Aedeen Cremin, ARR.News
6 POSTS
Dr Aedeen Cremin is an archaeologist, who has done field work in Ireland, Portugal and Cambodia as well as in rural NSW. On retiring from the University of Sydney she moved to Yass, NSW and briefly ran a small bookshop there. She is an ardent reader as well as the author of several textbooks and encyclopedia entries.
Review – Opportunity Makes the Man: The Labours of John Alexander Gunn
This wonderful book introduces a man who was a true hero. He defeated the dragon of anthrax, found a pot of gold, married a beautiful maiden, encountered a demon and died at the peak of his powers. Anthrax is a ferocious beast: in the 1880s it could kill 500 sheep in one day ... The story is brilliantly told in Peter Symes's biography of Gunn.
Author interview – Susannah Begbie
Susannah Begbie grew up in Eden Monaro, practises as a rural doctor, and has written a prize-winning debut novel, The Deed, set in the Riverina. Australian Rural & Regional News contributor, Aedeen Cremin, strongly recommends The Deed, which she concludes is "ultimately a morality tale - a highly enjoyable one" and was able to quiz Susannah about her work, her characters and some plot choices.
Review – The Deed
A black comedy that becomes a feel-good novel? Hard to believe, but this book manages it and does so with style and charm. At first sight the characters are cartoonish ... Why would we want to read about them? Well, it’s worth doing because the first quick sketch is filled out with a sure hand, adding relief, light and shade and very soon the reader can identify with at least some of the characters. It’s still a cartoon, but now a cartoon for a lovely tapestry set in a fertile landscape.
Author interview – Pip Fioretti
Having read Pip Fioretti's Bone Lands in a sitting and finding it an "extraordinary work", Australian Rural & Regional News contributor, Dr Aedeen Cremin was keen to find out more about this "cracker of a book", its origins and its author.
Review – Bone Lands
This is a cracker of a book. I literally could not put it down and read it at a sitting. From the very first page we are plunged into the mind of the main character—we can hardly call him a ‘hero’, though he has performed heroic deeds. A former army officer, badly wounded and literally scarred by his time in the second ‘Boer War’ (1899-1902), Gus Hawkins is by 1911 a policeman, a mounted trooper, stationed in the far west of NSW on the Darling River between Bourke and Wilcannia.
Review – Ships, Shops and Sheep – The Remarkable Life of Paul Simons
This is the very personal life-story of a charismatic Welsh seaman who moved to Australia for love and once there became a captain of industry. The work is ‘as told to’ by Paul Simons to the writer Terry Larder and contains many anecdotes that illuminate aspects of life in wartime Britain and in postwar Australia ... Most of the book is concerned with Paul's life and career, enlivened with some quite racy anecdotes and more serious reflections on the way of the world. Paul has a sense of humour but also a strong moral sense.
