Two months ago I wrote about how I'd read and reread Shirley Conran's scandalous novel, Lace, many times over the past forty years. Someone called Jess commented under the post that she'd done the same thing with Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow. I'd never read that book (in fact, never read anything by Ruth Park, who like me was born in New Zealand but lived most of her life in Australia) so I tracked the book down. It was magnificent. The novel is set in The Rocks, Sydney, and is about a teenager who is transported back to Victorian times. I really liked it and, like Jess, think it'll become one of those books I read again. Thanks for the recommendation!
On a vaguely related note, another classic I'd failed to read until recently is On the Beach by Nevil Shute. It's a delightful if dystopian novel written in the late 1950s and set in the early 1960s, after a nuclear war has killed most of the world's population. People in the southern states of Australia await the inevitable radiation sickness that will eventually end their lives. I don't usually read sci-fi but this book was both an interesting (and timely) thought experiment and a fascinating glimpse into the middle-class mores of sixty years ago. I liked the book and plan to read it again soon to more fully appreciate its nuances.
On the Beach was also made into a film in 1959. I haven't managed to track down a copy yet. But Australians often wryly exclaim about the end of the world (i.e. the end of the book and film) occurring on a Melbourne beach. Turns out the more precise location, in the book at least, is Point Lonsdale, Victoria. Andrew and I happened to visit Point Lonsdale around the same time I was reading On the Beach. It was so cold and windswept on the day we visited – despite it being late November, in the southern hemisphere summer – that the end of the world was sort of plausible.
No comments:
Post a Comment