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'For Orla, living in the suburbs in 1968 on the cusp of adolescence, her father is a great shining light, whose warm and powerful presence fills her world.
'But in the aftermath of his sudden death, Orla, her mother and her sister are left in a no-man’s-land, a place where the rights and protections of the nuclear family suddenly and mysteriously no longer apply, and where the path between girl and woman must be navigated alone.' (Publication summary)
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Notes
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Dedication: For my father, William Orr Kirk
Epigraph:
'thinking I think of you and me.
Our empty spaces where fathers should be.'
-A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, Eimear McBride
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Children Take Control of Their Lives in an Adult World
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 March 2019; (p. 24)
— Review of Hare's Fur 2019 single work novel ; Driving into the Sun 2019 single work novel'Bad parents often make good literature: the egotistical and controlling Sam Pollit in Christina Stead’s tour-de-force The Man Who Loved Children; the abusive father and alcoholic mother in Edward St Aubyn’s masterful trilogy Some Hope; and, in William Faulkner’s gothic novel, As I Lay Dying, the cowardly and manipulative Anse Bundren who, among his many misdeeds, forces his pregnant teenage daughter to forgo her savings for an abortion so he can buy a set of new false teeth and attract a second wife.' (Introduction)
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Stephen Dedman Reviews 'Driving Into the Sun' by Marcella Polain
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 411 2019; (p. 39)
— Review of Driving into the Sun 2019 single work novel'In Driving Into the Sun, Marcella Polain – winner of the Anne Elder Award, the Patricia Hackett Prize, and more – has done an excellent job of capturing the inner emotional landscape of a young girl growing up fatherless in Perth’s outer suburbia in the 1960s. She recreates an era of television westerns and Bakelite phones, a time when Perth residents had just learned to worry about unlocked doors and windows, and when you could buy a house and land for $14,000 – if you were a man. If you were a woman with $13,000, as the novel points out, you needed a man to stand guarantor for the rest.' (Introduction)
-
Stephen Dedman Reviews 'Driving Into the Sun' by Marcella Polain
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 411 2019; (p. 39)
— Review of Driving into the Sun 2019 single work novel'In Driving Into the Sun, Marcella Polain – winner of the Anne Elder Award, the Patricia Hackett Prize, and more – has done an excellent job of capturing the inner emotional landscape of a young girl growing up fatherless in Perth’s outer suburbia in the 1960s. She recreates an era of television westerns and Bakelite phones, a time when Perth residents had just learned to worry about unlocked doors and windows, and when you could buy a house and land for $14,000 – if you were a man. If you were a woman with $13,000, as the novel points out, you needed a man to stand guarantor for the rest.' (Introduction)
-
Children Take Control of Their Lives in an Adult World
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 March 2019; (p. 24)
— Review of Hare's Fur 2019 single work novel ; Driving into the Sun 2019 single work novel'Bad parents often make good literature: the egotistical and controlling Sam Pollit in Christina Stead’s tour-de-force The Man Who Loved Children; the abusive father and alcoholic mother in Edward St Aubyn’s masterful trilogy Some Hope; and, in William Faulkner’s gothic novel, As I Lay Dying, the cowardly and manipulative Anse Bundren who, among his many misdeeds, forces his pregnant teenage daughter to forgo her savings for an abortion so he can buy a set of new false teeth and attract a second wife.' (Introduction)
