ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Thea Astley (Wikipedia)

Thea Astley OAM, OA,  (1925-2004) was the prolific author of fourteen novels, and two short story collections.  She won numerous awards, including the Miles Franklin Award four times, for The Well-dressed Explorer (1962); The Slow Natives (1965); The Acolyte (1972) and Drylands (1999) (which was also nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Award).

Some of Astley’s titles are available from Allen and Unwin in their ‘House of Books’ imprint. Search from their home page using ‘Thea Astley’.

This list of her awards is from from Wikipedia:

• • 1962: Miles Franklin Award for The Well Dressed Explorer
  • 1965: Miles Franklin Award for The Slow Natives
  • 1965: Moomba Award for The Slow Natives
  • 1972: Miles Franklin Award for The Acolyte
  • 1975: The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for The Kindness Cup
  • 1980: Australian Literature Studies Award for Hunting the Wild Pineapple
  • 1980: Member of the Order of Australia (OAM)
  • 1986: ALS Gold Medal for Beachmasters
  • 1989: Patrick White Award
  • 1990: New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for fiction for Reaching Tin River
  • 1992: Officer of the Order of Australia (OA)
  • 1996: The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow
  • 1999: Miles Franklin Award for Drylands
  • 2000: Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, Fiction Book Award for Drylands
  • 2002: New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, Special Award for being “a trailblazer”

In 2020 (August 17th-25th) ANZ LitLovers is hosting Thea Astley Week and this page gathers together all the reviews shared by readers who participate, eventually forming a valuable resource for anyone who wants to find out more about Thea Astley and her work.

Novels (links on the titles go to Wikipedia)

Girl with a Monkey (1958)

• see my ANZ LitLovers review

A Descant for Gossips (1960),

•  see my ANZLitLovers review

The Well Dressed Explorer (1962),

• see my ANZLitLovers review and a Sensational Snippet

The Slow Natives (1965),

• see my ANZLitLovers review and the Opening Lines

A Boat Load of Home Folk (1968)

The Acolyte (1972),

• see my ANZLitLovers review and the Opening Lines

A Kindness Cup (1974)

• see Bill’s review at The Australian Legend
• see my ANZLitLovers review 
• see Lou’s review at The Australian Legend

An Item from the Late News (1982)

• see my ANZLitlovers review 
• See Sue’s review at Whispering Gums

Beachmasters (1985),

• See my ANZLitLovers review

It’s Raining in Mango (1987)

Reaching Tin River (1990)

• See Bill’s review at The Australian Legend.

Vanishing Points (1992)

• See the review at His Futile Preoccupations

Coda (1994),

• see my ANZLitlovers review
• See Meg Broughton’s guest review at ANZ LitLovers

The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow (1996)

• See Sue’s review at Whispering Gums
• Janine’s at The Resident Judge of Port Phillip
• Kim’s at Reading Matters; and
• my ANZLitLovers review

Drylands (1999)

• see Kerryn Goldsworthy’s review at her blog
• see Sue’s review at Whispering Gums
• see Bill’s review at The Australian Legend

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Short Stories

Hunting the Wild Pineapple (1979)

• See Sue’s review of the titular story at Whispering Gums
• See Jennifer’s review at Tasmanian Bibliophile at Large

Collected Stories (1997)

• See Bill’s review of ‘One of the Islands’

Poetry

• Selected Poems (2017, posthumous UQP edition)

Other

• Three Australian Writers (1979, a critical study of Bruce Dawe, Barbara Baynton and Patrick White)

Biographies and other commentary

• Thea Astley, Inventing Her Own Weather, biography by Karen Lamb, see my ANZ LitLovers review, and Sue’s at Whispering Gums
• AustLit: Thea Astley (if you can access it)
• Perry Middlemiss’s Thea Astley page (It would be lovely if a Brisbane reader could supply a photo of her place on their Albert Street literary trail!)
• ‘The monstrous Accent on Youth’ (an essay published in Meanjin)
• Sue’s Favourite Writers series at Whispering Gums: Thea Astley