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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the whole town is intent on finding him. As they search the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen - explore their own relationships with the complex landscape unsettling history of the Flinders Ranges.
'The colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is unfamiliar, multicultural, and noisy with opinions, arguments, longings and terrors. It's haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day that Denny could be found, or lost forever.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Epigraph:
Three hearty cheers for the flag, the emblem of civic and religious liberty, and may it be a sign to the natives that the dawn of liberty, civilisation, and Christianity is about to break upon them, JOHN MCDOUALL STUART, PLANTING THE BRITISH FLAG IN THE CENTRE OF AUSTRALIA, 1860
Now is so small a part of time. OODGEROO, 'THE PAST'
The province of the poem is the world.
When the sun rises, it rises in the poem
and when it sets darkness comes down
and the poem is dark.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, PATERSON
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Selected as one of the Guardian Australia best Australian books of 2022
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
Lost Boy in a Land of Terror and Beauty
2024
single work
column
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 15 January vol. 34 no. 1 2024; 'Fiona McFarlane is an award-winning Australian writer whose first novel, The Night Guest, was acclaimed for its re-creation of the onset and development of dementia in the 75-year-old protagonist. It won the Voss Literary prize in 2014 and was shortlisted for others. While not every writer can produce short stories as well as longer work, McFarlane excels at both, with short stories appearing in prestigious journals such as The New Yorker. Her debut collection The High Places was lavishly praised, winning the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017.' (Introduction) -
Back to the Old House
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , June 2023;
— Review of The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel -
New Take on Lost Kids Narrative
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 31 December 2022; (p. 16)
— Review of The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel -
Best of 2022 : Part One
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 17 December - 6 January 2022;
— Review of The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel ; Salonika Burning 2022 single work novel ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel ; Heat 1996 periodical (53 issues) -
Big-picture Questions : Fiona McFarlane’s Panoramic Fiction
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 449 2022; (p. 46)
— Review of The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel'Early in The Sun Walks Down, Mary Wallace – mother to six-year-old Denny, who has gone missing in a dust storm – throws her husband a ‘general look of bafflement at having found herself here, in this place, with these people’. It’s a symptomatic moment early in a novel that contains myriad displays of perplexity by various characters – at each other, at situations they create or must navigate, at the meaning of life.' (Introduction)
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‘Funny’, ‘Punchy, ‘A Gorgeous Writer’ : the Best Australian Books Out in October
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 4 October 2022;
— Review of Seeing Other People 2022 single work novel ; Tripping Over Myself : A Memoir of a Life in Comedy 2022 single work autobiography ; Limberlost 2022 single work novel ; Faith, Hope and Carnage 2022 single work autobiography interview ; A Kind of Magic 2022 single work autobiography ; The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel -
The Best New Books Released in October as Selected by Avid Readers and Critics
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , October 2022;
— Review of Seeing Other People 2022 single work novel ; Limberlost 2022 single work novel ; The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel -
Fiona McFarlane The Sun Walks Down
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 19-25 November 2022;
— Review of The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel'“How are they losing their children like this, all over the country?” asks an Afghan cameleer as he passes through the town of Fairly, where The Sun Walks Down is set. Days earlier, the farmhand Billy considers the fear that “a lost child” evokes in the people now implanted on his Country: it is “the one cost of settling on this land that they consider unreasonable”. His sister, once employed as a nursemaid, retells the tale of the Pied Piper, speaking of her two stolen daughters; an Irish housekeeper, in counterpoint, describes an Indigenous story once overheard, about a mother spirit looking for her missing children.' (Introduction)
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‘How Are They Losing Their Children like This?’ Fiona McFarlane’s Novel Interrogates the Stain of White Presence on Aboriginal Land
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 6 December 2022;
— Review of The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel'“How are they losing their children like this, all over the country? They aren’t used to the desert.”
'These are the thoughts of a Pashtun cameleer in Fiona McFarlane’s second novel, The Sun Walks Down, set in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges in 1883. This “bit part” cameleer is one of the few characters with a first-person address in McFarlane’s polyphonic, multifaceted saga that explores the cultural narrative, anxiety, and stain of white Australian presence on arid Australian land.' (Introduction)
-
Big-picture Questions : Fiona McFarlane’s Panoramic Fiction
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 449 2022; (p. 46)
— Review of The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel'Early in The Sun Walks Down, Mary Wallace – mother to six-year-old Denny, who has gone missing in a dust storm – throws her husband a ‘general look of bafflement at having found herself here, in this place, with these people’. It’s a symptomatic moment early in a novel that contains myriad displays of perplexity by various characters – at each other, at situations they create or must navigate, at the meaning of life.' (Introduction)
-
Lost Boy in a Land of Terror and Beauty
2024
single work
column
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 15 January vol. 34 no. 1 2024; 'Fiona McFarlane is an award-winning Australian writer whose first novel, The Night Guest, was acclaimed for its re-creation of the onset and development of dementia in the 75-year-old protagonist. It won the Voss Literary prize in 2014 and was shortlisted for others. While not every writer can produce short stories as well as longer work, McFarlane excels at both, with short stories appearing in prestigious journals such as The New Yorker. Her debut collection The High Places was lavishly praised, winning the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2023 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Fiction
- 2023 longlisted HNSA Historical Novel Prize — Adult
- 2023 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards — Fiction Book Award
- 2023 longlisted Davitt Award — Best Adult Crime Novel
- 2023 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
- South Australia,
- Bush,
- 1883