YA Fiction

A wedding ring, a hairbrush and a swallow’s nest

by Lisa Gorton •

April 2009, no. 310

The Nest by Paul Jennings

Penguin, $19.95 pb, 264 pp

YA Fiction

A wedding ring, a hairbrush and a swallow’s nest

by Lisa Gorton •

April 2009, no. 310

Early winter: Robin is living with his father in the mountains. Where is his mother and why did she leave? This mystery drives the conflict between Robin and his father, who won’t tell Robin what he knows. The Nest is a family drama with a Gothic mystery at its heart. The tension between these elements – the unusual structure that Jennings has created to hold them together – gives the novel an odd power and surprising range. But The Nest derives much of its appeal from its account of daily life in the Australian snowfields, a setting with its own practical magic. The characters move from cosy rooms into wild and dangerous country. This contrast suggests the literary styles that Jennings brings together here: The Nest is a realist novel with Romantic images and themes.

Lisa Gorton

Lisa Gorton, who lives in Melbourne, is a poet, novelist, and critic, and a former Poetry Editor of ABR. She studied at the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford. A Rhodes Scholar, she completed a Masters in Renaissance Literature and a Doctorate on John Donne at Oxford University, and was awarded the John Donne Society Award for Distinguished Publication in Donne Studies. Her first poetry collection, Press Release (2007), won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry. She has also been awarded the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. A second poetry collection followed in 2013: Hotel Hyperion (also Giramondo). Lisa has also written a children’s novel, Cloudland (2008). Her novel The Life of Houses (2015) shared the 2016 Prime Minister’s Award for fiction. She is the editor of The Best Australian Poems 2013 (Black Inc.).