McLaren, John (1988) Iris Milutinovic - between two worlds. The Library chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin (42/43). pp. 142-159. ISSN 0024-2241

Abstract

Contains a critical essay on Australian writer Iris Milutinovic, nee Iris Osborne, and her work. Prior to achieving fame, Milutinovic had suffered a disastrous first marriage to an Irish guardsman before meeting her second husband, an immigrant from Serbian Yugoslavia. Marrying in 1951 and moving to Albany, a small and isolated town on the south coast of Western Australia, she began a writing and broadcasting career. Milutinovic was a busy professional writer whose work included radio scripts, regular articles on cooking for the Epicurean, and short stories published in such Australian literary journals as Overland and popular publications such as Australian Women's Weekly and Woman's Day. During her life she published two books, the novel Talk English Carn't Ya, and short story collection, I'm Still Here, Aren't I? In the Talk English Carn’t Ya, the first person narration purports to be the words of the husband as dictated to his wife. In this manner Milutinovic gave her husband a fictionalised voice addressing the Australian community that had otherwise refused to hear him. The book furthermore highlighted the difficulties as well as delights of the Milutonovics’ marriage, and also showed the wife asserting herself to take charge of the couple’s affairs by shedding the male arrogance that the husband brought from his culture.

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