Michael Wilding, The man of slow feeling (#Review, #1970 Club)

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Michael Wilding’s short story, “The man of slow feeling”, is hopefully the first of two reviews I post for the 1970 Club, but we’ll see if I get the second one done. I have been making a practice of reading Australian short stories for the Year Clubs, so when the year is chosen I go to my little collection of anthologies looking for something appropriate. My favourite anthology for this purpose is The Penguin century of Australian stories, edited by Carmel Bird, because it is a large comprehensive collection and because the stories are ordered chronologically with the year of publication clearly identified. Love it!

Who is Michael Wilding?

With these later year clubs, like 1970, there’s a higher chance that the authors we read might still be alive. This, I believe, is the case with Michael Wilding. Born in England in 1942, he took up a position as lecturer at the University of Sydney from 1963 to 1967, before returning to England. However, two years later, in 1969, he returned to Australia and stayed. He was appointed Professor of English and Australian Literature at the University of Sydney in 1993, and remained in that position until he retired in 2000.

AustLit provides an excellent summary of his career. As an academic, he has, they say, had a distinguished career as a literary scholar, critic, and editor”, specialising in seventeenth and early eighteenth century English literature. Since the early 1970s, he has also “built a reputation as an important critic and scholar of Australian literature” focusing in particular on Marcus Clarke, William Lane and Christina Stead. And, he has been active as a publisher, having co-founded two presses, and at least one literary magazine.

However, he also, says AustLit, “came to prominence as creative writer in the late 1960s, when he was at the forefront of the ‘new writing’ movement which emerged in Australia in at that time”. He was part of a group of writers, editors and publishers “who were influential in promoting new and experimental writing, and in facilitating the revitalised Australian literary landscape of the late 1960s and 1970s”. AustLit doesn’t identify who was in that influential group, but I think Kerry Goldsworthy does in her introduction to Penguin’s anthology. She writes that “short fiction was the dominant literary form in Australia in the 1970s” and the most recognised practitioners were Frank Moorhouse, Peter Carey, Murray Bail and Michael Wilding. (All men, interestingly.) This writing, says Goldsworthy, was heavily influenced by European and American postmodern writing, but she doesn’t specifically reference Wilding’s story in her discussion.

Wilding has published over twenty novels and short story collections. AustLit adds that his short stories have also been published widely in anthologies, and that many have also been translated. Wikipedia provides an extensive list of his writing.

“The man with slow feeling”

“The man with slow feeling” is a third-person story about an unnamed man who, as the story opens, is in hospital after a serious accident from which he had not been expected to survive. However, he does survive. Gradually his sight and speech return, but not his sensation. That is, he can’t taste food or feel touch.

Soon though, he realises that sensation is returning, just some time after the actual experience. For example, he and his partner, Maria, make love, but he feels nothing – until some hours later. Not good! Not only is there the problem of feeling nothing, but when they are making love, he might experience some unpleasant sensation from three hours ago. Then, when he is out shopping three hours later, he experiences the orgasm. Or, regarding food, he will eat lunch but not taste it until 4pm. It is all, to say the least, disorienting. So, he sets up a system where he records his “sensate actions” so he can prepare (or “warn”) himself “after a three hours’ delay … of what he was about to feel”.

I’m sure you can see the practical problem with this. Soon, he becomes trapped in “a maze of playback and commentary and memory”, where he is trying to record the present for the future while at the same time experiencing the past. It becomes intolerable.

The tone is one of disassociation, alienation – which had me heading off down that more “modernist” path. But, the “recorder” aspect suggested that the theme involves partly, at least, exploring the conflicted role of recording versus experiencing – which is a more post-modern idea. Can you do both? Can a writer do both? Can, I remember discussing at length during my film librarian career, a documentary filmmaker record and not experience (or not affect the experience) during the act of recording? What are the bargains you make between the two?

I don’t know enough about this time in Australian literature – I haven’t read enough – to understand where Wilding’s ideas and thoughts fit into the zeitgeist. In her introduction to the anthology, Kerryn Goldsworthy says that the writing of this time incorporated “elements of fantasy, surrealism, fabulist, literary self-consciousness, and the process of storytelling itself”. She says the stories by Murray Bail and Peter Carey are concerned with “the riddles and paradoxes of representation itself”. Wilding’s story could also be read as part of this exploration.

This is a dark story in which, if I stick with my idea about the theme, Wilding suggests that the life of sensation is what it’s all about. Fair enough, but where does that leave the writer (or recorder)?

“The man with slow feeling” had me intrigued from its opening lines to its close. I’m not sure I have fully grasped all that Wilding intended by it, but this was a time of experimentation with the short fiction form and new writerly freedoms. I wish I could point you to an online version of the story.

* Read for the 1970 reading week run by Karen (Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings) and Simon (Stuck in a Book).

Michael Wilding
“The man with slow feeling” (orig. pub. Man: Australian Magazine for Men, July 1970)
in Carmel Bird (ed.), The Penguin century of Australian stories
Camberwell: Penguin Books, 2006 (first ed. 2000)
pp. 232-238

Monday musings on Australian literature: 1970 in fiction

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Once again it’s Karen’s (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling) and Simon’s (Stuck in a Book) “Year Club” week. This week, it is 1970, and it runs from today, 14th to 20th October. As for the last 6 clubs, I am devoting my Monday Musings to the week.

Despite the excitement and idealism of the 1960s, 1970 Australia was strongly conservative, politically speaking, with some notorious conservative leaders (like Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Sir Henry Bolte, and Robert Askin) being premiers of their respective states. But, there were exceptions. The socially progressive Don Dunstan became premier of South Australia during the year, and, while our Prime Minister, John Gorton, was a conservative, he was recognised as a supporter of the arts.

The war in Vietnam was still underway but was becoming increasingly unpopular. This was the year Australia decided to go metric for weights and measures, and, more relevant to this post, it was also the year that Germaine Greer’s The female eunuch (which I read the following year) was published.

A brief 1970 literary recap

Books were of course published across all forms, but my focus is Australian fiction, so here is a selection of novels published in 1970:

  • Jessica Anderson, The last man’s head
  • Richard Beilby, No medals for Aphrodite
  • Richard Butler, Sharkbait
  • Diane Cilento, Hybrid
  • Jon Cleary, Helga’s web
  • J.M. (John Mill) Couper, The thundering good today
  • Geoffrey Dutton, Tamara
  • Catherine Gaskin, Fiona
  • Shirley Hazzard, The Bay of Noon
  • Edward Lindall, A gathering of eagles
  • William Marshall, The age of death
  • Cynthia Nolan, A bride for St Thomas
  • Barry Oakley, A salute to the Great Macarthy AND Let’s hear it for Prendergast
  • Dal Stivens, A horse of air
  • Colin Thiele, Labourers in the vineyard
  • Ron Tullipan, Daylight robbery
  • Barbara Vernon, Bellbird (based on the ABC television series)
  • F.B. Vickers, No man is himself
  • Patrick White, The vivisector

A few of these writers are still respected and read today; a few are known but read less frequently; while some have fallen out of public consciousness (to my knowledge, anyhow!)

Of those I didn’t know, a couple caught my attention for their subject matter. F.B. Vickers is one. Trove describes No man is himself as “A novel set in the north west of Western Australia concerning an officer in charge of Native Welfare who is sympathetic to Aborigines but involved in personal difficulties with the white community and his wife.” The other is Edward Lindall whose A gathering of eagles is also set in Western Australia, and has a First Nations character. Google Books describes it as a “thriller set in the remote barren wasteland of north western Australia; an outcast Aboriginal woman, Ilkara, assists the survivors of a murderous plot to outwit their would-be killers.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says Lindall was the pseudonym used by Edward Ernest Smith (1915-1978). He is also listed at a Classic Crime Fiction site.

Writers born this year include novelists Julia Leigh and Caroline Overington, and those who died include Herz Bergner (whose Between sea and sky I’ve reviewed), children’s fiction writer Nan Chauncy, Frank Dalby Davison (who was part of “the triumvirate” with Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw), and George Johnston.

There were not many literary awards, yet, though the state awards we know were getting close. And, several of the main awards made in 1970 weren’t to fiction. The ALS Gold Medal, for example, went to historian Manning Clark, and the Colin Roderick Award to Margaret Lawrie’s Myths and legends of Torres Strait.

There were some fiction awards, however, including of course, the Miles Franklin Award, which went to Dal Stevens’ A horse of air. The trade union-supported Mary Gilmore Award (my post on this award) was made to Keith Antill for Moon in the ground. It’s an Australian science fiction story set around the secretive Pine Gap near Alice Springs. The “$1,000 Rothman’s award for the best Australian novel of 1969” was awarded in 1970 to George Johnston‘s “semi-autobiography Clean straw for nothing” (from Trove).

The state of the art

As for previous club years, I checked Trove to see what newspapers were saying about Australian fiction. This was a little trickier for 1970 because, due to copyright, many newspapers from this time have not yet been digitised. However, some papers, most notably The Canberra Times and Tribune, along with some regional ones, have made their content available to Trove. To them I am most grateful.

George Johnston

Book cover

If one name loomed large in my my 1970 Trove research, it was George Johnston, and not just because he died in July. There were, of course, the obituaries, but, unrelated to his death, is his being used as a benchmark by commentators. For example, John Lleonart, reviewing Barry Oakley’s A salute to the Great McCarthy in The Canberra Times (8 August), has some “niggles” about the book but concludes that “Oakley has given us in McCarthy a classic figure of Australian mores to rank with George Johnston’s My brother Jack“.

Meanwhile, in discussions about the need for more Australian content on television, the television miniseries of My brother Jack was suggested as a benchmark for good Australian television content. Frances Kelly, writing in The Canberra Times (August 26), discusses the economic and artistic challenges to producing more “good” Australian content, and suggests one solution could be for Australia to

follow the BBC’s lead and begin work on adaptations. There are many fine Australian novels, which if we must still fly the flag, would bear dramatisation. My brother Jack was a shining example. 

The obituaries sum up Johnston’s career well – at least as it was seen at the time of his death. Maurice Dunlevy writes in The Canberra Times (23 July) that:

He had come back to his gumtree and kookaburra womb to find a new land, a people without a soul, and some uncomfortable ghosts from his past. “I would like to help Australians to find a new identity, a new soul, a new spirit”, he said on television. But to do so he had to sort out his own attitude to a country where he had left “the irrecapturable rapture of being young”. He was trying to do this in the third volume of the trilogy [A cartload of clay] during the past year.

Roger Milliss discusses Johnston at some depth in Tribune (12 August), concluding that

the important thing is the task that George Johnston recognised and set for himself — that of modernising Australian literature, of dragging it screaming into the 1970’s, of giving it a shape consistent with the world around it. That task must now be taken over by someone else — perhaps a writer who will emerge from the ranks of this new emerging generation.

These two obituaries make good reading if you are a Johnston fan.

Bookworm diggers

Meanwhile, over in South Vietnam, reported the Victor Harbour Times (May 29), Australian soldiers were well supplied with most amenities, but were running short of reading material. They had, says the report, “ample supplies of newspapers and regularly published magazines” but “novels, other books and paperbacks [were] in short supply”. Donations were being called for, and the Army would deliver them.

Australian classics

Publishers publishing classics is not new, but it’s always interesting to see “what” publishers see as those worth publishing at a particular time. In 1970, the Australian publisher Rigby published two Australian classics, Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery under arms and Marcus Clarke’s For the term of his natural life, in $1.25 paperback editions. The Canberra Times (May 30), described them as “quite massive little tomes as paperbacks go” but said they gave readers “the opportunity of owning at a reasonable price two books that will be read and reread as long as Australian literature survives”. I love the qualification, “as long as Australian literature survives”. I wonder what the reporter thought might happen? Anyhow, these are still recognised “classics” but more have been added to the Australian classics pantheon since then.

While not quite making classics status, two other authors from the past were mentioned in the year’s papers. One was Communist Party member, Jean Devanny, whose papers were donated by her daughter to the University of Townsville. (I included her in my post on women writers and politics in the 1930s.) The Tribune‘s report (January 28) says that Jean Devanny had had more than 20 books published by Australian and overseas publishers. One of her best known, Sugar heaven (1936), is a novel of class and politics on the Queensland cane fields, and was published in the Soviet Union in 1968.

The other author, Vance Palmer (1885-1959), came from the same era, and while not a Communist, was left-leaning politically. By 1970, he was seen as old-fashioned, but Professor Harry Heseltine thought he was due for a reassessment, and published his Vance Palmer in 1970. I will share more about this in another post.

Censorship and Book Bans

“Australia is still the country of interfering and sometimes ridiculous censorship, but there are signs of vitality on the cultural scene” (Paris newspaper Le Monde, The Canberra Times, December 21, 1970).

The last book banned in Australia was Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s complaint. It was banned in 1969, but after protestations by booksellers and publishers, and two trials in New South Wales which ended in hung juries, the ban was lifted in 1971. In 1970, however, it was all still happening. There’s way too much reporting for me to cover here, so I’m just to entertaining references to whet your appetite.

The University of New South Wales’ student newspaper, Tharunka (April 21), devoted a special literary supplement to the issue, asking writers to comment on censorship. One was Thomas Keneally, who commenced his piece by saying he felt “uneasy contributing to a forum on censorship because I have never achieved banmanship”. He is tongue-in-cheek about the reasons for the ban, which had to do with its being a “dirty” book. Keneally doesn’t see orgasm as “the key to the vision of man”, and argues that “there is very little of less value to the novelist than a person enjoying himself”. Fair point! Nonetheless, despite his “spinsterish views on eroticism in literature”, he thinks the ban is “an embarrassment”.

Maurice Dunlevy takes satire further in his article “The Portnoy tug-of-war” (The Canberra Times, September 5). Do read it … And, for a more recent history of the saga, check this article by Sian Cian in The Guardian (February 2, 2022). She quotes Des Cowley, of the State Library of Victoria:

“There’s been a lot written about the whole saga with Penguin and the legal case, but a little part of that story is that a small group of people got together and defended the right of literature to exist. It is such a beautiful case because, in a way, it ushers in the change Australia saw between the 1960s and 70s, with the progressive Whitlam government, and going from a literary backwater to a world stage.”

I’m not finished with 1970 … but this post is long enough. I’d love to hear any thoughts you have about the year, or about the stories I’ve shared here.

Sources

  • 1970 in Australian Literature (Wikipedia)
  • Joy Hooton and Harry Heseltine, Annals of Australian literature, 2nd ed. OUP, 1992

Previous Monday Musings for the “years”: 1929, 1936, 1937, 1954, 1940 and 1962.

Do you plan to take part in the 1970 Club – and if so how?

Stephen Orr, Shining like the sun (#BookReview)

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A question that confronts many young people as they reach adulthood – in western cultures at least – is, should I go or should I stay? This is particularly so for young people in small rural towns, and is the issue at the heart of Stephen Orr’s latest novel, Shining like the sun. Wilf Healy, the oldest of three brothers, stayed in Selwyn which is now dying, while his brother Colin left for the bright lights of America, as soon as he could. Now eighty years old, the widowed Wilf is confronting the rest of his life, and he is again pondering the question, except he is not thinking of heading for the bright lights but for Louth, the island on which he grew up. The thing is, that island is empty. No-one lives there now. But this doesn’t dissuade Wilf from his dream. Meanwhile, his 17-year-old great-nephew Connor is about to lose his Mum to cancer and sees no life for himself in Selwyn.

That is the basic plot. Selwyn is a fictional wheatbelt town in South Australia – only identified because Louth Island is a real island off the coast. Selwyn has “three hundred people coming and going, dying, lost in the cracks”, plus one of those signposts pointing to far-flung places around the world. Wilf lives and works in Monk’s pub, delivers the mail (not to mention vegetables and pharmaceuticals) around the community, and drives the school bus, all because he can’t say “no” when yet another job needs doing. However, as the novel opens, he’s had enough. He wants to retire, but his plans to leave are half-hearted at best – and not just because of his sense of responsibility for his sick niece Orla and her son, the disengaged Connor. Why?

The three epigraphs provide a clue, but so of course does the story. We follow Wilf through his days, as he engages with the people of Selwyn, people whom Orr paints beautifully with a description here, a piece of dialogue there. Take young Connor, “an out-of-tune whistle that just needed a breath of air”, or Bobby, the 85-year-old vegetable grower and builder of a kit plane “who is too old to deliver vegetables, but not fly”. Take the school principal, Noah, for whom Wilf drives the school bus. He’s a weak man, who, when a certain crunch comes, cannot stand up for right. And take Wilf’s school bus passengers who are so entertainingly individuated from the opinionated Sienna to the JK Rowling-wannabe Luke, from the withdrawn Trevor to the entitled bully Darcy. The bus-rides are interspersed through the novel, providing perfectly pitched comic relief while also playing an important role in moving the narrative along. It is something that happens on the bus that triggers the novel’s main crisis.

But, Wilf and Connor provide more than two ends of the “do I leave” spectrum. Wilf’s reflections on his growing up provide a stark contrast to the lives of Connor and his peers. Wilf, of course, came from the often brutal “spare the rod, and spoil the child” era, when you did what you were told and expected little else, whilst Connor is growing up at a time when young people are not directed, but encouraged to find themselves. Orr does not judge either way, but lets his readers see and ponder how it all plays out in a life.

I opened this post on the question of staying or going, identifying it as the novel’s central issue – which it is. However, this is not the theme. Rather, it is the question which gives the theme its push. The theme, itself, is something deeper, something so fundamentally human that it could almost sound trite, except it’s not. I’m talking about the idea of community, of connection, of being where you are part of something bigger, where you can make a difference to the lives of others. This might sound schmaltzy. However, because Orr’s characters are fallibly human, and because the socio-economic challenges facing small towns (in particular) are real, connection doesn’t come easily. Shining like the sun, with its cast of authentic characters and array of specific, yet also typical situations, teases out whether this connection, this idea of community, can in fact still fly.

“the possibility of being happy” (Connor)

Orr’s intention? There is surely some political intent, some wish to convey the value and importance of these towns which are being allowed to die through neglect and poor policy (“farms flattened”, and so on). But, it is also personal in terms of exploring what sustains human beings the most – a fancy job or house? Or connections with your community? Mr Gums and I wait for the cliched “tight-knit community” which is unfailingly trotted out after whatever disaster (natural or personal) is on the day’s news. Like most cliches, however, it has an element of truth. A “real” tight-knit community is worth its weight in gold – another cliche for you. Orr knows this, so does Wilf. There is nothing romantic to this story, just real life with all its questions and toughness alongside moments of humour and mutual support in which, even Connor realises, there is “the possibility of being happy”.

Shining like the sun, then, is another special Stephen Orr novel. It is not fancy in voice or structure. That is, it is told third person – albeit a first person narrator opens the proceedings – and is told chronologically, with occasional flashbacks as Wilf remembers his past. What makes it special is the quality of the descriptive writing, the knowing characterisation, the authentic dialogue, and the serious but warm tone leavened by natural humour that comes from ordinary people going about their business.

I read this novel immediately after my return from touring outback Queensland. We saw many small country towns, most of which were variations on the theme. Orr’s story rings true to these towns. Indeed, to end on a cliche – because, why not? – Shining like the sun is a love letter to an Australia little known to its mostly urban inhabitants. It has much to offer on both political and personal levels, but, beyond that, it is just a darned good read.

Stephen Orr
Shining like the sun
Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2024
313pp.
ISBN: 9781923042278
Review copy courtesy of Wakefield Press.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Aussie Booker Prize listees

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Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional

In terms of the Booker Prize, it’s been a long time between drinks for Aussie writers. By this I mean that Charlotte Wood’s shortlisting for the 2024 prize with Stone Yard devotional, breaks the longest drought Australian writers have had in terms of being listed for the prize since its commencement in 1969. It has been eight years since longlisting and a full decade since shortlisting. This is probably largely due to the widening of the playing field in 2014 to include English language novels from any nationality.

This year’s winner will be announced on 12 November, but rather than wait until then, I’ve decided to share now the Australian books which have been listed for (or won) this prize because listing for this prize is a win in itself (even if it doesn’t come with the big bucks!) As Wikipedia shows, and the Booker Prize website confirms, longlists were not published for the Prize until 2001. The Booker Prizes website – particularly the year by year highlights – is worth exploring if you are interested in the prize.

Now, the order of my listing. While an alphabetical listing by author would make it easy to quickly see whether authors/books we love were listed, and how often authors have been listed, my main point here is to show when Australian authors/books have been listed, so, chronological it is.

Book cover
  • 1970 Shortlist (Lost Man Booker Prize*): Shirley Hazzard, The bay of noon (on my TBR)
  • 1970 Shortlist (Lost Man Booker Prize*): Patrick White, The vivisector (on my TBR)
  • 1972 Shortlist: Thomas Keneally, The chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (read before blogging)
  • 1975 Shortlist: Thomas Keneally, Gossip from the forest
  • 1979 Shortlist: Thomas Keneally, Confederates
  • 1982 Winner: Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark
  • 1985 Shortlist: Peter Carey, Illywhacker
  • 1988 Winner: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (read before blogging)
  • 1993 Shortlist: David Malouf, Remembering Babylon (read before blogging)
  • 1995 Shortlist: Tim Winton, The riders (read before blogging)
  • 1997 Shortlist: Madeleine St John, The essence of the thing (on my TBR)
  • 2001 Winner: Peter Carey, True history of the Kelly Gang (read before blogging)
  • 2002 Shortlist: Tim Winton, Dirt music (read before blogging)
  • 2003 Winner: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little (read before blogging)
  • 2003 Longlist: J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (read before blogging)
  • 2004 Longlist: Shirley Hazzard, The great fire (read before blogging)
  • 2004 Longlist: Gail Jones, Sixty lights
  • 2005 Longlist: J. M. Coetzee , Slow man
  • 2006 Shortlist: Kate Grenville, The secret river (read before blogging)
  • 2006 Longlist: Peter Carey, Theft: A love story (read before blogging)
  • 2008 Shortlist: Steve Toltz, A fraction of the whole (my review)
  • 2008 Longlist: Michelle de Kretser, The lost dog (read before blogging)
  • 2009 Shortlist: J. M. Coetzee, Summertime
  • 2010 Shortlist: Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (my review)
  • 2010 Longlist: Christos Tsiolkas, The slap (my post)
  • 2014 Winner: Richard Flanagan, The narrow road to the deep north (my review)
  • 2016 Longlist: J. M. Coetzee, The schooldays of Jesus
  • 2024 Shortlist: Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional (my review)

* The Lost Man Booker Prize was made in 2010 to retrospectively correct a 1970/1 chronological glitch.

Only 5 writers have won the award twice, and one of those is Australian, Peter Carey. J.M. Coetzee, who is now Australian, has also won twice, and has been listed for the award four times since he moved to Australia from South Africa in 2002. However, his two wins, which I have not listed above, occurred while he was a “South African” writer.

Of the many Booker Prize controversies over the years, an early one involved Thomas Keneally in 1975, when the judges deemed only two novels worth shortlisting, of which Keneally’s Gossip from the forest was one. I am familiar with much of Keneally’s oeuvre (though I’ve not read a lot) but this one is new to me! The winner was the other (Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and dust).

The most nominated Australian writers are:

  • J.M. Coetzee (6, if we fold in those two pre-Australian resident wins)
  • Peter Carey (5)
  • Thomas Keneally (4)
  • Shirley Hazzard (2)
  • Tim Winton (2)

The Man Booker International Prize was made biennially between 2005 – 2015 to recognise one writer for their achievement in fiction, and Australian writers have been shortlisted three times:

  • 2007 Shortlist: Peter Carey
  • 2009 Shortlist: Peter Carey
  • 2011 Shortlist: David Malouf

In 2106, this award came into line with the Man Booker Prize and is now made annually for a work of translated fiction. This will rarely include Australian books given the majority of our writers write in English. However, in 2020, Shokoofeh Azar was shortlisted for The enlightenment of the greengage tree (my review).

Any thoughts?

Six degrees of separation, FROM Long Island TO …

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When last month’s Six Degrees went to air, I was on holiday in outback Queensland. I have since returned from that wonderful trip, but am now in Melbourne for two weeks, catching up with family, including of course our two gorgeous grandchildren. I could do the grandmotherly thing and wax lyrical about what fun they are, but if you have grandchildren, yours will be just as much fun, and if you don’t, then, my stories will bore you very quickly, so let’s get straight to this month’s Six Degrees. As always, if you don’t know how the #SixDegrees meme works, please check host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month we are back to books I haven’t read, this one being Colm Tóibín’s Long Island. I’ve seen (and loved) the movie of the first novel, Brooklyn, but haven’t read it or this sequel. I’d like to though!

Louise Mack, Girls together

I considered many ways to take this chain but in the end, I decided to go with the idea of a sequel. My link is an old Australian novel, Louise Mack’s Girls together (my review), which was published in 1898 and was the sequel to her novel Teens.

Girls together is about two friends, 16-year-old Lennie, who is at a point of transition in her life, and 18-year-old Mabel, who returns in the opening chapters from Paris and is training to be an artist. My next link draws on the idea of friendship between two young women. Nell Pierce’s A place near Eden (my review) is very different to Girls together, but the main friends here, Tilly and Celeste, are, like Lennie and Mabel, two years apart in age, meaning that from the start, Tilly is less experienced than Celeste – and she feels it. For the main part of the story, they are 19 and 21, and something happens, near Eden, for which Tilly is blamed.

Flynn Tiger in Eden

My next link is simple, obvious, so MR at least is sure to love it! I am linking, in other words, on title. The book is Chris Flynn’s A tiger in Eden (my review). It’s about Billy, “a thug-on-the run” in Thailand from his violent past in Belfast. He is, of course, the “tiger” in Eden, but there are more tigers to the story than just this.

A tiger also appears in my next novel, Fiona McFarlane’s The night guest (my review) which is about an older woman living on her own, the carer her children organise for her, and a tiger which starts to visit at night. As in Chris Flynn’s novel, there are layers here to the idea of the tiger.

The older woman in my next link has far more agency than McFarlane’s Frida who is, admittedly, in the early stages of dementia. The woman is the narrator of Sigrid Nunez’s essay-novel cum autofiction work, The vulnerables (my review). It’s the story of a woman who, in the early days of COVID and lockdown, takes on the task of pet-sitting a miniature macaw in a classy New York apartment, but finds herself sharing this role with a disaffected, opinionated Gen Z son of friends of the apartment owner.  An uneasy relationship develops between these two strong-minded people.

My last link is about another older woman and a younger man living in the same apartment complex. They become friends when he is locked out of his apartment, but their friendship happens rather more easily than Nunez’s pair because they quickly find points of connection. The novel is Michael Fitzgerald’s Late (my review). It is a “what if” story about Marilyn Munro spun through a story about Sydney’s 1980s gay murders. Late encourages us to think about who Marilyn might have been had she been allowed to be herself, and who her young gay neighbour might be if allowed to be himself!

So, we started with Kate’s book in greater New York, but moved very quickly to Australia, before popping over to Thailand, back to Australia, and then to New York again, before finally ending up in Australia. We’ve met tigers and thugs (not to mention a macaw), older women and younger men, and we’ve come across some interesting girl friends. We’ve met people to be trusted and some not so much. I hope you’ve been intrigued!

Now, the usual: have you read Long Island and, regardless, what would you link to?

Finlay Lloyd’s 20/40 Prize 2024: Shortlist announced

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And, the interesting literary awards keep coming. In November 2022, I announced the creation of the new 20/40 Publishing Prize by the local-to-my-region independent, non-profit publisher, Finlay Lloyd. A year later, in October 2023, I announced the inaugural shortlist, and soon after that, the winners, Rebecca Burton’s Ravenous girls (my review) and Kim Kelly’s Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room (my review). I am absolutely thrilled to see that the shortlist for this year’s award has just been announced.

But, before I get to that, a little explanation re my opening sentence. Like the Barbara Jefferis and the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Awards, this award, too, has different and specific criteria, though in this case they are not so much about content as form. The 20/40 prize is a manuscript award with the prize being publication, neither of which criteria is particularly unusual. Further, it is not limited to debut or young or women or any other subgroup of writers, as some manuscript awards are. Submissions can be fiction or non-fiction, but must be prose (albeit “all genres … including hybrid forms” are welcome). What makes this award particularly special – to me anyhow – is that it is for shorter works, that is, for works between 20,000 and 40,000 words (hence the award’s name, the 20/40 Prize). The original aim was to make two awards – one to a work of fiction and one to nonfiction. However, last year the fiction submissions were so strong, said the judges, that both winners were fiction. Let’s see what happens this year …

And now, the 2024 Shortlist

Here is the shortlist, with a description from the announcement, plus further information I have found on the previously published authors.

  • Alicia Marie Carter’s Minotaur toes pulls no punches in taking the reader deep into the searing, visceral reality of the ensnared existence of a young woman, manipulated in prostitution: Carter is a writer, editor, teacher and podcaster who has had short stories, poetry and personal essays published in various literary journals, has won awards for her short fiction, and had a novel, Songs at the end shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize 2021.
  • PS Cottier and NG Hartland’s The thirty-one legs of Vladimir Putin spirits us away on a comedic journey into a world where the reality and absurdity of political power are increasingly indistinguishable: Cottier is a Canberra-based “poet who occasionally writes prose”, among other things, with an impressive body of work to her name; Harland is also a Canberra-based writer about whom I have found little except some references to prose writing.
  • Susan Saliba’s There is something that waits inside us empathetically explores the search for solace of a girl caught between the example of her high-achieving aunt and her eccentric, dysfunctional mother: Saliba is an English and Creative Writing Teacher, and an award-winning writer of young adult and children’s fiction.
  • Sonya Voumard’s Tremor shows us that beyond our societal expectations and judgements about normality, individual lives with disability can follow atypical, often difficult, but ultimately inspiring paths: Voumard is a writer and lecturer, primarily in non-fiction, who first came to my attention when she was longlisted for the Stella Prize in 2017 with The media and the massacre (which kimbofo reviewed from her won journalistic perspective).

Last year’s submissions were judged blind. This is not explicitly stated in this year’s shortlist announcement, but Julian Davies did say in an email announcement earlier this year that “Consistent with the ethos behind the prize, and last year’s guidelines, all entries will be read blind by the panel so that the quality of the writing guides the panel’s decisions rather than any extraneous influence”. I am clarifying this as I know it appeals to many readers and writers.

The judging panel for the 2024 prize comprised author Kevin Brophy (whose The lion in love I’ve reviewed), the publisher and author Julian Davies (whom I’ve reviewed a few times), author and poet Rashida Murphy, and last year’s winners, Rebecca Burton and Kim Kelly (aka Kim Swivel). The ongoing plan is for the previous year’s winners to be on the next year’s panel.

The winners will be announced on 26 October, just in time, again, for Novellas in November. The media release says, “it is intrinsic to a publishing prize that when the shortlisted entries are announced, the winning books are already in the final stages of being prepared for publication”. In other words, we should be able to buy them at the end of this month. Watch this space. I have so many novellas I want to read for Novellas in November …

It is heartening to see Finlay Lloyd’s commitment to their prize. I hope it continues long into the future.

Monday musings on Australian literature: literary Magandjin/Brisbane

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Last week I wrote a post on “literary outback Queensland”, following the route of a trip we had just finished. That trip ended up in Magandjin (or Brisbane), which is very definitely not “outback” so I decided to hold over Brisbane fiction for another post.

Concluding the Skylore drone show, 2024 Brisbane Festival

Brisbane is the capital of the state of Queensland. However, occupation of course long predates this colonial history. The oldest archaeological evidence for Aboriginal occupation dates back 22,000 years but the report used to provide these dates adds that “Brisbane is probably far older than [these dates suggest], with earlier evidence likely destroyed by the changing coastal and sub-coastal environment, coupled with rapid urban expansion”. Several Aboriginal groups claim traditional ownership of this area, including the Yagara, Turrbal and Quandamooka peoples. And these people have their own names for the city. The one best known to settler Australians is Meanjin, a Turrbal word for the land on which parts of the city are built, but another is Magandjin (sometimes spelt Maganjin), a Yagara word referring to the tulipwood tree. I’m not across the finer details here, but this seems to be the name that is the accepted or preferred name.

Colonial occupation commenced with the establishment of the Moreton Bay penal settlement at Redcliffe in 1824, but this settlement was moved to North Quay on the Brisbane River in 1825. From here the city developed in fits and starts as cities often do. You can read about it at the link on Brisbane above if you are interested. I lived in Brisbane through most of my primary school years.

For this post I’ve decided to share a selection of books in chronological groupings – by setting, not by publication. Listing the books chronologically by publication would have its own validity in terms of capturing the interests of the period they were written (regardless of the period in which they were set), but I’ve decided to take the simpler route and focus on the picture they build of Brisbane. Most on my list I’ve read, some before blogging, but there are some TBR wishlist books here too.

Colonial era (19th century)

I have chosen two novels to represent Magandjin’s colonial area:

Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie (2023, my review): set primarily in colonial Brisbane in the 1850s, with a brief section set in the 1820s as the settlers started to arrive, and a contrasting modern narrative set in 2024, Edenglassie paints a picture of colonial society from a First Nations perspective. Lucashenko said her main aims were to ask “what was going through these people’s [the colonisers’] minds?” (as things could have been different) and to counteract the trope of the dying race. It’s a vivid and engaging book.

Jessica Anderson, The commandant Book cover

Jessica Anderson, The commandant (1975, my review): also set in colonial Brisbane, but in the abovementioned penal colony of Moreton Island in 1830. It is Anderson’s only historical novel, but was apparently her favourite. It was inspired by the real story of its commandant, Patrick Logan. Known as a harsh leader, he was murdered while out on an expedition. The story is told mostly through the eyes of his (fictional) younger, visiting sister-in-law.

20th Century

Brisbane is Australia’s most northern state capital – Darwin being a territory capital – and was closest to the South West Pacific Area theatre of World War II. Consequently, it played a major role in Australia’s defence, and became a temporary home to thousands of Australian and American servicemen and women. Naturally, this significantly affected the city’s social and political environment. Many novelists have explored this time, but I’m sharing just a few, followed by some novels set later in the century.

Arielle Van Luyn, Treading air

Ariella van Luhn, Treading air (2016, my review): set in Townsville 1922, and then Brisbane 1945, this work of historical fiction was inspired by a petty criminal named Lizzie O’Dea. Van Luyn creates vivid pictures of Brisbane, including the story of Lizzie’s theft of “bully beef and US army blankets”, which conveys much about the stresses of the time.

Melanie Myers, Meet me at Lennon’s (2019, my review): set in WW2 Brisbane when American servicemen were in town, sweeping young women off their feet and not always paying attention to their moral compass! My 1929-born Mum was a young woman at the time, and her school was taken over by the American military. Myers’ novel fictionalises the stories and places mum told us about.

David Malouf, Johnno (1975, read before blogging): semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in 1940s-50s Brisbane, with the first person narrator telling of his friendship with his schoolmate, “Johnno”. Malouf captures well-to-do Brisbane life, but also the challenges of growing up and finding one’s place.

Thea Astley, The slow natives (1965, on my TBR): set in the mid-1960s, says Wikipedia, examining “the relationships between suburban Brisbanites, including a priest, nuns and a couple and their teenage son”. Explores the sort of emotional and spiritual aridity that is often at the heart of Astley’s fiction, and that may have stemmed, at least partly, from her youthful experience of life in Brisbane.

Toni Jordan, Fragments (2018): a dual narrative literary mystery which moves backwards and forwards between 1930s New York and balmy 1980s Brisbane.

Trent Dalton, Boy swallows universe

Trent Dalton, Boy swallows universe (2018, my review): semi-autobiographical story of a young boy growing up in the 1980s and 90s, in working class suburban Brisbane; a story about a childhood characterised by drugs and violence, but also love.

Andrew McGahan, Praise (1992, read before blogging): set in 1990s Brisbane, this novel triggered the Australian literary genre, grunge lit, which Wikipedia describes as, “an Australian literary genre usually applied to fiction or semi-autobiographical writing concerned with dissatisfied and disenfranchise young people living in suburban or inner-city surroundings”. Andrew Stafford reviewed Praise in The Guardian, drawing some comparisons with Johnno:

it captured the town’s torpor and the ambivalence of its inhabitants better than any book since David Malouf’s Johnno.

But whereas Malouf luxuriated in detailed poetic descriptions and may have been the first writer to describe Brisbane as a “big country town” (and Johnno moved at about the same pace), Praise was full of pent-up energy. A classic of Australian dirty realism, it’s a novel in which not a lot happens – but like Brisbane itself, all the action is happening beneath the banal facade, fuelled by frustration and repressed rage.

21st Century

Brisbane in this century has experienced some major disasters, including serious flooding, which are increasing in frequency due to climate change. (This report from the Queensland government is instructive.) It has also been a period of high population growth and significant infrastructure development. It feels like a city on the move, but not without tensions over the potential for negative outcomes.

Donna Cameron, The rewilding (2024, my review): set in contemporary Australia, this work of ecofiction takes us on a wild road trip from Sydney to northern Queensland via disaster-struck flooded Brisbane where our eco-warrior protagonist, Nia, takes risks amongst Brisbane’s skyscrapers to promote her planet-saving cause.

Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light, book cover

Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light (2014, my review): three-part work, set largely in Brisbane, but with stories set throughout Australia. The middle part, “Water”, is a longform story set in the near future, at least it was from 2014 when it was written, as it’s set in the 2020s. Australia is a republic with a female president, a new flag, and Jessica Mauboy’s song “Gotcha” as the national anthem. However, life isn’t perfect. Narrator Kaden is a Cultural Liaison Officer who thought she’d be working with “other Aboriginal people”. Instead, she she’s to work with “plantpeople” who are sort of mutant plants with human features created during “islandising” experiments. It’s a story about how we treat other, about segregation, discrimination and dirty politics.

Brisbane is home to many wonderful novelists whom I haven’t mentioned here (like Susan Johnson, and Nick Earls), and to the impressive University of Queensland Press which does a sterling job of supporting First Nations and other Australian writing.

Do you have any favourite Brisbane-based books?

2024 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist

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Recently, I posted on the shortlist for the Barbara Jefferis Award, which has a very specific goal concerning the depiction of women and girls in a positive way or in a way that empowers the status of women and girls in society. Today, I’m sharing another shortlist for another award with a specific focus. The award is the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award and its focus is “Australian research-based literature”. It is offered through a municipal council, the Waverley Council in Sydney, which also makes it unusual.

Like the Barbara Jefferis award, and indeed the Stella Prize, this award is not limited by genre or form – that is both fiction and non-fiction are eligible. The judging is based on “on literary merit, research, readability, and value to the community”. I have written about it before, so if you are interested in its origins and intentions please check that link. Previous winners include historians Alison Bashford and Claire Wright, biologist Tim Low, novelists Helen Garner and Delia Falconer, and journalist Gideon Haigh.

Last year, the winner’s prize doubled in value from $20,000 to $40,000, due “to an ongoing multiyear commitment by the award’s principal sponsors, Sydney philanthropists, Mark and Evette Moran, Co-Founders/Co-CEOs of the Mark Moran Group”. This makes it a significant prize. There is also a People’s Choice Prize of $4,000 and the six shortlisted books receive $1,500 each.

The judges for the 2024 award are poet Jamie Grant, publisher Julia Carlomagno, and writer Angela Meyer (whom I’ve reviewed a few times here). They narrowed the shortlist to 6 books, from 175 submissions. The announcement quotes them as saying:

“We were impressed with the breadth and calibre of this year’s entries, which ranged across genres, forms and styles. The six chosen books cast a lens both global and intimate, exploring issues of gender, class, nation and family, and emphasising the importance of community. We congratulate all the shortlisted authors.”

The 2024 shortlist

  • Shauna Bostock, Reaching through time: Finding my family’s stories (Allen & Unwin, First Nations family history)
  • Deborah Conway, Book of life (Allen & Unwin, memoir, kimbofo’s review)
  • Ryan Cropp, Donald Horne: A life in the lucky country (La Trobe University Press, biography, Lisa’s review)
  • Anna Funder, Wifedom (Hamish Hamiliton, biography, my review)
  • Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie (UQP, historical fiction, my review)
  • Dave Witty, What the trees see: A wander through millennia of natural history in Australia (Monash University Press, ecoliterature/nature writing)

As commonly happens with this award, life-writing features heavily in the shortlist. Like last year, there is just one work of fiction. But, unlike some years, I’m pleased to have read two of the shortlist!

If you wish to vote for the Nib People’s Choice Awards, you can do so from now until 17th October, so click here to register your choice. For more information on the award overall, check out Waverley Council’s announcement.

The winner of the overall prize and the People’s Choice Award will be announced on 27 November.

Have you read any of these books?

Jane Caro, The mother (#BookReview)

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When my reading group scheduled Jane Caro’s debut novel, The mother, I was, I admit, not exactly enthusiastic, because my sense was that it was not going to be the sort of, shall I say, subtle writing I prefer. My sense was right, but I am not sorry I read it – partly because of the engaged discussion we had and partly for Caro’s intention.

The mother, then, is not a literary award-winner – the writing is fine but not exciting or breath-taking in the way I like – but, and it is a big but, it is an accessible, fictional exposé of the main points Jess Hill makes in her Stella Prize-winning See what you made me do: Power, control and domestic violence (my review). Hill explores family and domestic violence from every angle, but the most shocking and enlightening part for me concerned children, particularly the Family Court’s inability or refusal to see the risks to children from its parent access orders, even when the children themselves express fear. This point is powerfully made by Caro in her novel*.

But, let me step back a bit. The mother tells the story of 60-something middle-class Miriam Duffy who, widowed early in the novel, is pleased – and indeed grateful – when her emotional daughter, with whom she has had a tricky relationship, marries a perfect-seeming man. Gradually, however, little niggles about this relationship become bigger until one day they are confirmed when Ally returns home with two little children in tow, having left her husband. From here the situation deteriorates as the husband Nick escalates his bullying, predatory behaviour, and Miriam and Ally realise that the law is unable to protect them. The novel is described as a thriller, so I’ll give you just one more piece of information. It opens with a Prologue in which Miriam buys a handgun.

This brings me to the structure. After this Prologue, the novel is divided into two parts. In Part 1, Ally marries and soon after, Miriam is widowed. There is also a second, older, daughter who is in a stable marriage and has two children. During this part, Caro slowly drips out many of the flags that constitute coercive control, but that on their own don’t initially look like it or can be explained away – things like isolation from family and friends, use of a (demeaning) pet-name, jealousy, charm that is turned on and off at will, and surveillance, moving into sexual violence and gaslighting. This part ends with Ally’s return home. Part 2 commences four years later, and we are reminded of the Prologue, because Miriam is researching where she can buy a gun. Miriam and Ally have been systematically intimidated by Nick, and have reported his transgressions against Ally’s AVO (Apprehended Violence Order) again and again, but

Eventually they had stopped going to the police. It wasn’t that the cops weren’t sympathetic; it was just that they could not do anything.

In this part, Caro ratchets up the sense of helplessness (and hopelessness) the two women feel as Nick finds new ways to harass and terrify them. As I read it, I couldn’t help but think about all the news stories of recent years about murdered women and children. Nor could Miriam and Ally, but they turned the TV off the minute these stories came on. They were too close to home!

Like many issue-driven books, The mother did, as many in my reading group commented, feel didactic at times, and it is somewhat predictable. Some of us also felt that it was a little laboured in places. However, offsetting this is the novel’s characterisation and understanding of human nature. Caro conveys the complex human emotions we all experience under stress. She explores the lines and balance between what is acceptable in relationships and what is not, the fears about when to speak up, the justifications we try to find when things feel awry, and the feelings of guilt (particularly in mothers).

The mother is unapologetically a novel with a cause. With its compelling storyline and believable characters, it has a chance of reaching those who do not understand what coercive control is, and who do not realise that it crosses all demographics. Nick, for example, is a vet and Ally a PhD candidate. Miriam, a successful businesswoman, lives in comfortable North Shore Sydney.

This novel is being promoted primarily as a thriller, but I’m more inclined to see it as belonging to that long tradition of social problem novels. It may not be as sophisticated as the best of them, but its intention is clear, to drive social change. I hope it succeeds. I don’t imagine Jane Caro, or Jess Hill for that matter, will let matters lie until we see real, sustained change happening – and nor should we.

* This month there has been news about changes in family law in Australia, including removing the presumption of equal shared care, putting a focus on prioritising children’s best interests, and revamping the role of independent children’s lawyers. Time will tell what difference this makes in practice.

Jane Caro
The mother
Allen & Unwin, 2022
368pp.
ISBN: 9781761063893 
ASIN: B09MQ3PN1W

Monday musings on Australian literature: literary outback Queensland

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I started writing this in late August, before we headed off on our outback Queensland trip, revisiting many places from my childhood, as well as seeing some new places. It was while living in Mt Isa, in northwest Queensland that I developed my love of Australian literature and of the Australian landscape. I was 11 when we moved there, and 14 when we left.

Queensland is, area-wise, Australia’s second largest state (though third largest in terms of population). Wikipedia has articles on the different regions of Queensland, but the areas and specific places we are moving through are:

  • Far North Queensland: encompassing part of the Great Barrier Reef, Cape York Peninsula, the Atherton Tablelands, the Daintree Forest and Queensland’s part of the Gulf of Carpentaria. This is the only part of Australia that is the country of both Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.
  • North Queensland: includes Mt Isa
  • Central West Queensland: includes Longreach, Winton, and Barcaldine.

These are my focus in this post, though from the Central West we will continue southeast to Brisbane, passing through some other notable areas. We visited nearly all the places I mention below on our recent trip, or we were in their vicinity, waving at their road signs as we whizzed by!

To describe the landscape would take a post in itself, but I’ll just say that this area includes tropical regions that are frequently visited by cyclones, and dry western regions that are frequently visited by drought. Tourism, agriculture (including sugarcane), pastoral (featuring huge cattle stations), and mining are the main industries of the area. First Nations people live throughout the state, but not all communities have survived well. Much has been lost. It was while living in Mount Isa in the 1960s that I first learnt that there were different Aboriginal nations (though we didn’t use the word “nation” then.) The Kalkadoons (more properly now, Kalkatungu) were my introduction to Australian Aboriginal culture and history, not that we learnt much. But it did frame my early understandings of what Australia was.

While the big coastal cities – Cairns and Townsville – are well populated, this more western area is far more sparse, but it is nonetheless home to more Australian literature than you might think. A few years ago, I reviewed a book that focused on literature of cyclone country, Chrystopher J. Spicer’s Cyclone country: The language of place and disaster in Australian literature. In this book, he discusses five writers, whom I will include in my list below.

Moving now to literature, specifically, Spicer argues that weather is inseparable from the physical and experiential aspects of the landscape. One of his points concerns how writers capture the idea that people who live in cyclone areas “integrate” the experience in some way into their identity – and into their understanding of how to live in that place. This is probably true in all areas which have “big” weather, not just cyclones but also events like droughts. Regardless, many writers have drawn on the weather as much as the landscape to enhance their stories and ideas. Teresa Smith, reviewing Mirandi Riwoe‘s historical novel Stone sky, gold mountain (2020), which is set during the gold rush in the Palmer River area near Far North Queensland’s Cooktown, writes that “There is no mistaking the location within this novel … anyone who has lived in central and north Queensland will relate to the sense of cloying and oppressive heat that lifts from the pages of this story …”

Over the years, I have read many novels set wholly or partly in outback and remote Queensland. Two authors, though, who stand out are Alexis Wright and Thea Astley. Both have written powerfully and evocatively about the region, pulling no punches about its social, economic and psychic challenges. I’m not, however, going explore this in detail. Instead, I’m sharing a selective list of works, roughly following the trip we took, to give you a flavour! (This means some authors you might expect, won’t appear here!)

A literary trip through Outback Queensland

Our trip started in Cairns, where we did a day trip north before we went west through the Atherton Tablelands, and its sugarcane, gold and timber towns, to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Then we wended south through Mount Isa, Winton, Longreach, Barcaldine and on to Roma and Toowoomba, before heading east to Brisbane.

Carins, Kuranda, the Daintree, Port Douglas, and environs:

  • Thea Astley, Girl with monkey (1958), A boatload of home folk (1968), Hunting the wild pineapple (1979, my post on the titular story), The multiple effects of rainshadow (1996, my review) are some of the books Brisbane-born Astley, who lived for many years in north Queensland, set in the region. Her focus was outcasts, misfits and injustice.
  • Xavier Herbert wrote many of his books while living in Redlynch, on the edge of Cairns, but in fact his subject matter tended to be the Northern Territory.
  • Susan Hawthorne, Earth’s breath (2009) is a verse novel inspired by the 2006 landfall of Cyclone Larry, which affected many coastal towns around Cairns and across the Atherton Tablelands.

Tinaroo: Myfanwy Jones, Cool water (2023, my review) is set on the Atherton Tablelands, with an historical narrative based around the building of the Tinaroo Dam in the mid-1950s and a modern timeline set in the same place. Its theme, however, is not so much environmental, as you might expect, as toxic masculinity.

Karumba and the Gulf of Carpentaria: Alexis Wright, Carpentaria (2006, my post), and Praiseworthy (2023): Wright is an activist and writer from the Waanyi nation in the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Her novels capture the region’s political and cultural tensions and challenges, the long tail of invasion and dispossession, with a vibrancy and humour that never forgets the dark side.

Normanton: Nevil Shute’s A town like Alice (1950) is partly set in a fictional outback Australian town which is based on Normanton (and nearby Burketown). It features an entrepreneurial young English woman determined to lift the economy, and make it a “town like Alice”.

Mount Isa and the Barkly Tablelands

  • Vance Palmer’s Golconda trilogy (Golconda, 1948; Seedtime, 1957, and The big fellow, 1959) is set in Mount Isa, and explores industrial conflict between miners and management.
  • Debra Dank’s memoir We come with this place (2022, my review) is set in the Northern Territory-northern Queensland region, including the Barkly Tablelands on which Mount Isa sits. Dank truth-tells about her people’s life and culture.
Sign on wall in the Blue Heeler Hotel, Kynuna

Dagworth (sheep station), Kynuna and Winton: AB “Banjo” Paterson’s poem and song “Waltzing Matilda” was written and first performed in this region around 1894 to 1895, though details seem to vary a little about which verses were written where, where it was first performed, its inspiration in characters of the region, and Banjo’s role in the 1894/95 Shearer’s Strike.

Barcoo River: Janette Turner Hospital, Forecast: Turbulence (2011) (partially read) is a bit of a stretch, because its stories are as much set in the USA as in Australia, as far as I can tell, but one of the stories, the “Republic of Outer Barcoo”, refers to the Barcoo River which joins Longreach’s Thomson River to flow into Coopers Creek. Newtown Review of Books says that “Throughout this collection characters’ emotional states are reflected in the weather, or described in terms of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes or the isobars on a weather map” which Chrystopher Spicer would have loved. The Barcoo also features in some Paterson poems. However, I really wanted to include it here because the Barcoo, in the ANU’s words, “has been used since the 1870s as a shorthand reference for the hardships, privations, and living conditions of the outback”. This is a meaning I’ve grown up with. But, the ANU adds that “Barcoo can also denote more positive aspects of outback life: a makeshift resourcefulness” and “a laconic bush wit”.

Barcaldine: William Lane’s A workingman’s paradise is set in Sydney, but includes a character from the Barcaldine-based 1891 Shearers’ strike. He is in Sydney rustling up support for the cause. The striking shearers in Barcaldine, apparently, flew the Eureka flag during and sang Henry Lawson’s “Freedom on the Wallaby”.

Injune: Frank Dalby Davison’s Man-shy (1931, read at high school) about men and cattle, and Dusty (1946) about a drover and his part-dingo dog, were set in this district where Davison had worked on cattle properties.

Patrick White, Voss

Roma: Patrick White’s Voss (1957) was inspired by Ludwig Leichhardt’s second fated expedition. It was west of Roma that his party disappeared leaving no trace.

Toowoomba and the Darling Downs: Patrick White’s aforementioned Voss passed through this area.

These books span a century, but Peter Pierce’s The Oxford literary guide to Australia, includes novelists, poets and other writers from the 19th century who lived and wrote the region. The works that I have mentioned vary in their subject matter, but many deal with the challenges of coping with the isolation and the elements (one way or another), and their characters often survive because of their ingenuity and sense of humour. Many of the novels are political, like William Lane’s inclusion of the shearer’s strike in his and Vance Palmer’s dealing industrial unrest in a mining community. First Nations people do not feature strongly in novels by non Indigenous writers, but their own writers are now starting to correct that absence. The landscape – which ranges from bare and brown in the outback to almost too lush and oppressive in the tropics – can be richly metaphorical as well as literal. And, the weather is omnipresent in much of the writing. All these features, I think, mark these books out as essentially different from their urban counterparts.

So, I’ve not included Brisbane, nor the majority of the east coast. Another time perhaps? Meanwhile, now’s your opportunity to tell me what you think and share some of your favourite novels set in remote regions of your country.