''The Slow Natives'' (1965) is a

Miles Franklin 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 ...

-winning novel by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n author

Thea Astley Thea Beatrice May Astley (25 August 1925 – 17 August 2004) was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She was a prolific writer who was published for over 40 years from 1958. At the time of her death, she had won more Miles Franklin ...

. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1965, the second of her record number of four wins.

Plot summary

Set in sub-tropical Queensland, the novel examines the relationships between suburban Brisbanites including a priest, nuns and a couple and their teenage son.

Style and themes

The novel represents a departure for Astley from her earlier novels in that rather than focusing on one or two particular characters, she moves "freely among a group, switching attention omnisciently from one to another. Almost all the characters suffer from some form of spiritual aridity; in Astley's vision, there often seems nothing between repression, and empty or even corrupt sexuality". Astley's characters in this novel often only realise their failings after disaster has beset them. The father, for example, only realises after his teenage son has lost his leg in a "joy-riding accident", that he has "failed to give his son 'the sort of discipline ... ewanted more than anything in the world'."Taylor and Perkins (2007), p. 246

Critical reception

Ruth Lesley, in ''The Canberra Times'' noted: "She works on two levels, that of the everyday world of meals, work, parties and squabbles, which she describes with wit and penetration, and that of the lonely inner world of each of her characters. There is very little action as such, but her analysis of the characters and the subtleties of their relationships makes very interesting reading."

Awards

, 1965 * Melbourne Mooma Festival Award, 1965

References

Notes