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
Praise for The Year of the Beast
‘a notable work; it covers many ideas, and personalities, showing the complexities of apparently ordinary lives, and places them convincingly in the context of larger social and philosophical issues. The Year of the Beast ends the Glenroy sequence while remaining true to Carroll’s sense that history is always with us and within us, human propensities never change, and stories never really end’
Dennis Haskell, The Age
‘There’s much to enjoy here: the convincing historical fabric of Melbourne during the Great War . . .; profound observations of the human condition; the humanity of the two main characters . . . and their resistance to and emancipation from an oppressive moral code.’
Good Reading
‘Steven Carroll’s Glenroy series [is] one of the most ambitious undertakings in 21st-century Australian literature so far — a century long in chronological scope, a suburb wide in its intimate domestic attentions . . . He has taken a few generations of ordinary women and men . . . and made an epic of their lives. They live and breathe in these hundreds of pages. They are purely human: flawed and beautiful in their flaws.’
Geordie Williamson, The Australian
‘written with a perfect poetic pace . . . Melbourne is Carroll’s city and it is through this new novel, this seamless, delicious read, that he presents a story of our home to us, and for us. A rare gift indeed.’
Christine Gordon, Readings
‘a wonderful book, richly evocative of its time and with unforgettable characters’
ANZ LitLovers
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
The Year of the Beast
COPYRIGHT
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Australia in 2021
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
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Copyright © Steven Carroll 2021
The right of Steven Carroll to be identified 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 5731 4 (pbk)
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia
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