Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Print this page

The Diamond Anchor by Jennifer Mills & The China Garden by Kristina Olsson

by
June 2009, no. 312

The Diamond Anchor by Jennifer Mills

UQP, $32.95 pb, 314 pp, 9780702236952

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

The China Garden by Kristina Olsson

UQP, $32.95 pb, 279 pp, 9780702236976

The Diamond Anchor by Jennifer Mills & The China Garden by Kristina Olsson

by
June 2009, no. 312

It is a common assumption that nothing much happens in small country towns; that they are insular places where people live their entire lives, unchallenged by the outside world. But I never found the towns I lived in to be stagnant: conservative and sometimes small-minded, yes, but never uniformly dull. Individuals and families come and go; people run away or arrive, seeking refuge; people return after years of absence to settle down again.

The quirky country town and the tensions beneath its apparently placid surface has proved to be tempting territory for Australian novelists. Indeed, it is something of a cliché. Kristina Olsson’s The China Garden and Jennifer Mills’s The Diamond Anchor explore this familiar ground with varying degrees of success. They are interested in what it means to come from somewhere marginal, to know its people and landscape intimately. Both are concerned with the undertow of memory and emotion that draws their characters to a particular geographical place. But how their characters sort through their memories is a point of difference.

Kate McFadyen reviews 'The Diamond Anchor' by Jennifer Mills and 'The China Garden' by Kristina Olsson

The Diamond Anchor

by Jennifer Mills

UQP, $32.95 pb, 314 pp, 9780702236952

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

The China Garden

by Kristina Olsson

UQP, $32.95 pb, 279 pp, 9780702236976

From the New Issue

You May Also Like