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A KINDNESS CUP.

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Tom Dorahy, a former teacher now in his sixties, has been invited back to The Taws, a frontier area of New South Wales, Australia, "where masculinity is top dog," to celebrate the growth of the town during the past twenty years. His "homecoming" is not the warm, nostalgic experience one would expect. Twenty years previously, Dorahy and his friend Charlie Lunt had observed brutal events, which convinced them of the inherent evil within the hearts of the town leaders. The killings of an innocent aborigine population were only part of the problem. The town's leaders refused to recognize any crime or to feel any guilt, and Dorahy was too weak and ineffective to bring about any change . Now returned, he is determined that the town's leaders, still in power, will at last acknowledge what they have done, and he sets in motion the forces which result in a showdown.

With a sharp eye for the telling detail, a prose style which bends and adapts to reflect the thinking of her characters, a keen ear for dialogue, and an uncompromising integrity in carrying her themes forward, Astley creates a rough frontier world in which justice is relative-whatever works in carrying forward the goals of the community is "right." As the story moves back and forth in time through Dorahy's memories and Lunt's experiences, the reader observes sadistic town leaders encouraging violence and vengeance and a compliant population going along. As Dorahy tries to come to terms with his own role in the events and avenge the wrongs the town has done to Charlie Lunt, he is also hoping that in the end his own life will "add up."

Fast-paced, dramatic, and excruciatingly tense, this thirty-year-old novel examines the power of the majority, the nature of justice, and the roles of vengeance and forgiveness. As the town celebrates its twenty years of "progress" during the homecoming with songs and stories, the reader is haunted by the supreme irony of the words of Auld Lang Syne as they ring out: "We'll take a cup of kindness yet for Auld Lang Syne." Mary Whipple