Reviews/Articles
On this page you will find the full text of some reviews, as well as some comments from critics and excerpts from reviews. Most of the reviews are in regard to the recently published essay collection Sneaky Little Revolutions (NewSouth 2022). Over time, more reviews will be added, including some archival material.
There will also be some articles from newspapers and magazines, but this is website is intended for general readers, so material published in academic journals will not be included.
Somewhere other than Hydra?
What would have happened if Charmian Clift and George Johnston had made their home in Greece somewhere other than the island of Hydra? That is the hypothetical question explored in this article, published in the Hydra Book Club Journal, October 2023.
Nadia Wheatley, Spectrum, 19 August 2023
‘If Charmian Clift were alive, she would be celebrating her 100th birthday on Wednesday, August 30.’
Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald, 2022 (review of Sneaky Little Revolutions)
‘Charmian Clift is the greatest essayist this country has produced.'
Reading this dazzling book is like ‘quaffing the finest champagne on earth’ - Download as PDF
Mary Ann Elliot, The Chronicle, 2022 (review of Sneaky Little Revolutions)
Clift’s ‘perceptive, luminous observations, highlighting both the political and the personal, are an engrossing read’.
Engrossing read in new edition of Clift’s essays - Download as PDF
Nadia Wheatley, Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, 2022, re Kalymnos launch of the translation of Mermaid Singing
‘As Charmian Clift’s essays are being discovered by a new generation of readers, her first travel memoir, Mermaid Singing, has just been translated into Greek. It is this that brings me to the island of Kalymnos.’
Persona: the parallel lives of Charmian Clift
Originally broadcast by the ABC in 2004 and repeated in 2008, this innovative and moving biographical portrait was made by acclaimed ‘radio poet’ Robyn Ravlich. It features the voices of Charmian Clift, her elder son Martin Johnston and biographer Nadia Wheatley
Life Sentences Podcast: Suburban Bohemia
Published 8 July 2022
Nadia Wheatley talks to Caroline Baum about how Charmian Clift adjusted to suburbia after her return to Australia in 1964, and how she used her own lived experience and distinctive personal voice to connect with her readers.
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/life-sentences-podcast/id1559400094?i=1000569150941
Phillip Adams, ABC RN, Late Night Live, Interview with Nadia Wheatley, re Kalynos launch of the translation of Mermaid Singing
Broadcast Wed 29 Jun 2022 at 10:40pm — live from Kalymnos, where Clift’s biographer had just joined the book’s translator, Fotini Pipi, and Australian Ambassador to Greece, Arthur Spyrou, at the book launch.
Fiona Wright, Sydney Review of Books, 2022 (review of Sneaky Little Revolutions)
‘These are essays unabashed in their sensuality and liveliness, keenly curious and attuned to mystery and marvel, and they are almost always full of joy.'
Martin Johnston reading his elegy for Charmian Clift
Charmian's elder son, Martin Johnston, wrote 'Letter to Sylvia Plath' shortly after his mother's death. It is subtitled 'i.m. CC'. This recording of Martin reading the work was made for Australian Poets on Tape, UQP, 1975. To hear Martin reading other poems, visit www.martinjohnstonpoet.com. The poem appears in Martin Johnston, Beautiful Objects. Selected Poems, available from Ligature
Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries, 2022 (re Sneaky Little Revolutions)
‘My regard for Charmian Clift veers uncomfortably close to veneration, which appals me. The figure of Clift as a messy morality tale about what happens when you run off to be a writer comes at the expense of the work she produced, which is to the contrary searing in its clarity. This collection is a reminder of the work behind the legend: her bent, her conviction, and her cool. And the sentences! Clift’s essays evince an ardent attention to life in all its vagaries, which is really the most a person can give.’
Jane Caro, Walkley Award winning columnist and author 2022 (re Sneaky Little Revolutions)
‘Charmian Clift was ahead of her time and yet also representative of them. Her essays are a fascinating, thoughtful – sometimes judgemental, sometimes lyrical – window into an Australia on the brink of change. Whether you always agree with her opinions or not, she writes like a dream and her voice is wry, insightful and self-aware. It is lovely to see her gaining the recognition she has long deserved.’
Kerryn Goldsworthy, Australian Book Review, 2001 (Review Selected Essays of Charmian Clift)
‘Reading these essays, it’s easy to see why Clift became a cult figure. The chatty, charming and sometimes slightly dippy persona distracts attention just enough from the steely intelligence, the sophisticated sentence structure and the passion for causes that characterise these pieces but might otherwise rather have alarmed her readers … In an era that hadn’t yet thought too much about these things, her columns demonstrated that a woman … could and should be an active citizen of the world.’
Mark Tredinnick, The Book Bulletin, 2001 (Review Selected Essays of Charmian Clift)
‘From the women’s pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, among advertisements for wrinkle cream and mini-skirts … Clift challenged a complacent society, fashioned a sly and elegant sedition: opposing Vietnam, unmasking materialism, championing equality for women.’
Richard Cotter, Sydney Arts Guide, 2022 (review of Sneaky Little Revolutions)
'Forthright, funny and with an indefinable flair, Charmian Clift’s writing plays second fiddle to nobody.'