Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Night Animals by Bruce Pascoe

by
May 1987, no. 90

Night Animals by Bruce Pascoe

Penguin, 151 pp, $9.95 pb

Night Animals by Bruce Pascoe

by
May 1987, no. 90

It’s a favour to no-one to call him (certainly never her) ‘a modern Henry Lawson’ – as the back cover of Bruce Pascoe’s collection proclaims – because of the large and difficult questions that are raised. What does the name ‘Henry Lawson’ mean? ‘The Loaded Dog’, or ‘Water Them Geraniums’? The writer of humorous stories about the bush where life is animated by a huge and comic spirit, or of ones about living in the bush that leave you feeling dismayed and chilled to the bone? And who is this epithet aimed at? For some, Lawson is the face on the ten-dollar note; for others, he’s the successful Australian writer who went to England and failed to make any impression, returned, and then lived long enough to mourn his own decline as a writer, ending his life as a miserable drunk; for still others, he’s one of the first writers you read at school.

J.A. Mead reviews 'Night Animals' by Bruce Pascoe

Night Animals

by Bruce Pascoe

Penguin, 151 pp, $9.95 pb

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.