''The Well Dressed Explorer'' (1962) is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian 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 ...

. This novel shared the award with '' The Cupboard Under the Stairs'' by George Turner.

Plot summary

The novel follows journalist, George Brewster, who moves from city to city, from empty love affair to empty love affair, until he dies. He is married, but faithless to his wife...and is ultimately a "pathetic figure".Taylor and Perkins (2007), p. 246

Themes

The themes of this novel are common to Astley's novels: "the hurts inflicted inadvertently and deliberately on others, the terrible shallowness underlying the inability to identify imaginatively with others, and the destruction of others and of the self by wrongly conceived actions."

Notes

References

Middlemiss.org
*Taylor, Cheryl and Perkins, Elizabeth (2007) "Warm words: North Queensland writing" in Patrick Buckridge and Elizabeth McKay (ed.) ''By the Book: A Literary History of Queensland'', St Lucia, University of Queensland Press {{DEFAULTSORT:Well Dressed Explorer 1962 Australian novels Miles Franklin Award-winning works Novels by Thea Astley