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'Melbourne, 1917: the times are tumultuous, the city is in the grip of a kind of madness. The Great War is raging, and it is the time of the hotly contested second conscription referendum. Fights are raging on the streets, rallies for 'YES' and 'NO' facing off against each other on opposing corners. Men, women and children, jostling, brawling, fighting and spitting.
'Through these streets walks Maryanne, forty years old, unmarried and seven months pregnant. These are uncertain, dangerous times for a woman in her position. And she is facing a difficult choice - a choice which gets more urgent by the day - whether to give her child up for adoption as the Church insists she does, or to keep her child and face an uncertain future.
'An extraordinary powerful novel of a time, a city and a woman, The Year of the Beast is Steven Carroll at his best. A rhythmic, insistent and pulsing novel that tells a compelling story of mothers, families, and what it means to be an individual, standing against the surge of the crowd.' (Publication summary)
'Steven Carroll’s six-volume Glenroy series is a beautiful reminder of what novels can do, writes Geordie Williamson.'
'In his 2017 essay ‘Notes for a Novel’, illuminatingly added as a kind of afterword at the end of this book, Steven Carroll recalls a dream that he had twenty years ago. It was this dream, he says, that grew into a series of novels centred on the Melbourne suburb of Glenroy, a series of which this novel is the sixth and last. ' (Introduction)
'The sixth and final novel of Steven Carroll’s Glenroy series takes us back to where this intergenerational saga begins, to Melbourne in 1917, and to Maryanne, a 40-year-old woman who is pregnant with an illegitimate child; a child who is “the egg from which a story would be hatched”.' (Introduction)
'The sixth and final novel of Steven Carroll’s Glenroy series takes us back to where this intergenerational saga begins, to Melbourne in 1917, and to Maryanne, a 40-year-old woman who is pregnant with an illegitimate child; a child who is “the egg from which a story would be hatched”.' (Introduction)
'Steven Carroll’s six-volume Glenroy series is a beautiful reminder of what novels can do, writes Geordie Williamson.'
'In his 2017 essay ‘Notes for a Novel’, illuminatingly added as a kind of afterword at the end of this book, Steven Carroll recalls a dream that he had twenty years ago. It was this dream, he says, that grew into a series of novels centred on the Melbourne suburb of Glenroy, a series of which this novel is the sixth and last. ' (Introduction)
