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'In 1924 the planned and long-awaited Sydney Harbour Bridge represents an impossible ideal - to span the great waters of the harbour and take a war-scarred nation into a dazzling future. No one is more enthusiastic than Reverend Ralph Anderson Cage of Lavender Bay, whose imagination is seized by the scale of this thoroughly modern vision.
'Ralph is a grand dreamer with all-too-human failings and in the Bridge, which he can see under construction from his Rectory verandah, he finds an obsession to last a lifetime. Sermons become paeans to the creative will of God - and the beauty of girders and pylons - and his parish papers wax lyrical about rivets and granite. But as he urges his long-suffering wife Stella, his children, his parishioners and the phlegmatic housekeeper Mrs Pessey to dream as big as he does, Ralph fails to notice those left behind by the bridge: the dispossessed families whose houses are destroyed in its path and the workers who lose their lives in accidents on its precarious heights. The Great Depression wears on, and the Bridge becomes a bitter reminder to his hungry parishioners of a promised prosperity that never comes. As Ralph invests everything in his obsession, the great arch he so loves and admires threatens to become his undoing.
'Inspired by true people and events, and as open and colossal as the bridge itself, Vicki Hastrich's deeply moving novel links two centuries, two world wars and two generations. By turns wickedly funny and breathtakingly poetic, this is the story of an ordinary man, and an ordinary life, made grand.' (Publisher's blurb)
Notes
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Dedication: For Mum, a city and a bridge; and for Frank Cash, a second volume.
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Epigraph: Is this a life to disregard? - Auguste Friand (1880-1918)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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The Sydney Harbour Bridge : From Modernity to Post-Modernity in Australian Fiction
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 12 no. 1 2012; 'This paper considers a recent spate of novels that deal in various ways with the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. These include Peter Corris's Wet Graves; Alex Miller's Conditions of Faith; Vicki Hastrich's ; and Sarah Hay's The Body in the Clouds. It is argued that these novels, written so long after the bridge's completion, are each grappling with the transformation of this icon of Australian modernism into the significant component in the nation's foremost experience of postmodern urban space - Circular Quay.' (Author's abstract)
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[Review] The Great Arch
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: Reviews in Australian Studies , vol. 5 no. 1 2011;
— Review of The Great Arch 2008 single work novel -
[Review] The Great Arch
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , March vol. 33 no. 1 2009; (p. 109-110)
— Review of The Great Arch 2008 single work novel -
Spun from Four Horizons : Re-Writing the Sydney Harbour Bridge
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , December vol. 33 no. 4 2009; (p. 417-429) 'The Sydney Harbour Bridge provides an imaginative space that is revisited by Australian writers in particular ways. In this space, novelists, poets, and cultural historians negotiate questions of emotional and psychological transformation as well as reflect on social and environmental change in the city of Sydney. The writerly tensions that mark these accounts often alter, or query, representations of the Bridge as a symbol of material progress and demonstrate a complex creative engagement with the Bridge. This discussion of 'the Bridge' focuses on the work of four authors, Eleanor Dark, P.R. Stephensen, Peter Carey and Vicki Hastrich and includes a range of other fictional and non-fictional accounts of 'Bridge-writing.' The ideas proffered are framed by a theorising of space, especially referencing the work of Michel de Certeau, whose writing on the spatial ambiguity of a bridge is important to the examination of the diverse ways in which Australian writers have engaged with the imaginative potential and almost mythic resonance of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.' (p. 417) -
[Review] The Great Arch
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , February no. 308 2009; (p. 31)
— Review of The Great Arch 2008 single work novel
-
Bridges Link Tales from Two Cities
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 10-11 May 2008; (p. 32)
— Review of The Comfort of Figs 2008 single work novel ; The Great Arch 2008 single work novel -
Troubled Waters
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 17 May 2008; (p. 22)
— Review of The Great Arch 2008 single work novel ; The Comfort of Figs 2008 single work novel -
Cage's Folly Bridges Troubled Parish
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 31 May 2008; (p. 14)
— Review of The Great Arch 2008 single work novel -
[Review] The Great Arch
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , February no. 308 2009; (p. 31)
— Review of The Great Arch 2008 single work novel -
[Review] The Great Arch
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , March vol. 33 no. 1 2009; (p. 109-110)
— Review of The Great Arch 2008 single work novel -
The Trouble With Frank : The Intersection of Fiction and Life : A Dissertation : Writing the Novel, The Great Arch
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Great Arch : A Fictional Work The Trouble With Frank : The Intersection of Fiction and Life : A Dissertation : Writing the Novel, The Great Arch 2008; -
Spun from Four Horizons : Re-Writing the Sydney Harbour Bridge
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , December vol. 33 no. 4 2009; (p. 417-429) 'The Sydney Harbour Bridge provides an imaginative space that is revisited by Australian writers in particular ways. In this space, novelists, poets, and cultural historians negotiate questions of emotional and psychological transformation as well as reflect on social and environmental change in the city of Sydney. The writerly tensions that mark these accounts often alter, or query, representations of the Bridge as a symbol of material progress and demonstrate a complex creative engagement with the Bridge. This discussion of 'the Bridge' focuses on the work of four authors, Eleanor Dark, P.R. Stephensen, Peter Carey and Vicki Hastrich and includes a range of other fictional and non-fictional accounts of 'Bridge-writing.' The ideas proffered are framed by a theorising of space, especially referencing the work of Michel de Certeau, whose writing on the spatial ambiguity of a bridge is important to the examination of the diverse ways in which Australian writers have engaged with the imaginative potential and almost mythic resonance of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.' (p. 417) -
The Sydney Harbour Bridge : From Modernity to Post-Modernity in Australian Fiction
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 12 no. 1 2012; 'This paper considers a recent spate of novels that deal in various ways with the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. These include Peter Corris's Wet Graves; Alex Miller's Conditions of Faith; Vicki Hastrich's ; and Sarah Hay's The Body in the Clouds. It is argued that these novels, written so long after the bridge's completion, are each grappling with the transformation of this icon of Australian modernism into the significant component in the nation's foremost experience of postmodern urban space - Circular Quay.' (Author's abstract)
- Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney Harbour, Sydney, New South Wales,
- Sydney, New South Wales,
- 1920s
- 1930s
- 1967