Born: Established: 1949 Melbourne, Victoria, ;
AustLit
Details of Works Taught
Text | Unit Name | Institution | Year |
---|---|---|---|
y
The Art of the Engine Driver
Steven Carroll
,
Pymble
:
HarperCollins Australia
,
2001
Z900860
2001
single work
novel
(taught in 1 units)
'On a hot summer's night in the 1950s, the old and the new, diesel and steam, town and country all collide - and nobody will be left unaffected. 'As a passenger train leaves Spencer Street Station on its haul to Sydney, a family of three - Vic, Rita and their son Michael - are off to a party. George Bedser has invited the whole neighbourhood to celebrate the engagement of his daughter. Vic is an engine driver, with dreams of being like his hero Paddy Ryan and becoming the master of the smooth ride. As the neighbours walk to the party, we are drawn into the lives of a bully, a drunk, a restless girl and a young boy forced to grow up before he is ready. The Art of the Engine Driver is a luminous and evocative tale of ordinary suburban lives, told with an extraordinary power.' Source: Publisher's blurb. |
Australian Literature Honours C: Reading Suburbia | University of Sydney | 2010 (Semester 2) |
Text | Unit Name | Institution | Year |
---|---|---|---|
y
The Time We Have Taken
Steven Carroll
,
Pymble
:
Fourth Estate
,
2007
Z1344340
2007
single work
novel
(taught in 3 units)
'One suburban morning in Summer 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, realises that his suburb is 100 years old. He contacts the Mayor, who assembles a Committee, and celebrations are eagerly planned. That same morning, just a few streets way, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband's snores. It is years since Vic moved north, and left their house of empty silences, yet his life remains bound up with hers. Their son, too, has moved on - Michael is at university, exploring new ideas and the heady world of grown-up love. Yet Rita still stubbornly stays in the old street, unable to imagine leaving the house she has tended so lovingly for so long. Instead she has taken on the care of another house as well - that of the widowed Mrs Webster, owner of the suburb's landmark factory, now in decline. As these lives entwine, and the Committee commissions its centenary mural and prepares to commemorate Progress, History - in the shape of the new, post-war generation represented by Michael and his friends - is heading straight for them...' (Source: Publisher's blurb) |
Writing Australia | Queensland University of Technology | 2009 (Semester 2) |
y
The Time We Have Taken
Steven Carroll
,
Pymble
:
Fourth Estate
,
2007
Z1344340
2007
single work
novel
(taught in 3 units)
'One suburban morning in Summer 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, realises that his suburb is 100 years old. He contacts the Mayor, who assembles a Committee, and celebrations are eagerly planned. That same morning, just a few streets way, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband's snores. It is years since Vic moved north, and left their house of empty silences, yet his life remains bound up with hers. Their son, too, has moved on - Michael is at university, exploring new ideas and the heady world of grown-up love. Yet Rita still stubbornly stays in the old street, unable to imagine leaving the house she has tended so lovingly for so long. Instead she has taken on the care of another house as well - that of the widowed Mrs Webster, owner of the suburb's landmark factory, now in decline. As these lives entwine, and the Committee commissions its centenary mural and prepares to commemorate Progress, History - in the shape of the new, post-war generation represented by Michael and his friends - is heading straight for them...' (Source: Publisher's blurb) |
Writing Australia | Queensland University of Technology | 2010 (Semester 2) |
y
The Time We Have Taken
Steven Carroll
,
Pymble
:
Fourth Estate
,
2007
Z1344340
2007
single work
novel
(taught in 3 units)
'One suburban morning in Summer 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, realises that his suburb is 100 years old. He contacts the Mayor, who assembles a Committee, and celebrations are eagerly planned. That same morning, just a few streets way, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband's snores. It is years since Vic moved north, and left their house of empty silences, yet his life remains bound up with hers. Their son, too, has moved on - Michael is at university, exploring new ideas and the heady world of grown-up love. Yet Rita still stubbornly stays in the old street, unable to imagine leaving the house she has tended so lovingly for so long. Instead she has taken on the care of another house as well - that of the widowed Mrs Webster, owner of the suburb's landmark factory, now in decline. As these lives entwine, and the Committee commissions its centenary mural and prepares to commemorate Progress, History - in the shape of the new, post-war generation represented by Michael and his friends - is heading straight for them...' (Source: Publisher's blurb) |
Reading Suburbia | University of Sydney | 2014 (Semester 1) |
Text | Unit Name | Institution | Year |
---|---|---|---|
y
A World of Other People
Steven Carroll
,
Sydney
:
Fourth Estate
,
2013
Z1932853
2013
single work
novel
historical fiction
(taught in 2 units)
'Set in 1941 during the Blitz, A World of Other People traces the love affair of Jim, an Australian pilot in Bomber Command, and Iris, a forthright Englishwoman finding her voice as a writer.The young couple, haunted by secrets and malign coincidence, struggles to build a future free of society's thin-lipped disapproval. The poet T.S. Eliot, with whom Iris shares firewatching duties, unwittingly seals their fate with his poem 'Little Gidding', one of the famous Four Quartets.' (Publisher's blurb) |
Australian Texts | University of Sydney | 2014 (Semester 1) |
y
A World of Other People
Steven Carroll
,
Sydney
:
Fourth Estate
,
2013
Z1932853
2013
single work
novel
historical fiction
(taught in 2 units)
'Set in 1941 during the Blitz, A World of Other People traces the love affair of Jim, an Australian pilot in Bomber Command, and Iris, a forthright Englishwoman finding her voice as a writer.The young couple, haunted by secrets and malign coincidence, struggles to build a future free of society's thin-lipped disapproval. The poet T.S. Eliot, with whom Iris shares firewatching duties, unwittingly seals their fate with his poem 'Little Gidding', one of the famous Four Quartets.' (Publisher's blurb) |
Australian Texts: International Contexts | University of Sydney | 2015 (Semester 2) |