Featured Reading Guide
Nicholas Shakespeare
Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania and sent to school in England. When he returns to Australia twelve years later, the timeless beauty of the land and his encounter with a young woman whose own life has been marked by tragedy, persuade him to stay. They marry, and he finds himself drawn into the eccentric, often hilarious dynamics of island life. Longing for children, the couple open their home to a disquieting guest, a teenage castaway, whose presence in their home begins to unravel their tenuously forged…
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topAbout the Book
Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania and sent to school in England. When he returns to Australia twelve years later, the timeless beauty of the land and his encounter with a young woman whose own life has been marked by tragedy, persuade him to stay. They marry, and he finds himself drawn into the eccentric, often hilarious dynamics of island life. Longing for children, the couple open their home to a disquieting guest, a teenage castaway, whose presence in their home begins to unravel their tenuously forged happiness.
topNicholas Shakespeare interview/review
The Observer
January 8, 2006
Escape: My favourite place in the world: They’ve travelled all over the globe but if they could return to just one special place which would it be? Carl Wilkinson asked 15 of the world’s top travel writers to choose their all time favourite destination
NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE
FRANKLIN RIVER, TASMANIA
The Franklin River is one of the last wilderness areas on earth and until you’ve walked earth that other Homo sapiens haven’t trodden, you don’t know what you’re missing. I spent six days drifting downstream past ancient huon pines that were alive when Christ was crucified.
There is a rhythm between complete calm where the river is carrying you along – when cliff faces, trees and the sky are reflected in the water – and the rapids, when your life flashes past you. It was an extraordinary experience. I would love to go back and do the full 12-day trip from the source in the Cheyne Mountains down to where the Franklin comes out into Macquarie Harbour.
One of the highlights was when we came to the Kuti Kina cave. It was the farthest south man got during the last Ice Age and it’s where the Aboriginals holed up for 8,000 years. Going down this river offers the possibility that you will see species thought to have vanished. While we were there a German tourist about 50 miles east of us had taken two photographs of what he claimed was a Tasmanian tiger. If the images are real it will have been the first time one has been spotted since 1936.
The novelist James McQueen said of the Franklin that ‘for me it is the epitome of all the lost forests, all the submerged lakes, all the tamed rivers, all the extinguished species’. That really sums it up for me. It’s a wilderness that stands for all wildernesses.
topStarting Points for Discussion
- The power of the past is a major theme in the book. What objects/relics from the past appear in the book and how do they shape the characters’ stories?
- Kish is a mysterious character who appears suddenly into Alex and Merridy’s lives and leaves just as abruptly. In what way is his arrival (and departure) a
catalyst in their marriage?
- ‘Ship after ship. Each with its thorn-sized sails and cargo of dreams’. In what ways is Alex’s hobby symbolic?
- ‘Everything on the river was done by hand, the labour back-breaking’ ‘His passage into countryman had not been smooth’ Both Alex and Merridy take on physically demanding livelihoods that they are not immediately suited to. Why are they driven to do this and what makes them successful?
- Alex will never know that Merridy’s baby is Ray Grogan’s. What is more important; protecting someone you love from hurt or telling the truth?
- Ray Grogan is presented unsympathetically; in fact his greedy capitalism is destroying the Wellington Point community. So why is Merridy attracted to him and why is it significant that he is the father of her baby?
- The novel is punctuated by extracts from Talbot’s newsletter. Why does Nicholas Shakespeare include these and what do they tell us about the community?
- ‘Nothing would ever seem to him more separating than the vanishing of her smile as she recognised machine gun fire’. Do you think Albert Talbot is self-indulgent in prolonging this moment indefinitely through the ‘sound of steady typing’ as he churns out the Newsletter , shut away from the world? Could he have been happier if he had immersed himself in the community?
- How is Kish’s presence important in beginning Merridy’s grieving process for her missing brother. How does this prepare her for the news of his death?
Other Books by Nicholas Shakespeare
Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin’s death from AIDS in 989 brought a meteoric career to an abrupt…
In Tasmania: Adventures at…
In this fascinating history of two turbulent centuries in an apparently idyllic…
Inheritance
Andy Larkham is late. He is due at the funeral of his favourite school teacher,…
Secrets of the Sea
Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove…
Snowleg
A young Englishman visits Cold War Leipzig with a group of students and, during…
Suggested Further Reading
- Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish ~ Richard Flanagan
- Skylight Confessions ~ Alice Hoffman
- The Other Side of the Bridge ~ Mary Lawson