Olive gathering, on an Ancient Greek amphora, circa 520 BC by the Antimenes Painter, in the black figure style.
By Tamara Lewit, The University of Melbourne
Today, olive oil is often hailed as helping to protect against disease, but beliefs in its medicinal or even sacred properties date back millennia.
Olive oil was used for healing and purification and associated with important rituals from at least the second millennium BCE, in ways which still influence practices today.
A holy liquid
Mid 2nd millennium BCE texts from the capital of the Hittite empire (in what is now Turkey) describe the anointing of a newborn child and the mother to ward off the dangers of birth.
In ancient Syria the high priestess of the god Baal was initiated with an anointing of “fine oil of the temple”.
Mycenaean Bronze Age tablets from the palace of Pylos in what is now Greece record the making of special scented oil to be offered to the gods.
In the Hebrew scriptures, oil is used to to initiate priests and kings such as David and Solomon, and to sanctify ritual objects.
A preserver of health
Olive oil was used by Greeks and Romans for cleansing and healing.
Oiling while bathing was a vital part of health regimes. No visit to the baths was complete without rubbing your body with oil (in place of soap) and scraping it off with a metal tool called a strigil.
Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote:
There are two liquids that are especially agreeable to the human body: wine inside and oil outside […] but oil is an absolute necessity.
He recommended olive oil as a cure for nettle stings and a base for many medicinal herbs.
Celsus, a Greek medical writer of the second century CE Roman Empire, advised:
If an exhausted person is bordering on a fever, they should immerse themselves […] in warm water to which a little oil has been added and then gently rub the whole body […] with oil.
Another medical writer Soranus says to anoint a newborn with olive oil, as had the Hittites 1,500 years earlier.
A recent study has shown that perfumed oil was used in Greco-Roman offerings to deities, and for the ritual anointing of statues.
Olive oil and Christianity
When Christianity developed in the later Roman Empire, the Greek term Christos was used as a translation of the Hebrew word messiah, meaning “one anointed with sacred oil”. This was the origin of the words Christian and Christ.
Scented and blessed olive oil called a chrism was used for sanctification and purification.
A church council of 381 CE records that:
Those who […] are being saved from the heretics […] are first anointed with holy chrism on the forehead, eyes, nostrils, mouth and ears […] and then we baptise them.
Such perfumed olive oil was (and indeed still is) used to sanctify liturgical objects such as chalices, in rituals such as the ordination of priests, before baptism, and to anoint the sick.
Oil is still used in religious rituals today.Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Churches were lit by a new type of lamp called a polycandelon, which had multiple glass bowls filled with scented olive oil, as well as lamps made in symbolic shapes such as a dove, crown or boat. These symbolised the light of God and contributed a heavenly fragrance.
The oil from saints’ tombs and sacred places was reputed to bring about healing miracles. Reliquaries containing the remains of saints had special holes for oil to be poured in and then dispensed.
This and the scented oil from lamps at martyrs’ shrines was used to anoint the sick.
A ninth century text describes how at Saint Menas’ tomb in Egypt:
a lamp before the grave […] burned day and night and was filled with fragrant oil. And when anyone took of this lamp oil […] and rubbed a sick person with it the sick person was healed.
Pilgrims who visited holy sites collected such oil in flasks, hoping to take home its healing power.
Pilgrims used flasks like this to carry oil from the pilgrimage site of Saint Menas.Rogers Fund, 1927/The Met
The early Church not only used olive oil, but also produced it.
Sixth century and later monastic and church archives record gifts of olive groves and enslaved workers to ecclesiastical and monastic estates.
This is confirmed by my own recent research into archaeological finds of oil production remains in episcopal complexes, annexes attached to churches, and in monasteries.
Christian symbols appear on the seals of oil transport containers from a fourth century CE shipwreck recently found off the coast of Mallorca.
Their painted inscriptions identify the contents as a special “sweet oil”, perhaps produced at monasteries in southern Spain and marketed for ritual and healing use.
Olive oil today
Ancient uses of olive oil for rituals of initiation, sanctification and healing have a modern legacy.
In 2023, oil for the coronation of Charles III was harvested from groves on the Mount of Olives, processed at local monasteries and blessed by archbishops in Jerusalem.
The anointing ritual continued a tradition derived from early medieval coronations of the first English kings, in turn modelled on that of the ancient King Solomon .
Olive oil is still used in Christian sacraments, the consecration of churches, and anointing of the sick.
Beautiful to taste, touch, see and smell, olive oil has had a special significance in human history. Its uses today have grown from the roots of a long tradition.
Tamara Lewit, Honorary Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is an ambitious, inventive and often exhilarating take on one of Western civilisation’s most enduring stories. Photograph:Matt Damon as Odysseus (centre) by Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal.
By Anthony Macris
I first read The Odyssey during the summer holidays when I was 15 years old. Parked under the shade of the mulberry tree in our Brisbane backyard, I would read, grab a few mulberries, then read some more, my fingers sometimes staining the pages dark purple. It was a secondhand Penguin Classics edition, translated by E.V. Rieu, its yellowing paper and creased spine, to my teenage eyes, somehow as ancient as the work itself.
Every time I read the Homeric epithet “wine-dark sea” – one of the repeated formulas that bear the imprint of the epic’s oral beginnings, such as “dawn, fresh and rosy-fingered” and “Zeus the thunderer” – I’d feel as though my purple fingerprints had somehow become part of the poem.
Between falling half asleep in the stupefying Queensland heat, or running inside to escape a sudden summer storm, I immersed myself in the glittering Aegean and its rocky islands, the stage set on which the goddess Athena attempts to safely usher Odysseus, her favourite, home to Ithaka. The whole time I read, I watched out for Kythera, the island where my mother was born, or Kos, my father’s island, wondering if Odysseus would land there. There was no mention of Kos, but he was blown off course past Kythera, which sent me into a brief frenzy of excitement.
Back then, there was no way I could have known that, nearly half a century later, I would be sitting in an IMAX theatre in Sydney’s Darling Harbour, watching a film version directed by British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan and reportedly budgeted at US$250 million. I’m no longer in the family living room, peering into the tiny black-and-white TV screen, watching Kirk Douglas strut his stuff as Odysseus in Ulysses (1954), a favourite Saturday afternoon rerun.
This time, the screen surrounding me is so large I’m inside the frame, immersed in a hyperreal, Bronze Age universe where Matt Damon plays the wily Odysseus, King of Ithaca, the hero of Troy who has fallen foul of Poseidon. Douglas’ brash grin has been replaced by Damon’s restrained realism, and there’s not a papier-mâché temple to be seen. Nolan’s film is a very different kind of Odyssey indeed.
Mysterious beauty
I’ve always wanted to atone for my first, rather naive reading of The Odyssey, enjoyable as it was. So, as I prepared to write this essay, I resolved to try reading it, at least in part, in the original ancient Greek. I know some modern Greek – not as much as my parents would have liked – but armed with a dual-language text, how hard could it be? I bought a Loeb Classical Library edition and imagined I’d compare the Greek and English line by line. It would be slow going, but perfectly doable.
If any classicist is reading this, please stop laughing now. No, you can’t read The Odyssey this way. Some words are the same (well, sort of), but many are not, and the winding syntax is radically different, with barely a subject-verb-object sentence in sight.
Even so, what I could glean beguiled me. The pages of ancient Greek text that unfolded before me were like an ancient dry-stone wall, interlaced with vines and intricate decorative markings. They possessed a beauty I couldn’t quite penetrate, but couldn’t stop looking at either, making them all the more mysterious and uncanny.
Perhaps hearing it read aloud would help? Online, I found recitations of The Odyssey in ancient Greek. The sound of it was unlike anything I’d heard before. I could hear a music similar to modern Greek, but now harnessed to the driving rhythm of Homer’s dactylic hexameter. It belonged to a much more distant world, lost in time but still omnipresent, which only deepened my sense of curiosity and enchantment.
But, enchanting as it was, it was still largely incomprehensible. Reluctantly, I abandoned my experiment. This son of the Greek diaspora was not going to crack that particular code.
Over the years, I’ve read translations by Robert Fagles (1996) and Robert Fitzgerald (1961). While I found them enjoyable, Emily Wilson’s 2017 verse translation, which Christopher Nolan has cited as an inspiration for his film, immediately struck me as having a much greater directness.
The appeal of Wilson’s translation is hard to resist, not least for the way it addresses gender biases in some previous versions. The density of language that can make some translations such a battle for contemporary anglophone audiences has given way to something more natural. Overall, Wilson’s approach leans towards George Orwell’s famed windowpane, where language is made transparent so that it can foreground the larger meanings of the text. That transparency proves deeply immersive, like looking at a painting stripped of centuries of varnish.
But this approach isn’t without its risks. The Homeric style is meant to have a strong poetic dimension in its rhythm, musicality and patterns of sound. Would this come through as strongly as in some of her predecessors?
Well, yes, mostly, but in its own way. The scene that introduces the goddess Calypso in her cave is an example of where the simplicity of style and lyrical flight come together:
There sat Calypso with her braided curls.
Beneath the hearth a mighty fire was burning.
The scent of citrus and brittle pine
suffused the island. Inside, she was singing
and weaving with a shuttle made of gold.
Her voice was beautiful. Around the cave
a luscious forest flourished: alder, poplar,
and scented cypress. It was full of wings.
Birds nested there but hunted out at sea:
the owls, the hawks, the gulls with gaping beaks.
A ripe and verdant vine, hung thick with grapes,
was stretched to coil around her cave.
Such images, so freshly rendered in the English verse meter of iambic pentameter, are light in touch yet richly sensuous, and more than succeed in opening up the Homeric universe to a new audience.
Cinematic odysseys
Nolan has taken a major gamble on a big-budget adaptation of The Odyssey. Its translation to the screen has a chequered history, producing decidedly mixed results.
Broadly speaking, in terms of English-language productions, there are two kinds of adaptation.
There are the relatively faithful versions that attempt to transpose the Homeric myth directly to the screen, complete with tunics, ships, gods and monsters. The most recent full attempt is the 1997 television miniseries. A freewheeling adaptation with soulful performances by Armand Assante as Odysseus and Greta Scacchi as his wife Penelope, its monsters – created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop – inflect its spirited, mythic sweep with a somewhat bizarre Muppets-gone-R-rated quality.
Then there are the broader reimaginings, such as the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), which, taking a major cue from James Joyce’s modernist novel Ulysses, transposes the story to the American South. Theo Angelopoulos’ Ulysses’ Gaze (1995) – only partially in English – is an even looser reimagining, built around the wanderings of a filmmaker.
Nolan’s version is very much the ultimate high-risk venture: a full-blown historical Odyssey, set in ancient Greece, that aspires to capture the spirit of Homer.
On the practical side, it would seem that the major barrier that thwarted previous attempts has finally been removed: an epic-sized budget. Never before has so much money been thrown at getting The Odyssey up on the big screen, a sum perhaps only someone with Nolan’s clout could command, allowing him to employ filmmaking techniques such as shooting the entire film in IMAX.
Such huge resources allow The Odyssey to be rendered convincingly without lapsing into the kind of artificial mise-en-scène that so undermined earlier attempts at comprehensive adaptations.
If only it had always been so. The sword-and-sandal film – an umbrella term encompassing everything from the often B-grade Italian films known as peplum to Hollywood prestige epics – has long struggled with uneven production values and limited special effects. Set in the Greco-Roman world, these historical spectacles have frequently drawn on the Trojan War cycle and other material from Greek mythology, though perhaps even more often from ancient Greece’s gargantuan, attention-hogging offspring: ancient Rome.
Mid-20th-century Greek examples of sword and sandal, like The 300 Spartans (1962) and Jason & the Argonuats (1963), usually had middling budgets, but Roman examples went fully imperial. Films like Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) are all purple robes and gleaming breastplates, ranked armies marching beneath an eagle insignia, vast temple complexes with marble statuary and flagstones.
The Roman epic reached its giddy heights, both in thematic pretension and budgetary
blowout, with Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s gaudy Cleopatra (1963). Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s four-hour marathon of quasi-Shakespearean emoting cost US$44 million to produce, the equivalent of around US$450 million in today’s dollars. While the film did strong box office, its failure to recoup those costs nearly ruined 20th Century Fox.
Its failure marked a decisive turning point in the commercial viability of the genre. Since then, more recent Roman epics like Gladiator (2000) and Gladiator II (2024) have somewhat revived the genre’s fortunes. On the Greek side, so did Troy (2004), based on The Iliad and starring Brad Pitt, and the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans.
But has Nolan finally achieved what Mankiewicz – one of the great directors of Hollywood’s golden age – could not: a historical epic that is both artistically convincing and a popular success?
Christopher Nolan has taken a major gamble producing a big-budget version of The Odyssey.Universal Studios
The narrative design of The Odyssey
Part of the magic of Homer’s Odyssey lies in the fact that it is set in an older, more modest world than ancient Rome, one that doesn’t lend itself to the spectacle of lavish sets and costumes. It is by turns visceral and bloody, lyrical and enchanted, bonded to the earth and the elements, to its people, plants and animals.
Here, the earthly sphere is ruled by Olympus. Countless oxen are sacrificed to the gods and then feasted on. The sea, controlled by Poseidon, pounds, inundates, splinters masts, and foils Odysseus’ journey at every turn.
The world of The Odyssey is also full of desire. Gods lie with mortals and produce offspring. Odysseus, handsome and charismatic, godlike but not a god, is a victim of his own manly bearing. Circe the witch finds him irresistible, seducing him into staying with her on the island of Aeaea for a year. Calypso is so smitten she holds him captive, offering him eternal life and love.
Tying all this together is a ten-year voyage whose main purpose is nostos, the return home. But to get home Odysseus must traverse a sea governed by a force hostile to him: Poseidon. This story frame, deceptively simple, is ingeniously conceived, balancing architectural clarity with an intricacy of narration that can easily go unnoticed.
Matt Damon as Odysseus.Universal Studios
The most powerful narrative gambit is to begin near the end with Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, trying to end the disorder that has overtaken his father’s house. For the first four books of the 24 that make up the epic poem, its hero, Odysseus, is absent.
Telemachus is unable to keep Penelope’s suitors at bay indefinitely. They constantly pressure her to accept that her husband is dead and to marry one of them, who would thus usurp Odysseus’ place as king. Unable to resolve the problem by force, Telemachus instead sets out in search of his father.
The story is thus framed by a son searching for the father he has scarcely seen, while, far across the sea, a father struggles to return to his family and homeland.
Separating Odysseus and Telemachus is a series of obstacles, not least the constant meddling of the gods, who treat mere mortals as proxies through which they conduct their private feuds.
Lustful, capricious, pierced by the smallest slight, the gods occupy a narrative above the main narrative. Yet because they so often assume human guise in order to intervene directly in mortal affairs, they also exist within the story of Odysseus’ adventures.
Within the voyage itself there are further conflicts: between Odysseus and his men, and between them and the strange beings they encounter from island to island. In one episode, the crew urges Odysseus not to venture further into the cave of Polyphemus (the Cyclops), where some of them end up meeting a grisly fate. In another, just when they finally catch sight of Ithaka, crew members, believing that Odysseus is concealing treasure from them, open the bag of winds given to him by Aeolus, the king of a small island. Once released, the winds blow them all the way back to Aeolus’ island.
In this way, we can see how the mythological and thematic dimensions of The Odyssey derive much of their enduring power from the ingenuity of its narrative design, which binds the poem’s many elements into a coherent whole. That design has shaped storytelling for nearly three millennia, from 5th-century Greek tragedy to Aristotle’s Poetics and beyond.
Nolan’s Odyssey
There can be little doubt that it is this richly layered approach to storytelling that has so attracted Christopher Nolan.
Nolan’s Odyssey, which he not only directed, but also wrote and co-produced, is a deep dive into the Homeric universe that is respectful of the spirit of its source material, but not afraid to play fast and loose with it. Clocking in it at three hours, it is a serious attempt at recasting the prestige epic for a new generation.
It is also clearly a passion project. Nolan’s interest in Homeric epic is longstanding. Originally hired to direct Troy, he lost the project when Wolfgang Petersen, who had first developed it, wanted it back after Warner Bros. cancelled his Batman vs. Superman film. As compensation, the studio offered Nolan Batman Begins instead.
Nolan’s fascination with Homer and his desire to put his own stamp on The Odyssey are evident from the prologue. In Odysseus’ feasting hall on Ithaka, a bard beats his staff on the floor and, in rhythmic cadence, begins to tell his story. A moment later, we cut to the Trojan Horse, half buried at the shoreline. Rearing from the beach like the half-buried Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968), the fabled horse already looks like the relic of a ruined civilisation.
In Nolan’s film, the fabled Trojan Horse resembles a relic of a ruined civilisation.Universal Studios
This sequence – beautiful, unsettling, elemental – sets the tone for the
entire film. Visually, Nolan’s Odyssey adheres to a pristine naturalism that alternates with moodier textures. The Aegean is by turns a sparkling blue and a muted purple (the wine dark sea) and war scenes are rendered in vivid washes of burnt red and orange that evoke the nuclear blast of Nolan’s critical and commercial triumph, Oppenheimer (2023). Settings are credibly ancient, and costumes attempt to be true to period, with tweaks made for current tastes or stylistic effects.
In terms of genre, the film avoids the temptation to turn Homer into either contemporary fantasy or a succession of action set-pieces, devoid of moral or emotional complexity. Its performances – led by a core cast of Matt Damon as Odysseus, Ann Hathaway as Penelope, and Tom Holland as Telemachus – display little of the staginess of the classic epics of yesteryear.
I couldn’t help but wince, however, when Telemachus calls his parents “Mom” and “Dad”. Here, and elsewhere, the tonal dissonance caused by contemporary idioms isn’t worth the attempt at relatability. Otherwise, the acting seems well pitched for a contemporary epic.
Homecoming and story layers
The theme of homecoming lies at the heart of another Nolan film, the space epic Interstellar (2014). There, an astronaut must overcome the barriers of space-time so that he can be reunited with his family. As in The Odyssey, the emotional journey is every bit as important as the physical one.
Here, too, Nolan understands that nostos is not simply a voyage across the sea, but the emotional thread that binds the story’s many strands together. Odysseus – husband, father, king, a warrior scarred by war – carries many burdens as he tries
to get home after the ten-year siege of Troy.
At first I was worried that Damon’s quiet authority might not carry the emotional range the character requires: bravado as well as level-headedness, moments of weakness (or hubris, when he taunts the Cyclops) as well as resilience and resourcefulness.
There may be an argument for an Odysseus that lights up the screen, but it can’t be denied that Damon’s performance – with the rougher edges of Odysseus’ character smoothed off for modern sensibilities – draws you in. His love for Penelope, the wife he longs to return to, is never in doubt, and it is this longing that gives emotional coherence to the film’s episodic journey.
With Odysseus forced to carry the full weight of the movie’s spectacle across the open seas, it falls to Penelope to sustain the mirror storyline of palace intrigue. Often obscured by a lattice screen, she sits weaving in a room that looks directly into the feasting hall. She is aware of the suitors’ every move, and they of hers. This choice of setting creates an extraordinary dramatic tension, reminding us that while Odysseus struggles to return home, home itself remains under siege; his wife is trapped in a cage.
Regal and resourceful, this Odyssey’s Penelope can also be unashamedly emotional. Her anxiety at her husband’s disappearance, the pressures of a potential forced marriage and the threats to her son’s life, are all expressed by Hathaway in scenes of raw feeling that give her character psychological realism. If Damon embodies the journey home, Hathaway embodies what home means.
Ann Hathaway’s portrayal of Penelope is unashaedly emotional.Universal Studios
Assembling the story
Juggling the multiple storylines of The Odyssey is no easy task, and few directors are better equipped to do it than Nolan. From his first film, the no-budget feature Following (1998), he has shown an interest in complex temporal plot structures. Such complexity marks a major break with standard sword-and-sandal epics, which can suffer from a plodding linearity that stifles innovative storytelling.
Instead, Nolan has deftly assembled, if not always smoothly, The Odyssey’s main story elements into the kind of layered narrative that the Homeric epic demands. The overarching frame of Odysseus’ return to Ithaka remains firmly in place, together with the parallel stories of Telemachus and Penelope, all these elements bookended by the siege of Troy.
As if this weren’t enough, Nolan adds a subplot that does not appear in Homer: a conflict between the leader of the suitors, Antinous (played with gleeful slipperiness by Robert Pattinson), and Sinon (Elliot Page), a character borrowed from Virgil’s Aeneid.
To this plot architecture, Nolan adds his signature storytelling style: the manipulation of time for dramatic effect. Already present in Homer, Nolan takes it to the next level. The narrative acquires a kind of Rubik’s Cube quality, inviting the spectator to rearrange fragments of the story in the mind as it unfolds.
Running through the film are abrupt flashbacks, recurring images and narrative fragments that gradually acquire new meaning as the film progresses. A sword slices through the neck of a stone god, setting off sparks as the head severs. We see the image several times, always wondering where it belongs. When its dramatic place in the story is finally revealed, the effect is a satisfying moment of recognition.
Robert Pattinson plays the slippery Antinous.Universal Studios
Genres and mash-ups
There is also a mash-up dimension to Nolan’s Odyssey, or what we used to call postmodern pastiche, a practice now so prevalent that we take it for granted. For example, Nolan’s treatment of the Circe episode veers into psychological horror. Circe’s isolated, dilapidated hut, and the sinister way she entices Odysseus and his men to eat the food laced with herbs that transforms them into pigs, bear the unmistakable imprint of the horror genre.
The transformation itself is grotesque, and a good example of Nolan’s refusal to rely heavily on CGI, if at all. Instead, prosthetics, staging and judicious editing are used to skin-crawling effect.
The episode of the Laestrygonians, where Odysseus and his men encounter a race of giants, at times looks like something out of John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981). Nolan’s giants wear heavy silver-coloured armour, whose forms evoke a much later medieval world. Elsewhere, Nolan’s treatment of the bleak, rugged shorelines, shot in muted tones, recalls the windswept beaches of his World War II film, Dunkirk (2017).
There was one moment, however, where this stylistic hybridity went a little too far. Nolan has insisted that the costume of Agamemnon – leader of the Greek forces besieging Troy – is grounded in historical accuracy. Yet the curved helmet, sweeping cape and overall silhouette have invited comparisons with Batman.
The first appearance of the costume struck me as a clever juxtaposition of antiquity and popular culture. But when Agamemnon reappears in the same costume striding through the gates of Troy, the allusion becomes distracting. For a moment, it looks as though Batman has sacked Troy, with Odysseus reduced to Robin, the boy wonder who helped make it all happen with his wooden horse.
A definitive screen Odyssey?
Much can be forgiven, however, for the poignant episode that is Odysseus’ visit to Hades. As I watched the film, my teenage reading of The Odyssey came flooding back to me. I realised that this memory of Hades had always been somehow lurking in the back of my mind: a land of the dead that was infinitely sad, yet somehow more humane than the punitive Christian hell.
It is Circe who tells Odysseus how to reach Hades and how to perform the necromantic rites that will summon the dead. The Greek term for a journey into the underworld is katabasis, though in Homer, Odysseus does not literally descend into Hades. He crosses Oceanus, beaches his ship near the land of the Cimmerians, and proceeds to the meeting place of the underworld rivers.
The place where Odysseus summons the dead is a deserted riverbank, and in Nolan’s version it is exquisitely rendered: wreathed in cloud and mist, its mystical, primeval essence is fully captured. After Odysseus has slaughtered the sheep and held them over the pit so that their blood runs into it, the dead appear. It is only once they have drunk the black blood that they are permitted to speak.
The desolate shore, the gaunt silhouettes of the dead, hungry to lament, provide more than a counterpoint to the dramas of the earthly world and the realm of the gods above. They complete the Homeric universe, placing human existence within its larger context of suffering and mortality.
Nolan’s Odyssey is an ambitious, inventive and often exhilarating take on one of Western civilisation’s most enduring stories. He has managed better than most to negotiate the limitations facing any Hollywood director attempting to balance financial risk, audience expectations and his own artistic vision, without which the film would have no beating heart.
Is it a definitive film version of Homer’s Odyssey? No, it isn’t; nor should it be. In fact, it can’t be.
Like all its predecessors, it is the latest attempt to do justice to an ancient story that will always remain just beyond our reach, and whose infinite interpretability tells us as much about ourselves as the mythologised Bronze Age from which it springs.
Cartier's legendary 'Tutti Frutti' necklace, a riot of carved emeralds, rubies and sapphires, that captured the French house's bold interwar imagination in 1936 and a new modern elegance. Cartier Collection. Photograph: Vincet Wulveryck. Cover picture of Hermes AW26 by Max Farago,
By Sasha Grishin
Harper's Bazaar editor and Parisian
socialite, Daisy Fellowes, wearing
the 'Tutti Frutti' Hindou necklace
in its original form, in 1937.
Photograph: Cecil Beaton
Founded in Paris 179 years ago, Cartier has fostered a legendary reputation as the creator of luxury goods for royalty, the aristocracy, film stars, and the generally wealthy. The English king Edward VII famously referred to Cartier as “the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers”.
The glittering magnificence of the Cartier style through the ages has been brought together in a major exhibition by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, now being presented at the National Gallery of Victoria.
An Instant Hit
Curated over almost a decade by the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Helen Molesworth, the Cartier show opened in London last year for a seven-month season and promptly sold out.
With almost 350 items on display, it was celebrated by many as one of the best shows of 2025. However, one criticism was the exhibition was too cramped, and the inevitable small scale of most of the objects resulted in a crowd crush within darkened spaces.
King Edward VII famously referred to Cartier as “the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers”
Director of the Cartier Collection,
Pascale Lepeu, at the new exhibition
Melbourne, at the NGV International.
The NGV iteration of the exhibition, with almost 400 items, presents a number of alterations to the checklist of exhibits, such as the inclusion of necklaces and bodice ornaments owned by Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba. Melba was an early client of the brand, with Pierre Cartier among her fans.
More significantly, the NGV has collaborated with internationally renowned designers to reimagine the exhibition, following in a tradition it has established for itself over several years.
The gallery has collaborated with Studio Sabine Marcelis and CLOUD, two multidisciplinary design practices based in Rotterdam, in The Netherlands.
Marcelis evokes the Cartier colour palette in her design, while CLOUD has built on the Cartier geometric forms to create light-filled architectural structures that are involved in a creative dialogue with the jewellery.
It was Alfred’s three sons who made Cartier into a powerhouse of fashion design, with offices in Paris, London, New York and St Petersburg
Alfred Cartier (second from right) with his three sons
Pierre, Louis and Jacques, 1922. Cartier Collection
Photograph: Vincent Wulveryck.
A Thumbnail Sketch of the Cartier Style
The thumbnail sketch of the development of the Cartier style is mandatory for understanding the exhibition.
Louis-François Cartier founded the firm in Paris in 1847, and in 1874 passed it to his son Alfred.
It was Alfred’s three sons – Louis, Pierre and Jacques – who internationalised the brand and made it into a powerhouse of fashion design, with offices in Paris, London, New York and St Petersburg.
Louis embraced orientalist Art Deco designs and colourful “Tutti Frutti” jewel combinations.
He also pioneered wristwatch designs and exploited platinum as a structural base for elaborate diamond and gemstone settings in the jewellery.
Cartier continues to resonate with its audiences by tapping into ancient cultures and traditions, making them modern and relevant
Splendid Cartier Paris necklace from 1947.
Cartier Collection. Photograph: Nils Hermann.
Pierre extended operations to New York, while Jacques developed operations in New Bond Street in London.
It is difficult to define the Cartier design, yet relatively simple to recognise it when you encounter it.
Writing in the NGV Cartier catalogue, Vivienne Becker, a prolific London-based jewellery historian, arrives at a convincing characterisation. She writes that the style:
is underpinned by culture, by an ever-evolving quest to infuse jewellery design with originality, artistic integrity and cultural richness.
As one makes their way around the exhibition, there is constant encounter with styles from the past – including Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese, Iranian and Islamic elements – informing the use of diamonds and other precious materials.
The tiaras have been worn by celebrities, from Clementine Churchill at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to the singer Rihanna
A scintillating tiara, made by Cartier
Londonin 1937. Cartier Collection.
Photograph: Vincent Wulveryck
A Who's-Who List of Clients
Cartier also has its repertoire of signature motifs, such as the iconic Panthère, which may appear as a panther clip brooch, or snakes and crocodiles that can take the forms of necklaces and bracelets.
As jewellers and watchmakers, Cartier was known as the “watchmaker of shapes” – exploiting squares, rectangles and octagons, rather than the traditional circle.
While celebrating a supreme elegance, most of the items on display have the power to surprise, such as a spectacular scarab brooch, or a 1933 brooch with a giant floating amethyst set against sapphires, diamonds and platinum.
A highlight of the exhibition is the display of more than 20 stunning tiaras. These are symbols of royalty and glamour, with connotations of celestial halos, laurel wreaths and garlands.
These tiaras have been worn by a who’s who of celebrities. For instance, one scroll tiara (1902) was worn by Clementine Churchill at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and again in 2016 by the singer Rihanna, on the cover of W magazine.
Household names who have worn the Cartier jewellery in this exhibition include Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly and Dame Nellie Melba
Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor,
in Cartier jewels, 1939. Conde Nast
Photograph: Cecil Beaton Archive
There is also the Sun tiara of 1907, with a 32-carat cognac-yellow diamond at its core, and the Art Deco diamond and platinum Halo tiara of 1934, which was inspired by ancient Egypt and owned by Begum Aga Khan III.
Household names who have worn the Cartier jewellery present in this exhibition include Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Rihanna, Princess Margaret, The Duchess of Windsor, Dame Nellie Melba, the Maharaja of Patiala, Begum Aga Khan III and American heiress Barbara Hutton. These will prove a selfie magnet for many visitors.
While this is not the first major Cartier exhibition in Australia (there was a big show in Canberra in 2018), it is the largest, containing almost 300 items never previously seen in Australia. It is also the most innovative in its display.
Cartier continues to resonate with its audiences by going beyond mere displays of ostentatious wealth; it taps into ancient cultures and traditions, making them modern and relevant to contemporary audiences.
Cartier is showing at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 4th 2026.
The Greeks didn’t locate their deep past in far-off fantasy lands, instead, these stories happened in places all around them. So what about the journey of Odysseus? Photograph: The Odyssey film by Christopher Nolan/Universal Pictures.
By Greta Hawes and R. Scott Smith
The ancient Greeks would have enjoyed current controversies about the “historical accuracy” of Christopher Nolan’s new adaptation of The Odyssey. The Greeks loved arguing about the “truth” of Homer’s stories. They weren’t precious about their myths. Greek storytellers could – and did – criticise them. They competed to make people see old stories in new ways.
For the ancient Greeks, their deep past – the time of gods and monsters – was a paradox. On the one hand, it was full of fantastic happenings. On the other, those events mainly took place in familiar locations around the Mediterranean and featured heroes who were the ancestors of people living in the present.
We have been mapping the real-world locations tied to Greek myths. The Greeks didn’t locate their deep past in far-off fantasy lands. Instead, these stories happened in places all around them. So what about the journey of Odysseus?
Traversing the Beyond
Homer’s epic The Odyssey, probably composed around 800 BCE, follows Odysseus’ journey home from Troy to Ithaca. Much of the voyage takes place in “The Beyond”: a storyworld with its own logic, full of eerie, strange and monstrous creatures.
Although Homer placed this part of the story in a fantasy world, it didn’t have to stay there. As the Greeks spread throughout the Mediterranean, they started wondering: could Odysseus have travelled here?
Although the myth of the Trojan war freely invents some aspects of the topography, the Greeks agreed Troy was located on the Dardanelles, in modern-day northwestern Turkey. They identified various landmarks there with events in the epics. When Heinrich Schliemann excavated a Bronze-Age citadel in the region, he claimed this was Homer’s Troy.
Homer calls Odysseus’ island homeland off the western coast of mainland Greece Ithaca. An island in the right area still goes by that name today, although Homer’s description does not exactly match it.
Odysseus gets as far as Cape Malea (modern Maleas), off southern mainland Greece, before he is hit by a storm. That storm drives him into “the Beyond”.
Homer’s description of what happens next can’t be plotted on a map. Nothing is familiar; directions like north and south are meaningless.
Recreating the journey
Homer’s epics reflect the geo-politics of his time. Around 800 BCE, hundreds of city-states across the Greek mainland were jostling for prestige. The idea local heroes had once gotten together to conquer Troy was very attractive.
From the 5th century BCE we find ancient geographers debating where exactly Odysseus voyaged. Their texts – some only surviving in fragments – are the best evidence we have for how ancient communities laid claim to the fabulous places described by Homer.
Some ancient geographers were sceptical that the Beyond was in the Mediterranean and pointed instead to the Atlantic.
Eratosthenes commented cynically:
you’ll find where Odysseus wandered when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds [that Aiolos gave to Odysseus].
In other words: you won’t.
But the attraction of identifying Homer’s fantastic locations with real places was too strong.
There were competing claims. In Homer’s account, Odysseus encounters lotus-eaters drugged by the “honey sweet” fruit of the lotus flower. Ancient geographers located their home in several regions of north Africa. Meninx, a large island off modern Tunisia, was a popular candidate: Strabo cites as proof its altar of Odysseus and trees with sweet fruit called lotus.
Artemidoros placed the lotus-eaters further west. He argued they were nomads in what is now Morocco who survived in waterless deserts by chewing a juicy root.
The MANTO project has been mapping where the Ancient Greeks thought their myths took place. This map shows key locations in The Odyssey through the Mediterranean.Anika Campbell
From the early 7th century BCE, the ancient Greeks had begun to migrate to Sicily and southern Italy. When these migrants claimed their new homelands were the places Homer described, they gave their new homes very old – and prestigious – pasts.
When Greeks founded modern Naples, they called it “Parthenope”, for one of the Sirens said to be buried on a nearby headland.
Ancient artists painted the Sirens as part-woman, part-chicken. Today the islands are known as Li Galli (The Chickens).
Circe, the goddess who transformed Odysseus’ men into animals by giving them a potion, was said to have lived on a headland south of Rome, still called Monte Circeo today.
Homer says Odysseus buried one of his crew on Circe’s island after he fell off a roof. Ancient Greeks identified this tomb on Monte Circeo. Moly, the drug Odysseus used to counter her magic, was still picked nearby.
Some said Odysseus entered the underworld via an oracle of the dead at Cumae: the surrounding area is highly volcanic, which fit with stories about vaporous rivers in the underworld.
When Heinrich Schliemann excavated a Bronze-Age citadel in Hisarlik he claimed this was Homer’s Troy.Universal Studios
Scylla and Charybdis, a multi-headed monster and a whirlpool, were placed in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the tip of Calabria, which had exceptionally dangerous tides.
And people pointed out large rocks off the coast of Sicily the Cyclops had hurled at Odysseus’ ship as it escaped as proof it happened there.
These kinds of claims show the Greeks making fantastic landscapes seem familiar, while highlighting the strangeness of the real world with its psychotropic plants, volcanoes and ancient relics.
Innovative interpretations of the Odyssey are nothing new. The Greeks would have enjoyed our continued grappling with the “truth” of this story.
When we view Sam Neill's body of work, we can see his characters always have a significant level of intellect and astuteness. Photograph: the actor in 2011 by Matt Carr/Getty.
By Daryl Sparkes
I remember watching an interview with actor Sam Neill, saying: “Good screen acting hints at secrets. At other lives underneath the veneer.” At the time, I wondered what were these secrets Neill was referring to.I just had to look at the vast body of Neill’s work, the characters he played, and how he played them to answer that question.
Claiming him as Australian
The actor was born Nigel John Dermot Neill in 1947 in Northern Ireland before moving to New Zealand as a child. In the time-honoured tradition of Australia claiming New Zealand talent as our own, it was when he made the move across the pond that he first found fame and the launching pad for his international career.
A law school dropout, he soon found acting to be his calling while at university, acting in a number of plays before moving to New Zealand television and his first starring role in the action thriller feature Sleeping Dogs (1977).
This film got him noticed in Australia where he picked up a small role in television series The Sullivans before landing his first major motion picture – My Brilliant Career (1979), opposite another emerging talent of the Australian screen, Judy Davis.
He made a plethora of less widely known films like Just Out of Reach (1979) and Attack Force Z (1982), while also appearing in television shows such as Young Ramsey.
His international break out film was, unusually, playing the son of Satan in the quite schlocky Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981).
But the film was commercially successful, and the role opened up many doors for Neill who spent the rest of his professional career criss-crossing continents and acting in films and television series in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and his original home, New Zealand.
As often happens with our Australian talent, they have to be recognised overseas before we recognise them back home.
So back in Australia we came to embrace Neill in landmark films such as playing Micheal Chamberlain opposite Meryl Streep in Evil Angels (1988) and opposite a young Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm (1989).
At this time, he met with producer Cubby Broccoli to be considered as the replacement for Roger Moore in the James Bond series, but unfortunately lost out to Timothy Dalton.
Neill may have been the greatest Bond we never had.
The actor who didn’t show he was acting
Perhaps the role he is best remembered for is as the star of the original Jurassic Park (1993) and sequels Jurassic Park III (2001) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022), where he played renowned palaeontologist Alan Grant.
This role is a great example of how refined his acting talents were.
At the beginning of Jurassic Park, Grant is quite aloof and cold to those around him, and visibly uncomfortable around the park owner’s grandchildren. As the drama unfolds, Grant gradually shifts to becoming the children’s protective mentor risking his life for them.
Neill doesn’t do this through dramatic speeches or over-the-top visual displays. Instead he gives us a performance of subtle shifts in the character’s behaviour.
Neill’s ability at nuance made his roles so believable and authentic.
When we view his body of work, we can see Neill’s characters always have a significant level of intellect and astuteness. He was often cast in roles of men of intelligence, quiet authority or class. Neill was the reasonable, decent man everyone looked at for stability and strength when disaster fell, and all others were losing their heads.
He had this understated quality to many of his roles. Not being the overt method actor like many of his generation, he chose restraint and reason, embellishing his characters with a feeling of genuine realism.
Neill was able to relate emotion through slight facial expressions or minute vocal inflections. He could be equally delighted, menacing or upset with just a glance.
The quality of the man
Neill took many risks with the roles he took on. His versatility and range meant he could be equally good in a historical drama (Sirens, 1994) as he was in a comedy (Death in Brunswick, 1990) or even horror (In the Mouth of Madness, 1994) and sci-fi (Event Horizon, 1997).
It shows the quality of the man that Neill was as willing to appear in blockbusters as he was in small, independent films, to help and coach the next generation of filmmakers.
In ironic casting, the Sam Neill who dropped out of law school to become an actor played his final role as a lawyer, in the acclaimed three seasons of the Australian courtroom series The Twelve (2022–25).
In 2023, Neill said “I’m not afraid to die, but it would annoy me”.
For him it may have been annoying. Those who admired him will be meeting this moment with profound sadness and gratitude for the exceptional work he leaves behind.
Neill uncovered the secrets in the lives of all of his characters, presented them to us in his own inimitable style and made even the most ordinary moments feel quietly extraordinary.
The life-size, 35-metre-tall rocket ship at Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel show that formed the backdrop to the Autumn/Winter 2017collection at the Grand Palais. Cover picture of Yuima Nakazato Haute Couture AW26/27 in Paris by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM.
By Mal James
Fashion shows can often feel exclusive, reserved for the very rich, the very famous or the very well-connected. This perception has been aided by depictions of the catwalk in film and TV, think The Devil Wears Prada, Zoolander, Absolutely Fabulous, which simply confirm the widely held view of fashion as synonymous with artifice and superficiality.
Yet, while the catwalk is undoubtedly a stage for pomp and social peacocking, it is also a serious business. It can make or break a collection’s success, and launch designers and models into the fashion stratosphere. Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show at the V&A in Dundee unveils this reality, offering an access-all-areas glimpse into the intricate world of fashion, revealing great complexity beyond the perceived superficiality.
This exhibition is superbly co-curated by the museum’s Kirsty Hassard and Svetlana Panova, along with Jochen Eisenbrand and Katharina Krawcyzck of the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, where the show originated. It chronicles fashion’s 125-year catwalk journey, exploring its rich history and enduring cultural significance.
It was an Englishman, Charles Frederick Worth, who pioneered the catwalk in mid 19th-century Paris, where he revolutionised fashion presentations by using live models instead of static mannequins. Runway shows allowed models to showcase complete outfits and provided wealthy clients with a more immersive view of Worth’s designs.
By the early 1900s, these fashion parades held in Parisian ballrooms started to evolve into more theatrical events. This trend continued into the 1920s, when shows grew increasingly spectacular and decadent, with Gabrielle Chanel famously presenting models descending the mirrored staircase in her iconic atelier at 31 rue Cambon, Paris.
Fashion and history
On loan from the Balenciaga archive, and seen for the first time in the UK, there is an exquisite array of outfits presented on miniature wire mannequins. This display describes how, in 1945, as Paris emerged from Nazi occupation, the city faced a shortage of materials, making conventional fashion shows impossible. Titled “théâtre de la mode”, this ingenious solution presented haute couture at micro scale to buyers, press and clients, allowing Paris to reclaim its status as the fashion capital of the world.
The exhibition shows how post second world war, catwalk shows expanded in scale, ambition and location, with designers keen to make a lasting impression. André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne were pioneers in the 1960s, while from the 1980s onwards, Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier helped to modernise presentations, connecting them with pop culture and mass audiences.
The emergence of the “supermodels” in the late 1980s and 1990s helped to turn catwalks into cultural phenomena. Groundbreaking shows, such as Versace’s spring/summer 1991, where models who were stars in their own right walked to George Michael’s Freedom, highlighted a dynamic synergy between fashion and pop culture.
By the late 20th century, designers including Alexander McQueen were creating unforgettable fashion moments, such as the No. 13 collection (spring/summer 1999), where model Shalom Harlow wore a white dress that was sprayed by two robots.
Notably, the exhibit dedicated to Hussein Chalayan showcases his contribution towards the transformation of fashion shows into more artistic and cerebral experiences. His 2000 After Words collection, featuring wearable furniture, challenged traditional norms and paved the way for more artistic presentations.
Spectacle, innovation, commerce
There is plenty of fashion spectacle throughout, the exhibition excelling with a curated selection of iconic pieces from the likes of Viktor & Rolf, Maison Martin Margiela, Vivienne Westwood, Loewe, Chanel, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Yohji Yamamoto and Iris van Herpen – the range is dazzling.
I was captivated by the voluminous but solemn blue Balenciaga velvet dress from the spring/summer 2020 collection by Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia. Evoking a Victorian silhouette, yet with no decoration and a tailored bodice, it reflects fashion’s historical roots in contrast with unfussy modern design.
The powerful silhouette and electric blue tone bring a seriousness to an otherwise radical or performative aesthetic. Positioned in the exhibition, it reminds us how modernity is always tethered to historical influences.
The exhibition showcases how catwalks have become crucial for brand marketing, merging art, commerce and entertainment, while engaging global audiences through digital channels. It includes invitations and artwork from key designers, along with miniature models of Chanel’s 2014 Supermarket and 2017 Space Rocket shows, offering insights into the intricate yet monumental scale of catwalk productions.
The curators have seamlessly integrated Scotland’s contribution to catwalk history too, charting the influence of fabrics like tweed and tartan, and featuring photographs from Glasgow’s Empire Exhibition in 1938, possibly Scotland’s earliest fashion show. There are also fascinating images from Dior’s inaugural Scottish shows in 1955 in Glasgow and at Gleneagles, echoed almost 70 years later with a 2024 Dior show (under designer Maria Grazia Chuiri) where models walked the exquisite topiaried gardens of Drummond Castle in Perthshire.
The exhibition includes the coveted label Le Kilt, featuring
an outfit from the 2024 show, created in collaboration with Dior, further highlighting the the fashion house’s Scotland connection. Prominent Scottish designers are also featured, such as Christopher Kane, Charles Jeffrey and the poignant inclusion of an outfit by the late Pam Hogg who died last November.
The exhibition highlights how catwalks can mirror societal changes and evolving beauty standards. I was thrilled to see the inclusion of Rick Owens’ Spring/Summer 2016 presentation, where a 40-strong group of female “steppers” stomped down the runway in poses and expressions that defied typical beauty expectations.
The show caters to diverse audiences and ages, featuring dynamic catwalk and backstage photography by British photographer Robert Fairer, who has captured the energy and spirit of the fashion industry since the early 1990s. Engaging and interactive exhibits also let audiences in on the inner workings of fashion shows, including hairstyling and make-up.
Fun selfie opportunities allow visitors to engage with fashion’s more flamboyant side which make you feel like part of the exhibition, rather than merely an observer. This excellent V&A show truly challenges and expands our perception of the catwalk, leading audiences towards a lasting and deeper respect for the art of fashion and its important and enduring influence.
The Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show is now on at the V&A Dundee until January 2027.
Mal James, Personal Chair of Fashion Design, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
Holiday books are about page-turners as well as catching up on those that have been left on the bedside table during the year. Cover picture of Robert Redford on the beach in Malibu by Annie Leibovitz.
By Jo Case
When I think about holiday reading, I think about relaxing with an easy page-turner … but I also think about finally having the headspace for the more complex, challenging books that have haunted my bedside table during the busy year.
Summer reading is often characterised as paperback romance or detective fiction. And it is that. But it’s also anything your tired, finally well-rested brain wants to apply itself to in the sunnier months: on a beach, by a pool or splayed on a couch under an air conditioner.
We asked six avid readers what they plan to read this holiday – and their answers reflected all of the above and more. I’ve already stolen a few ideas to add to my own hopeful pile. (So far, it includes Susie Boyt’s much-raved-about novel Loved and Missed, a biography of her father Lucian Freud, Dominic Amerena’s literary satire, I Want Everything … and Anna Karenina.)
The Summer Book and Belgian crime
What better time to revisit The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson? It helps that there is a film adaptation on the way (starring Glenn Close), though I wonder how this bittersweet, funny and pitch perfect story of a girl, her grandmother and her father spending a summer on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland can be rendered in filmic form.
Talking of adaptation, the latest TV adaptation of the chief inspector Maigret detective novels has recently dropped – and that encourages me to read more of the short novels by the Belgian writer, Georges Simenon. I read half a dozen Maigret novels last summer, but that’s fine – there are 75 books in the series. Good times.
David McCooey is professor of writing and literature, Deakin University.
Page-turning rural noir
As a former managing editor of television and video for ABC News, Tim Ayliffe has always had a keen eye for the hot button issues of the day. That’s reflected in his John Bailey series of tense political thrillers. But Dark Desert Road promises to be something different.
Here, Ayliffe heads west into the New South Wales Riverina and the territory of the rural noir. His usual burnt-out journalist in the eye of the storm is replaced by a burnt-out cop. Kit McCarthy hasn’t seen her twin sister Billie in years. This is quite understandable as Billie seems to have got herself involved in a survivalist cult hell bent on blowing things, and people, up. So now she needs help.
That’s the premise – and it promises to be just the right kind of energetic page-turner for a lazy holiday read.
Sue Turnbull is honorary professor of communication and media studies, University of Wollongong – and a crime fiction expert.
Patricia Lockwood
Last summer I read Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This, a novel that’s up-to-the-minute smart about contemporary life on social media until halfway through when it takes you by the throat and leaves you gasping.
I went quickly to her 2017 memoir, Priestdaddy, where she recounts life as the child of a married Catholic priest. More lately, I read her viral poem, Rape Joke, a remarkable reshaping of thought and talk around women’s experiences of rape. You have to love a writer who can come up with (in a London Review of Books column):
Perhaps for the bug reason, she could only ever picture Kafka lying on his back. Perhaps because of his surviving photos, she had the idea that he medically could not blink.
This summer, I hope to read her new post-COVID novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, hoping for more writing that identifies and breaks our taboos – like the best jokes do.
Kevin Brophy is emeritus professor of creative writing at University of Melbourne.
Novels about academia
To some, summertime means spontaneity. To me, an adorer of a syllabus if there ever was one, it means a carefully curated reading list. This year, the plan is to spend as much time as possible reading novels about the idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of academia.
I’ll start by revisiting three classics – Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe, Vladimir Nabokov’s inimitable Pnin, David Lodge’s Changing Places – before I move on to books I haven’t read before.
At the top of my list is Alison Lurie’s The War Between the Tates, a portrait of infidelity and pomposity at Corinth University (a fictional reimagining of Cornell). Next are two darkly comic novels from the nineties: Javier Marías’ Oxford novel All Souls and Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring. Then, I intend to round out the summer with My Education by Susan Choi (shortlisted for this year’s Booker for Flashlight) and Elif Batuman’s The Idiot.
If there’s any summer left at the end of all this, I’ll devote it to rereading some old favourites: JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.
Joseph Steinberg is Forrest Foundation postdoctoral fellow, English & Literary Studies, The University of Western Australia.
Book & film: The Virgin Suicides
Every summer, I return to the same perfect pairing: Jeffrey Eugenides’s elegiac novel The Virgin Suicides and Sofia Coppola’s fever-dream adaptation. The story – a meditation on loss and longing – follows the tragic fates of the Lisbon sisters (Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese) who are withdrawn from school by their stifling mother and imprisoned at home – before eventually dying by suicide.
Set in 1970s Michigan, in the heart of the Rust Belt, the story brushes against some big themes: the horror of the mundane, the decay of memory, the failure of the American Dream. But the novel’s thematic complexity is not as powerful as its aesthetic imagination. I revisit the girls’ world obsessively because its hazy, dreamlike quality captures, with unnerving accuracy, how it felt to be a teenage girl. Simply put, the summer was long and languorous, and the house was always too small.
Eugenides’s novel, like Coppola’s film, skilfully blends the magic and misery of adolescence: the sacred rituals and secret pacts, the constant scrutiny and creeping sense of entrapment. Like adolescence, summer too is defined by its inevitable ending.
Kate Cantrell is a senior lecturer in writing, editing, and publishing at the University of Southern Queensland.
Australian romantic comedies
A couple of years ago, I nominated Abra Pressler’s Love and Other Scores as my beach book and noted that it was part of an increased investment from major Australian publishers in local romantic comedies. As someone who both writes and studies romance fiction, I’m delighted that this trend has continued.
There has been a spate of excellent Australian rom-coms released this year: Steph Vizard’s A Smart Girl’s Guide to Second Chances, Patrick Lenton’s In Spite of You, Emma Mugglestone’s In the Long Run, Darcy Green’s After the Siren, Karina May’s That Island Feeling, and Holly Brunnbauer’s What did I Miss?, just to name a few.
My beach read this summer is also a local rom-com: Brooke Crawford’s Better Than the Real Thing. This is a story about a Melbourne teacher in the midst of a series of life crises who unexpectedly finds a reclusive rock star’s childhood diary. When he offers to pay her a lot of money to travel in London and return it to him – how can she refuse?
