From Vance Palmer's 'The Passage' to Susan Johnson's 'The Landing'
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2017.30Keywords:
Vance Palmer, 'The Passage', Susan Johnson, 'The Landing', Caloundra, Sunshine Coast, changing values, Australian societyAbstract
This article compares Vance Palmer’s classic novel, The Passage (1930), set in Caloundra, with Susan Johnson’s The Landing (2015), a comic novel of manners set at the northern end of the contemporary Sunshine Coast. It considers the novels’ different perspectives on Australian society and changing values, including attitudes to nature, arguing that Palmer’s novel now seems more idealistic than realist while Johnson’s cynicism about Australian life shows some disturbing elements beneath the comedy.
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