English: VCE Literature

Robert Drewe’s Ned Kelly gets under the skin.
Nine years before Peter Carey published his Booker-winner The True History of the Kelly Gang, he gave a cover endorsement to Robert Drewe’s Our Sunshine, claiming it would ‘forever change the way we see Ned Kelly’. With hindsight, Carey could also have been writing the creative brief for his own, later, achievement.

"The Children of Dynmouth" is Trevor's finest novel so far. At its core is a memorable creation -- an aimless, sadistic 15-year-old boy named Timothy Gedge who, having no father and virtually no mother, wanders about the seaside town of Dynmouth trying to connect himself with other people. He turns up at every funeral, knocks on every door, greets everyone he encounters in the street, always with the same insouciant, brainless, shrewd smile; he is tolerated by everyone and liked by no one; by the novel's end he has come close to destroying several people.

Editor Kevin Haworth writes that Lewis's story is "a short novel of astonishing depth and resonance, a sharply drawn historical tale that asks contemporary questions about identity and belonging, about men and women, and about an individual's capacity to act within an inflexible system." Originally published in 1941, The Wife of Martin Guerre has earned the respect and admiration of critics and readers for over sixty years.

It is the now-classic story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother, and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever considered before. In effect, they exchange places, and find the peace that neither will ever retreat from again....

Anna has returned from visiting her mother. Restless and unable to sleep, she wanders through her parents' house, revisiting the scenes of her childhood. In a cupboard drawer, folded and pushed away from sight, she finds a sepia photograph of her grandmother, Hanna, whom she remembers as old and forbidding, a silent stranger enveloped in a huge pleated black dress. Now, looking at the features Anna recognises as her own, she realises she is looking at a different woman from the one of her memory. Set against the majestic isolation of the Scandinavian lakes and mountains, this is more than a story of three Swedish women. It is a moving testament of a time forgotten and an epic romance in every sense of the word.

David Malouf's first novel is a rare classic, evoking an Australian boyhood in the forties, the pubs and brothels of the fifties, and the years away treading water overseas. An affectionately outrageous portrait, Johnno brilliantly recreates steamy wartime Brisbane.

Miss Peabody, a lonely spinster in London, writes a fan letter to Diana Hopewell, an Australian novelist. In reply, Hopewell sends installments of her novel-in-progress, the zany adventures of a trio of gently lesbian ladies, a headmistress and two companions, touring Europe with a hapless student. With each mail delivery, Miss Peabody's involvement with the novelist and her characters intensifies until fantasy and reality poignantly merge.

Far in the future, the World Controllers have finally created the ideal society. In laboratories worldwide, genetic science has brought the human race to perfection. From the Alpha-Plus mandarin class to the Epsilon-Minus Semi-Morons, designed to perform menial tasks, man is bred and educated to be blissfully content with his pre-destined role.

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Summering with a fellow schoolboy on a great English estate, Leo, the hero of L. P. Hartley's finest novel, encounters a world of unimagined luxury. But when his friend's beautiful older sister enlists him as the unwitting messenger in her illicit love affair, the aftershocks will be felt for years.

The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters — the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known.

When a man dreams things from the past, you'd think he'd be able to rearrange them in new sequences to please himself. But no. In my dreams, it all happens as it happened, and I see it and be it again and again and the confusion never wears off. People drift to the valley called the Sink out of loneliness, hardship or an affinity with the land. It is an isolated place, with a swamp and an old white bridge and the forest encroaching from all sides. The solitude is tangible. But when a mysterious creature is suddenly on the loose, killing livestock and preying on everyone's deepest fears, four inhabitants find themselves unexpectedly in one another's company - with chilling results.

A confronting, intensely moving story about the intricate bonds of friendship, the shock of a brutal death, the slow torment of grief, and the seeds of happiness.

Tomboy Scout Finch comes of age in a small Alabama town during a crisis in 1935. She admires her father Atticus, how he deals with issues of racism, injustice, intolerance and bigotry, his courage and his love.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about the barbarism of an old world left behind, about the harshness of a new country, and the destiny of those in a land beyond hope who seek to redeem themselves through love

Against the backdrop of Darwin -- that small, tropical hothouse of a port, half-outback, half-oriental, lying at the tip of northern Australia -- a young and newly arrived southerner encounters the 'maestro', a Viennese refugee with a shadowed past.

The Red King controls his forest kingdom not just by force of arms, but by spreading disease. All who question his authority are infected with the deadly red fever. Who would dare oppose such a man? Only a tiny band of entertainers-- a magician, an acrobat, a monkey, and a bear.

The Farseekers continued the saga of Obernewtyn and its band of Misfits, children outcast from society because of their psychic abilities—and the story of their heroic leaders, Elspeth Gordie, who alone carried the fate of the world on her shoulders.

A stunning collection of fourteen short stories, full of provocative ideas and haunting images. Originally published in 1996 and back in print in a a beautifully packaged edition in response to popular demand.

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.

Kimmy encounters two wild children who have grown up in the hills of Australia and tries to protect them from the unknown person who murdered their father.

After discovering valuable relics from a seventeenth-century shipwreck, a sixteen-year-old Australian disappears under mysterious circumstances.

In a world that knows too well the anguish inherent in the clash of old ways and new lifestyles, Margaret Cravenas classic and timeless story of a young man's journey into the Pacific Northwest is as relevant today as ever. Here amid the grandeur of British Columbia stands the village of Kingcome, a place of salmon runs and ancient totems - a village so steeped in time that, according to Kwakiutl legend, it was founded by two brothers left on earth after the great flood. Yet in this Eden of such natural beauty and richness, the old culture of totems and potlaches is under attack - slowly being replaced by a new culture of prefab houses and alcoholism.

The Education of Little Treetells of a boy orphaned very young, who is adopted by his Cherokee grandmother and half-Cherokee grandfather in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee during the Great Depression. "Little Tree" as his grandparents call him is shown how to hunt and survive in the mountains, to respect nature in the Cherokee Way, taking only what is needed, leaving the rest for nature to run its course. But when Little Tree is taken away by whites for schooling, we learn of the cruelty meted out to Indian children in an attempt to assimilate them and of Little Tree's perception of the Anglo world and how it differs from the Cherokee Way.

Extravagant, inventive, emotionally sweeping, this rich and lyrical, heartbreaking and hilarious novel has been widely hailed as a classic. Set on the peaceful island of Cephallonia, just as the horrors of World World II reach its remote shores, "Corelli's Mandolin" is "an exuberant mixture of history and romance, written with a wit that is incandescent".--"Los Angeles Times Book Review". The basis for the major motion picture "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", starring Nicholas Cage. Abridged 3 CDs.

Driving one night along the deserted track that leads to the farm, Miss Hester Harper and Katherine run into a mysterious creature. They dump the body into the farm's deep well but the voice of the injured intruder will not be stilled and the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.

The Harp in the South is a nostalgic and moving portrait of the eventful family life of the Darcys of Number Twelve-and-a-Half Plymouth Street in Surry Hills, a Sydney slum. There grow the bitter-sweet first and last loves of Roie Darcy, who becomes a woman too quickly amid the brothels and the razor gangs, the tenements and the sly-grog shops.

Looking at the views and experiences of three generations of indigenous Australians, this autobiography unearths political and societal issues contained within Australia's indigenous culture.This moving account is a classic of Australian literature that finally frees the tongues of the author’s mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.

Pip is headed for an apprenticeship at the blacksmith's forge. Then an anonymous donor appears, and sends Pip to London to live as a gentleman. Pip is sure he knows the identity of his secret benefactor. He couldn't be more surprised when he finds that he's been mistaken all along.(

Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while the year 1984 has come and gone, Orwell's narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish.

Mary Horton is content with her comfortable, solitary existence . . . until she meets Tim. A beautiful young man with the mind of a child -- a gentle outcast in a cruel, unbending world -- he illuminates the darkness of Mary's days with his boyish innocence. And he will shatter the lonely, middle-aged spinster's respectable, ordered life with a forbidden promise of a very special love.

This is the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of his farm in the Depression, the death of his son in World War II and that of his beloved wife after sixty devoted years - yet he felt that his life was fortunate.

Nora Porteous has spent most of her life waiting to escape. Fleeing from her small-town family and then from her stifling marriage to a mean-spirited husband, Nora arrives finally in London where she creates a new life for herself as a successful dressmaker. Now in her seventies, Nora returns to northern Australia to settle into her childhood home. But Nora has been away a long time, and the people and events of her past are not at all like she remembered them

Raphael Lipkin is a man obsessed. He hears voices. He talks to ghosts. He is spending the summer at the Mountain Clinic, a psychiatric hospital in upstate New York—not as a patient, but as a visiting professional with a secret, personal quest.

Death of a River Guide was called "haunting and ambitious" by The New York Times Book Review and "a remarkable achievement" by The Washington Post Book World. It confirms Richard Flanagan's place among the world's most remarkable voices.Aljaz Cosini is leading a group of tourist on a raft tour down Tasmania's wild Franklin River when his greatest fear is realized -- a tourist falls over-board.

Alternately hilarious and heartwarming, this beloved coming-of-age novel from the Australian outback brings together unforgettable characters with clarity and truth, all told in a unique young woman's voice. My Brilliant Career was made into an award-winning film starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

Cassie has always been told that humans cannot survive outside Parkland, the huge fortress enclosure where humans and other apes are guarded by the mysterious keepers. But Cassie is sure that there must be life beyond the walls when she catches a glimpse of a "wild" boy.

Set in a very distant future where humans has left Earth due to global warming, two humans are sent back to repopulate a newly regenerated Earth. However, Earth is not the same place it was when humans left it generations ago, and when a crash landing damages their computer system, the humans are forced to attempt to survive in this hostile new world which is completely foreign, even though it was the place of birth of their species.

When fifteen-year-old Nathanial moves to a sinister town that has been bruised by an ancient evil, he finds himself one of those Chosen to fight the cycle of darkness.

Rage Winnoway's closest friends have always been her four dogs: Bear, Billy Thunder, Elle, and Mr. Walker. When Rage sets off for the hospital where her mother lies in a coma, the dogs and the neighbor's goat tag along. On the way, they run into the firecat, who talks them into going through a magical gate. And something wonderful happens