THE PLAYMAKER

by Thomas Keneally ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1987

Keneally's mature fiction goes from strength to strength, finding ever new subjects to press within the vise of its historical imagination. He's now provided a brilliant fictional corollary to Robert Hughes' impressive The Fatal Shore in this portrait of convict-settled Sydney, Australia, in the late 1700's (contemporaneous with the new United States of America). An English officer in Sydney, a Lieutenant Clark, receives permission to stage a play--Farquhar's bawdy comedy, The Recruiting Officer--and to cast it out of the convict population, the wretches who, spared the gallows in London, were ""transported"" to nowhere to do what no one is quite yet sure. But only to juxtapose the dispossessed and disadvantaged playing roles of freedom doesn't satisfy subtle Keneally: the novel is as well a chock-full panorama of English criminal life and disproportionate punishment, searching through its men and women (""she-lags"") and their codes of honor that give them an odd advantage over the English officers and clergy in the desolate land. The jailors, we're always aware, live in this jail too--ab origines in their own right, prey to all sorts of supra-rational occurrences (spells and visions) that nothing in England could have prepared them for. But the literary joy here has more to do with how individual each characterization is, each one tuned to another note of Keneally's fastidious yet rich, strong prose. The Nobel committee, given its laggardness, ought to start looking at Keneally now, though he's relatively young. At this rate, he'll be edging toward the top of the list soon enough.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION