In this haunting story, two Australian men are hired to clear the ubiquitous manuka scrub in a bleak and rain-swept New Zealand gully. As their wide open homeland and dreams of teaching the locals how to break in horses begin to seem increasingly remote, the backbreaking, monotonous work and isolation soon take their toll, on body and mind.
Alex Miller is one of Australia's best-loved writers, and winner of the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2012.
Alex Miller is twice winner of Australia's premier literary prize, The Miles Franklin Literary Award, first in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game. His fifth novel, Conditions of Faith, won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the 2001 New South Wales Premier's Awards. In 2011 he won this award a second time with his most recent novel Lovesong. Lovesong also won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Awards, the Age Book of the Year Award and the Age Fiction Prize for 2011. In 2007 Landscape of Farewell was published to wide critical acclaim and in 2008 won the Chinese Annual Foreign Novels 21st Century Award for Best Novel and the Manning Clark Medal for an outstanding contribution to Australian cultural life. It was also short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the ALS Gold Medal and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Alex is published internationally and widely in translation. Autumn Laing is his tenth novel.
Bleak. A short story of a couple of blokes working on New Zealand, clearing scrub in awful conditions. Somehow though, the friendship and hardship they share is cheering - at least until the final paragraph.
What a really interesting read. I can't say much about the story without giving it away. What I can say is, buy this very cheap, short book and spend an hour reading it. It's worth all of that just to read the endnote!