AustLit

Kneale examines three Australian novels, To the Dark Tower (Victor Kelleher), The Best Thing (Margo Lanagan) and Ariel, Ted and the Secret of Life, and argues that they all 'contain strands of subversion consistent with contemporary critical and literary theories and the spirit of postmodernist discourse' (21). Drawing attention to the significance of the physical environment in Australian narratives, he claims that all three texts venture 'beyond the issues of survival against a challenging physical terrain or a specifically Australian cultural terrain to the question of survival against an uncertain conceptual terrain' (29). He concludes that while these narratives are not concerned with 'constructing a distinctively Australian setting they do not completely abandon the traditional Australian motif of survival' (29).