A review by innerweststreetlibrarian
The Acolyte by Thea Astley

2.0

Ugh. I hate all these people and begrudge them every second of my life that was spent on them. I'll exclude Sadie from this review, because she's cool. The rest, however, are the most insufferable ensemble I've come across for a very long time. Thea Astley is clearly a brilliant writer to make me hate them all so much. She has such an interesting turn of phrase and employs a vast vocabulary so I can see why this qualified for the Miles Franklin, but I can't figure out WHY it was the winner. Perhaps there was a paucity of competition that year? I also can't figure out why she went to all the trouble of writing this in the first place. Paul is a wet blanket, but an arrogant one at that. Hilda and Ilse need to get out more and meet a few new people. Preferably independently of each other. So should Paul for that matter. Holberg should stop being such a jerk. I struggled to be interested in what was going on in their lives, hoping that something dramatic or interesting might happen in the next chapter. Without spoiling anything, dramatic events do happen, but I just didn't care. They seem so ultimately pointless. Much like this book.