''Oceana Fine'' is a 1990 Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Tom Flood.

Synopsis

Finn Taylor is a university student who goes to work on a Western Australian wheat silo during his summer holidays. Beneath the land lie unused mine shafts, and above, the wheat silos. This novel is part mystery, part psychological thriller and part fantasy as it follows the rises and falls of a faming family.

Awards

Australian/Vogel Literary Award ''The Australian''/Vogel Literary Award is an Australian literary award for unpublished manuscripts by writers under the age of 35. The prize money, currently A$20,000, is the richest and most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript in ...

, 1988 * Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, 1990 *

Miles Franklin Literary Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–195 ...

, 1990

Critical reception

Marian Eldridge in ''The Canberra Times'' notes that the novel "takes on the soaring characteristics of magic realism as Flood seeks to create myth through evocation of landscape, family histories, legend ("wheat babies", what a lovely addition to our folklore), and through memory. There is a youthful sexual encounter that, upon its retelling - or reliving - or beginning afresh - has subtly changed as the narrator has changed. Time rolls forward, then, like a change of wind across a wheatfield, rolls back again."

References

1989 Australian novels Miles Franklin Award-winning works {{1980s-novel-stub