Peter Ward’s stunningly inadequate review of Passenger in the Weekend Australian has at least the virtue that it compels a reply. The first came from Keneally himself, who finished his account of the novel’s favourable reception in other English-speaking countries by saying ‘I just don’t want people to avoid Passenger because of any antipodean twitches. So don’t miss it. Believe me.’

To respond to the author’s impious self-confidence with any kind of literal-minded censure would be to miss the point. Keneally is a literary larrikin. Like Halloran in Bring Larks and Heroes, Jimmy Blacksmith, and ‘I’, the foetus-narrator in Passenger, he will hammer away at the indifferent world until finally it reacts. (‘Once a Catholic …’ is a motto Keneally might well consider for his coat of arms.)