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y separately published work icon Glenroy Series series - author   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2001... 2001 Glenroy Series
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Notes

  • Steven Carroll has suggested that he will write two further books in this series.

Includes

1
y separately published work icon The Art of the Engine Driver Steven Carroll , Pymble : HarperCollins Australia , 2001 Z900860 2001 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'On a hot summer's night in the 1950s, the old and the new, diesel and steam, town and country all collide - and nobody will be left unaffected.

'As a passenger train leaves Spencer Street Station on its haul to Sydney, a family of three - Vic, Rita and their son Michael - are off to a party. George Bedser has invited the whole neighbourhood to celebrate the engagement of his daughter. Vic is an engine driver, with dreams of being like his hero Paddy Ryan and becoming the master of the smooth ride. As the neighbours walk to the party, we are drawn into the lives of a bully, a drunk, a restless girl and a young boy forced to grow up before he is ready. The Art of the Engine Driver is a luminous and evocative tale of ordinary suburban lives, told with an extraordinary power.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2
y separately published work icon The Gift of Speed Steven Carroll , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2004 Z1134135 2004 single work novel

'The history of his summer is written in the grass ... In 1960 the West Indies arrive in Australia, bringing with them a carnival of music, colour and possibility. Michael, who is sixteen, is enthralled. If, like his heroes, he has the gift of speed, he will move beyond his suburb into the great world ... And yet, as his summer unfolds, Michael realises that there are other ways to live. When the calypso chorus accompanying Frank Worrell and his team fades, Michael has learnt many things ... about his parents, his suburb, a girl called Kathleen Marsden, and about himself.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

3
y separately published work icon The Time We Have Taken Steven Carroll , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2007 Z1344340 2007 single work novel (taught in 3 units)

'One suburban morning in Summer 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, realises that his suburb is 100 years old. He contacts the Mayor, who assembles a Committee, and celebrations are eagerly planned. That same morning, just a few streets way, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband's snores. It is years since Vic moved north, and left their house of empty silences, yet his life remains bound up with hers. Their son, too, has moved on - Michael is at university, exploring new ideas and the heady world of grown-up love. Yet Rita still stubbornly stays in the old street, unable to imagine leaving the house she has tended so lovingly for so long. Instead she has taken on the care of another house as well - that of the widowed Mrs Webster, owner of the suburb's landmark factory, now in decline. As these lives entwine, and the Committee commissions its centenary mural and prepares to commemorate Progress, History - in the shape of the new, post-war generation represented by Michael and his friends - is heading straight for them...'

(Source: Publisher's blurb)

4
y separately published work icon Spirit of Progress Steven Carroll , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2011 Z1766658 2011 single work novel 'The thing that makes you, it never goes

A sleek high-speed train glides silently through the French countryside, bearing Michael, an Australian writer, and his travelling world of memory and speculation.

Melbourne, 1946, calls to him: the pressure cooker of the city during World War II has produced a small creative miracle, and at this pivotal moment the lives of his newly married parents, a group of restless artists, a proud old woman with a tent for a home, a journalist, a gallery owner, a farmer and a factory developer irrevocably intersect. And all the while the Spirit of Progress, the locomotive of the new age, roars through their lives like time′s arrow, pointing to the future and the post-war world only some of them will enter.' (Publisher's blurb)
5
y separately published work icon Forever Young Steven Carroll , Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 2015 8665029 2015 single work novel

'The latest novel by acclaimed novelist Steven Carroll, winner of the Prime Minister's Award and the Miles Franklin Award.

'And is nostalgia not so much a longing for a place or a time, as a longing for youth itself?'

'Forever Young is set against the tumultuous period of change and uncertainty that was Australia in 1977. Whitlam is about to lose the federal election, and things will never be the same again. the times they are a'changing. Radicals have become conservatives, idealism is giving way to realism, relationships are falling apart, and Michael is finally coming to accept that he will never be a rock and roll musician.

'A subtle and graceful exploration of the passage of time and our yearning for the seeming simplicities of the past, Forever Young is a powerfully moving work - clear. beautiful, affecting - by one of our greatest authors.

'Carroll ... transmutes the grey facts of daily life into light and luminous art.' Geordie Williamson, the Australian.' (Publication summary)

6
y separately published work icon The Year of the Beast Steven Carroll , Sydney South : Fourth Estate , 2019 15014937 2019 single work novel

'Melbourne, 1917: the times are tumultuous, the city is in the grip of a kind of madness. The Great War is raging, and it is the time of the hotly contested second conscription referendum. Fights are raging on the streets, rallies for 'YES' and 'NO' facing off against each other on opposing corners. Men, women and children, jostling, brawling, fighting and spitting.

'Through these streets walks Maryanne, forty years old, unmarried and seven months pregnant. These are uncertain, dangerous times for a woman in her position. And she is facing a difficult choice - a choice which gets more urgent by the day - whether to give her child up for adoption as the Church insists she does, or to keep her child and face an uncertain future.

'An extraordinary powerful novel of a time, a city and a woman, The Year of the Beast is Steven Carroll at his best. A rhythmic, insistent and pulsing novel that tells a compelling story of mothers, families, and what it means to be an individual, standing against the surge of the crowd.'  (Publication summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

First known date: 2001

Works about this Work

"On the Threshold of Change" : Liminality and Marginality in Steven Carroll's Fiction Xavier Pons , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies , vol. 37 no. 1 2014; (p. 11-23)

'Abstract: The paper deals with Steven Carroll's quartet of novels about a Melbourne suburb. Carroll's original brand of realism is an attempt to capture "life in motion" and focuses on the way individuals and communities evolve. Hence his predilection for describing liminal moments in his narratives - moments when people and places are on the cusp of change. His novels are in this sense the expression of a philosophy of change as well as examples of narrative methods meant to give concrete form to that philosophy. Liminality sometimes gives way to marginality: instead of evolving with their social context, some characters retain features that make them out of place in their brave new world. They are stranded on the wrong side of liminality, a notion whose promises of resolution do not always come true.' (Publication abstract)

Life in the Frame Bron Sibree , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 13 August 2011; (p. 23)
Steven Carroll Tim Elliott , 2011 single work biography
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 30-31 July 2011; (p. 32-33)
Waste Land Is Fertile Ground Jane Sullivan , 2009 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 28-29 March 2009; (p. 26-27) The Age , 28 March 2009; (p. 22-23)
Waste Land Is Fertile Ground Jane Sullivan , 2009 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 28-29 March 2009; (p. 26-27) The Age , 28 March 2009; (p. 22-23)
Steven Carroll Tim Elliott , 2011 single work biography
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 30-31 July 2011; (p. 32-33)
Life in the Frame Bron Sibree , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 13 August 2011; (p. 23)
"On the Threshold of Change" : Liminality and Marginality in Steven Carroll's Fiction Xavier Pons , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies , vol. 37 no. 1 2014; (p. 11-23)

'Abstract: The paper deals with Steven Carroll's quartet of novels about a Melbourne suburb. Carroll's original brand of realism is an attempt to capture "life in motion" and focuses on the way individuals and communities evolve. Hence his predilection for describing liminal moments in his narratives - moments when people and places are on the cusp of change. His novels are in this sense the expression of a philosophy of change as well as examples of narrative methods meant to give concrete form to that philosophy. Liminality sometimes gives way to marginality: instead of evolving with their social context, some characters retain features that make them out of place in their brave new world. They are stranded on the wrong side of liminality, a notion whose promises of resolution do not always come true.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 30 Apr 2015 09:17:45
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