AustLit

'[...]the uncanny is from its beginning linked to a confusion between the recognizable and unrecognizable, as well the narrator's confusion over the true state of the world. If an attempt to "see properly" is signaled in the beginning and end, then the contents of the novel drives the filmmaker from searching the landscape for a "meaning behind appearances" to the final scene, where the filmmaker offers this image: "my finger poised as if to expose the film in its dark chamber that was the only visible sign of what I saw beyond myself' (Plains 174). Murnane's return to publishing fiction began with Barley Patch (2009), in which the unnamed narrator says that it would suit his purpose to report learning while young that "a work of fiction is not necessarily enclosed within the mind of its author but extends on its farther sides into little-known territory" (71). Gelder and Jacobs use the idea of the uncanny as a means to explore a history of disquiet happenings in postcolonial society, and a feeling of disquiet does seem to exist in The Plains, in its examinations of exploration and changing landscapes.'  (Publication abstract)