[Editor: This review, of two books by Eleanor Dark and Kylie Tennant, was published in The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.), 15 February 1947.]
Two new books …..
With accent on the Australian scene
The realisation that we have writers in Australia who are fast taking their place among their greater overseas contemporaries is vividly emphasised after reading two new books accentuating the Australian way of life.
They are Eleanor Dark’s “Waterway” and Kylie Tennant’s “Lost Haven.”
Although “Waterway” was published in English and American editions a few years ago, this is the first Australian release of a popular novel by the authoress of “Timeless Land” — an American Book of the Month Club choice.
The story has the city and suburbs of Sydney as its background, with typical Sydney people as its characters living on the harbourside of Watson’s Bay, travelling to the city by ferry and back again at the end of their day.
The narrative is told with exquisite description, rising to great tension in the ramming of a ferry and the destinies of the characters involved.
Eleanor Dark has that same delicacy of style in her writing that marks the poems and short stories of her father, Dowell O’Reilly.
In “Waterway” she has produced an excellent and thoroughly satisfying novel.
In “Lost Haven” we have an amusing and gusty story centred around a little backwater New South Wales town and its colourful inhabitants.
The story is told with rare candour, salty humour, and vivid characterisation.
Kylie Tennant, in private life the domesticated wife of a New South Wales schoolmaster, has been described by American critics as “writing in the spirit of Mark Twain.”
In her latest novel she shows the same versatility of style that won her the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1935 with “Tiburon” and later “The Battlers,” for which she was also awarded the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal.
With “Lost Haven” she enhances her reputation both in Australia and overseas as a novelist of fine discernment.
— WARWICK LAWRENCE
Source:
The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.), 15 February 1947, p. 2 (Late City edition)
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