A Woman of the Inner Sea
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Woman of the Inner Sea is Thomas Keneally’s strongest, most compelling work since his Booker Prize-winning Schindler’s List. Like that book, the story of Woman of the Inner Sea arises from a true incident, and once more the imagining of it is utterly convincing.
Kate Gaffney-Kozinski, an attractive, well educated woman, has gone on “walkabout” to the inner reaches of the Australian outback. Fleeing her wealthy husband, Paul Kozinski, and his unscrupulous clan, Kate is trying to obliterate herself and the grief that haunts her. At first we do not understand its source, but as the story unfolds a kind of mystery evolves around the tragic loss of her two children. In a small town she tries to change herself into a different woman, seeking the companionship and protection of a reticent but rough local man, an explosives expert known as Jelly. But the violence of the west country’s unpredictable weather forces her on and soon she must confront her husband.
No one knows Australian society better than Thomas Keneally, who offers here a rich cross-section of his people: from Kate’s prominent father to her controversial uncle, a renegade priest; from the grasping Kozinskis who rule Sydney’s construction business to colorful small-town men like Jelly and his friend Gus, who travels with a kangaroo and emu he has rescued from an entertainment park. And at the center of this panorama stands Kate, a passionate woman of great integrity caught in a nightmare of grief and deception. Woman of the Inner Sea, with its evocation of the heroic in the midst of disaster and evil, will be remembered as one of Thomas Keneally’s best works.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest effort from Booker Prize-winning Australian author Keneally (Schindler's List, The Playmaker , etc.) is one of his best. He sets it on native turf and uses glimpses of his homeland's history, folkore and natural wonders to lift intriguing events to the level of riveting, sophisticated thriller. Based on fact and infused with Keneally's colorful imagination, the story follows Kate Gaffney-Kozinski, wife of a wealthy construction empire scion and mother of two, through the disintegration of her marriage, the deaths of family members, and her ``transformation'' as a barmaid at the Railway Hotel in Myambagh, far inland from the coastal Sydney of her early life. Under the avuncular eye of the pub owner and his not-so-friendly wife, Kate settles into this bastion of ranchers, sheep shearers and barflies and takes up with softhearted pensioner Jelly (short for gelignite: dynamite). When Kate's husband's goon Burnside--a finely drawn personification of the banality of evil--shows up with divorce settlement papers, Myambagh is struck by one of the periodic floods for which it is famous. Kate suffers another loss and she must flee again into the outback--this time with Jelly's friend Gus and his pet emu and kangaroo. Keneally displays a rueful appreciation for the double-edged sword of language in his retelling of an aboriginal tale in which the animals decide to give the word beast to humans. And as he brilliantly illustrates how the best-laid plans can go awry, he demonstrates that the true test of people is in how they cope with life's major and minor catastrophes.
