to see us as a country. That is where some of the emptiness lies: in Melusine’s perception of Australia as a continent. It was free of a lot of the things she knew from Europe and thus… it was empty.

6. One thing we noticed was that each of Melusine’s tales began with a traditional “storytelling” approach or phrase. In one case, Once upon a time… In another, you introduced the date-setting a la 1984. Did you intend for each tale to reflect on a different kind of storytelling, even from their outset?

I did. I wanted to play with the idea that all stories have cultural bias and that every single introduction sets up an expectation for the reader and that part of that expectation is bias. I set up the different atmosphere and mostly retain it, but I’m doing it in order to undermine what readers think they trust.
If you want to compare this to a novel which uses a more standard fairy-tale structure, The Art of Efffective Dreaming uses the Sleeping Beauty story. It’s still subversive, but in a different way.

7. As this interview is published on a blog… Why did you decide to present Kat’s blog posts without distinguishing them much from the rest of the text (unlike Melusine’s tales, for example)?

Let me shamefully admit that I was just messing with readers’ minds. Some readers complain they have to read every word I write and I’m afraid that is entirely intentional on my part and Kat’s blog is an example of how I force long-suffering readers into that terrible hard labour. Where I am most evil in this regard is in The Year of the Fruit Cake.

8. Of course, one aspect we focused on was the novel’s Jewish and Jewish-Australian elements. By making Melusine a (quasi-immortal) Jewish fairy, you create a space for discussing Jewish experiences throughout history. Can you tell us a bit more about this decision?

This historian side of me is faced every day with the erosion of Jewish history. Just yesterday I read a blog post about the history of pasta that claimed that the first mentions of pasta outside China and its region were Arab… but the examples and terms given were from the Talmud. Since I am (by training) an historian of Western European history, I know Western Europe best and it was the obvious place to look. There are a bunch of Medieval family-origin stories (the one about Melusine as a guivre is the Lusignan one) that I looked into and that gave me a path.
There are heaps of Jewish supernatural creatures I could have used, and some of them appear in The Wizardry of Jewish Women, but I thought that a Jewish fairy based on the family ancestor stories would be more fun for readers in the context of the story I wanted to tell in The Time of the Ghosts. I needed the length of life, and I needed that European connection. When Melusine flies in the story, she looks exactly like Melusine does in the illuminated manuscript of the Duc de Berry. That’s a moment when our world touches that of the novel.

9. One thing our students noticed was that Kat’s perception of the older women doesn’t always seem to line up with their behavior. In a way, this caused the characters to ‘blend’ together into a more cohesive unit for many of them. Did you play off of Kat’s reliability in this way mainly for this effect, or more so to represent her teenage voice?

I wanted Kat to be distinctive and showing what she thought of people as a contrast to what those people did was an easy way to do this without undermining the tale itself. It also meant I could show her growing in the way teenagers do, as a contrast to the way the other characters grew, so I guess her teenagerhood was an element.

10. Last but not least, are all the recipes that are described in the book ones that you use?

Yes and no. I’m an ethnohistorian and part of my historical research is often into food and foodways. I’m also a foodie. I can cook (and have cooked) most of the recipes in the book but they reflect the foodways of each character. You can tell a lot about a person by what they cook and how they serve it. Mabel cooks traditional Australian English-origin food, for example, and will make scones in just a few minutes if anyone drops in. She will serve them with cream and with her own jam. Her recipes mostly come from my own childhood, but there will be variants in any CWA (Country Women’s Association) cookbook until the late 1970s, when Australian foodways changed a bit.

I put just one scene in to act as a path in, for anyone who wants to explore this, and that’s the scene where Kat makes the three older women coffee.

And since one of our students wrote to Gillian on her website, we’ve also got her response to his question!

Dear Gillian Polack, my name is Ben Königsfeld and I study English at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf. I take part in a course about Australian speculative fiction taught by Lucas Mattila and Tina Burger, who you might remember from the event two weeks ago called ”Jewish Australian Speculative Fiction Writers in Conversation”. We are currently writing blog posts about your book The Time Of The Ghosts and I am focusing on the stories of Melusine. I was wondering if you could tell me if anything particular inspired you to write these stories and how much, if at all, the Melusine of European folklore influenced them. Furthermore, I was wondering what your intention behind the stories were. I hope these questions aren’t an inconvenience. Sincerely, Ben Königsfeld

Dear Ben,

I was going to write you a separate reply, but most of my answer to you overlaps with the answers to the other questions. The important bit that doesn’t is that Melusine stories as I know them (the 15th century one by Jean d’Arras is the one I know best) are more ancestor tales than fairy stories. I dragged her into another genre and she is nothing like the French Melusine except in that she is magic and her non-human form is the same. It wasn’t that Jean D’Arras didn’t influence me. I took that influence and asked “What story would I have liked if I were Kat’s age? What would have grabbed her interest enough for her to read something she really shouldn’t?” The story I wanted was one of survival and of cultural survival. I wanted readers to see what certain aspects of Europe might have looked like through Jewish eyes, but needed to make those eyes privileged. I wanted to change the stories we often hear about our ancestors… that survival is enough. Survival is never enough. This is why I wrote Melusine the way I did.

I don’t know if I succeeded in my goal. I do know that I learned a lot in writing the novel. I’ll keep trying.

Gillian

Follow Gillian on Twitter!

This interview was carried out via correspondence by Tina Burger and Lucas Mattila.

Judging a Book By its Covers: The Time of the Ghosts

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by Theodora Charalambous

Everyone knows the age-old saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, and although most of us try to implement it in our daily lives, when it comes to the book buying experience things seem to be a bit different. If you’ve ever visited a library or a book store you know quite well how tedious the process of finding the “perfect” book can be when there’s an overwhelming amount of literature and more waiting for you on the shelves. You make your way to the aisle of your preferred genre and now what? What’s the deciding factor that makes one choose a book? Let’s be honest, it’s the cover! Whether it’s a beautifully illustrated cover, a hard cover with interesting engravings on it or a very minimalistic one, the one that manages to steal your attention, is the one getting picked up first.


On this blog post, I will be discussing how the three book covers made for the novel The Time of the Ghosts, written by Jewish Australian author Gillian Polack, reflect on its story and whether or not “Don’t judge book by its cover” is bad advice.

Let’s start with the original 2015 cover by Satalyte’s in-house designer, Marieke Ormsby. The design, as the writer described it, is more of a contemporary fiction cover. There is what resembles mist on top of a faded dark green background, with the main focus being four small
white figures of women, each floating on top of a white tea cup. This cover also includes the
subtitle:



Someone has to write this down.
Someone who has seen it all.
Seen the ghosts.
Eaten the food.
Even washed the dishes.

Polack‘s favorite cover edition is the second one, that was designed by Book View Cafe, more specifically by writer and cover designer Maya Bohnhoff. It consists of four photos; the very first, is one of an older woman in a white dress and a straw hat, hugging a bouquet of carrots under a tree. The other three are, a straw hat on top of a small garden table, a tea cup and lastly a picture of a road. The background is a grayish ripped cloth overlapping a deep purple one, which compliments the sepia toned photos perfectly. The cover has the writer’s personal touch, as the images of the teacup, the road and the background cloth are pictures taken by Polack herself.

Lastly the 2021 edition cover art is by NextChapter, and the one I personally own as well as the reason behind the idea of this blog post. The book cover is outlined with a small detailed design reminiscent of a golden picture frame. Two open doors reveal a rundown corridor and its rusty wooden floor, with a single window shining light to reveal the figure of a white woman wearing a wedding dress, or perhaps a gothic Victorian nightgown. Exclusively in the 2021 edition, the phrase “Enchanted Australia Book 1” hovers above the title.

When I first got my hands on this novel, looking at the recent cover, my expectations of what the story would be about definitely did not fit the actual plot. The novel follows the lives of three elderly women and the teenage girl runaway, who they’ve taken in, as well as their adventures chasing away ghosts and other supernatural creatures to protect Canberra. The Time of the Ghosts is so much more than your typical ghost story. It’s about friendship, bonding over tea, protecting the place you call home and overcoming your own inner ghosts. The first two cover art designs, undoubtedly encapsulate the essence of the novel perfectly, the women, the tea and the hidden mysteries of Canberra.

So, should we trust book covers or not? The answer is yes…but maybe not always. Covers are usually very carefully designed and picked to provide just enough information about the book to the potential reader. For example, the cover usually indicates the genre of the book, as certain trends tend to show up more across specific categories. Consequently, some covers can be misleading, as they are designed to reel in a particular demographic that would normally not be interested in the book. In the case of The Time of the Ghosts the 2021 cover art is quite deceiving, as it leads one to suspect that the novel’s genre is horror. Additionally it can create the misconception that the novel is a part of a trilogy called Enchanted Australia. However, the reason behind this design was to sell copies on Amazon, which is why it doesn’t represent the novel’s story as closely in comparison to the first two editions. Even so, my experience reading the book was a good one, making the cover’s deception a minuscule problem, if one at all.


Most of us judge books based on a list of certain criteria and not solely on one factor. Whether that list includes the title, the author, the description and so on, we cannot dismiss the importance of the cover design. Perhaps, next time you’re looking to bring a book home, try choosing it simply by its cover.

Images Used

Ormsby, M. J. (2015). The Time of the Ghosts cover art, 1st edition [Illustration]. The History Girls. https://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2016/02/discovering-what-characters-eat-gillian.html?m=1

Bohnhoff, M. (2018). The Time of The Ghosts cover art, 2nd edition [Book cover]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Time-Ghosts-Gillian-Polack/dp/1611387205

NextChapter. (2021). The Time of the Ghosts cover art, 3rd edition [Illustration]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Time-Ghosts-Enchanted-Australia-Book/dp/103456353X

Antisemitism in the Melusine stories

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by Adesua Atamah, Ben Königsfeld, Kathleen Reiswich & Lisa-Marie Richter

Gillian Polack is an Australian writer and medievalist who was born in Melbourne. She has been nominated for numerous awards throughout her career as an author and won the Ditmar Award for Best Achievement and Best Novel respectively in 2010 and 2020. Polack has released nine novels and in this blog post we will talk about the topic of antisemitism in her sixth novel The Time of The Ghosts,which was published in 2017, focusing particularly on the Melusine tales.

The idea of Melusine first appeared in European folklore, where she is depicted as a woman with the characteristics of a fish from the waist down, resembling a mermaid. Although, the Melusine of The Time of the Ghosts does not share this attribute, it is hinted at throughout the novel as Ann, who is a friend of Melusine, gifts her the figurine of a mermaid, as it is believed that if you give a mermaid an image of herself, she becomes a fairy and is young again.

The Melusine tales are told in parts through the duration of the whole novel and do not only follow her personal life for several centuries, but also automatically include the history of Judaism and antisemitism, as Melusine herself is Jewish and experiences discrimination in a Christian dominated historical society.

Antisemitism in the Melusine tales

Antisemitism means hatred targeted against Jews. One of its origins lies in Egypt and the Greeks and Romans spread the hatred by retelling Egyptian stereotypes in short stories. Therefore, the Greek and Roman empire created the roots for European antisemitism. During the Middle Ages Jews were often the scapegoat when misery and disease plagued a society. People in the Middle Ages believed that Jews were bewitched by an unholy power due to making a pact with the devil and this superstitious belief caused many Jews to be wrongly persecuted and thus allowed antisemitism to spread worldwide.

In the first Melusine story, which takes place in Kiev in 1643, it becomes obvious that there is shame in appearing Jewish in public. Melusine emphasizes that some people comment on her appearance by pointing out that she does not look Jewish (cp. p.7). This further illustrates the idea that Jewish features are viewed as undesirable in this Christian society. Further, evidence for antisemitism can be found in the first Melusine tale when non-Jewish peasants “decided that Jews [are] vermin” (p.7). Throughout the tales Melusine feels like an outcast due to her Jewish heritage, but she still tries to fit in by partly giving up her parts of her Jewish identity (cp. P.45). Additionally, this phenomenon can also be found in chapter seven, when Melusine visits a village in Germany where she notices that a lot of Jewish people converted to Christianity. The hatred towards Jewish people reached its peak during the Second World War, when millions of Jews were gruesomely murdered by the Nazi Regime. This horrifying historic era is also mentioned in the Melusine tales, when the reader learns that every Jew in the village is murdered by the Nazis 20 years later (cp.122-143).

In conclusion, the novel does a great job in presenting the deep-rooted hatred Jewish people have faced throughout too many centuries. It illustrates the antisemitism Melusine encountered closely and demonstrates how even small comments, such as saying she does not look Jewish, are hurtful. Gillian Polack’s novels often deal with Judaism and her novel The Wizardry of Jewish Women does the same while also catching your interest with topics such as feminism and family.

Bibliography

  • Polack, Gillian. The Time of the Ghosts. Next Chapter, 2021.

Different Genres in Gillian Polack’s “The Time of the Ghosts”

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by Leonora Rexhi

The novel The Time of The Ghosts by Gillian Polack contains many different elements that seem to belong to a variety of genres. If one browses a bit through the internet, one will find out that the novel is associated with three genres at once, not just one. In ”The Time of The Ghosts” these are: Horror, Fantasy and Contemporary Fantasy. All genres overlap in some aspects, but also differ.

The Horror of Ghosts?


If one pays attention only to the title of the novel, one might think that it is a horror or gothic novel, because ghosts are a classic example of this genre and the novel is primarily about ghosts; to be precise about ”three ladies” who talk ”about ghosts” (Polack 12). Polack uses other horror elements, such as ”misty figures wandering, whispering shadows” (Polack 13) and shadows, which evoke fear and fascination in the reader. In addition, Polack also uses supernatural elements in her novel, such as souls or spirits; ”I can see spirits and otherworldly things more than ghosts, though” (Polack 16). In addition, death is also a theme in the novel, which is fitting for the Horror genre; such as in the Tales of Melusine.

From Horror into Fantasy


Nevertheless, it is difficult to draw exact lines, as many genres also overlap, such as the Horror and Fantasy genres. In both genres, the forest is mentioned as a feature, as it is considered as a mystical, creepy, dark place on the one hand, but also as a magical place on the other. The forest is most themed in the Tales of Melusine, where it is told how ”the fairy Melusine flew far away to visit the forest of Broceliande” (Polack 17). This aspect also brings us to the Fantasy genre, as the story is about the fairy Melusine, and fairies are one of the most significant features of the Fantasy genre. Another aspect of the Fantasy genre is the motif of various sagas or even folktales, which is fitting for the Tales of Melusine, since it is such a saga. The character of Melusine is a legendary figure of the Middle Ages who establishes a connection between a supra-irid being and a mortal (Märchenatlas).
Even with the Fantasy genre, there are overlaps with the Contemporary Fantasy genre, although they are very similar. The Contemporary Fantasy genre is defined as a genre with ”fantasy stories set in a modern setting” (Malatesta), where the characters are set in ”present day setting, with elements of magic and/or magical creatures” (Malatesta). In the novel it shows through the characters Lil, Ann and Mabel who encounter the ghosts and other supernatural beings in Canberra.

Speculative Fiction – Umbrella Term or One Among Many Genres?

Besides the above genres, the speculative fiction genre is also very applicable to Polack’s novel; if not the most applicable. That is because it is not a plot, or a world one knows, since it does not occur in everyday life. Most significantly, as mentioned earlier, there are crossovers in the speculative fiction genre with other genres, which is the main feature. As a result, it would be difficult to assign the novel to exactly one genre.
Polack uses many different elements, different genres in her novel, which makes it a very exciting but also, above all, very versatile story, with much to offer.

Bibliography

  • A. (2020, 23. März). Melusine (mythische Gestalt). Märchenatlas. http://www.maerchenatlas.de/miszellaneen/marchenfiguren/melusine/
  • Malatesta, M. (2019a, Mai 19). Contemporary Fantasy Genre – Complete List of. Book Genres. https://book-genres.com/contemporary-fantasy-genre/
  • Malatesta, M. (2019b, Mai 19). Horror Genre Definition – Complete List of. Book Genres. https://book-genres.com/horror-genre-definition/
  • Malatesta, M. (2019c, Mai 19). Speculative Fiction Definition – Complete List of. Book Genres. https://book-genres.com/speculative-fiction-definition
  • Polack, Gillian. The Time Of The Ghosts (Enchanted Australia Book 1)

Interpretative Approaches to Women in “Time of the Ghosts” – Academic Musings

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by Benedikt von Laufenberg

This blog post is concerned with the way female characters are presented in Gillian Pollack’s The Time of the Ghost. Before the interpretation of the novel can be started, it is necessary to justify the chosen approach.

Interpretative Approaches

An interpretive approach, which completely transforms the regarded artwork is in need of justification because there are certain risks associated with it. First, there is the danger of ideologically manipulating the artwork. One might analyze Kafka’s Metamorphosis within a psychoanalytical framework but this inevitably validates the theoretical framework. X no longer means X but Y and this Y is defined outside of the work itself. Second, there is the risk of burying the artwork under a heap of theoretical assumptions. X no longer means X but might mean Y or Z. In both cases there is the danger of obscuring the artwork by interpretation instead of uncovering some elements of it. These negative consequences of interpretation are summarized by Susan Sontag: “(…) interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art” (Sontag 7). Sontag’s rather polemical solution is: “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art” (14). This last statement is too general to be applied to every artwork. But why not analyze Polack’s novel in a way that is more immediate and not so reliant on interpretation? The answer is to be found in the novel’s subject matter. As the title indicates, it is about ghosts and if one does not take this at face value, one is interpreting because the subsequent question is: what do the ghosts stand for? An answer might be patriarchy, the bourgeoisie, the Dionysian element in human consciousness, or the subconscious itself. An interpretative approach could completely transform the novel in such a way that all these answers are possible. Thus, there is always a contingent factor in interpretation because someone is choosing a path to derive this answer and not another one. The justification is the novel’s subject matter which demands to be interpreted in such an emphatic manner that it is difficult to conceive of another approach to it.

“The Three Had Action Down to A Fine Art”

The chosen interpretive approach is concerned with the way female characters are portrayed and how this representation challenges representation of female characters in the past. Jia Tolentino, writing about female characters in novels, asserts: “If you were a girl, and you were imagining your life through literature, you would go from innocence in childhood, to sadness in adolescence to bitterness in adulthood – at which point, if you hadn’t killed yourself, you would simply disappear” (Tolentino 95). It is noteworthy that the three women, who assist Kat in tackling the ghosts, are about 70. Thus, they have not killed themselves nor have they disappeared. Besides that, they have profound knowledge in fighting ghosts:

“The three had action down to a fine art. They didn’t even have to think about it anymore, so often had they moved. Mostly it was for settling restless spirits (which really didn’t take action at all) or for investigating something that turned out entirely phony, but these things were obviously preparation for now. Because now, they knew what to do”

(Polack 84)

This fighting of ghosts, which is of real importance in the novel since ghosts are supposed to be existent, has a real-life counterpart, which is described by Tolentino: “Women are hunted by memories and stories of one another – shadow selves, icons, obsessions, ghosts” (Tolentino 123). Thus, one might read the ghosts in The Time of the Ghosts as physical manifestations of the psychic processes described by Tolentino (cf. ibid.). A reading which might be substantiated. However, it has to be noted that the novel is composed under the premise that ghosts are real and that they can be fought by certain techniques which of course cannot be transferred in our world.  Thus, Tolentino’s description of Ferrante is not entirely applicable to Polack’s novel: “It is transcendent, in the way de Beauvoir meant it, to watch Ferrante’s narrators triangulate themselves from these images, in their emotional and intellectual project of asserting selfhood and control” (Tolentino 122f.).

Real Life Implications

 Even though the real-life implications of Polack’s novel are not as profound as Ferrante’s might be, the case can be made that the constellation of female characters, who assert themselves and male spectral characters, who are controlled by the female characters, do have real life implications. This is due to the fact that the reader of novels has certain expectations (cf. Tolentino 95), which stem from other books. These expectations, indoctrinated by readings, influence the way we perceive the world. Tolentino mentions Emma Bovary, the heroine of the eponymous novel: “(…) Emma, a pretty and suggestible farmer’s daughter with a taste for romance novels, gets married to a doctor named Charles Bovary and finds herself confused. Marriage is much duller than she expected (Tolentino 115). In the end, after many failed affairs, she commits suicide (cf. ibid.). Emma, disillusioned by life with no opportunity of asserting herself, does not see any other solution except from killing herself. These storylines influence perception. But our perception is equally, if not more profoundly, influenced if stories differ from those we are used to. In that sense, Polack’s novel might influence the perceptions of the readers for the better.

            It was demonstrated that an interpretative approach which adds something to the novel is justified in this case because the subject matter is open for analysis and difficult to handle without an interpretive approach. After this it was shown that Pollack’s novel differs substantially from historical representations of women.

Sources:

  • Polack, Gillian. The Time of the Ghosts, edited by Stephen Ormsby and Vonda N. McIntyre, Next Chapter, 2021.
  • Sontag, Susan. “Against interpretation“. Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Penguin Group, 2009, pp. 3-14.
  • Tolentino, Jia. “Pure Heroins“. Trick Mirror Reflections on Self-Delusion, 4th Estate, 2020, pp. 95-129.