- The Slow Natives
infobox Book |
name = The Slow Natives
title_orig =
translator =
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author =Thea Astley
illustrator =
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country =Australia
language = English
series =
genre =Novel
publisher =Angus and Robertson , Australia
release_date = 1965
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback &Paperback )
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preceded_by =
followed_by ="The Slow Natives" (1965) is a
Miles Franklin Award winning novel byAustralia n authorThea Astley , the first of her record number of four wins. It also won the 1965 Moomba Award.Plot summary
Set in sub-tropical Queensland, the novel examines the relationships between suburban Brisbanites including a priest, nuns and a couple and their teenage son.
tyle and themes
The novel represents a departure for Astley from her earlier novels in that rather than focusing on one or two particular characters, she moves "freely among a group, switching attention omnisciently from one to another. Almost all the characters suffer from some form of spiritual aridity; in Astley's vision, there often seems nothing between repression, and empty or even corrupt sexuality". [ [http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4113/Astley-Thea.html Clancy, Laurie "Thea Astley Biography: Thea Astley comments"] ]
Astley's characters in this novel often only realise their failings after disaster has beset them. The father, for example, only realises after his teenage son has lost his leg in a "joy-riding accident", that he has "failed to give his son 'the sort of discipline ... [he] wanted more than anything in the world'." [Taylor and Perkins (2007), p. 246]
Notes
References
* [http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4113/Astley-Thea.html Clancy, Laurie "Thea Astley Biography: Thea Astley comments"]
* [http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/astleyt/slownats.html Middlemiss.org]
*Taylor, Cheryl and Perkins, Elizabeth (2007) "Warm words: North Queensland writing" in Patrick Buckridge and Elizabeth McKay (ed.) "By the Book: A Literary History of Queensland", St Lucia, University of Queensland Press
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