Sebastian Smee

Formal feeling comes good

issue 20 January 2007

Contemporary Australian fiction, like Australian film, is known more for its exuberance and antic energy than its reticence and restraint. Deborah Robertson’s Careless, a first novel that has already won her acclaim in her own country, is a marvellous correction to the stereotype.

Robertson’s ingredients are simple, but disparate: right to the end, one is not quite sure how they are going to combine.

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