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The highly anticipated second novel from the bestselling author of CARELESS
'He goes down the stairs, singing Johnny Cash. It's a song about a man who's fallen real low, but he's not low, he's forty-three years old today, there's still time. You never know what is waiting, you just never know. This morning he can hope. And this is the thing he doesn't ever talk about: He wants to be a father, now, not later, he doesn't want to waste one more minute of his life.'
David Quinn's dream of family has for years eluded him. Surely what he wants is simple? It's only what other men have, but there's no woman in his life, and now that he's living on a remote island in the Atlantic, do his hopes still stand a chance?
It's summer on the Irish island of Inishmore, and the tourists are arriving. They're coming for the wild beauty and the five thousand years of history, the Celtic legends and the burial sites of saints. They're coming for the drink and the sex and the craic. Seventeen-year-old Esther Bradley has come from Fremantle, on the west coast of Australia. On harsh Inishmore, where people have always struggled to survive, she is battling the landscape of her own mind. David Quinn is reluctant to catch Esther when she tumbles dangerously into his life, but happiness is about to burst upon him, and every simple thing he's wanted will soon be close enough to touch. But is anything ever really simple any more?
Set among the ancient stories of the haunting Aran Islands, reaching to London in the 1980s and contemporary Australia, this is an unforgettable love story about life's wounds to the spirit and flesh, and the hope we all have for healing, for one more lucky roll of the dice. Following the bestselling and acclaimed CARELESS, Sweet Old World establishes Deborah Robertson as one of our most enthralling and original storytellers, a writer whose tender, fearless vision carries her readers close to the human heart.
About the Author
Deborah Robertson was born in Bridgetown, WA. Her first book, PROUDFLESH, won the Steele Rudd Award for the best Australian short story collection in its year of publication, and her stories have been widely published at home and abroad. Her first novel, CARELESS (Picador, 2006), was published to wide acclaim and bestseller status, and was shortlisted for a number of literary prizes including the prestigious Miles Franklin Award in 2007. A long-term resident of Fremantle, she now lives in Melbourne.
Reviewed By Toni Whitmont, Booktopia Buzz Editor
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What's new in Australian fiction? Everything of course.
We can't keep up with the demand for Zoe Foster's The Younger Man. The big news is that she will be here mid March for a Facebook chat with all of you, so make sure you grab your copy and read it in time.
Deborah Robertson's Sweet Old World would have to be my favourite from the Australian list this month. A most poetic and heartfelt new novel, it concerns the unlikely coming together of the older David Quinn and the much much younger Esther Bradley.
From a review by Catherine Hill, who edited the manuscript:
The novel is about their affair and its endpoint, which is jaw-dropping; it is one of the most affecting endings to a book I've read for ages. The whole story is really thought-provoking: about 'life' (a horribly vague description, but surely what the best novels make us examine) and the directions some people's lives take without their 'permission', as it were. How we might find ourselves, aged thirty or forty, lonely and living in a way we really didn't mean to. And whether that's in any way recoverable - how much say do we really have on the most important aspects of our existence? It's also very much about 'humanity' - how we interact with our friends and our lovers and our family, and the effect they have on us.
For a different take on Asbergers, try Kathy Lette's The Boy Who Fell to Earth . She has first hand experience with the syndrome in her own family so she is the perfect person to pen a book that it is both witty and poignant with a single mum trying to get it together in a new relationship, and a son that doesn't quite fit in.
Wendy James' Mistake is Jodi Picoult territory. Harrowing and haunting, it is about a woman who is desperately trying to justify her decision to adopt out her baby some 25 years ago, soon after giving birth as a resourceless teen. The problem is, she told no one, records have disappeared and now she is the subject of a nation wide police and media witch hunt. This is strong commercial women's fiction with a strong authentic ring to it.
The Fine Colour of Rust is about a woman in an outback town fighting to save the local school.
