Vanishing Points Thea Astley 1992

Dustjacket synopsis:
"Thea Astley, Australia's most acclaimed and awarded writer, presents two novellas which sweep the reader on sentimental journeys towards an ending rather than a beginning.

"Julie Truscott, a seemingly ordinary housewife, and Macintosh Hope, a disenchanted academic, each flee from lives they cannot control. The balance of their flight is destroyed by Clifford Truscott - Julie's real estate husband and the rapacious developer of Mac's neighbouring island.

"In Vanishing Points Thea Astley is at her best."

Quotes:
"Vanishing Points is an immensely important book, witty, provocative, dazzling." - Lucy Frost, Age
"Thea Astley's new novel is temptingly tactile - like a cat's back. It ripples and flows with experience and wit." - Rosemary Sorenson, Sydney Morning Herald

First Paragraph:

From where he sat on the terrace outside Laforgue's escape hatch, he noted how the uphill sweep of paddock became a rough wedge of unslashed grass between eucalypt hedgings and moved to an unnatural vanishing point as if landscape had taken over and exaggerated the principles of perspetive. He found this jarring, as he was sure he would find almost everything else about this weekend gathering. Already, after barely an hour, he was beginning to wonder why he had come, as he weighed up the value of slipping quietly back to the pigpen (not that he wasn't used to the primitive) room allotted, repacking his bag and driving off into coastal blue to the fleshpots of Surfers Paradise. 'Interpretation of the art,' the brochure had said, badly typed, occasionally misspelled but urgent with Kulturgeist, 'must be in those surroundings that supplement the art itself'. Jee--sus! 'The dynamics of the written word understood in a setting where nature enhances symbol and metaphor.'

From the Minerva paperback edition, 1993.

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Last modified: November 16, 2004.