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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'From the winner of the Australian Vogel Award and Miles Franklin Award. An Open Swimmer is a meditation on the horrors and joys of adulthood; That Eye, the Sky concerns a boy's vision of the world, and In the Winter Dark opens when a dog is torn from its leash by something unseen.' (Publication summary)
Contents
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That Eye, the Sky,
single work
novel
young adult
(p. 1-182)Ort knows the sky is watching. He knows what it means to watch; he spends long hours listening at doors and peering through cracks. Things are terribly wrong. His father is withering away, his sister is consumed by hatred, his grandmother is all inside herself, and his mother, a flower-child of the 1960s, is brave but helpless. Then a strange man appears at their door. That Eye, the Sky is about love, about a boy's vision of the world beyond, about the blurry distinctions between the natural and the supernatural. All this, and more, begins at the moment the ute driven by Ort Flack's father ploughs into a roadside tree, throwing the whole world out of kilter. (Source: Bookseller's website)
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In the Winter Dark,
single work
novel
horror
(p. [183]-340)
'Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then in his orchard, Murray Jaccob sees a moving shadow. Acorss the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. And on the verandah of the Stubbses’ house, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. Nothing will ever be the same again. ' (Publication summary)
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An Open Swimmer,
single work
novel
(p. [341]-[442])
'Jerra and his best mate Sean set off in a beaten-up old VW to go camping on the coast. Jerra's friends and family want to know when he will finish university, when he will find a girl. But they don't understand about Sean's mother, Jewel, or the bush or the fish with the pearl. They think he needs a job, but what Jerra is searching for is more elusive. Only the sea, and perhaps the old man who lives in a shack beside it, can help. An Open Swimmer is a remarkable first novel by one of Australia's most loved and respected writers.' (Publication summary)
