'Kungadgee, Victoria, Australia. A weekend in late November, 2014. At Hugh and Christine Cleary’s new vineyard, Whipbird, six generations of the Cleary family are coming together from far and wide to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the arrival of their ancestor Conor Cleary from Ireland. Hugh has been meticulously planning the event for months – a chance to proudly showcase Whipbird to the extended clan. Some of these family members know each other; some don’t.
'As the wine flows, it promises to be an eventful couple of days.
'Comic, topical, honest, sharply intelligent, and, above all, sympathetic, Robert Drewe’s exhilarating new novel tells a classic Australian family saga as it has never been told before.' (Publication summary)
Dedication: For Tray
Epigraph:
'Everything exists, everything is true,
and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.'
--W.B. Yeats
'In Robert Drewe's newest novel, Whipbird, disparate branches of the Cleary family tree gather for a weekend to celebrate both the 160th anniversary of their ancestor's arrival in Australia and the opening of Hugh Cleary's titular Whipbird vineyard. (In an early bit of humor, we learn the reason Hugh has chosen the 160th rather than the more recognizably significant 150th anniversary is that ten years earlier, everyone forgot.) In a suave satiric critique of the public's willful historical ignorance, Drewe shows guests amusingly unimpressed to learn that their ancestor Conor Cleary played a role in the 1854 miners' uprising at the Eureka Stockade, an event that is also celebrating its 160th anniversary: "Some of the adults recalled a school history lesson on Australia's small, swift civil war…. Who could remember the date involved when there wasn't even a public holiday for it?" (72). Hugh himself seems comically oblivious that their ancestor was a soldier (fighting on the side of the British) and not a miner.' (Introduction)
'Depending on your vintage, Robert Drewe is best known for his memoir The Shark Net, his debut novel, The Savage Crows, his widely studied short stories, or because his Our Sunshine became the Heath Ledger vehicle Ned Kelly. It seems fitting that Ernest Hemingway is name-checked twice in Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird. “As a writer you should not judge. You should understand,” Hemingway once wrote in Esquire, and throughout his career, Drewe has unfailingly taken this on.' (Introduction)
'Every so often someone writes fiction that ravishes the popular imagination. Robert Drewe did it at the outset with The Body surfers in 1983 and Christos Tsiolkas has been doing it in his latest books. Now Drewe has done it again in Whipbird, an absolutely compelling read and also something more.' (Introduction)
'Author Robert Drewe’s award-winning novels are much loved for their sharply drawn portraits of Australian life. For his latest, Whipbird, he has turned his satirical eye to the type of monied professional chasing the settler tradition by owning a modest vineyard.'
'In Robert Drewe's newest novel, Whipbird, disparate branches of the Cleary family tree gather for a weekend to celebrate both the 160th anniversary of their ancestor's arrival in Australia and the opening of Hugh Cleary's titular Whipbird vineyard. (In an early bit of humor, we learn the reason Hugh has chosen the 160th rather than the more recognizably significant 150th anniversary is that ten years earlier, everyone forgot.) In a suave satiric critique of the public's willful historical ignorance, Drewe shows guests amusingly unimpressed to learn that their ancestor Conor Cleary played a role in the 1854 miners' uprising at the Eureka Stockade, an event that is also celebrating its 160th anniversary: "Some of the adults recalled a school history lesson on Australia's small, swift civil war…. Who could remember the date involved when there wasn't even a public holiday for it?" (72). Hugh himself seems comically oblivious that their ancestor was a soldier (fighting on the side of the British) and not a miner.' (Introduction)
'Author Robert Drewe’s award-winning novels are much loved for their sharply drawn portraits of Australian life. For his latest, Whipbird, he has turned his satirical eye to the type of monied professional chasing the settler tradition by owning a modest vineyard.'
'Every so often someone writes fiction that ravishes the popular imagination. Robert Drewe did it at the outset with The Body surfers in 1983 and Christos Tsiolkas has been doing it in his latest books. Now Drewe has done it again in Whipbird, an absolutely compelling read and also something more.' (Introduction)
'Depending on your vintage, Robert Drewe is best known for his memoir The Shark Net, his debut novel, The Savage Crows, his widely studied short stories, or because his Our Sunshine became the Heath Ledger vehicle Ned Kelly. It seems fitting that Ernest Hemingway is name-checked twice in Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird. “As a writer you should not judge. You should understand,” Hemingway once wrote in Esquire, and throughout his career, Drewe has unfailingly taken this on.' (Introduction)
