The World Beneath

by Cate Kennedy

Once, Rich and Sandy were environmental activists, part of a world-famous blockade in Tasmania to save the wilderness. Now, twenty-five years later, they have both settled into the uncomfortable compromises of middle age - although they've gone about it in very different ways. About the only thing they have in common is their fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie.
When the perennially restless Rich decides to take Sophie, whom he hardly knows, on a trek into the Tasmanian wilderness, his overconfidence and her growing disillusion with him set off a chain of events that no one could have predicted. Instead of respect, Rich finds antagonism in his relationship with Sophie; and in the vast landscape he once felt an affinity for, he encounters nothing but disorientation and fear.
Ultimately all three characters will learn that if they are to survive, each must traverse not only the secret territories that lie between them but also those within themselves.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Tasmania, Contemporary, Book Club, Travel, Literature

342 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Cate Kennedy is an Australian author based in Victoria. She graduated from University of Canberra and has also taught at several colleges, including The University of Melbourne. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People’s Choice Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2010. It was also shortlisted for The Age fiction prize 2010 and the ASA Barbara Jefferis Award 2010, among others. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has twice won The Age Short Story Competition and has appeared in a range of publications, including The New Yorker. Her collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Cate is also the author of the travel memoir Sing, and Don’t Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight and Signs of Other Fires. Her latest book is The Taste of River Water: New and Selected Poems by Cate Kennedy, which was published in May 2011 and won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry.

Reviews

[Mish · Rating 3 out of 5]

The World Beneath won the People’s Choice Award for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2010 and I think she did a splendid job in exploring the life of a dysfunctional family. Rich and Sandy went through a bitter separated almost 14 years ago, leaving her to raise their only daughter Sophie single-handedly. Rich has been virtually estranged from Sophie’s life with only the occasional letter here and there. It is only on Sophie’s 15th birthday that Rich decides he would like to get to know his daughter better and build a relationship that he invites her on a hiking trip through the Tasmanian wilderness. Sandy is furious that Rich has come back in their lives, bring back memories that she would rather forget. She is hesitant about letting Sophie go - Can she trust this man after all these years to look after her daughter? Rich assures her that he can and Sophie is determined to go.

The story is told by the point of view of these three characters and I think the author did an amazing job in allowing you to get an in-depth understanding of their personalities and getting inside their heads. But I must warn you that they are not all likable. I thought the parents were weak and pathetic idiot. Many times I just wanted to thump over the head and knock some sense into them. They were so self-absorbed in their own lives, stuck in a time warp that they were completely oblivious to what is happening to Sophie and her needs and wants. I like Sophie and had a lot of sympathy for her. She was perhaps the strongest and most sensible character out of the 3, yet for a 15 year old she carried far too much of her mothers’ burden of insecurity and responsibility which caused significant distress to her wellbeing.

The only let down of the book (and the reason why I didn’t give it 4 stars) was the authors vivid description of the landscape. Even through it was beautiful to read in some parts, I felt however in others it was just too long and drawn out. Otherwise it was a lovely story about family life of love, loneliness and then hope, and looking beyond yourself and rediscovering the most important people in our lives.

[Paltia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story set in Tasmania, of a father seeking to establsh a relationship with his 15 year old daughter, Sophie. Father and mother, environmental activists, meet while involved to varying degrees in a protest movement to prevent a dam being built. They join together, based on their initial and somewhat brief attraction. Once the mother learns she’s pregnant the father is gone without a moment’s notice. Sophie and her mother are at odds. Sophie is struggling with an eating disorder which she has thus far has managed to keep secret from her mum. She has nothing but disdain for her hippy mum and all her friends. She’s simultaneously placed her absent father on a pedestal and having spent no time with him in her 15 years easily idealizes him. She is ecstatic when she locates him and they decide to join forces on a long wilderness hike in the wilds of Tasmania. Much happens on this trek which I will leave for you to discover on your own. This is a touching, honest and painful look at a child’s need to be known, a father’s reluctance to honestly examine who he is, and a mother’s fearless love for her daughter. Wherever else happens will there be a family connection again? Look out for it when and where you least expect it.

[Penni Russon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a seven year old my best friend and I made our own "No Dams" placards and marched around my bush suburb of Hobart - we also took a handmade petition around saying simply "Save the Wilderness". The Franklin Dam is probably my earliest memory of politics (apart from our pet budgie named Whitlam), so I was drawn to this novel in which the Dam protests feature as the zenith of two dysfunctional adult lives, much to the chagrin of their shared daughter, Sophie, who is a site of tension but also offers redemption to each of her wayward parents - the mother who has raised her (and so failed her most often) and the father who abandoned her, but has the chance to invent himself anew and so offers Sophie the possibility of reinvention.

The journey was engrossing; Sophie garnered my sympathy and I felt Kennedy played my emotions well with regards to Rich and Sandy - I could never quite make up my mind how I felt about either of them, I could neither love nor hate them, pity nor condemn them.

Occasionally the similes groaned, and the characters' tendency to emote via the past was a little wearing (as are such people in real life). There were times I felt unsure why Kennedy felt this story required the long form of the novel, and in some way I find difficult to articulate there were times I did feel I was reading a very long short story, something about the lack of texture, the singular focus, the way everything that happened served the same purpose, the very confined palate in terms of character and setting. This isn't really a complaint, more a curious observation.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially I found this book difficult to get into, probably because the three main characters were so unappealing,. However as the novel progressed and especially after the trek began I found it more engaging and the characters more believable. The scenes in the goddess retreat were funny but sad as were the flashbacks to the Franklin River protests. Towards the end of the novel the shifts between Rich and Sandy became too abrupt and the structure awkward. The secondary story of Ian, the rescuer coping with finding a dead tourist, was a distraction from the main storyline and although it gave another prospective to the lost walkers' dilemma, it could have been dispensed with without effecting the story. Ultimately, a satisfactory examination of a dysfunctional family and the impact of tourism on our last wilderness areas.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

delicious schadenfreude of aging, divorced hippies simultaneously lamenting their lonely miserable lives and reverting to always telling the myths/stories of their activist days, back when. 'cept in this case, the 15 year old daughter is listening, very closely. so sophie the teen both rejects and sneers at her single mom's nostalgia, jiggly fat arms, pitiful life, and hypocrisy and internalizes her mom's (and her absent but longed for dad's) ethos, love, hypocrisy, and partial activism of saving some wild places and rivers in Tasmania.
so dad and emo-goth-daughther go on a hike/camping trip into the self same wilderness area the parents tried to save in the '60's-70's with beautiful descriptions of the country and plants and water and trees and such (which frankly could have been edited down in my most humble and non-editor opinion, 'cause shit, this DID win all kinds of awards and such) and daughter, dad, and mom come to a bit, but not much, of self-realization of their nihilism (is that possible? kinda double negative i guess) and hypocrisy.

[Kerry-Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An emo goth daughter who is anorexic and who feels a begrudging pity for her mother for clinging to her past as a hippy protester who saved the Franklin.....a neglectful deserter father who rings for birthdays and xmas...teenage blogs...so far..all pretty much suburban life.

and then the father and daughter go to Tassie for a bonding bushwalk and we see the shift in things...

A great little read...a coming of age story..and maybe the adolescent market would like it..

There is quite a bit of the social commentary in it...modern subsets of society etc. but..without the condemnation of the paths chosen..so that is nice.

I enjoyed the landscape described...I have walked the walk with my dad and he has an amazing collection of photos of the area concerned from the 40s and 50s...so..a few connections there...

[Hannah Wattangeri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cate Kennedy writes in a sardonic, witty yet empathetic way. Her portrayal of this separated family of three highlights the pettiness and ordinariness of everyday life and the difficulties and challenges of relationships. The adults attempting to forge a path of difference and individuality fail in the eyes of their troubled teenage daughter. It is their very ordinariness that eventually warms them to us and a sense of hope emerges as they all attempt to forge closer and warmer relationships.

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of a couple who in their youth were environmental activists in Tasmania, but are now estranged. They have a 15 year old daughter that the father, Rich, hardly knows, but he decides to get in contact and take her on a trek back to Tasmania. While he has become so different to the person he was in the past, Sandy, his ex, has remained much the same hippy style person she always was. The daughter, Sophie, is an emo-goth and also has an eating disorder, which her mother hasn't noticed.

So pretty much this was a story of them getting to know themselves and see the others for who they really are. I found all of the characters unlikeable and annoying at times, but I did like the way it wrapped up in the end.

[Erica]

The book that this book most reminded me of was Scott Smith's The Ruins. But where The Ruins took somewhat interesting and sympathetic characters and built amazing tension, The World Beneath took characters I hated and moved ever so slowly toward a somewhat interesting finale. It's the story of an estranged father who comes back into his 15-year-old daughter's life to take her on a bushwalk in Tasmania. The father is a weak-willed jerk. The mother is a caricature. The daughter is ok. But spending 341 pages with these people was tedious until the last 40 pages or so. They're not likeable, but they're also not especially interesting. This is one I wish I would have skipped.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is it, the one that's going to win the Miles Franklin in 2010. It is a brilliant book, captivating and compelling. Here's where I first raved about it: http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200... and here's my review http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200...

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

i got about 120 pgs. in and just could not make myself read any further. didn't care for the main characters except for the daughter Sophie. her parents met at a demonstration to stop a dam on some river in tasmania from being built. parents keep reminiscing about this time and i couldn't bring myself to care.

[Amy Heap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars for The World Beneath, read for book club. A familiar tale, with a very Australian setting, I struggled to warm to the characters and the journey felt a little worn. At times I felt the writing was too obvious, unsubtle, but I was eventually drawn in and even shed a tear before it was over.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this novel as it was a book group selection. I am glad I did. I felt the characters were very one dimensional but I really liked the description of the Overland Track. That, for me, was the best thing about it,
I felt all the characters were caricatures. However, the story was driven well. There’s a wee story towards the end that needs to be a story on its own.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really excellent book with fine characterisation. Sophie is so recognisable as a 15 year old girl. The portrayal of the Overland Track and the Labyrinth was spot-on accurate too, as was the sense of fear when they were lost.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich (photographer) and Sandy were environmental activists years ago when they were students. They took part in a world-famous blockade in Tasmania to save the wilderness - demonstrating and spending a brief time in prison to stop a dam being built. They end up living together in a rather back-water sort of town and have a baby, Sophie. Sandy is a hippy-type and wants to give birth as naturally as possible. Things don't quite work out like that. Rich walks out on her and Sophie when Sophie is still very young. Sandy's parting words to him are that if he leaves then he'll never see Sophie again.

By the time Sophie is approaching her 15th Birthday she is anorexic but her mother doesn't realise. She has become a "goth" and resents her mother and everything she stands for. There is a lot of hostility.

Rich gets in touch and persuades Sandy to let him take Sophie on a trek into the Tasmanian wilderness. She is, understandably, very anxious and while they are away she goes on a course for finding your inner self.

Didn't warm to any of the characters but they were very well described and real.

The trek is a disaster. Rich is wearing new walking boots and gets a bad blister early on. He doesn't enjoy the company of the other walkers they encounter. He finds a lot of them very pretentious because they've done so much more trekking than he has and are much better prepared.

He decides that they'll take a detour towards the end of the trek to see the real wilderness. He has no compass and they get lost. He is, by this point, seriously ill and is behaving in a very odd way.

When they don't arrive back at the airport where Sandy is waiting for them she is frantic with worry. She alerts the police and Search and Rescue. Thick fog descends and they can't start their search. Sophie saves the day by starting a fire and laying out coloured material.

Rich thinks he's taken a photo of a Tasmanian devil but Sophie reckons it was just a dog. in his delusional state he thinks it's going to make him famous when he gets back with the film from his camera.

[Cheryl Torpey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was thoroughly captivated by the imagery and Cate Kennedy’s prose. It would have been easy to dismiss the story as being stereotypical generational divide between mother and daughter relationships - and then the immersion of Sophie into the Tasmanian wilderness with her stranger photographer father changes everything. In the absence of Sonja, Sophie connects to her mother in a deep and meaningful way. The beauty and the majesty of Cradle Mountain moved me. Amazing prose had me wanting to write down descriptions that connected to me : “But people looked at something like that and saw what they wanted to - or needed to. The way you wanted something so much it warped what you saw, distorting and blurring what was there … something to pore over and fantasize about. People would come here with a craving.” , “A Novacane shot in a dream”, “When you look at a photo you need to manipulate it to be as perfect as your vision had been …”, “The register turned up to the wrong saturation … “ - fabulous! Only reason I didn’t five star this story was around then ending - and to be fair - I plan to reread to check that I am not missing something.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review of this one is mixed -- I'd give it one-star for the first 3/4 and five stars for the last fourth of the book. It's the story of a teenage girl, her overbearing mother, and her estranged father. All three characters start out fairly unlikable but the mom and daughter evolve throughout the novel into sympathetic characters. The dad, not so much, despite a final redeeming act of selflessness. It took me a really long time to get into this book - I only stuck with it because it came recommended by someone whose judgement I respect. The final quarter of the book, though, I really enjoyed and stayed up late reading it (which is pretty much how I determine whether a book is good or not). Oddly, most books make me want to visit the place where they were set but this story of a bushwalk through the Australian outback did not make me want to go there. (I do want to go there, but this book did nothing to convince me.)

[Kaylie Longley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm relieved to be done reading this contemporary. Despite its relatively short length, shaving off 100+ pages might help. The minimal, drowning plot drags, discussing a dysfunctional family, with archetypal characters to boot. I suppose the backdrop of Tasmania adds some character. Despite a shifting narrative of three viewpoints, I never sympathized with anyone. Teenager Sophie and estranged parents Sandy and Rich learn to deal with one another, the battle between carpe diem and nostalgia, and their daughter's not-so-hidden eating disorder. Perhaps Kennedy's debut novel would have fared better if she dived deeper into Sophie's psyche or at least given someone an arc. At least there's no shallow ending or moral lesson.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Family dysfunction in Tasmania. The first half of the book was great. Estranged mom and dad, in their forties, both trapped in the defining moment of their lives, now 20 years in the past. Teenaged daughter struggling through adolescence.

Then, off things went into a predictable, smarmy, tear jerker. Everybody coming to grips with their demons in perfect harmony. All three main characters taking quantum leaps forward in personal development.

I was acutely aware of how the Tasmanian countryside became a generic backdrop, of how trivial all the supporting characters were, and of how little I cared for Sandy, Rich, and Sophie (and what happened to them).

[Glenys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written a story that is easy to read.
Sandy and her former partner Rich were at the Franklin River blockade in 1983 and although time has moved on, they have not. Separated for nearly 15 years, (since the birth of their daughter) they both live in the past fueled by memories of what was a monumental event for them.
Sandy, still living her hippy lifestyle with her close circle of female friends fails to see her teen-aged daughter, Sophie. When Rich wants to meet his daughter after all this time, Sophie is jubilant and filled with expectations. A walking trip in Tasmania seems to be the answer, but cradle Mountain has a way of sorting people out.

[JanGlen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this as an audiobook, listening while occupied with mundane tasks. The story is straightforward, and requires little in the way of concentration, and there are many moments of easy humour. I doubt though that I would have finished the book if I had actually been reading it as the rather stereotyped characters were stupendously irritating, something I found I could handle more easily on audio.

[Merceiam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teenager Sophie is raging against the world. Scornful of everything her mother does, she decides to go on a wilderness trek in Tasmania with her estranged father. Kennedy perfectly captures the angst of teenagers, and her excellent writing has drawn characters that are fallible and credible.
Nihill, the narrator of the audiobook, gives a great rendition in particular of a petulant, egocentric teenager.

[Susan Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book got better and better. I was a bit put off by the cliched parent caricatures at the start but I developed a bit more empathy for them, and they became a bit more believable, as the book went on. The ending was a bit hurried and unsatisfying but overall I really enjoyed it, particularly the feisty fifteen year old perspective, and the overland track adventure.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read a few of the reviews here, and don’t agree. I found the book funny and poignant. A mother and father who are hollow and screwed up, narcissistic and not very likeable, and a long suffering fifteen year old daughter each narrate the story. The characters each grow through their own versions of denial. The fourth character is the vivid landscape of Tasmania. A great read, I think.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, easy to read novel about a dysfunctional family.

The shifting POV worked well here and allowed us to gain deeper understandings of these characters are. Although not all particularly likeable, there was something compelling about them.

Loved the descriptions of the Tasmanian wilderness. Overall, I really enjoyed this.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, if I hadn't been reading this for my book group, I would have DNF'd it about 100 pages in. The characters were so one-dimensional and the plot was boring and predictable. There's really nothing else to say about it.

[Michelle Sheaffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good book and worth reading. It definitely had insight into how a young teen girl may feel and the challenges they go through. The relationships between the characters are interesting and complicated. I did not enjoy the parts of the book that focused just on the mom at her retreat.

[Dragonladymoi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hated this book from the start, thought the characters were boring and not my sort of people. Thanks, Cate. Well played; for when the tone turned it was so hilarious that I had to laugh out loud uproariously. From then on it was compelling reading. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Jeffrey Knightly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The adult characters all seemed a bit larger than life as if to make a point rather than tell a story. That said, this book prompted in me a fair amount of self reflection about human failures and their relationships, especially as they affect the children in their lives. Parts of the story felt just a little too familiar and while it was easy to mock the adult characters and think that they were just over the top, there was a cautionary, but wait, how is that so different than ...

Good book