AustLit

'Lucien Gracq, the hero of Brian Castro’s verse novel Blindness and Rage, wishes to be a writer, though he has written only love letters to women, which achieved tragicomic results, or none at all. When Gracq retires from his job as a town planner in Adelaide, it seems he will have the time and freedom to write the epic he has dreamed of, but he is diagnosed with terminal cancer and given fifty-three days to live, enough time, perhaps, to compose something worthwhile. But Gracq must overcome a more fundamental problem: he is terrified of leaving his mark upon the blank page, and on the world.' (Introduction)

'Though Ned Kelly popularly gets the title, Australia’s last bushrangers were Patrick and James Kenniff, horse and cattle thieves whose operations were at their height at the turn of the 20th century. In One, troops cannot pull the Kenniff Gang out of the ranges and plains of Western Queensland – the brothers know the terrain too well, and the locals are sympathetic to their escapades. A policeman and a station manager go out on patrol from tiny Upper Warrego Station and disappear. Sergeant Nixon makes it his mission to pursue the gang, especially, Jim Kenniff, who becomes for him an emblem of the violence that resides in the heart of the country.

'In the literary tradition of Cormac McCarthy and Peter Carey, One is a novel of lyrical beauty that traverses the intersections between violence and love. It is a love story that reveals the sometimes slippery nature of the truth. What right does a man have to impose his will on the world? Can the written law can ever answer the law of the heart?' (Publication summary)

'Navigatio tells the story of Saint Brendan of Clonfert, a sixth century monk and adventurer, and his legendary quest for the Isle of the Blessed via a gauntlet of monsters, devils, angels, prophets and beautiful maidens. Brendan's battles with the sea and the cosmos bear out what William Faulkner once called ‘the human heart in conflict with itself’. This haunting parable of darkness and light, of temptation and belief, of voice and silence, is told with the utmost economy of words, making it a small masterpiece of compassionate perception.' (Publication summary)

'There are always two landscapes in a Malouf story. The one you can touch with your hands, and the one that is dreamed – discoverable by language, always on the verge of disappearing. In medieval Japanese art and letters, this quality was known as yūgen (幽玄),which might be translated as ‘shadow-filled’ or ‘beyond words’ or ‘that which resists being clearly seen’. Arthur Waley, translating fifteenth century playwright and pioneer of Noh, Zeami Motokiyo, said that wandering in a great forest without thought of return is a path to yūgen, as is standing on a shore and gazing after a fishing boat that disappears behind an island, or seeing wild geese disappearing into white clouds. Kamo-no-Chomei (1155–1216) wrote in his Mumyō-sho (Treatise Without a Name), that yūgen occurs, ‘when an unseen world hovers in the atmosphere’.' (Introduction)

'An atmospheric literary thriller, it tells the story of a foreign journalist living in Saigon who, shortly after reporting on a murdered girl washed up in Saigon River, is approached by a foreigner describing a brothel known as "the darkest little room in Saigon". The mysterious man shows him a photograph of a beautiful woman covered in wounds and the journalist investigates, not only out of suspicion that women are being maltreated, but also in the hope of finding someone from his past.

Rich in setting and characterisation, and pure in voice, The Darkest Little Room explores the elemental dilemmas of being an outsider, the nature of desire, and the risks of loving, especially in a world where no one is who they seem.' (Source: http://www.patrickholland.com.au/) (Sighted 11/09/2012).

'Grey's mother dies giving birth to his sister Irene and the tragedy haunts his life in the small town of Mary Smokes. Grey prays that his mother will be returned to him in some form, so he might protect her from the world as his father did not. This prayer, Grey believes is answered in his sister Irene. He becomes obsessed with protecting her purity and innocence.

'Also with his mother gone and his father turned to drink, Grey begins running with the wild boys, horse-handlers and fox hunters and part-time timber workers - members of a small, vanishing tribe who find themselves caught between an old relationship with place and a new one that is exemplified by the highway that threatens their town. A rash gamble by Grey and Irene's broken father means he and the Mary Smokes boys must steal horses to ensure Irene's safety. The consequences seem set to fall on Greys' closest friend, 'Ook' Eccleston. As Grey's, Eccleston's and Irene's lives are put at stake his allegiances falter and the world of Mary Smokes slips into a heightened state of darkness and threat.

'With the passion of Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights and the distilled beauty of Ondaatje, Patrick Holland captures the fragility and grace of small town life and how one fateful moment can forever alter the course of our lives.' (From the publisher's website.)