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A review by kimbofo
The Hands: An Australian pastoral by Stephen Orr
5.0
Every now and then I pick up a book and within a matter of pages — or perhaps sentences — I know this is exactly the right kind of book for me. That’s how I felt when I started reading Stephen Orr’s The Hands: An Australian Pastoral, which was longlisted for the 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
The mood of the story, coupled with the great characters and economical prose style, hooked me from the start and I read it in one (very long) sitting. I rather suspect that come 31 December, it will prove to be my favourite book of the year.
The story, which takes place in 2004, is set on an isolated cattle station, overseen by Trevor Wilkie, in outback South Australia. This is how Orr describes it:
Here, three generations of the Wilkie family live side by side, not always in unison. Trevor runs affairs with the help of his wife, Carelyn, and his 11-year-old son, Harry, who is educated at home via School of the Air. (Elder son Aiden is at boarding school, but comes home whenever he can.) Also living on site is Trevor’s aunt Fay, her disabled middle-aged son, Chris, and Trevor’s father, Murray, a curmudgeon who owns the title deeds but isn’t prepared to hand them over just yet — even though he’s too old to be much use around the farm any more.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
The mood of the story, coupled with the great characters and economical prose style, hooked me from the start and I read it in one (very long) sitting. I rather suspect that come 31 December, it will prove to be my favourite book of the year.
The story, which takes place in 2004, is set on an isolated cattle station, overseen by Trevor Wilkie, in outback South Australia. This is how Orr describes it:
Bundeena was marginal country. It could carry cattle, sparsely. To Trevor, this was where Australia became desert, where man—following the east-west railway, before it seriously set its sights on the Nullarbor—had given up on agriculture. Most men, at least. Except for them: sixth-generation Beef Shorthorn producers who’d wrestled with the land for 130 years. This was country that hadn’t asked for farmers but had got them anyway. On the southern edge, the railway line, and to the north, nothing. They had neighbours to the east and west, but they might as well have been living in New Zealand.
Here, three generations of the Wilkie family live side by side, not always in unison. Trevor runs affairs with the help of his wife, Carelyn, and his 11-year-old son, Harry, who is educated at home via School of the Air. (Elder son Aiden is at boarding school, but comes home whenever he can.) Also living on site is Trevor’s aunt Fay, her disabled middle-aged son, Chris, and Trevor’s father, Murray, a curmudgeon who owns the title deeds but isn’t prepared to hand them over just yet — even though he’s too old to be much use around the farm any more.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.