Lamb, Karen (2015), Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather, University of Queensland Press. ISBN: 9780702253560.
Review
Book Review: Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather
Queensland Review, Vol.26(2), pp.285-286
2019
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Source: InCites
Abstract
Astley’s foibles are sympathetically portrayed; her reputation for being somewhat difficult is ascribed to social awkwardness and anxious over-compensation — such as when she burst in uninvited to Patrick White’s house, determined to begin a friendship (she succeeded — although the relationship was not without its ups and downs) or when she declared on a literary festival panel with Richard Flanagan that his Gould’s Book of Fish was ‘a bit of a wank’ (cited in Lamb 2015: 310). Astley’s early life in Brisbane is compellingly sketched, and Lamb’s attention to historical detail and context evokes a snapshot of wartime Brisbane, a heady university town brimming with American soldiers and fleetingly stamped by culture, until the end of the war sent the soldiers away, women back into the home and Astley northwards as a schoolteacher indebted to the Queensland Education Department for the cost of her university tuition. Marriage to Jack Gregson, whom she met at a concert in Brisbane, was an adventure and a lifeline that the young Astley grasped, despite her parents’ disapproval of a husband ten years her senior, divorced and a Protestant to boot.
Details
- Title
- Book Review: Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather
- Creators
- Emma Doolan - Southern Cross University
- Publication Details
- Queensland Review, Vol.26(2), pp.285-286
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Identifiers
- 991012894599502368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts; School of Arts and Social Sciences; Humanities
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Review