The New Torchlight List: New Zealand & Australia

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RNZ: The NEW Torchlight List

Arts


Jim Flynn and Wallace Chapman discuss Australasian literature. Wallace takes on Jim over Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries - too long, says Jim. Not so, says Wallace. Jim says Catton can write but she needs to get her talent under control - "too much good material". He says Janet Frame also can write "but a lot of it is spoiled by schoolgirl emotive prose". Among Australian writers Jim rates Thomas Keneally with Schindler's Ark, Peter Carey and Hannah Kent - a writer with an impressive first novel, Burial Rites, that has won nine literary awards. "Watch for Kent's next novel."