Thea Astley (1925–2004)

Despite having won a record four Miles Franklins, it is easy to forget how fantastic a writer Thea Astley was. Perhaps this is because it is her later (and, frankly, weaker) work that is more available in second-hand bookstores. Perhaps it's the usual tired cultural-cringe narrative still running through my generation's veins. It certainly can't be because her themes or attitude are dated. Her tales of vaguely unlikable, repressed, judgmental Australians still resonate. Her characters glancing at one another, never looking in the same place at the same time, rarely able to express how they feel, usually unaware of the missed connections. Worrying their teeth along the frayed edges of their cultural norms, unsettled by the new, but unsatisfied with the old.

Astley strikes me as Australia's answer to Muriel Spark, or Margaret Drabble. They too are authors who can seem a bit "dried up" to my generation but - once the book has begun - surprise us with their savagery and insight. And unlike most of Australia's great writers born before 1940 (Patrick White and Christina Stead come to mind), she was truly Australian from birth to death.

The Slow Natives haunts me, and I'm not even sure it's one of her best books. It is, nevertheless, a riveting portrait of the grayness of life and the chances some take to grab at flecks of colour therein - or, more often, the way ordinary people remain blind to those polychromatic moments. Is Astley cruel? Many readers think so. I instead see her as honest, reflecting a guarded, territorial, tall-poppy-obsessed 1960s Australia. I hope our culture has changed in 60 years. I think it has. But, then again, no-one in Astley's fiction seems too far removed from our reality.… (mere)

Two connected novellas written late in Astley's lifetime. To be honest, I thought the conceit of the first, The Genteel Poverty Bus Company was stronger than the execution, although it has its powerful moments. It is a story of missed connections, of humans attempting to retain individualism in the face of cultural flatness, of raging against the corporate storm, and of memory.

The villain of the first novella returns as a more-rounded character in the second, Inventing the Weather which is classic Astley. She remains one of the greatest writers Australia has yet produced, and - although it's a short and somewhat slight work - this is a very enjoyable meditation on what we try to achieve, and what we do if we fail.… (mere)