'Over a fifty-year period, from 1944 to 1994, Thea Astley published a number of critical writings, including essays, newspaper articles and reviews, and short reflections and meditations on her craft. Despite a renewed interest in Astley’s work, however, most critical interrogations of her oeuvre focus on her novels, and more recently her poetry. As a result, Astley’s critical writing has not been afforded the same breadth and depth of investigation as her fiction. This lacuna is troubling, since Astley’s critical works are important not only for their insight, but for what they reveal about Astley’s self-representation, and in particular the dual identity that she embodied as both a teacher and a satirist. This article argues that these dual roles emerge clearly in Astley’s essays and in fact are inextricable from many of her works. Further, the tensions between these two personae — Astley as teacher and Astley as satirist — reveal natural overlaps with her imaginative writing, and reflect her changing ideas about fiction writing, literature, and education.' (Publication abstract)
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'When the tourist ship Malekula arrives at a tropic island in the the Pacific the crushing heat and the looming hurricane intensify the hostilities and frustrations of the egocentric people on board. And when the hurricane bursts on the island the havoc it brings is less perhaps than the personal storms of man and wife, of spinster friends, of man and mistress, of erring priest.
'Gerald Seabrook's pointless womanising achieves a finality of irritation for his suffering wife; elderly Miss Paradise drives her life-long friend, Miss Trumper, to make a fatal pilgrimage; the agent Stevenson sees the failure of his dream of love with his mistress; and the priest, Father Lake, explodes his own petty vices and his spiritual impotence. Their moments of truth are brilliantly illuminated as the story moves to its climax in the hurricane and its aftermath.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (House of Books ed.)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
Works about this Work
-
Dementia, Ageism and the Limits of Critique in Thea Astley’s Satire
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , December vol. 22 no. 2 2022; -
Double Trouble : The Teacher/Satirist Duality in Thea Astley’s Critical Writings
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , December vol. 26 no. 2 2019; (p. 218-231) -
'Touching the Edges of Cyclones' : Thea Astley and the Winds of Revelation
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , June vol. 25 no. 1 2018; (p. 137-148)'Thea Astley once commented that, ‘everybody is living on a cyclonic edge’, and that many of her characters were ‘always touching on the edges of cyclones’. In Queensland literature, cyclones often appear as tropes of apocalypse: new worlds of person and place are revealed out of the destruction of the old. In Astley's novel A Boat Load of Home Folk (1968), the tempestuous forces of personal cyclones, as well as those of the cyclone destroying the island around them, overtake a group of stranded cruise passengers, and consequently place and person assume unique meanings as the characters try to survive. Although one of her least-known works, A Boat Load of Home Folk is a profound novel of human experience in which Astley uses the elemental cyclone as a trope of apocalypse that is both an instrument of destruction and a catalyst of revelation.'
Source: Abstract.
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Thea Astley : Writing in Overpoweringly a Male Dominated Literary World
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Indian Review of World Literature in English , July vol. 6 no. 2 2010; This paper is an attempt to explore different themes in the novels of Thea Astley.(p. 1) -
Thea Astley : Exploring the Centre
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Subverting the Empire : Explorers and Exploration in Australian Fiction 2004; (p. 97-144)
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Untitled
1968
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 21 December 1968; (p. 17)
— Review of A Boat Load of Home Folk 1968 single work novel -
Fiction Chronicle
1969
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Quarterly , Spring vol. 28 no. 3 1969; (p. 413-425)
— Review of The Spear Grinner 1963 single work novel ; A Boat Load of Home Folk 1968 single work novel ; A Wild Ass of a Man 1967 single work novel ; Dynasty 1967 single work novel -
Recent Novels
1968
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , Summer (1968-1969) no. 40 1968; (p. 39-41)
— Review of Montgomery and I 1968 single work novel ; The Chantic Bird 1968 single work novel ; Three Persons Make a Tiger 1968 single work novel ; Count Your Dead : A Novel of Vietnam 1968 single work novel ; A Boat Load of Home Folk 1968 single work novel ; Tell Morning This 1967 single work novel ; The Wine of God's Anger 1968 single work novel -
Demolished Adults
1968
single work
review
— Appears in: Nation , 26 October 1968; (p. 22)
— Review of A Boat Load of Home Folk 1968 single work novel -
Look What the Storm Washed Up - Catholic Guilt
1968
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 5 October vol. 90 no. 4622 1968; (p. 81)
— Review of A Boat Load of Home Folk 1968 single work novel -
Thea Astley : Exploring the Centre
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Subverting the Empire : Explorers and Exploration in Australian Fiction 2004; (p. 97-144) -
Thea Astley : Writing in Overpoweringly a Male Dominated Literary World
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Indian Review of World Literature in English , July vol. 6 no. 2 2010; This paper is an attempt to explore different themes in the novels of Thea Astley.(p. 1) -
Thea Astley
Candida Baker
(interviewer),
1986
single work
biography
interview
— Appears in: Yacker : Australian Writers Talk About Their Work 1986; (p. 28-53) -
Why Write Novels?
1968
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 26 October vol. 90 no. 4625 1968; (p. 52-54) -
Thea Astley : Writing the Parish and Extending the Metaphor
1991
single work
criticism
— Appears in: International Literature in English : Essays on the Major Writers 1991; (p. 593-602) Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds 2006; (p. 90-98)