This was magnificent. Hitting Thea Astley hard. Keep them coming ( )

This beautifully packaged and written book was a joy from start to finish.
In her flat above Drylands' newsagency, Janet Deakin is writing a book for the world's last reader. Little has changed in her 50 years, except for the coming of cable TV. Loneliness is almost a religion, and still everyone knows your business. But the town is being outmanoeuvred by drought and begins to empty, pouring itself out like water into sand. Small minds shrink even smaller in the vastness of the land. One man is forced out by council rates and bigotry; another sells his property, risking the lot to build his dream. And all of them are shadowed by violence of some sort these people whose only victory over the town is in leaving it.
I loved the individual characters and their struggles. They are beautifully captured in lyrical prose. I look forward to reading more of this author's work. ( )

i was reading maybe 3 or 4 books at a time, so it took me a while to get through.
life in these dusty landscapes, that i love, is much less desirable for these characters.
like waiting for something to happen that never does, or screaming and no one can hear, or like being invisible.
some stories are harder to finish than others, not because they aren't good, they just touch us differently. maybe not the right kind of escapism? ( )

Read by the group in May 2001 ..... This is about a dying Australian country town in Queensland. There were some interesting and unforgetable characters. ( )