The White Earth
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4.2 • 34 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2005 Miles Franklin Literary Award
One spring day in late 1992, when William was halfway between his eighth birthday and his ninth, he looked out from the back verandah of his home and saw, huge in the sky, the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. He stared at it, wondering. The thunderhead was dirty black, streaked with billows of grey. It rolled and boiled as it climbed into the clear blue day, casting a vast shadow upon the hills beyond. But there was no sound, no rumble of an explosion. William was aware of the smell of burning . . . but it was a good smell, a familiar smell. The smell of grass, of wheat, of the farm itself.
His father dead by fire and his mother plagued by demons of her own, William is cast upon the charity of his unknown uncle - an embittered old man encamped in the ruins of a once great station homestead, Kuran House. It's a baffling and sinister new world for the boy, a place of decay and secret histories. His uncle is obsessed by a long life of decline and by a dark quest for revival, his mother is desperate for a wealth and security she has never known, and all their hopes it seems come to rest upon William's young shoulders. But as the past and present of Kuran Station unravel and merge together, the price of that inheritance may prove to be the downfall of them all. The White Earth is a haunting, disturbing and cautionary tale.
'The novel is beautifully structured, filled with parallels and reverberations which come back to haunt and illuminate the reader as the story unfolds.' - Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser
'A great Australian story embracing national themes that should engage us all.' - Lucy Clark, The Sunday Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Playing with genre expectations, McGahan's layered, impressive book (after 1988 and Praise) begins as a child's tale, takes on shades of the horror story and, in its most surprising shift, becomes a tragedy of Australian history. Set in Australia's Queensland province, the novel begins with the blaze of 70 acres of wheat, a conflagration that consumes nine-year-old William's father and sends the boy and his mother packing to his great-uncle John McIvor's rotting mansion on the arid plains of what was once a vast sheep ranch. Chapters alternate between William settling into his new existence (action set in the early 1990s), and the story of John's youth on the ranch, where as the son of the ranch manager he nurtured ambitions to one day own the estate. John recruits William's help in organizing a rally for his right-wing group, which opposes the proposed Native Title laws that would return Aboriginal-claimed land to the original inhabitants. The novel's first half is a slow build, the second half, a well-wrought, meditative reflection on Australia's colonialist demons, brings the book's gothic intimations home to roost. William must discover for himself the horrors that John's beloved land conceals and the original sin that lurks in Australia's past.
Customer Reviews
Deeply engrossing
Surprisingly easy to read, yet deep as the land beneath our feet.
A Great Australian Novel - Unmissable!
A wonderful, devastating piece in the vivid and unique setting of Australia’s fantastical and mysterious wilderness, becoming gradually overcome by the modern world of greed and want. Worthy of it’s acclaim and Miles Franklin award!