Bring Larks and Heroes, by Thomas Keneally

If you’re an Australian reader of this blog, you have to have been under a rock not to have seen Michael Heyward from Text Publishing as passionate champion of Australian classic literature.  I think that Text’s new collection of Text Classics is a great initiative – and I especially like the way it fits nicely with my project to read all the Miles Franklin winners.

Bring Larks and Heroes won the Miles Franklin in 1967, the third novel in Thomas Keneally’s long and impressive career as an Australian novelist.  Reading it is a little bit like finding an undiscovered Patrick White, because its style, to my surprise, is modernist – utterly unlike Keneally’s later novels that I’ve read: Schindler’s Ark a.k.a. Schindler’s List (which won the Booker in 1982); The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, (see my review); and The Widow and Her Hero (see my review).  I think it would be…