Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: journalist

  • Friends Like These

    Friends Like These

    MEG ROSOFF

    New York City, 1983.” Remember this time.” This is what Beth tells herself as she arrives in the overwhelming heat, rubbish strewn, smelly streets of New York. She is dragging a suitcase and looking for her accommodation. You see Beth is doing an internship as a journalist and this is her first time in a big city. Everything is strange and oppressive, especially her small room.

    Meg Rosoff has written a young adult novel which is fresh, interesting, and engaging in Friends Like These. Beth’s character is sensible and practical, but she will be dealing with a great many unknown situations. One of the many threads in this story deals with friendship.

    Edie is another of the interns beginning work. She is smart, wealthy, and observant. She takes Beth under her wing and teaches her how to notice things, to seek out what is behind every door and how it relates to their job.

    Beth has never met anyone like Edie, who is outwardly confident, but has been seeing a therapist for many years and has a bitter relationship with her mother. Edie is overawed by Beth’s good sense and uncomplicated thoughts. A deep friendship develops, but Beth is unused to the cunning and self-seeking attitude her friend gradually displays.

    On so many levels this is almost a practical handbook for any young woman beginning a career and interacting with extremes of personalities. It is a rewarding read for any person interested in observing characters, and their development.

  • Valiant for Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent

    Valiant for Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent

    Neil McDonald and Peter Brune, have both written extensively about Australia’s role in the second World War. This biography about the journalist Chester Wilmot , is well researched, with comprehensive referencing. Both authors had access to Chester’s papers, donated to the National Library of Australia, by Chester’s widow Edith, and also papers from the Liddell Hart Centre for military archives at King’s College in London.

     Chester Wilmot was a war correspondent respected by his biographers, and this biography follows his life from early days, through entry into journalism, and finally his career as a war correspondent. His father was a great influence as he too was a journalist. He had a strong social conscience and with it, integrity to check original sources for accuracy. He valued accuracy, even when it led to criticism of military issues. He had the need to look for the underlying causes of both successes and failures. He had numerous battles with censors, who deleted large sections of his reports, in case they aided the enemy.

     Prior to World War two, Chester had travelled to Japan and Europe, where he had observed  the growth of national anger and racism, developing into fanaticism. He noted this and understood the history behind the passionate feelings.

     He was present at many of the great battles in Europe, and Papua New Guinea, broadcasting for the BBC, and ABC. His reports on the Kokoda Trail were memorable, and his confrontations with General Blamey make interesting reading, as do his encounters with Montgomery. His reports were uniquely trusted by listeners to the ABC and BBC, as well as soldiers in the field, who felt they had been listened to.

     His death in a plane crash in Greece, in 1954, at age forty two, was a loss felt very keenly by all those involved in war correspondence. This is a comprehensive cover of the experiences of one of Australia’s most renowned War correspondents.

  • Whole Wild World: A Memoir

    Whole Wild World: A Memoir

    Award winning journalist Tom Dusevic offers a wonderful look back in time as he allows us to see, first hand, just what it was like growing up in post war Australia as the child of Yugoslavian migrants trying their best to fit into a new and totally foreign way of life, in a country that was so very different to their beloved homeland.

    As a young child Dusevic was always one to challenge the status quo, deciding to leave home at the young and tender age of not quite four, as he figured that ‘life under a dictatorship’ was not to be tolerated. After all he should be allowed to have a lolly! And if not he should have to know Why Not!

    This challenging, pushing the boundaries, looking for the alternative option, was to become a formative aspect of his character as he grew into manhood in the suburbs of Sydney, at a time when it was a safe to play in the streets. His family where a painful and yet respected component of his life, hanging out with mates was first and foremost a priority, there was a time for daydreaming, castle building and a large backyard to play in. A time when parental supervision was minimal which gave a great scope to the games played and places discovered.

    We are more than entertained by the antics that went on at school, many of which readers will relate to all too well, as he moved from primary to high school, with his love of knowledge seeing him and his teammates as challengers on the quiz show ‘It’s Academic’, moving on to become the champions of two states and winning a $500 bank account each: unimaginable wealth back then.

    His journey into the sporting arena as required growing up in Australia was at various time painful, enjoyable and reluctant, but always underpinned by a desire to win or at least come out not to badly beaten.

    After he had become well known as one of the winning school contestants on It’s Academic, he received considerable fan-mail from girls watching the show, some so ‘red-hot’, it was astonishing but also helped paved the way for his introduction to girls as more than just friends.

    As the years move along he has to begin to figure out what it is he wants to do once school ends. His brother Sam has gone on to University but Tom is not sure this is the pathways for him. Journalism beckons with his fall back plan to become eventually a Barrister if all else fails.

    Always one to make the most of every opportunity he pushes the boundaries in his final year at school, places a great deal of faith in the supposition that he will find a newspaper who will take him on as a Cadet and sets his sights high.

    This is a journey about coming of age; of being divided in culture, looking back at a time when life seemed to be so simple, but was not and eventually finally discovering what home, life, living and making your own pathway is truly all about.

    A reflective, funny, wry and totally enjoyable look at just what life was like for the child of an immigrant family struggling to find a way to fit in, to begin again and to eventually become settled members of the Australian way of life, lumps, bumps, relatives, politics and all!