Dirt Music
Sydney
:
Picador
,
2001
Z918096
2001
single work
novel
(taught in 15 units)
'Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.
'One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast...' (From the publisher's website.)
The Transit of Venus
New York (City)
:
Viking
,
1980
Z391036
1980
single work
novel
(taught in 6 units)
The Secret River
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2005
Z1194031
2005
single work
novel
historical fiction
(taught in 69 units)
'In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand.
'But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself.
'Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.
'Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.
'Inspired by research into her own family history, Kate Grenville vividly creates the reality of settler life, its longings, dangers and dilemmas. The Secret River is a brilliantly written book, a groundbreaking story about identity, belonging and ownership.' (From the publisher's website.)
Coonardoo : The Well in the Shadow
1928
Z1081769
1928
single work
novel
(taught in 39 units)
Set in North-West of Western Australia, it describes life on cattle stations and the relationship between the white owner of the station and Coonardoo, an Aboriginal woman.
Night Letters : A Journey Through Switzerland and Italy
Sydney
:
Macmillan Australia
,
1996
Z529292
1996
single work
novel
(taught in 7 units)
'Every night for twenty nights in a hotel room in Venice, an Australian man recently diagnosed with an incurable disease writes a letter home to a friend. In these letters he reflects on questions of mortality, seduction and the search for paradise in deeply life-enhancing ways.' (From publisher's web site.)
Bliss
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
1981
8407782
1981
single work
novel
(taught in 11 units)
'For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life.' (From the author's website.)
study is made of the movement away from the intense nationalism and the realism characteristic of Australian literature
in the early years of the twentieth century. Students consider the ways in which the spiritual and cultural uncertainties of
contemporary Australian life are reflected in the literature and film of the period and explore contemporary attitudes to
history, myth, memory, imagination and a changing awareness of 'place' in the national consciousness. Films include Mad
Max, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and The Castle.
