This stylish reissue of one of Thea Astley’s finest early novels is a classic story of small-town life. Two schoolteachers are drawn to each other by their concern for a lonely young girl. As long as Vinny Lalor could remember she had been on the fringe of things—in her family and at school. But ...
She felt every second of her sixty-two years, but was braving it out with parfums de bain and some raggedly applied lipstick whose end result was sad. She felt guilty but was fighting it and this pungent taste was new to a soul that had marched straight and crazed along preordained paths to the e...
He rubbed a little more olive oil into his shoulders and tensed. “You’re a bitta orl right,” he assured himself nasally and humorously. “Woo!” On his own he was almost likable, the vulgar charm of his honesty diminishing customary egotism. He did a few body-presses and leg-pedallings and then lay...
He is sitting back as the others register. His gentleness is fraying. Do you ever receive warrants against blackfellows guilty of offences? Sheridan asked. Lieutenant Buckmaster shifted his weight from one foot to the other. ...
‘Wouldn’t you just know!’ Daisy could have been sitting there, for all she knew. Kathleen kept noddling through those last days before Ronald died, the horrible secret of his illness huddled within, unable to turn to the children, lost between voyages in her own port. She drank the last of her co...
There was a large crowd, sensed rather than seen, sitting or standing around on the warm, pleasant grass, and waiting contentedly enough for the bishop to begin speaking. Jon and Elsie scuffed noisily through the paper bags that littered the turf, moving in closer in order to obtain a better view...