Chester Eagle (1933–2021)

Award-winning Australian author Chester Eagle journeys through Australian literature offering engaging essays on the works of writers including Miles Franklin, Patrick White, George Johnston, Beverley Farmer, Helen Garner and Alexis Wright. As Eagle says in his introduction: ‘The essays are not introductory. I consider them rather as a sharing of one writer’s reflections with the thoughts of readers who are looking for something new to add to their thinking. What the fellow-writer has to offer is the insight that comes from having also been at the heart of the risky business of creating and imagining. Writers can see what other writers are up to because they face the same problems and use the same tricks.’ These entertaining essays are linked by the essential notion of what it means to be a writer in Australia, and as such offer up valuable insights into our literature and country.

I first read Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo in 1961, and was much affected by it. I first read Sally Morgan's My Place in 2007 because I thought it might make a companion for, or provide a comparison with, its predecessor. It did. I was surprised by the way the two books spoke to each other. I read My Place slowly, trying to find its themes, then returned to Coonardoo, only to find, as often happens, that either the book or its reader had changed. In my first reading, years ago, I had felt a great sorrow for Coonardoo, had admired Prichard's handling of a harsh region of the country which I had never seen, but failed to notice many things about the story line which are obvious to me now.

• The un-loving of Coonardoo, A white woman's version of a black woman's life, first published in 1929


• Sally Morgan's My Place, An Indian discovers she's Aboriginal; the struggle to find a way back.

I am inclined to think that the region where Prichard's story is set is the heart of the book; that is, that the book's central character is a place, an area, a setting, a harsh and violent eco-system which even the black people find hard and white people who are unaccustomed to it find atrocious. (p.138)