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From Vance Palmer's The Passage to Susan Johnson's The Landing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2017

Susan Lever*
Affiliation:
Susan.plever@bigpond.com
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Abstract

This article compares Vance Palmer's classic novel, The Passage (1930), set in Caloundra, with Susan Johnson's The Landing (2015), a comic novel of manners set at the northern end of the contemporary Sunshine Coast. It considers the novels’ different perspectives on Australian society and changing values, including attitudes to nature, arguing that Palmer's novel now seems more idealistic than realist while Johnson's cynicism about Australian life shows some disturbing elements beneath the comedy.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017 

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