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| Stephen Scourfield |
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| Reviews |
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Connected
“An expert with an eye for the soul of a land is what makes a perfect traveller, and Stephen Scourfield is just that. In these essays and stories (he) gives us both sides of the equation: the experiences fuelling his vision and the stories expressing that vision.
“There is an almost beatific feeling contained in the essays, as if Scourfield is truly becoming one with the land. In the stories there is the solidity of an utterly known space, where the narrative gently seduces you, sometimes to the verge of tears.”
The West Australian |
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| Other Country |
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“The success of Other Country is also largely due to its voice, which is immediate, dramatic and stark. Poetic as well as vernacular, it suggests Proulx, McCarthy and other US writers for whom voice is, in many ways, story. Scourfield’s evident intimacy with the landscape and subject that have inspired him percolates through every page of this impressive novel.”
The Weekend Australian |
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| “Set in the Australian Outback and written in a taut poetic style perfectly suited to the hardened characters who inhabit it, Other Country is unusual for the language of its landscape. Perfect for those who liked Cormac McCarthy's
All the Pretty Horses, this novel richly deserves to be published in Britain and
America“. The Economist, Best Books of 2007 (worldwide) |
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“ … an engaging novel that has flashes of pure poetry and a resonant, deeply affecting ending.”
Australian Literary Review |
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“Scourfield has a profound love for this unyielding territory, and the dust of the Dry and the rain of the Wet have entered the pores of his language.”
The Bulletin |
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“This is … a well-crafted and skilfully written story of two brothers and the forces that shape their lives.”
Sydney Morning Herald |
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“Scourfield’s story is a cracker that reveals an imagination that surely has more stories to tell.”
The Age |
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“This debut novel about manhood and survival in the Outback marks an interesting new voice in Australian fiction.”
Sunday Telegraph |
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“What struck me most in reading this evocative, mostly affecting novel was how Geoffrey Blainey’s notion of the tyranny of distance applied not so much to our remoteness from the mother country, but our isolation from our own country and each other . . . an engaging first novel that has flashes of pure poetry and a resonant, deeply affecting ending.”
Australian Literary Review in The Australian |
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“Scourfield, who has a long history of writing non-fiction and photographing the Outback, can now lay claim to a rather impressive first novel about it.”
The Courier Mail |
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“With spare, blunt language, Scourfield reveals the gritty heart of our country, and his characters and the land that spawned then are so authentically Oz that even a citified girl who’s never been past Dubbo recognises his vision as the real deal.”
Vogue magazine |
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“Other Country is a superb achievement. In the narrative's imagery and poetic cadences it might do for the mythos of the Kimberley what Tim Winton in fiction, and Hal Colebatch in poetry, have done for the metaphysics of WA's marine environment, elevating and celebrating its various dimensions. Other Country is also a bloody good yarn.”
West Weekend Magazine |
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“ … so good it was a difficult book to put down. Other Country brilliantly captures the reality of the Outback and its people, the land, the seasons, and the flavour, colour and unexpected humanity of the place. Scourfield has an exacting understanding of the Outback psyche and the complex hardships everybody out there accepts as the norm.
And he portrays it so well. This is a really great read, and I hope there's more to come.”
Waikato Times, New Zealand |
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“Laced with laconic humour, this gritty yarn is bang on the money.”
Qantas magazine, The Australian Way |
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“This is a novel of violent passions, loyalties and conflicting ideas as the brothers’ relationship swings between love and violent opposition. There are echoes of Annie Proulx in the tough, spare prose which gives no quarter to either the characters or the outback itself.”
Australian Bookseller & Publisher |
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“very assured debut.”
Good Reading |
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“This rewarding Australian novel deftly portrays toughness and vulnerability.”
Gold Coast Bulletin |
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“Packed with forceful emotion, bravery and rawness.”
Broome Advertiser |
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“captures the landscape in which it is set as well as the dry humour that the Australian outback is famous for. It’s forceful, emotional, gritty and brave.”
Ultimate Travel Magazine
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“The pindan of the far north does more than coat your clothes and skin in its silky red dust, it seeps into your blood, too. It’s pretty obvious first-time novelist Scourfield is seriously infected if Other Country is anything to go by. The reverence with which he describes the far north – its colours, its age, its delicately tuned ecology, its people – is almost religious. And he writes at his best when he’s lost in this landscape.”
Sunday Times Magazine |
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