Perhaps the book's suggestive cover, with a title that promises the fantasy of Simone, albeit dead in Australia, positioned above an Aboriginal art graphic, perfectly contextualises the vast array of genres, styles and topics within. The overall organising principle for this collection is announced in the epigraph to the Introduction where an interviewer asks Noam Chomsky whether the time might come when we are no longer ashamed of our country and Chomsky replies 'it depends what you mean by your country'. The ensuing investigation of 'our country' provides an interesting, if not unusual, journey into the thoughts and observations of Lawson.

Using a mix of fact, fiction and autobiography, Lawson investigates the extent to which increasingly repressive ideological conformity has eroded any sense of social democracy. While the tone is optimistic rather than gloomy, she is clearly concerned about the disappearance of the dissenting voice as she moves us through a wide range of settings; Alice Springs, East Timor, Indonesia, West Papua, Britain and France, to emphasise this point. Despite the many problems she observes as a consequence of this loss of critical voice, she manages to maintain positive about the future through her own good faith in people generally. For example, though she explains that our nation-building efforts (characterised by corroboree, Snowy River horse riders in Akubras and Drizabones, and the lawnmower ballet at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games) are largely symbolic, she argues that we read symbols accurately and we 'know full well what we're doing when symbolic action is called for' (5). Thus the meaning of Cathy Freeman's gold medal win, watched by the whole of Australia, was about the future, about 'what's not attained but might be, with a long way to go' (4).

And though the shifting locales might be difficult at first to integrate into a coherent narrative of 'our country', they all contribute to an analysis of the connections between the personal and the political, and the impossibility of imagining culture or identity from an exclusively local perspective. Our country, then, is variously created and critiqued by many famous dissenting voices that share cameo roles with more intimate dissenters that Lawson has both invented and remembered. The title essay/story for example, is as much about a reading group of ordinary women as it is about Beauvoir. And I guess this is why I found this essay quite disappointing given its apparent subject. While it is always difficult to do justice to an icon, particularly a feminist one, I found myself unable to take an interest in anything her various reading group characters had to say, either about Simone or themselves.

Nevertheless, her writing versatility, her astute observation and cultural critique is evident every time Lawson's analysis of the ways in which de Beauvoir hasn't 'died' in Australia intercepts the agonies of the reading group characters. Similarly, the deeply reflective essay, 'How Raymond Williams Died in Australia', is a brilliant discussion on cultural institutions and loss. In this collection there are many moments when Lawson is at her best and, even when her dissenting voice seems muted in the words of fictional others, you can't help admiring her constant self-questioning and searching for a way forward.

Shirley Tucker is a Lecturer in the Contemporary Studies Program at the Ipswich campus of the University of Queensland.