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y separately published work icon A Boat Load of Home Folk single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1968... 1968 A Boat Load of Home Folk
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'When the tourist ship Malekula arrives at a tropic island in the the Pacific the crushing heat and the looming hurricane intensify the hostilities and frustrations of the egocentric people on board. And when the hurricane bursts on the island the havoc it brings is less perhaps than the personal storms of man and wife, of spinster friends, of man and mistress, of erring priest.

'Gerald Seabrook's pointless womanising achieves a finality of irritation for his suffering wife; elderly Miss Paradise drives her life-long friend, Miss Trumper, to make a fatal pilgrimage; the agent Stevenson sees the failure of his dream of love with his mistress; and the priest, Father Lake, explodes his own petty vices and his spiritual impotence. Their moments of truth are brilliantly illuminated as the story moves to its climax in the hurricane and its aftermath.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (House of Books ed.)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Angus and Robertson , 1968 .
      image of person or book cover 4808256817524069106.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.

      Holdings

      Held at: Monash University Monash University Library
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1983 .
      image of person or book cover 5701072513656097899.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: The House of Books , 2012 .
      image of person or book cover 6208156168564293383.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 224p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published December 2012.
      ISBN: 9781743315620

Other Formats

Works about this Work

Dementia, Ageism and the Limits of Critique in Thea Astley’s Satire Ann Vickery , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , December vol. 22 no. 2 2022;
Double Trouble : The Teacher/Satirist Duality in Thea Astley’s Critical Writings Kate Cantrell , Lesley Hawkes , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , December vol. 26 no. 2 2019; (p. 218-231)

'Over a fifty-year period, from 1944 to 1994, Thea Astley published a number of critical writings, including essays, newspaper articles and reviews, and short reflections and meditations on her craft. Despite a renewed interest in Astley’s work, however, most critical interrogations of her oeuvre focus on her novels, and more recently her poetry. As a result, Astley’s critical writing has not been afforded the same breadth and depth of investigation as her fiction. This lacuna is troubling, since Astley’s critical works are important not only for their insight, but for what they reveal about Astley’s self-representation, and in particular the dual identity that she embodied as both a teacher and a satirist. This article argues that these dual roles emerge clearly in Astley’s essays and in fact are inextricable from many of her works. Further, the tensions between these two personae — Astley as teacher and Astley as satirist — reveal natural overlaps with her imaginative writing, and reflect her changing ideas about fiction writing, literature, and education.' (Publication abstract)

'Touching the Edges of Cyclones' : Thea Astley and the Winds of Revelation Chrystopher Spicer , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , June vol. 25 no. 1 2018; (p. 137-148)

'Thea Astley once commented that, ‘everybody is living on a cyclonic edge’, and that many of her characters were ‘always touching on the edges of cyclones’. In Queensland literature, cyclones often appear as tropes of apocalypse: new worlds of person and place are revealed out of the destruction of the old. In Astley's novel A Boat Load of Home Folk (1968), the tempestuous forces of personal cyclones, as well as those of the cyclone destroying the island around them, overtake a group of stranded cruise passengers, and consequently place and person assume unique meanings as the characters try to survive. Although one of her least-known works, A Boat Load of Home Folk is a profound novel of human experience in which Astley uses the elemental cyclone as a trope of apocalypse that is both an instrument of destruction and a catalyst of revelation.'

Source: Abstract.

Thea Astley : Writing in Overpoweringly a Male Dominated Literary World Megha Trivedi , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Indian Review of World Literature in English , July vol. 6 no. 2 2010;
This paper is an attempt to explore different themes in the novels of Thea Astley.(p. 1)
Thea Astley : Exploring the Centre Paul Genoni , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Subverting the Empire : Explorers and Exploration in Australian Fiction 2004; (p. 97-144)
Untitled 1968 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 21 December 1968; (p. 17)

— Review of A Boat Load of Home Folk Thea Astley , 1968 single work novel
Fiction Chronicle Laurie Clancy , 1969 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Quarterly , Spring vol. 28 no. 3 1969; (p. 413-425)

— Review of The Spear Grinner Clive Barry , 1963 single work novel ; A Boat Load of Home Folk Thea Astley , 1968 single work novel ; A Wild Ass of a Man Barry Oakley , 1967 single work novel ; Dynasty Tony Morphett , 1967 single work novel
Recent Novels John McLaren , 1968 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , Summer (1968-1969) no. 40 1968; (p. 39-41)

— Review of Montgomery and I Geoff Baker , 1968 single work novel ; The Chantic Bird David Ireland , 1968 single work novel ; Three Persons Make a Tiger Dal Stivens , 1968 single work novel ; Count Your Dead : A Novel of Vietnam John Rowe , 1968 single work novel ; A Boat Load of Home Folk Thea Astley , 1968 single work novel ; Tell Morning This Kylie Tennant , 1967 single work novel ; The Wine of God's Anger Kenneth Cook , 1968 single work novel
Demolished Adults Thelma Forshaw , 1968 single work review
— Appears in: Nation , 26 October 1968; (p. 22)

— Review of A Boat Load of Home Folk Thea Astley , 1968 single work novel
Look What the Storm Washed Up - Catholic Guilt Nancy Keesing , 1968 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 5 October vol. 90 no. 4622 1968; (p. 81)

— Review of A Boat Load of Home Folk Thea Astley , 1968 single work novel
Thea Astley : Exploring the Centre Paul Genoni , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Subverting the Empire : Explorers and Exploration in Australian Fiction 2004; (p. 97-144)
Thea Astley : Writing in Overpoweringly a Male Dominated Literary World Megha Trivedi , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Indian Review of World Literature in English , July vol. 6 no. 2 2010;
This paper is an attempt to explore different themes in the novels of Thea Astley.(p. 1)
Thea Astley Candida Baker (interviewer), 1986 single work biography interview
— Appears in: Yacker : Australian Writers Talk About Their Work 1986; (p. 28-53)
Why Write Novels? Sandra Hall , 1968 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 26 October vol. 90 no. 4625 1968; (p. 52-54)
Thea Astley : Writing the Parish and Extending the Metaphor Robert L. Ross , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: International Literature in English : Essays on the Major Writers 1991; (p. 593-602) Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds 2006; (p. 90-98)
Last amended 19 Nov 2019 10:36:27
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