Reaching Tin River Thea Astley 1990

Dustjacket synopsis:
"Belle's mother was a drummer in an all-women's group before she turned vegetarian and went to live in a shack in the hills. Her father was a trumpeter Belle met for the first time in a Manhattan jazz bar. She had a husband too, briefly - an upwardly mobile deputy librarian searching for the perfect sauce. Belle even had a best friend once, whose ebullience was finally subdued in vermouth and leather sofas.

"Their selves were their centres, and Belle realised she'd have to research much further to find her own. If it were not in the music of memory, perhaps she'd find it in the backblocks, where her blow-up sepia dream lover might be conjured out of the past into the ugly circumference of her present.

"Perhaps at Tin River?"

First Paragraph:

I am looking for a one-storey town

with trees
river
hills
and a population of under two thousand
one of whome must be called Gaden Lockyer.

Or

Mother was a drummer in her own all-women group, a throbbr of a ladt with midlife zest and an off-centre smile.

Or

I have decided to make a list of all the convent girls who leanrt to play 'The Rustle of Spring' by Christian Sinding between 1945 and 1960.

From the William Heinemann hardback edition, 1990.

This page and its contents are copyright © 2001-04 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: November 16, 2004.