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y separately published work icon Omega Park single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Omega Park
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Amy Barker presents a confronting tale of heartbreak and redemption. Omega Park is a housing commission estate on the fringes of Queensland's Gold Coast. Dingo Patterson and Jacob Box are growing up and trying to survive. Surrounded by broken families, crime and desperation, they are young men with dreams of a different life. When a car chase ends in tragedy for one of the boys, relations with police and within the community reach crisis point. Amy Barker tells a sobering tale of modern warfare in the suburbs with confidence and assurance. This striking debut novel explores how life on society's margins can mean the end of the road for some, and offer the possibility of escape for others.' (Publisher's Blurb)

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Notes

  • Dedication: For Gram and Pop

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

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Works about this Work

Lost in Space : Gold Coast Characters Wandering Home(less) Kelly Palmer , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , December vol. 27 no. 2 2020; (p. 181-200)
The Beach as (Hu)man Limit in Gold Coast Narrative Fiction Kelly Palmer , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , June vol. 25 no. 1 2018; (p. 149-162)

'Gold Coast beaches oscillate in the cultural imagination between everyday reality and a tourist's paradise of ‘sun, surf and sex’ (Winchester and Everett 2000: 59). While these narratives of selfhood and becoming, egalitarianism and sexual liberation punctuate the media, Gold Coast literary fictions instead reveal the beach as a site of danger, wholly personifying the unknown. Within Amy Barker's Omega Park, Melissa Lucashenko's Steam Pigs, Georgia Savage's The House Tibet and Matthew Condon's Usher and A Night at the Pink Poodle, the beach is a ‘masculine’ space for testing the limit of the coastline and one's own capacity for survival. This article undertakes a close textual analysis of these novels and surveys other Gold Coast fictions alongside spatial analysis of the Gold Coast coastline. These fictions suggest that the Gold Coast is not simply a holiday world or ‘Crime Capital’ in the cultural imagination, but a mythic space with violent memories, opening out onto an infinite horizon of conflict and estrangement.'

Source: Abstract.

[Review] Omega Park Jennifer Riggs , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 24 no. 1 2010; (p. 59)

— Review of Omega Park Amy Barker , 2009 single work novel
Omega Park 2010 single work review
— Appears in: UQ Graduate Contact 2010; (p. 38)

— Review of Omega Park Amy Barker , 2009 single work novel
Centre Selection Jacinda Woodhead , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The Newsletter of the Australian Centre for Youth Literature , November no. 3 2009; (p. 20)

— Review of Omega Park Amy Barker , 2009 single work novel
Boredom and Bandaids Chris Womersley , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian Literary Review , August vol. 4 no. 7 2009; (p. 22)

— Review of The Danger Game Kalinda Ashton , 2008 single work novel ; The Ice Age Kirsten Reed , 2009 single work novel ; We Don't Live Here Anymore Matt Nable , 2009 single work novel ; Omega Park Amy Barker , 2009 single work novel
It's No Walk in the Park Heidi Maier , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 15 - 16 August 2009; (p. 22)

— Review of Omega Park Amy Barker , 2009 single work novel
Well Read Patrick Allington , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 22 August 2009; (p. 24)

— Review of Document Z Andrew Croome , 2008 single work novel ; Omega Park Amy Barker , 2009 single work novel
The Sorry Estate of the Disaffected Geordie Williamson , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 29-30 August 2009; (p. 12-13)

— Review of Omega Park Amy Barker , 2009 single work novel
[Review] Omega Park Rebecca Sylvester , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: Incite , September vol. 30 no. 9 2009; (p. 34)

— Review of Omega Park Amy Barker , 2009 single work novel
Life Writing 2008 single work column
— Appears in: UQ News , November no. 579 2008; (p. 21)
Rookie Writer Joins Literati Rosemary Sorensen , 2009 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian , 9 September 2009; (p. 9)
Emerging Author Draws on Past 2009 single work column
— Appears in: UQ News , September 2009; (p. 20)
The Beach as (Hu)man Limit in Gold Coast Narrative Fiction Kelly Palmer , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , June vol. 25 no. 1 2018; (p. 149-162)

'Gold Coast beaches oscillate in the cultural imagination between everyday reality and a tourist's paradise of ‘sun, surf and sex’ (Winchester and Everett 2000: 59). While these narratives of selfhood and becoming, egalitarianism and sexual liberation punctuate the media, Gold Coast literary fictions instead reveal the beach as a site of danger, wholly personifying the unknown. Within Amy Barker's Omega Park, Melissa Lucashenko's Steam Pigs, Georgia Savage's The House Tibet and Matthew Condon's Usher and A Night at the Pink Poodle, the beach is a ‘masculine’ space for testing the limit of the coastline and one's own capacity for survival. This article undertakes a close textual analysis of these novels and surveys other Gold Coast fictions alongside spatial analysis of the Gold Coast coastline. These fictions suggest that the Gold Coast is not simply a holiday world or ‘Crime Capital’ in the cultural imagination, but a mythic space with violent memories, opening out onto an infinite horizon of conflict and estrangement.'

Source: Abstract.

Lost in Space : Gold Coast Characters Wandering Home(less) Kelly Palmer , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , December vol. 27 no. 2 2020; (p. 181-200)
Last amended 27 May 2021 12:50:01
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