Below the Styx

By: Michael Meehan

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Paperback | 1 March 2010 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
344 Pages

Age
0

Dimensions(cm)
20.8 x 15.3 x 1.91

Paperback

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Booktopia Comments

As reviewed by Toni Whitmont in the March 2010 Booktopia Buzz. Click here to see all of Booktopia's Newsletters.

What leads a cultivated and respected man to commit a murderous act?

As far as I am concerned, Meehan is one of the unsung heroes of Australian novel writing and Below the Styx received a 5 star rating in the recent Bookseller&Publisher Magazine.

This is an intriguing, thought-provoking and complex novel. It is also extremely amusing and beautifully written, with passages and descriptions that demand to be savoured, noted and re-read. I can't wait to get back for a second reading. (B&P)

Reviewed by Toni Whitmont, Booktopia Buzz Editor - March 2010

Product Description

Martin Frobisher has been beating close family members about the head with an epergne. Frobisher, successful publisher and community leader, is in the City Remand Centre, awaiting trial for murder. What shadow has fallen across the comfortable lives of Frobisher, his ambitious wife Coralie and her flaky sister Madeleine? What has led a cultivated and reflective man, known to shoo spiders and earwigs out of the harm's way, to such reckless acts of violence?

With the prospect of imprisonment for the Term of his Natural Life, can Frobisher and his research assistant Petra find guidance in the life and fortunes of a brilliant young Englishman, marooned in Australia, 'the land of vulgarity and mob rule' more than a century earlier, and obsessed with the darker moments in the nation's history? Why does Frobisher appear to care more, in the end, about the life of Marcus Clarke than he does about his own?

About Michael Meehan: Michael Meehan grew up in the Mallee region of north-west Victoria. He studies law at the University of Adelaide, and literature at Monash and Cambridge Universities. He has taught in universities in many countries in Europe and Asia, and is a professor and former Head of the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. His novels have been published in Australia, the UK and the US, and he won the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction in 2000 with his first novel, The Salt of Broken Tears. He lives in Melbourne.

Industry Reviews

"An air of literary pastiche, of allusion and homage, pervades Below the Styx. It adds texture and provides much pleasure in a novel that, at first old-fashioned, develops into something new and delicately original." --Sydney Morning Herald
"This is an intriguing, thought-provoking and complex novel. It is also extremely amusing and well-written..." --Bookseller + Publisher
"Michael Meehan leads his reader through the intricacies of his protagonist's quest with an easy grace. Deft character-drawing and a story which puts some probing questions about the relation of historical reconstructions to fuictional truth-telling raise this novel well above the ruck." --Adelaide Review on Deception

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