The Year That Was

AUSTRALIA The two outstanding Australian books of the year are autobiographies, but they're even farther apart than their respective origins in Sydney and Perth. No doubt for many readers one of the disappointments of Patrick White's 'long awaited' Flaws £n the Glass Qonathan Cape) was the absence of an index. Potential victims and bystanders, salivating alike, will find no list of 'name' targets of this sharpest of Australian writers who admits he forgets nothing: no more than a few perfunctory and occasionally parodic footnotes.