AustLit

'An ambivalent attitude towards the land is foregrounded in Randolph Stow's To The Islands and Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, published just one year apart, in 1958 and 1959. In both novels, the journey through landscape entails an attempted escape from community history and the gods of a particular place. The horse treks of Heriot in To The Islands and of James in The Double Hook are precipitated by acts of defiance and accelerate previously planned departures to vague destinations. Heriot is "going nowhere" (62) on his journey to the mythological islands; James's destination is the "nowhere on the other side" of the rock rise surrounding the valley (23). In these "border" fictions (McDougall and Whitlock 22) both characters seek in the periphery, represented as a neutral ground untouched by the implications of colonial settlement, escape from the consequences of their crimes.' (Introductory paragraph)