Review
Australian novelists rock. Authors such as Tim Winton, Evie Wyld, and many others from down under share a certain grittiness combined with tenderness as they take an honest look at the helplessly dysfunctional nature of the human heart. With her first novel, following her 2008 short stories
Dark Roots, Cate Kennedy firmly secures a place in that class.
The story revolves around a fractured family, an out-of-date subculture and an extinct Tasmanian species. Rich and Sandy, two idealistic young adults, fall in love during the 1980s as they fight side by side to save the Franklin River in Tasmania from a dam that would disrupt the ecological balance of the island's vast wilderness. So young, so undeveloped, so clueless about life in many ways, they form a bond that lasts ten years, based purely on the shared exhilaration of that moment in time when it seemed their...
Beyond the Book
The Australian state of Tasmania is made up of Tasmania Island (the 26th largest island in the world and home to Tasmania's capital city, Hobart) and surrounding islands including Cape Barren Island and King Island.
Located just south of Australia, Tasmania Island is separated from the mainland by the Bass Straight which is 149 miles (240 km) wide at its narrowest point.
For thousands of years Tasmania was a vast wilderness inhabited only by aborigines. Due to its separation from the mainland and the late settlement of European colonists approximately 200 years ago, Tasmania is home to a unique ecosystem featuring...
