Interestingly Enough...: The Life of Tom Keneally

by Stephany Evans Steggall

For five decades Tom Keneally has been one of Australia's finest and most loved writers. Celebrated across the world as a master storyteller, and known especially for the Booker Prize-winning Schindler's Ark, he is also respected for his humanitarian work and his commitment to causes such as republicanism. The breadth and richness of Keneally's life is explored in this comprehensive biography, authorised by the subject and written by Stephany Evans Steggall.

Beneath Keneally's warm and garrulous exterior is a complex man intermittently troubled by depression and anxiety. The prolific writer and popular raconteur has known many 'dark nights of the soul'. His commitment to Catholicism once led him to train for the priesthood, but crippling doubt left him unable to fulfil that ambition. Instead, he became a haunted writer – and then an uninhibited storyteller.

Keneally's remarkable career has seen him win literary acclaim and commercial success across the world. His works are frequent and diverse, ranging from much-loved novels (Bring Larks and Heroes, Confederates) and memoir (Homebush Boy, Searching for Schindler) to respected works of history (The Great Shame, Three Famines). A number of his novels have also been made into award-winning films (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler's List).

The story of Keneally's life and work is brilliantly told in this engaging and accessible new biography by Stephany Evans Steggall. The result of exhaustive research and unique opportunities to interview Keneally himself, Interestingly Enough… is the definitive account of an extraordinary Australian.

Genres: Biography, Biography Memoir, Nonfiction, Australia

370 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2015

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy reading literary biographies, but Interestingly Enough, the life of Tom Keneally is the first one I’ve read about a still living author. It’s a testament to Keneally’s place in Australia’s literary culture as a popular author of literary fiction that it’s hit the bookshelves while he’s still writing. (Just last week, I bought his latest, Napoleon’s Last Island). It can be a disadvantage to write a biography with the subject ‘looking over one’s shoulder’ and I suspect that there’s more to know about Keneally than Stephany Evans Steggall has been able to tell, but it’s an interesting life story all the same.

Like Graham Greene, Keneally is an author often tagged by Catholicism: the biography begins by unpacking what might have been if Keneally had not realised he was not cut out for the priesthood and had not had the courage to leave before his final ordination in 1961. This experience was a searing one, and even a casual reader could see that in his early books he wrote to advance from indoctrination to individuality (p.82). Keneally, understandably, felt some bitterness at the way he was treated when he left the seminary. Refused so much as a reference to help him on his way, he later wrote an article called ‘The Humanist Priest’ in 1969 in which he painted an unflattering portrait of his bishop

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2015/11/16/in...

[Ron Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first contact with Tom Keneally was in my first year at university in the early 1970s when Bring Larks and Heroes was a prescribed text. It was the first time I had to read and analyse a text without the controlled guidance of a school teacher. To this day I still remember the feeling of the text. I still have my paper back copy. Over the years I dipped into Keneally and in the recent past I have become an avid fan and I read whatever Keneally I can get my hands on.
I have met Keneally on several occasions. I lived in Kempsey for many years and if you now something of his background you will know that his parents owned Chaddies store on the highway at East Kempsey (It is still there and operating.) He visited Kempsey on a few occasions and I remember going to a function where he spoke. I have met him at a few writers’ festivals. He is a down-to-earth delightful man with a wicked sense of humour.
So it was with some delight that I saw this biography. I then managed to see Steggall and Keneally (Not together) at the Sydney Writers Festival where she discussed the writing of this biography.
Having been a supporter of Australia becoming a republic and the fair treatment of refugees I have shared Keneally’s thoughts and writings over the last four decades.
The biography spends some time on Keneally’s formative years and the influence that Catholicism had on him.
Steggall spends time discussing Keneally’s more successful novels, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Schindler’s List, The Daughters of Mars.
I was most interested in the background to the filming of Schindler’s Ark. The process and time that it took to come to fruition as a film.
The biography does delve on Keneally's fury temper in his younger years and his relationships with his publishers and critics. He has mellowed in older age. Also the continuous struggle to earn a living from being a writer, even one as prodigious and talented as Keneally. I enjoyed reading about his time as a teacher.
At the Sydney Writer’s Festival a few years ago Keneally spoke of his liking of A River Town, a novel set in the Macleay Valley at the turn of the nineteenth century. He said it was one of his favourites.
It is a testament to Keneally’s output that he has such a sizeable library of both fiction and non-fiction and even since this biography was published he has produced several more publications.
This is a fascinating and extensively researched biography that I would highly recommend and I would complement that by recommending that the reader delve into Keneally’s back catalogue and his more recent publications.

[Peter Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an interesting book.Keneally is a very prolific author,always reliable in telling a good tale,usually based on some historical event.Naturally It’s mainly concerned with his writing career so details of the origins of the ideas,their development and reception are the mainstay of the biography.Apart from leaving the seminary,naturally a huge step,his life has been based around writing and family.Instructive to see how much a concern about money was to him and to read about tussles and misunderstandings with agents and publishers.So a pleasant read for those intrigued by the writing process.

[Dulcie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Keneally is a journeyman author; its all about the research and the thorough preparation. A historian? Yes. A journalist? Yes. Quite good at both, but not an author of world shaping literature. I like many Keneally books.
One of the tenets of Evans Steggall is that Keneally is in the same class as Patrick White, when nothing could be further from the truth. in the same way that there us no comparison between this book and David Marr's magisterial study of White's life.
Keneally comes out here as at best lacking in ethics and any sort of common decency; or in fact much common-sense. This is not the case based on what I know of his life so the fault must all be with the autobiographer....

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story about a very interesting man. Enjoyable read.

[Alli_aye · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was keen to hear about Schindler’s Ark and the stuff about him almost becoming a priest was interesting, how it informed his later writing.

Audio Narrator: good

[RM · Rating 2 out of 5]

Steggall has done the research - simply reading Keneally's entire published output is a major achievement in itself - but as a biographer she remains too close to her source material. As a result, the book is too often simply a chronology of the contents of various documents and interviews: so we get a lot of mundane correspondence between Keneally and his publishers and agents, and reviewers' published reactions to Keneally's books, but not much at all about Keneally's writing process, or (as the subtitle promises) his life more generally.

[Maxine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the first couple of chapters a bit confusing, but once it got onto the subject of Tom proper I really enjoyed it.

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Longwinded, not that interesting.