The Long Prospect

by Elizabeth Harrower, Fiona McGregor (Contributor)

Sharply observed, bitter and humorous, The Long Prospect is a story of life in an Australian industrial town.

Growing up neglected in a seedy boarding house, twelve-year-old Emily Lawrence befriends Max, a middle-aged scientist who encourages her to pursue her intellectual interests. Innocent Emily will face scandal, suburban snobbery and psychological torment.

Originally published in 1958, The Long Prospect was described as second only to Patrick White’s Voss in postwar Australian literature.

The Introduction is by Fiona McGregor.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, 20th Century, Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

277 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Elizabeth Harrower is an Australian novelist and short story writer.

(from Wikipedia)

Elizabeth Harrower is regarded as one of Australia's most important postwar writers, and is enjoying a recent literary revival. Born in Sydney in 1928, her first novel, Down in the City, was published in 1957 and was followed by The Long Prospect (1958) and The Catherine Wheel (1960). Her most well-known work, The Watch Tower, was published in 1966 to huge acclaim. Four years later she finished In Certain Circles , but withdrew it before publication for reasons she has never publicly spoken of. The manuscript was rediscovered recently by her publisher who felt it should be published immediately. Harrower has since received rave reviews, including comparisons with Emile Zola and F Scott Fitzgerald.

Reviews

[CanadianReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Lilian was not subtle and hid nothing of herself. It could often be placed no higher than sadism [ . . . ]Living with her was practice in bloodless warfare.”

This is an incisive, finely observed piece of psychological fiction, both a coming-of-age narrative and a credible study of a cruel and destructive woman, who revels in creating dramas that damage others. The novel follows a young child, Emily, over a period of six years from the age of seven to thirteen. She lives with her forty-seven-year-old grandmother, the twice-widowed Lilian, who has been left well-off but who has little to do but party, toy with men, and bet on horses. Emily’s parents are alive but separated—her mother is in Sydney; her father, in the outback. They married young and never grew up. Passive and irresponsible, both are perfectly comfortable with Lilian’s taking charge of their daughter. Neither gives a thought to the neglectful and emotionally abusive situation the child has been left in.

Lilian takes in boarders, not because she has any need for the income, but because she requires an audience for the cruel dramas she instigates. One boarder, Thea, has fairly recently left Lilian’s house in the suburbs for a flat of her own, but she occasionally visits and takes Emily on outings. Eventually, Thea leaves the city of Ballowra (based on industrial Newcastle, Australia), and Lilian takes in another boarder: Thea’s former lover, Max. Lilian recognizes the potential for cruelty that such a situation promises. By having another, younger man in the house, she can make her current live-in fancy man, Rosen, jealous, and look a bit more respectable to the neighbours at the same time. She can also invite Thea to come for a visit from Sydney and then enjoy the fireworks that ensue when the former lovers encounter each other. Lilian’s timing is off, however, and things don’t develop quite as she plans. Max is sensitive and kind, and a special relationship develops between him and Emily, whom he feels he must protect from the ruthless and uncaring Lilian and her swinging friends, who resent him for his refusal to party with them.

The reader must be willing to suspend a certain degree of disbelief about the plot. It’s difficult to accept that any reasonable adult, never mind two, would board with Lilian for any duration of time. However, Thea’s, then Max’s concern for Emily’s welfare is credible, and the dilemma of leaving a child in a destructive environment rings entirely true.

Harrower’s characters are superbly drawn. Emily is sensitively, not sentimentally, depicted, and the author’s portrait of the scheming, domineering, sarcastic, and sadistic Lilian is brilliant.

It’s many years since I read another Elizabeth’s—Elizabeth Bowen’s—The Death of the Heart. I don’t recall that earlier book well, but its title would certainly suit this Australian novel: a study of the effect of a destructive personality on everyone she comes into contact with, including an impressionable child.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Harrower is harrowing! I spent 6 or more hours reading this over a 5/6 day period - and what did I get for my time invested? A nasty kick in the guts. The thing is I believed in Emily throughout until that bleak, dismal ending. She is 13 at the end of the story having moved to Sydney to spend the remainder of her childhood with her parents Paula and Harry. She survived her early years with Lilian, her grandmother, and unfortunately will have to endure more until she can be free - possibly when she turns 18.

This is Lilian - first sentence of the book:

The front door of Thea's flat was ajar so Lilian gave it a push and went in, her eyes on swivels.

Why would any writer to do that to her reader - cast me - into an abyss of depression. I can only guess that Harrower doesn't like humans, and can see no hope for us dreadful creatures. She strings us along for ten chapters, 277 pages, encouraging us to hope that someone will save Emily. Perhaps Thea or Max; someone brave enough to recognise and speak up against the evil committed against children.

Lilian is not evil, neither is her daughter Paula - but the consequences of their behaviour is deadly. Here's a short example of Paula's involvement with her daughter, who is about 8/9 years old:

The electric fire with both bars turned on, burned Emily's face and threw pink-orange light feebly into the darkening room. She gave an exaggerated sigh and clasped her face in her hands.
Paula raised her head and looked at her in silence for a moment as if the effort of breaking into speech was more than she could contemplate. She was gagged by the wintry Sunday dimness and warmth.
'Haven't you anything to do?' she asked repressively, at last.
'Nope. Nothing to read or anything.'
'Don't say "nope".'
Lilian intoned her eyes on the paper. 'Did you see this about the man who strangled-'
'Yes, I read it,' Paula said quickly, repelled and bored at the prospect of listening to the Lilian's portentous delivery. She was beginning to subside into her book again when she remembered Emily, felt the exasperating weight of her eyes and expectations. She said, trying not to lose contact with the printed page in front of her, 'We'll have to see Santa at Christmas time. Perhaps he'll bring you some books.'
'Will he? Will he? When will it be Christmas, Mum?'
Paula sighed, moved a foot away from the heat of the fire and said, 'Oh . . . about six months.'

There's a lot more of that - it makes you weep for the child. Her "care-givers" are not intentionally cruel just - neglectful! The long prospect I think is captured explicitly in that afternoon when Emily waits for someone to pay attention to her. It also predicts a long future ahead of her with no reprieve in sight.

And then Lilian takes a new lodger, Max. He is single, educated, 34 and employed at the local steel works. He is the first adult to take an interest in Emily - he gives her books and discusses them with her; they listen to music, play ping pong; indeed Max spends all his free time with Emily recognizing her desperate need for love, attention and companionship.

Emily is happy, probably for the first time in her life; but they have to spoil it - Lilian and partner, Rosen, connive with Harry and Paula to get rid of Max on trumped-up accusations. Emily can hardly believe what has happened. Lilian who has written to Thea in a meddling attempt to bring the ex-lovers together in her presence is surprised when Thea actually pays a visit. We hope she will be reunited with Max - and it is who Emily gives her the hotel where he is staying.

First published in 1958 I can only suggest that 'The Long Prospect' presents a distillation of Harrower's own experiences combined with a complete loss of faith in humans. The novel refers to the industry across the valley from Emily's home in Greenhills (a misnomer for a suburb of Ballowra) - it references the destruction caused by human development. Many of the scenes in the book contrast marginal, pastoral beauty with the hot suffocating landscapes of Balowra - a town inhabited by people who are products of the industrial age. They are devoid of feeling, unable to aspire to anything other than material goods and comforts. Emily, Max and Thea are the unusual types, lucky to escape if indeed they can from the suffocating influence of greed, production and the expanding capitalism fuelling urban, commercial and industrial growth in Australia at this time, post WW2.

Harrower uses landscape description to add locality, history and depth to the story of Emily. It extends and mirrors her theme to show neglect and ignorance in a much broader context. In the scene below, Emily climbs up the hill behind her house to wait for Max coming home from work.

It was Tuesday night. It was midsummer. Emily left the house by the side entrance and walked to the top of the hill. Behind her, below her, lay the last trickle of streets of Ballowra's most isolated suburb. Beyond them was flat marshy country, rich, vulnerable to floods, through which the main road stretched to join the cities and towns of the coast. At the point where Emily had stopped, another road ran at right angles along the crest of the hill. She had walked up from the valley of corrugated iron rooftops and on it now turned her back: on the other side the hill sloped, all pale shiny grass, dry and polished, down, down a long way to the river where the factory stood.

I also liked the fact that when Thea returns to Ballowra - she takes a bus out to Greenhills, intending to visit Lilian with whom she had boarded several years before and this bus drops Thea on the crest of the hill:

Thea left the bus and walked along the road on the crest of the hill. It was deserted and, when the bus had disappeared, very quiet. At this point the road ran in the cleft between two crumbling, yellow cliffs, one of which supported a wooden railing, a footpath, and a row of old but rather more elaborate than average bungalows. The other was thin and sloped quickly down to a bank of trees: these trees as yet hid the valley, the river, the factory, the monastery.

At the edge of the road the tar had come sluggishly to life, trickled warmly over sharp stones, held itself in plastic readiness to accept the imprints of a tyre or sole or paw.

And up from the river the summer wind blew, humming its almost peaceful song of distant industry clamour, smelling ever so faintly of water and weeds and trees, making itself known to Thea's senses, bringing with it such a pang of nostalgia that she had to smile even as it made her heart quake.

Thea is the other light in this book - and Max's true love. At the end she comes sailing back - and Emily believes momentarily that maybe Thea can rescue her - as she did when she was younger with her visits and picnics.

I want to end with this one final scene - one that Emily describes before she is called back into her new home, called in by her mother, to eat dinner.

The opposite land -unbuilt, hilly, wooded - curved low, dark-green, ideally round and gentle down to a rocky shore and the water. It was a bird sanctuary, Emily had been told, it might never change. It was certainly not NOW to be touched.
The knowledge that it was meant to be for birds, sacred to them, peopled the small headland, in Emily's mind, with bluebirds, wings, cries; with great colonies of birds, cool and busy under the trees' layered leaves.
Empty rowing-boats, anchored to the shallow water of the bay had all begun to swing round with the gentle force of the rising water. And the sun shone on their white-painted, water-wet sides; on the occupied, incoming sea; on the tops of trees; on the dull playing field.
Soon it would be gone, soon it would be dark, but meantime the earth gave up earthy evening scents, dampness in spite of heat. Frail pink clouds feathered the translucent sky and Emily clutched at the stake and breathed the air, looked with unthinking eyes, was uplifted, transported, gave herself to the present beauty and the coming night. With cold smoothing hands, the moment unfretted fear. She could have sung some wild wordless chant. In a trance she saw a bird soar homewards, disappear.

I would have liked the story to end there, because it would have ended on a note of hope. I've included these scenic and beautifully descriptive passages because the novel is threaded through with these moments allowing us both to pause and to deepen our awareness beyond the immediate story. We are required to look at man's exploitation of the natural world, and ultimately the repercussions on himself.

So, 5 stars for her writing, the psychological reality of her characters and their interactions and inter-dependencies; 5-stars also for descriptions, for multi-layering of meaning; 5-stars for championing the qualities seen in Thea, Max and Emily - and 0 stars for the ending. Way too sad. I'm not sure how to score overall - 5?

[Debbie Robson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must admit that I actually didn’t pay attention to the blurb on the back. It was an Elizabeth Harrower and it was set in Newcastle and I wanted to read it. We bring expectations for each book we read. That’s stating the obvious. Often the plot goes in different directions than we were expecting but the first chapter should give us some pointers of what the journey is going to be about. This is my only real gripe about this very original book. The Long Prospect’s first chapter (at least for this reader) is very confusing. So you are warned but also implored to keep reading. The Long Prospect won’t disappoint.
We open with the Emily’s grandmother paying an unexpected visit on someone called Thea. And snooping. I was trying to place where we were. So Thea was living in Ballowra (Newcastle) and as it turns out Lilian lives in Greenhills (I’m guessing Mayfield). The two women talk and there is only a passing mention of Emily. There is a bit of back story and suddenly Emily is there. It took me a while to work out that this is another day and another visit. Thea has called on Lilian and Emily at the house she used to board at, at Greenhills. By the end of this chapter Thea has left Ballowra.
By the second chapter I began to really get to know the household and by the third chapter I settled in to the story and began to admire what Harrower was achieving. By the time Max arrives at Lilian’s house to board with them the novel has taken flight. Here is Ballowra as seen by Emily’s father:
“Below him, acres of flat land were covered by low wooden houses in front of which swayed sappy knee-high grass. Paint was lavished only on the giant advertisement hoardings that bestrode the numerous vacant allotments. There were no trees. The steelworks which, at a great distance, surrounded the rise where Harry stood were the only reason, and, he was forced to suppose, justification, for the existence of Ballowra.
Here’s Max on arrival at the house. He is unpacking in his room and Emily is helping him. She has just put a record on his gramophone that he brought with him:
“The music started. The chairs were littered, so Max sat down on the bed, then leaning forward, lifted a packet of cigarettes and his lighter from the dressing-table.
If there was one thing he had not expected this morning on the plane, he thought, it was that at half past nine he would be in the room where Thea had lived, in the house with people she had spoken of, the child she was fond of.”
The evocation of the friendship between Max and Emily is a major achievement. His goodness highlights the failings of both Emily’s parents in regards to their child and of course the cruelties of Lilian. As the tension in the house builds you know that the unusual situation in the house can’t continue and that things will come to a head. The way that events unfold (completely dictated by the decisions of the main characters not deft plotting) is the strongpoint of the book and won’t disappoint. As a reader I loved the last line of the book hinting at the life of most women in the middle of the twentieth century. Highly recommended.

[Kimberly Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emily, soon to turn 12, lives with her grandmother Lilian in a small industrial town in Australia in the 1950s. Her parents are currently separated and working in other areas. Lilian is in her late 40’s, twice widowed, financially secure, and utterly self absorbed. Loves her good times, parties and alcohol. She is not only neglectful of her granddaughter, but unkind as a rule, often downright cruel. She scoffs at Emily’s fascination with learning. Lilian has no interest in higher education or any worthy pursuits. She harbors a barely disguised hatred of men, is highly manipulative, and frequently shows contempt toward them. A domineering woman, she is always on the prowl for a willing victim. Even her friends are not exempt from her little cruelties. One of the worst gossips in the narrow minded 1950s town, Lilian loves to dish the dirt on others, although she is far from a paragon of virtue herself.
Emily is a lonely girl who loves books and learning. Around the age of 12, her eyes seem to open as she suddenly becomes more aware of the ongoing behavior in her home. She also is becoming more self aware. Soon Max, a kindly man in his thirties, becomes a boarder in Lilian’s house. She takes Max in for the most part in order to disguise the presence of her live-in lover, Mr. Rosen. Max notices Emily’s loneliness and befriends her, all the while encouraging Emily’s interest in learning and helping to develop her intellect. Lonely Emily thrives under his caring friendship. When Max shows no interest in Lilian or her women friends, romantic or otherwise, they feel spurned and plot revenge. Lilian’s toxic gossip and manipulative acts deliberately cast doubt and suspicion on Max’s chaste friendship with young Emily. Readers can only hope that Max’s intervention will make a lasting difference in her life.
I enjoyed my first book by Elizabeth Harrower, and plan to read more of her work.

[Theresa Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Long Prospect is Elizabeth Harrower’s second novel, published in 1958. It is set in a fictional town called Ballowra, which is loosely based on Newcastle. I didn’t get quite the same sense of place with this one as I did with Down in the City, but perhaps Harrower shines brighter in this aspect when she is writing about places she has lived in. The setting for this one does however have significant influence on the characters and this is reflected in the way Harrower has written them. Specifically, if you consider Lilian, the villainous matriarch of this story, she is very much a big fish in a little pond, and her followers are all different shades of shallow based on their position in the pecking order of Lilian’s social circle. Having lived in regional towns for the majority of my life, I found these characters entirely recognisable, despite the fact that again, this is a story published 67 years ago.

‘It was impossible to know what reaction, if any, Lilian had expected. She was unable to think before she spoke, and therefore unable to plan ahead. But instinctive presumption and lack of feeling led to her displaying a callousness which in itself, distinct from what was said, appalled the heart.’

In The Long Prospect, Harrower’s gaze shifts from the relationship of marriage to that of child and caregiver. Emily is in the care of her grandmother Lilian because her parents were ill suited, got married without knowing each other, had a baby immediately and then went their separate ways. Lilian then set up her daughter, Emily’s mother, in Sydney with a share in a shop and kept the child with her. Emily’s parents remain married, but always apart in a farcical arrangement that appears to benefit no one, and they each see Emily separately on occasion, her father less often than her mother, but neither of them with any regularity nor enthusiasm. So, this is where we step into this story, where Emily is in the care of her grandmother, who runs a boarding house, and who is essentially an incredibly cruel woman who spends the majority of her time chasing other women’s husbands and hosting parties that appear to involve cards and heavy drinking, with the swapping of partners to cap off the evening. During these parties, Emily is ignored, but present and left to her own devices, perfecting her ability to remain invisible.

‘Three times she had resisted the appeal of Thea’s outstretched hand lest her grandmother should be reminded of her existence and send her away. But still she was near, seeing, listening...’

The psychological abuse that Lilian heaps onto Emily is witnessed by many, yet barely anyone calls Lilian out for it. Only once, in the entire novel, does Paula, Emily’s mother, say ‘Mum, don’t speak to her that way’, but she is ignored, and then goes back to her life in Sydney, leaving Emily at the mercy of Lilian. Let’s take a beat to acknowledge that Paula knows full well what her mother is like and has chosen to remove herself from Lilian’s influence, even if this means the sacrifice of her own daughter to achieve her means of independence. In The Long Prospect, Harrower is not simply portraying a case of child abuse and asking us to bear witness. What she is doing is demonstrating the toxic existence of women who despise their own daughters and granddaughters. It’s a hideous morphing of women hating women. And in the complex way that truly manipulative people operate, Lilian will despise Emily, but she will also not allow anyone else to, creating that vacuum where the abused feels championed by their abuser. Anyone who has lived experience of this will understand the complexities of untangling yourself from such toxicity and undoing the influence it has had on your life, particularly if this has taken place during your formative years. There is a scene where Emily’s father arrives unexpectedly and comes upon her in the street with her friend and comments to Emily that her neck is dirty. Before he has a chance to reach the house and see Lilian, Emily races back to tell her grandmother that he is here and what he has said to her.

‘My God!’ She drew a deep exasperated breath. ‘Isn’t that just like the thing.’ She glanced at the open front door. ‘And he said your neck was dirty?’

‘Yes, and it isn’t!’ cried Emily, triumphant. She had told on him.

The arrival of Max as a boarder changes Emily’s life and for the year he is there, she is seen in a way that she never has been seen before. All of a sudden, there is an adult who is taking an interest in her, teaching her things, ensuring she eats, goes to bed on time, has a routine. He even takes her to multiple appointments to the dentist to get her teeth fixed, which of course are decayed through neglect. There is nothing sinister in Max’s motivations, he is man who is witnessing neglect within a house in which he boards, and he decides to do something about it. For Lilian, this suits her just fine, Emily is occupied, and the presence of Max within her boarding house serves a purpose for her in that it provides leverage with which to make her current lover jealous. This is how Lilian rolls, she is a total narcissist and chooses to see only what is of immediate interest to her. For Emily though, her life is changed and improved beyond measure.

‘It was marvellously cheering. And to know that she, Emily Lawrence, whose name alone -Emily Lawrence – could sound like a phrase meaning stupid and lazy, was thought to be worthy of Max’s thought, made her eye herself in the mirror with an altogether new respect. And because she was no longer expected to strive and care for herself alone – to be healthy, to work, to succeed, to be clean and much more for her own sake alone – from matters of simplest hygiene to the most complex matters of thought within her youthful capacity she made great efforts and progress.’

As the reader, we all know where this headed. This is a small town filled with small minds who are fuelled by jealousy and competitiveness. When the inevitable fall out occurs, I felt hollowed out by it. I wanted something different for Emily. Max was so dignified in his handling of the accusations levelled at him and so sensitive to protecting Emily from the worst of it and trying to ensure that she understood that his leaving was necessary, but that she should continue with her learning and striving, to trust people, but also to not trust them with everything. His exasperation with the entire situation just leapt off the page, it was incredibly emotive writing. You just know that Max knows that life could go either way for Emily, coming from the household she is in, and the randomness of which way this may go was despairing for him.

‘How is it possible, Max wondered, giving way to moody generalisations, that the idea of progress can survive in the face of the evidence supplied by human nature?’

Another aspect of this novel that was well articulated was the illustration of the many facets of neglect. Emily does have food, she has clothes and is not expected to do anything to contribute to the household, leaving her to roam and play and do much of what she wants. She’s given money for the pictures, for magazines and lollies, and to her friends, it seems like she has the best life.

‘Don’t you ever do your own ironing?’ Patty asked, knowing.

‘No.’

‘Don’t you know how?’

‘No.’

‘You’re spoilt, aren’t you?’

With an effort, Emily threw up a tinny unconvincing smile. The unexpectedness of this small attack momentarily knocked her off balance, deprived her of another unit of energy, almost, it might fancifully have been felt, lessened her chances of survival.’

And that right there, was Lilian’s alibi. How could anyone accuse her of neglecting her granddaughter. Didn’t the girl have all she needed and then some? Didn’t she get five-pound notes pushed into her hand regularly so she could treat herself and her friends to whatever they liked? And as is the way of most people who never look beyond the surface, indeed, Lilian was doing a great job, taking care of her granddaughter when she didn’t have to, but she chose to, because isn’t that just the type of person she is? The insidiousness of it was all pervading. When we depart this story, it is with a sense of despair, because there is no happy ending, Emily is only thirteen, she still has years of living within this family before she can break free, if she even decides to. She has been moved to live with her parents in Sydney, who have reunited and intend on trying to live as a family for the first time ever. It won’t last, we know this as readers, as the novel ends with this line:

‘Paula giggled and raised her brows, sending a woman’s glances to the young girl beside her in the hope that she would respond and join her in the fascinating, necessary game of teasing Harry.’

We know that this will end before too long, Paula will leave Harry, Harry will leave Sydney and return to the country where he most feels at home, and Emily will return to Lilian.

The Long Prospect is book two of my immersion into the works of Elizabeth Harrower, whereby I am reading her novels in order of publication and will finish with her short story collection.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An interesting, character based novel about thirteen year old Emily Lawrence, her relationship with Max, a separated married man in his mid thirties, and how Emily’s grandmother Lily has an impact on the people around Lily. Emily grows up under the careless guardianship of her grandmother, Lily, in Lily’s boardinghouse in the industrial town of Ballowra, Australia in the 1950s.

Lily’s character is particularly well developed and her dialogue with others is well written. Overall a worthwhile reading experience, however I prefer the author’s more psychological unnerving and famous book, ‘The Watchtower’ (1966).

This book was first published in 1958.

[Gary Daly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had not heard of Elizabeth Harrower until earlier this year when I read in the Sydney Morning Herald that two of her novels were being released under Diana Gribble's Text Classic Editions (in yellow at the marvellously happy book price of $12.95). I've read The Watch Tower and now The Long Prospect which is a superbly written and electrifying story. A low key narrative about people, mostly nasty people in the sense of their jealousies, petty wants and sense of self importance. If there's one thing Elizabeth clearly demonstrates in The Long Prospect is how human relationships swim in the same bath of shit whether or not it's 1958 or 2013. Her characters in The Long Prospect hate each other with such pleasure it is disturbing to feel any gratitude towards characters who are uncoiled from the madness of existence. The narrative is smooth, enjoyable and provides the reader with the opportunity to hover above the mayhem of suburban Newcastle in the 1950s. A wonderful read.

[Danielle Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tried and failed to finish this last year, but recently picked it up again and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Looking back now, I'm not sure why I put it down - think I really just needed to stick with it. It's story of young Emily Lawrence who is living her grandmother in an outlying industrial town in NSW. No one in her family seems to care very much about her so Emily clings to adults that shows her any affection.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Harrower should be much better known. This is the second book I have read, The Watchtower was the first. Her work shows incredible psychological insight and complexity. She describes the casual cruelty of relationships with razor sharp intelligence.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

My word, there are some very nasty women in this novel!  Lillian is a vituperative snake who enjoys blatant cruelty for the entertainment it provides her; Billie is a vulgar flirt who doesn't care who her gossip hurts en route to getting what she wants i.e. a replacement for her unsatisfactory husband, and Paula hates all men, so her mother's advice to just get a nice divorce and find yourself someone else to give you a nice home gets this response:

'I wouldn't want anyone else if I did divorce hm.  I hate them all.' (p.33)

Lillian does not agree.  She has done very nicely out of her divorce — a whole street of properties in Sydney and the house in Bellowra where she takes in boarders as prospective next husbands —

As far as men were concerned, no one would more willingly admit that they were faulty — aggressive, rough, thoughtless. And Paula had, beginning with her father and ending with Harry Lawrence, come up against some weird specimens...Still! What did it matter?

To Lillian, who had competed with and excelled them in most of their faults, and who knew how to baffle and reduce them in a peculiarly feminine way as well, it all added to the zest.  No, she certainly would not agree. Pursing her mouth as she listened, she wished that Paula could see the immense possibilities for amusement in the situation. It was all right to hate men—any woman in her right mind did—but if you had any spirit at all you had to battle with them, and belittle them, and learn to enjoy it. (p.33-4)

Stuck in this snake pit of venom is poor little Emily, dumped on Lillian when her parents Paula and Harry separate, and a wretched time she has of it with Lillian as The Grandmother From Hell...

No wonder Patrick White liked Harrower's work, he was rather good at penning horrible female characters too...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/10/31/t...

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harrower writes a great sentence. Her books are more about the words she uses rather than the story she tells. I found this book took a bit to read with sentences of hidden meanings, insightful comments and complex personalities.
Emily is 12 years old and lives with her grandmother who runs the boarding house they live in. Emily is bright, alert and deeply lonely. She is often insulted by her grandmother and friends - who spend their days gossiping and planning the next party. A new border, Max arrives, and he befriends Emily and recognises her talent.
The book is about the meanness of people who do not see the importance of Max to Emily's growth and development. Emily does realise she is only 12 and has some sort of puppy love going on and Max is equally aware to keep his relationship purely as friend and mentor. But the meanness wins and Max is forced to leave.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Harrower was a child of separated parents. She lived in Newcastle till she was 12, sometimes with her mother and sometimes with her grandmother. It is obviously tempting to assume some biographical element in this story, but because she has revealed very little about her inspirations we may never know for sure. To my knowledge she has never discussed her father publically. She did say though "people don't understand what a fantastic amount of energy surviving takes if you have had a really turbulent childhood . . . It's another world." In an interview 30 years ago she admitted that, if anything, the emotional truth in her books was less extreme than the reality of her childhood. She later worked in offices, she has not gone to university - she says "only girls whose fathers were judges or specialists did that".

She has talked about being self destructive as an adult. Though she has never explained the reasons why she stopped writing in 1966 after the publication of The Watch Tower, she has said ''My friends thought I let other people waste my life. They would try to pressure me to keep writing, which should have been encouraging, but I wasn't easy to save.'' She admits she was disappointed when she did not win the Miles Franklin after such high expectations were raised. "I think I probably made a decision somewhere along the line and I think I was punishing someone [by not writing]," she says. "Not quite sure who exactly I was punishing . . . I think I thought. 'You don't want me, I don't want you.' " She always felt she was an outsider. But she believed that her decision to stop writing was self-destructive. If she had her time again, she would do it differently.

She says of current times "I don't know anyone who knows I am a writer. The people who understand are dead, Patrick, Cynthia, Richard." These were her closest friends, Patrick White, Cynthia Nolan who asked Elizabeth to write her biography and died by suicide in 1966, and Richard Hall, political adviser to Wayne Swan who died in 2003.

She was a member of the ALP from 1973 to 2011, leaving over the axing of Kevin Rudd. She received a substantial inheritance from her mother in 1970 and hasn't needed to work since then.

I think the title of the book The Long Prospect relates to looking at the long term effects of the attention of Thea and then Max on Emily's development and later life. We can't compare Emily's life with an ideal situation, it is what it is. But we can compare her life with and without the appearance in it of Thea and Max. Without them and the encouragement they provided, her life was a very unhappy prospect indeed. With their interventions it may still be so, but at least she has a memory of affection, intellectual stimulation and encouragement.

Emily's life is shallow, boring and without affection. Her grandmother Lilian is manipulative, controlling, sarcastic, self-absorbed and anti-intellectual and is easily able to dominate the more submissive people around her. Emily's mother Paula is too dominated by the force of Lilian's personality to come out with her own opinions at all and perhaps she even regrets ever having had a child in the first place. We see at the end of the book that Harry is taking Lilian's place as the person to whom Paula always defers. But between them all, we can see the lack of a single positive role model for Emily.



If an older man takes a special interest in an young girl suspicions are raised. But in Emily's case that was not so initially, her family was just too disinterested to care. Max's influence on Emily is profound, but each of the players in this drama has their own reasons to end their friendship. Lilian never seems to be seriously convinced of a threat to Emily, she just takes action regarding Max to assert her dominance over the other players.


As pointed out by Fiona McGregor in the forward, Harrower is thought of as a writer exposing misogyny, but she in fact looks at imbalances of power. Felix in The Watch Tower creates a terrible claustrophobia in his dealings with his wife and stepdaughters, but here it is Lilian who makes us realise that both sexes can produce situations where sarcasm and sheer power of personality can put a layer of fear over a household.

I love the psychological portraits that she paints of these characters. All of her books are psychological novels rather than plot driven ones, with an emphasis on the differences between the characters' thoughts and their actions. In this regard, her novels remind me of those of British author Harriet Lane, writer of the novels Her and Alys Always.

There is a strong descriptive element here, with many passages describing the sky and clouds, symbols of freedom perhaps. The novel conveys very well both the oppressive heat of the suburb, some have suggested it was Mayfield, but particularly the inertia and boredom of 50s suburbia. No-one questioned the status quo, things moved slowly along predictable paths, society required many secrets to be kept. EH herself had to leave Australia to break out of that life, as did many who wrote or were involved in the other arts. It is definitely a novel of its time, but its themes transfer well to today.

[Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have my library to thank again for this gem of a novel , discovered while browsing the available audio books .

Now resurrected, available and rightly so , Harrower's works lay like forgotten treasure for decades . She has a unique intense and forensic psychological style , but laced with fantasy , a strong sense of place and above all , and unforgiving gaze.

Emily, the unwanted child of a fragile marriage, is just on the cusp of puberty. Her inconsiderate , self regarding and malevelont grandmother provides board and lodging for her along with a changing cast of workers drawn to the industrial city north of Sydney . Emily, with her innate emotional intelligence, remains unseen except by a couple of lodgers , one of whom , Max , becomes the object of her first serious attachment .

Harrower contrasts the pure and apparently monastic Max , his pursuit of knowledge and it's bedfellow , freedom from domestic servitude, consumerism and compliance , with the self deceiving " bad faith " activities of the other adults . It's never going to end well .

While Emily is perhaps given more emotional understanding than the average 12 year old , she is raw enough to still be real . Her grandmother is a fully realised monster and it's worth reading the novel just for her.

There's echoes of Elizabeth Bowen and Shirley Hazard in the focus on displaced and
"spare part " children but the working class setting and brash directness allows for a more brutal telling .

All about them the quiet streets of suburbia and the distant noise of industry pulse with violence and harm under a carapace of novelty and material wealth . A masterpiece .

[Robert Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

A boarding house in Newcastle, late 1950’s, the manipulative landlady, Lilian, her set of vituperative friends, her set upon lodgers and her twelve year old granddaughter, Emily. Into this household comes Max, the onetime married lover of Lilian’s lodger Thea.

Emily is a desert flower, hiding, waiting, blasted by the constant heat of Lilian’s disregard and emotional bullying. Max appears and his simple regard for Emily as a person in her own right sets Emily blossoming. Max becomes the focus of Lilian’s need for control and Emily’s thirst for knowledge and acknowledgment.

“The voices still went on. She looked gain at the man, idly with more ease, at his eyes, and saw with a shock of profound surprise that his grey eyes were turned on her, and more than looking-seeing her, saluting her with a kind of serious friendliness as if he knew her…No one ever looked as if they saw her. “

Elizabeth Harrower’s prose is so precise. Her observations of her characters, phrase by phrase, builds up their personalities with such clarity.

“It was only necessary, she had discovered, for a person, place, or thing to be admired by her, to become the object of hilarity and scorn. They’d even laugh at Shakespeare, Emily thought, and when Mrs Salter and the head talked the way they did there was clearly something to him. But if she so much as mentioned Mrs Salter and Mr Wills in support of an argument they minced her up with smiling sarcasm, and laughed at the teachers, and laughed till she and the teachers shrank to dwarf-size. She burned with anger hot and gusty as a bushfire-an appalled, helpless kind of anger. For no one wanted to be just, and that’s till seemed-in spite of her theory of life and age-so unaccountable and alarming that her strength evaporated. They’d even laugh at God, she thought.”

Paula, Emily’s mother is putting in one of her rare visits from Sydney. She is glancing in at Max’s room.

“Books there were indeed-hundreds of books overflowing from the startled varnished shelves, books on chairs, books on the floor.

Paula was unable to hide her reluctant admiration for their quantity, but she mistrusted the implications of their possession. They seemed excessive, and she loathed excess. “

In just a few lines we have another layer to put on Paula.

The need for Lilian to be in control escalates, rumour and innuendo become fact. No one will be the same.

This is a brilliant study of people, good, bad and ugly. There is humour here, bound in barbed wire.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recognising, reminded by the 'Text Classics' cover of this of another thoroughly absorbing Australian novelist I bought this in anticipation of enjoyment, and was not disappointed. The immense skill with which Elizabeth Harrower draws each of her characters, the insight she has into each of them, their characters and emotions and interactions is hugely impressive, and the ending throat-achingly raw.

[Vireya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably should be read twice. On the first read, the "literary" sentences are often confusing and at times need to be read over to work out the meaning. But once you know who all the characters are and how they fit together, and come to grips with the writing style, the book becomes much more satisfying. Two stars for the first read, four for a second one.

[H.R. Kemp · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an immersive story. Slowly and effectively, I was pulled into the story, caring about the characters (especially Emily, but also Max and Thea), the situation, and what would eventually happen. It's a gentle story with an emotional impact, portraying real characters with flaws and dreams.

Emily is an impressionable and neglected 12-year-old, living with her petty and at times cruel grandmother, Lillian. Lillian is bent on revenge for all and any small perceived grievances. She enjoys seeing others humiliated, including Emily. When Max comes to stay at Lillian's boarding house, his history in the area and a previous relationship, make him a target for Lillian's cruelty. Unfortunately, Emily is a vulnerable child. She has been neglected and her need for attention drives her to form strong attachments to kind strangers. Max encourages her dreams and directs her learning but Lillian is determined to break their bond and make Max suffer.

It's a deep and complex story, told through Emily's POV. I understood her attachment to Max, felt her emotional rollercoaster, and heard her cries. I cared about what was happening and dreaded the hurts, hoping there would be a happy ending. Elizabeth Harrower is more complex than that, giving us a real story, with real three-dimensional characters, and a realistic ending. There is hope.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a text classic written in 1958, and although the prose feels like it was written in those times, the story has a timeless quality with sharp observations of flawed characters and complex relationships.
Well worth reading.

[lachrimae gementes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucidly sketched and closely observed, The Long Prospect is the story of a young mind struggling to thrive in surroundings both harmful and inadequate. Beneath Harrower’s restrained, elegant prose lie brutal truths of the kind we tend to reflexively turn away from. Where In Certain Circles explored the effects of material/ social privilege and deprivation, The Long Prospect focuses on spiritual inequality – the recklessness of those unburdened by conscience or self-awareness, as contrasted with the painful insight shouldered by others: former boarder Thea, with her over-abundance of humanity; Max, excruciatingly conscientious in his dealings with his young, neglected friend and admirer; and Emily, already cognizant of her guardians’ outrageous shortcomings.

So Lilian, a casually abusive landlady before whom the world appears as a distorted mirror, can never act rightly towards her granddaughter. In a houseful of dysfunction and projection, Emily becomes the unseen center.

Harrower evokes the fragility of everything valuable – friendship, in this case vulnerable to the vagaries of outside social forces; or the trust, hope, and emotional well-being of a young girl desperate to be seen and cared for. In the hands of those unequipped with vision or restraint, these delicate balances only seem to invite easy destruction.

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I prefer Harrower when there's more class friction (I'm reading Down in the City at the moment), but this is definitely a better novel than Down in the City. As ever, the prose is top-notch, the psychology Tolstoy-level perfection, the grimness as grim as anyone could want. Do your life *need* another novel about how the suburbs aren't good for the soul? Only you can decide that. If you only read one novel about how the suburbs aren't good for the soul this year, this would be a good choice.

[Harvard · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the adults in the room are terrible, terrible people, and I sympathised for Emily as the cosmic plaything desperate to latch onto anybody trustworthy. While the overall plot is simple, there are lines of absolute clarity which wonderfully illustrate that kind of oppressive feeling when those who were supposed to be there for us, reveal that they aren't.

[Dulcie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept going in the hope that something, anything would happen to some of these shockingly realistic people. Unfortunately they all seemed to come off relatively unscathed whereas Max bore the brunt of the misplaced ignominy.
In the end I found that this was quite a sad piece.

[Nickinko · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book, in turn hilarious and heartbreaking.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audio. Well written but implausible. Relentlessly Intense. Newcastle in the 50s.

[Marc Bordier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished The Long Prospect this week-end, and I must admit that it took me a bit of time and effort to get into it. The novel tells the story of Emily, a twelve-year old girl who grows up in a small industrial town on the Eastern Coast of Australia in the nineteen fifties, raised by her grandmother Lilian while her separated parents live in Sydney and in the outback. Emily grows up largely on her own, neglected by her cold, petty, gossipy and narrow-minded grandmother who cares little about her education and shows her no affection. One day, a middle-agend scientist named Max enters Emily's life as he takes a room into the boarding house of her grandmother, and the two of them develop an unusual friendship, with Max constantly stimulating Emily's intellectual curiosity and encouraging her to read and study all sorts of things. Unfortunately, in a small town, their relationship starts to raise eyebrows and exposes them to scandal. Eventually Max is forced to leave Emily, and she goes back to her family where a dull life awaits her.



The main interest of the novel lies in the vividness of the psychological portraits of the characters, and how the dynamics of their relationships move the plot. Of all the characters, I found Lilian, the grandmother, to be the most interesting, with her selfish, confrontational, malicious, wicked and hateful nature which can only be entertained by snooping into other peoples' lives to ruin their happiness. Her personality is even further emphasized by Harrower's stylish prose, which goes to a great length of detail to describe characters' emotions and reactions.



The Long Prospect is a dark book that will appeal to readers who enjoy an atmosphere of psychological violence behind closed doors.

[Rebecca]

Reading "The Long Prospect" is like being handed a time travel pass to 1950s Ballowra, New South Wales, to witness bright, twelve-year-old Emily Lawrence being slowly suffocated alive by her vicious, manipulative, game-playing, satin-wearing socialite grandmother, Lilian, and Lilian's roster of gentlemen boarders.

Emily constantly sits "between fury and bewilderment" (p. 132) and the reader does, too.
Harrower lays out - with bitter, clinical precision - how little women could expect from life. It's a deeply disturbing novel because female "respectability" demanded of its victims absolute powerlessness: dumb subrogation, zero economic power, licence to flatter one's "protector", but no more. The kind of very "short leash" Helen Garner alludes to in her latest collection of short stories.

The great irony is that monstrous Lilian - who skates along a very thin edge of respectability with a string of live-in lovers disguised as rent-paying tenants - is the most powerful figure in the narrative. You dislike her intensely for the emotional violence she wreaks on everyone she comes into contact with, but you also admire how she lives so large in such mean and mean-spirited times. It's an uncomfortable position for a reader to be in: to both loathe and secretly admire the begrudging, largely negligent "care giver" in Emily's life.

When Lilian takes on a new boarder from Melbourne, thirty-something, poetry-loving, scientist Max, who treats Emily like the intelligent, inquisitive human being that she is - causing Emily to declare that she loves him - you know bad things are going to happen. And they do. A challenging read.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first Elizabeth Harrower novel that I have read since discovering her via a short story published in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago. And while I enjoyed the representation of working class '50s life in regional Australia, it took me a while to get into the story and Harrower's style of writing. Harrower writes in minutiae. Everything that a character thinks as he or she says something (usually contrary to what they are thinking) is described.
The characters were all well drawn and lifelike (Lilian was particularly grotesque but realistic and identifiable). But, ultimately, I just did not like this story anywhere near as much as I liked the short story of Harrower's I read previously. And perhaps it is because i felt the story concentrated on the wrong character - I think I'd have liked to have explored Thea's story more than Emily's. Despite only giving this particular novel two stars, I am still very keen to read The Long Prospect as I now enjoy Harrower's particular style of writing.

[Jennifer G · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh! I really didn't like this book.

First of all, I found it difficult to read. I'm not sure what about the language I didn't like, but I found it difficult to process, and often had to read the same page over again.

The story was also extremely depressing - it was about a girl whose parents didn't want her and she lived with her grandmother, but her grandmother basically neglected her. She made a connection with another adult character, but her family didn't like it, so he was made to leave. Really sad and depressing. I'm sure there was lots of hidden meaning, but I just didn't get it.

[Jade17 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exhausting.