'Adam's life has been ruined by war ... A veteran of the Iraq conflict who has suffered such extensive bodily trauma that he can only really survive by means of a mechanical skeleton.
'Marianna's has been ruined by men ... A woman who has had to flee the country after her husband lied to the wrong people.
'John Philip's by too much money ... A man who inherits the lost erotic drawings of J. M. W. Turner in the evening of his own life.
'Rodney Hall presents the interwoven story of three people experiencing a period of life they never thought possible and, perhaps, should never have been granted at all ... Each sets out along a separate path, seeking a stolen season in which they can live on their own terms. ' (Publication summary)
Dedication: To the memory of my mentors John Manifold and Robert Graves two great and admirable men both of whom would probably have disapproved of this book.
Epigraph: Once we are bound to our brothers by a common goal that is outside us, then we can breathe. Experience teaches us that to love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze together in the same direction. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars
'I think it’s fair to say that each year the selected novels on the Miles Franklin shortlist manifest the zeitgeist, reflecting on some of the issues that are troubling society.' (Introduction)
'Australia’s contribution to the Second Gulf War has not proved a fertile subject for literary fiction. Of the 75 books nominated for the Miles Franklin Award since 2003 there’s almost nothing about Iraq, Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction.' (Introduction)
'Of the now twelve novels that make up Rodney Hall’s distinguished prose fiction – ranging from The Ship on the Coin (1972) to this year’s A Stolen Season – it is arguably in the latter that the task of remaking is most explicitly and adventurously undertaken, even literally in the case of Adam Griffiths. As an Australian soldier fighting with the ‘Coalition of the Willing’, Adam has been shockingly wounded: he is ‘helpless and isolated’. ‘Cocooned in his own silence’. Now, with his young wife, Bridget, who, in edge-of-panic reflection, muses ‘she ought never to have married him in the first place’, Adam, smashed, burnt, ‘ought to have died’, navigates the pain-racked hours, tortured step by step, with the robotic help of his exoskeleton, ‘the Contraption’. Like Viktor Frankenstein, Bridget recognises that she is in thrall to a monster: ‘He is her monstrosity, hers and hers alone.’ (Introduction)
'Of the now twelve novels that make up Rodney Hall’s distinguished prose fiction – ranging from The Ship on the Coin (1972) to this year’s A Stolen Season – it is arguably in the latter that the task of remaking is most explicitly and adventurously undertaken, even literally in the case of Adam Griffiths. As an Australian soldier fighting with the ‘Coalition of the Willing’, Adam has been shockingly wounded: he is ‘helpless and isolated’. ‘Cocooned in his own silence’. Now, with his young wife, Bridget, who, in edge-of-panic reflection, muses ‘she ought never to have married him in the first place’, Adam, smashed, burnt, ‘ought to have died’, navigates the pain-racked hours, tortured step by step, with the robotic help of his exoskeleton, ‘the Contraption’. Like Viktor Frankenstein, Bridget recognises that she is in thrall to a monster: ‘He is her monstrosity, hers and hers alone.’ (Introduction)
'Australia’s contribution to the Second Gulf War has not proved a fertile subject for literary fiction. Of the 75 books nominated for the Miles Franklin Award since 2003 there’s almost nothing about Iraq, Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction.' (Introduction)
'I think it’s fair to say that each year the selected novels on the Miles Franklin shortlist manifest the zeitgeist, reflecting on some of the issues that are troubling society.' (Introduction)
