Jump to content

The Grisly Wife

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Grisly Wife
First edition
AuthorRodney Hall
LanguageEnglish
GenreNovel
PublisherMacmillan, Australia
Publication date
1993
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePaperback
Pages261
ISBN0-7329-0776-4
OCLC29841439
Preceded byThe Second Bridegroom 
Followed byThe Island in the Mind 

The Grisly Wife is a 1993 Miles Franklin literary award-winning novel by the Australian author Rodney Hall.[1]

The Miles Franklin Award Judges' Report called it "a novel with a rather surprising vision."[2]

This novel is the second book in The Yandilli Trilogy (also referred to as A Dream More Luminous Than Love), though the third to be published, following the novels Captivity Captive in 1988, and The Second Bridegroom in 1991.[1]

Synopsis[edit]

Catherine Byrne marries self-proclaimed prophet Muley Moloch and leaves 19th-century England with him and his eight female disciples to search for paradise on earth in the wilds of Australia. But things do not work out as planned, as a shipwreck, illness and death cause the small group to fracture.

Critical reception[edit]

Jeff Doyle in The Canberra Times noted: "Hall is not so basic nor simplistic to provide a kind of allegorical reading of these issues under his stories. No, such a naive, perhaps crassly simple, view is the job of a reviewer bent on hinting at the multiple ideas running through the book."[3]

Awards[edit]

  • Miles Franklin Literary Award, 1994: winner
  • NBC Banjo Awards, NBC Banjo Award for Fiction, 1994: shortlisted[4]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Austlit - The Grisly Wife by Rodney Hall". Austlit. Retrieved 18 July 2023.
  2. ^ Miles Franklin Award Judges' Report
  3. ^ ""Funny and tragic second coming in the New World"". The Canberra Times, 30 October 1983, p11. Retrieved 18 July 2023.
  4. ^ "Austlit - The Grisly Wife - Awards". Austlit. Retrieved 18 July 2023.