Year of the Beast
Page 23
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to the following.
Publisher Catherine Milne and Belinda Yuille at HarperCollins, my editor Amanda O’Connell, Jo Butler for proofreading, and my agent Sonia Land and all the gang at Sheil Land.
Dr Kelly Gardiner, novelist and Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at the Department of Creative Arts and English at La Trobe University, for helping me with information on the Women’s Peace Army and the Women’s Political Association; Toni Glasson for family history research; and Paul Lyons for casting a cold eye over certain sections of the book and finding a name for Father Geoghan.
Finally, special thanks to my partner Fiona Capp, for her constant support, suggestions and advice, not just in the writing of this novel but all of them; in this case, especially, for thinking up the title. And to Leo – the lion-hearted boy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEVEN CARROLL was born in Melbourne. His first novel, Remember Me, Jimmy James, was published in 1992. This was followed by Momoko (1994); The Love Song of Lucy McBride (1998); The Art of the Engine Driver (2001), which was shortlisted for both the Miles Franklin Award in 2002 and France’s Prix Femina literary award for the Best Foreign Novel in 2005; The Gift of Speed (2004), which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2005; The Time We Have Taken (2007), which won both the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the South-East Asia and South Pacific Region and the Miles Franklin Award 2008; The Lost Life (2009), which was shortlisted for both the 2010 Barbara Jefferis Award and the ALS Gold Medal 2010; Spirit of Progress (2011), which was longlisted for the 2012 Miles Franklin Award; and A World of Other People (2013), which was shortlisted for the South Australian Premier’s Award 2014 and was co-winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award 2014. He was a finalist for the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2015. Forever Young (2015) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2016; and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award 2016; and A New England Affair (2017) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2018.
Steven Carroll lives in Melbourne with his partner and son.
PRAISE
Praise for A World of Other People
‘A World of Other People is a powerfully imagined, elegiac homage to love, heroism and poetry … an intimate private drama, set against the immense and tragic backdrop of European civilization tearing itself apart’
Prime Minister’s Literary Awards judges, 2014
‘A fine, absorbing novel — darker than The Lost Life but equally eloquent and assured. Carroll’s re-creation of a distant and now long-lost world is vivid and tactful’
Andrew Riemer, The Sydney Morning Herald
Praise for The Time We Have Taken
‘Carroll’s novel is a poised, philosophically profound exploration … a stand-alone work that is moving and indelible in its evocation of the extraordinary in ordinary lives’
Miles Franklin Literary Award judges, 2008
‘The result is a deeply satisfying encounter with the empty spaces that the suburb failed to fill both between people and inside them. Carroll takes time to tell an untidy story with a gentle sense of wonder. His prose whispers loud’
Michael McGirr, The Age
‘It is the creation of a larger concept of suburban life in all its transcendent possibilities that makes this novel so special. Carroll’s revelations of these beautiful insights into our utterly ordinary world make him a writer worth cherishing. His prose is unfailingly assured, lyrical, poised’
Debra Adelaide, The Australian
Praise for The Gift of Speed
‘Carroll’s gift for evocative storytelling … had me captivated’
Australian Bookseller & Publisher
‘A novel of tender and harrowing melancholy’
Le Nouvel Observateur
‘Carroll’s a rare beast in that he writes with great affection and understanding about life in the suburbs … A lovely rites of passage novel that is oh so carefully crafted and captures the evanescence of time to perfection’
Jason Steger, The Age
‘Carroll’s writing is astonishingly assured’
James Bradley, Australian Book Review
Praise for The Art of the Engine Driver
‘Subtle, true and profoundly touching’
Le Monde
‘A veritable gem … a beautiful discovery’
Elle France
‘An exquisitely crafted journey of Australian suburban life … fresh and irresistible’
Miles Franklin Literary Award judges, 2002
‘A little masterpiece’
Hessische Allgemeine
Praise for The Lost Life
‘Carroll’s prose is limpid and assured … [a] poised and beautifully burnished work. Carroll’s control is masterly’
Andrew Riemer, The Sydney Morning Herald
‘This is not so much a departure as an arrival … Carroll’s fiction is distinctive for the way his clean prose decelerates experience, puts aside the urgings of linear temporality, to reveal a richness that habitually evades us.
Australian Literary Review
‘Carroll’s prose has a sublime rhythmic quality … almost as if he has sung the words on the page’
Australian Book Review
Praise for Forever Young
‘No Australian author has better evoked the sense of change, the ravages of time, the obligation to self as well as to others. Forever Young is on one level about nostalgia, without ever succumbing to it … At every turn this exquisitely crafted novel can widen our notion of what it is to be human, then, now and, possibly, later’
The Sydney Morning Herald
‘The title of this fine novel speaks ambivalently to a longing for lost youth, and to the desire to escape its sentimental claims’
Peter Pierce, The Australian
‘Carroll … transmutes the grey facts of daily life into light and luminous art’
Geordie Williamson, The Australian
Praise for A New England Affair
‘This is a languid, angry, heart-rending novel, thoughtfully layered and passionately expressed’
The Australian
‘Carroll has carved out a stark and simple portrait of yearning, stripping away any dizzy glamour of the role of an artist’s muse to present a far sadder and more pragmatic study’
The Saturday Paper
‘As always with Carroll, it is … the richness of ideas, the allusive, measured prose, the subtle cross references to other books and literary theories that captivate the reader’
The Adelaide Advertiser
‘Carroll’s quiet, measured style is imbued with breathtaking observations of seemingly small moments. His writing here invites contemplation and reflection on what we lose in life and what we have, who we think we are and who we aspire to be. This novel is so much more than the sum of its parts and it’s impossible not to feel you have borne witness to something incredibly beautiful and true.’
Victorian Premier’s Literary Award judges, 2018
‘It is a deeply moving, intense and poignant novel of a love that never finds the right moment’
Mildura Midweek
ALSO BY STEVEN CARROLL
Remember Me, Jimmy James
Momoko
The Love Song of Lucy McBride
The Art of the Engine Driver
The Gift of Speed
The Time We Have Taken
The Lost Life
Spirit of Progress
A World of Other People
Forever Young
A New England Affair
COPYRIGHT
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2019
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Steven Carroll 2019
The right of Steven Carroll to be id
entified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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ISBN 978 1 4607 5769 7 (pbk)
ISBN 978 1 4607 1135 4 (ebook)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia
Cover design by Michelle Zaiter, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover images: Woman © Malgorzata Maj/ Arcangel; Melbourne courtesy National Museum of Australia (1986.0117.2981); Crowd by Bettmann/ Getty Images; Lamp and textures by istockphoto.com