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* Contents derived from the Melbourne,Victoria,:Oxford University Press,1962 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Wallace-Crabbe argues that Such is Life suffers from an excess of artifice and concludes that Furphy's realism leaves out too much of life: goodness and positive human values. Wallace-Crabbe concludes, "Far more than any question of structural over-ingenuity or an occasional act of garrulousness, [the] tendency to simply acquiesce in an amoral and fatalistic universe seems the important weakness of Such is Life".
Dallimore argues that Richard Mahony's malaise is not caused simply by the malevelonent forces of colonial society, but, more significantly, the forces within his own impetuous and complex self. But, Dallimore concludes that the novel is flawed because Richardson attempted to answer questions that are unanswerable with a prose style that frequently obliterates the sensitivity of the novel's better passages. In her estimation, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is a minor achievement in Australia's literary history.
