Amazon.com: Vanishing Points (9780399137709): Thea Astley: Books

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 1992

In The Genteel Poverty Bus Company, a lone man foils the capitalistic efforts of a developer-magnate, and the same developer's wife leaves her fat-cat husband for a mission at Bukki Bay in Inventing the Weather.

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } In The Genteel Poverty Bus Company, a lone man foils the capitalistic efforts of a developer-magnate, and the same developer's wife leaves her fat-cat husband for a mission at Bukki Bay in Inventing the Weather.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As depicted in these two wickedly observant, interlinked novellas, the southeastern "gold coast" of the author's native Australia is a den of dropouts, rednecks, ex-hippies, oldtimers and misfits--free spirits seeking liberty and self-definition in a world where progress threatens all that is authentically Australian. In "The Genteel Poverty Bus Company," a jaundiced, solitude-seeking tour guide named Mac erects a labyrinth on his private island, only to find his calm shattered by a glitzy resort going up on the adjacent atoll. He wages war (mainly with loud classical music) against the resort's obnoxious developer, Clifford Truscott, whose wonderfully vitriolic wife Julie narrates the second novella, "Inventing the Weather." Ditched by Clifford for their Swedish housekeeper, Julie guiltily leaves their three children with him and hooks up with a trio of renegade nuns who run a health clinic serving aborigines and the poor--until Clifford buys out their coastal enclave for another resort. Astley ( Hunting the Wild Pineapple ) has a quicksilver prose style and a keen satirical eye that make this book a delight.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In two brilliant novellas, narrators escape from urban Australian life to the unspoiled tropical coast of northern Queensland. In "The Genteel Poverty Bus Company," Macintosh Hope leaves an academic career for musical minibus tours of the Cape York Peninsula, then retreats to a deserted island where he fights an ingenious but losing battle against a ruthless developer. Julia Truscott, who leaves her stifling marriage to the developer in "Inventing the Weather," finds inner peace with nuns at a mission on the remote peninsula. Astley, winner of the Patrick White award, writes passionately of the lush Queensland landscape, raging at its despoilation. Witty and sophisticated, her new pair of novellas is highly recommended for all fiction collections.
- Joan I. Tracy, formerly with Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews