7 January 2000
January 2000
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Transcript
This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.
Jan 4 - 31
The Merry-go-round in the Sea
by Randolph Stow
Read by David Tredinnick
The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea was first published in l965, the fifth novel by Randolph Stow, and it remains his most popular in Australia. It's a semi-autobiographical account of Rob Coram's growth from the age of six to fourteen, in the West Australian coastal town of Geraldton, and its surrounding pastoral districts, in the l930s and l940s.
As Jennifer McDonnell says in her introduction to the reading:
"This is a novel of great inventiveness which transforms its biographical materials in a fusion of symbol, narrative and poetic allusiveness, and the merry-go-round is the predominant symbol...The novel is insistently about the role of friendship, family environment and myth in shaping individual identity, and it remains one of the most intensely imagined accounts in our national literature, of the grief, pain and alienation, the love, beauty and awe that this process entails."
The novel was abridged for radio by Richard Buckham, and produced by Mike Ladd.
This reading is available on cassette from ABC shops and centres.
