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'Helen, Walt and Duncan are looking for ways to entertain themselves in the sprawl of Sydney’s western suburbs. Walt, scrappy and idealistic, wants to prove a point, and turns to petty vandalism. His friend Duncan sticks to his fledgling football career, and sexual encounters in strange houses. Walt’s sister Helen, restless and seeking something larger than herself, is forced by scandal to leave the family home. As they move into adulthood they gravitate to the dingy glamour of the inner-city suburbs, to escape their families’ complicated histories, and in search of new identities, artistic, sexual and political.
'The Magpie Wing is set on football fields, in punk gigs, and in dilapidated and gentrifying pubs, moving from the nineties to the present, and between the suburbs and the inner city. Max Easton’s debut novel explores how, even in a city divided against itself, disparate communities – underground music scenes, rugby league clubs, communist splinter groups – share unexpected roots.'
Source : publisher's blurb
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Wastrels Out West : Max Easton’s Impressive Début
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 438 2021; (p. 39)
— Review of The Magpie Wing 2021 single work novel 'In July 1999, ABC’s 7:30 Report ran a story on the Western Suburbs Magpies, an NRL club struggling financially and playing out its final season before a merger with the nearby Balmain Tigers. For that human touch, the story featured shots of a family decking out their children in the Magpies’ black and white, their relationship with the ninety-year-old club described as ‘something in the heart’. It was all very warm and fuzzy, at least until the camera cut away and a voiceover delivered a neoliberal sucker punch: ‘love does not necessarily deliver dollars’. Set in the same Western Sydney suburbs still mourning the loss of their team, Max Easton’s terrific début novel, The Magpie Wing, tracks a trio of Millennials as they similarly battle to retain their identities in a rapidly gentrifying world.' (Introduction) -
Max Easton : The Magpie Wing
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 30 October - 5 November 2021;
— Review of The Magpie Wing 2021 single work novel'The Crossroads Hotel in Casula has gained the kind of infamy that most venues in 2021 want to avoid. In June the hotel became ground zero for the Covid-19 outbreak in the multiracial, largely working-class area of south-west Sydney. The starkly different, militarised response to this outbreak, compared with those in the eastern suburbs, has arguably done more to entrench Sydney’s west–east divide than any other event in the city’s history.' (Introduction)
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The Magpie Wing by Max Easton Review : A Bleak, Exceptional Portrait of Millennial Flailing
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 3 September 2021;
— Review of The Magpie Wing 2021 single work novel -
Come Writers and Critics
2021
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21 August 2021; (p. 15)
-
The Magpie Wing by Max Easton Review : A Bleak, Exceptional Portrait of Millennial Flailing
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 3 September 2021;
— Review of The Magpie Wing 2021 single work novel -
Max Easton : The Magpie Wing
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 30 October - 5 November 2021;
— Review of The Magpie Wing 2021 single work novel'The Crossroads Hotel in Casula has gained the kind of infamy that most venues in 2021 want to avoid. In June the hotel became ground zero for the Covid-19 outbreak in the multiracial, largely working-class area of south-west Sydney. The starkly different, militarised response to this outbreak, compared with those in the eastern suburbs, has arguably done more to entrench Sydney’s west–east divide than any other event in the city’s history.' (Introduction)
-
Wastrels Out West : Max Easton’s Impressive Début
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 438 2021; (p. 39)
— Review of The Magpie Wing 2021 single work novel 'In July 1999, ABC’s 7:30 Report ran a story on the Western Suburbs Magpies, an NRL club struggling financially and playing out its final season before a merger with the nearby Balmain Tigers. For that human touch, the story featured shots of a family decking out their children in the Magpies’ black and white, their relationship with the ninety-year-old club described as ‘something in the heart’. It was all very warm and fuzzy, at least until the camera cut away and a voiceover delivered a neoliberal sucker punch: ‘love does not necessarily deliver dollars’. Set in the same Western Sydney suburbs still mourning the loss of their team, Max Easton’s terrific début novel, The Magpie Wing, tracks a trio of Millennials as they similarly battle to retain their identities in a rapidly gentrifying world.' (Introduction) -
Come Writers and Critics
2021
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21 August 2021; (p. 15)
