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'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.
Notes
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Dedication: To Leo
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The Gift of Speed is framed within the 1960-1961 West Indian cricket tour of Australia.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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The New Historical Novel : Putting Mid-twentieth-century Australia into Perspective
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth : Essays and Studies , Autumn vol. 41 no. 1 2018; (p. 7-18)'This article argues that, since 2004 or so, a new kind of Australian historical novel has emerged among practitioners of literary fiction, one concerned with the mid-twentieth century. This new historical fiction has been characterized by an aesthetic stringency and self-consciousness. Though Steven Carroll and Ashley Hay will be the principal twenty-first-century writers examined, reference will also be made to several other writers including Carrie Tiffany, Charlotte Wood, Sofie Laguna, and to the later work of Peter Carey. In all these contemporary books, technology plays a major role in defining the twentieth century as seen historically.' (Publication abstract)
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Colonising Time : Steven Carroll’s Reinvention of Suburbia
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 13 no. 2 2013; 'Suburbia is a familiar topos in Australian fiction. Its address to colonisation is mostly oblique, yielded through its focus on the inauthenticity and restlessness of a settler modernity typically sourced in the white Anglo culture of pre 1970s decades. Yet the actual suburbs of postwar Australia are multiplicitous and shifting, always in tension with the imagined terrain of fictional suburbia. My paper explores literary suburbs as constituted by a complex set of orientations towards the real and the imagined. It reads the ways that Steven Carroll’s fictional suburbia indexes real world localities, while simultaneously serving as locus for reinvention of the novel in Australia, through forms of interior consciousness and temporality affiliated with European models of literary modernism. In Spirit of Progress (2011), Carroll's narrative engages with classic Anglo-Australian suburbia as a representational field, working with and against the real of history, even as it mines the seam of suburbia as a site of both colonization and forgetting, and of longing and return.' (Author's abstract) -
Celebrating Suburbia
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Exploring Suburbia: The Suburbs in the Contemporary Australian Novel 2012; (p. 303-334) -
Making the Ordinary Extraordinary
2008
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 21 June 2008; (p. B4) -
Present Tense With Meaning
2007
single work
column
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 10 March 2007; (p. 13)
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A Summer in the Life of a Teenager
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 31 July 2004; (p. 7a)
— Review of The Gift of Speed 2004 single work novel -
Celebration of a Moment in a Younger Age
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 31 July - 1 August 2004; (p. 8-9)
— Review of The Gift of Speed 2004 single work novel -
Nostalgic Textures
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 263 2004; (p. 56)
— Review of The Gift of Speed 2004 single work novel -
Playing the Game of Life
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 14 August 2004; (p. 6)
— Review of The Gift of Speed 2004 single work novel -
A Premium Blend
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 24 August vol. 122 no. 6435 2004; (p. 65)
— Review of Ophelia's Fan 2004 single work novel ; Spirit Wrestlers 2004 single work novel ; Rhubarb 2004 single work novel ; Furies 2004 single work novel ; The Gift of Speed 2004 single work novel -
Dark Downs Thriller Stands Tall on Short List
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 22 April 2005; (p. 3) -
Prize Fighters Booked for Crack at the Franklin
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian , 22 April 2005; (p. 3) -
Present Tense With Meaning
2007
single work
column
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 10 March 2007; (p. 13) -
Making the Ordinary Extraordinary
2008
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 21 June 2008; (p. B4) -
Celebrating Suburbia
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Exploring Suburbia: The Suburbs in the Contemporary Australian Novel 2012; (p. 303-334)
Awards
- 2005 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- Melbourne - North, Melbourne, Victoria,
- Melbourne City, Melbourne, Victoria,
- 1960-1961