On its first US publication in 1985 a review in Publishers Weekly called it “as static and unchanging as the vistas it reflects upon.” According to Murnane’s publisher’s agent at the time-and to a fair degree in the opinion of Gerald himself-this review did the book no favours and, quote, “killed” its chances there. Even in Australia it has remained a relatively marginal work. The patron he eventually secures puts him up in a grand house out on the plains where not just the patron’s vast library but his wife and daughter, too, offer all kinds of temptations and distractions.Īlthough The Plains has of late garnered some good international attention, it was not always the case. He is seeking support for a filmscript in-progress called, with deadpan irony, The Interior.

He lodges in the hotel on the main street and begins to make submissions to a group of wealthy landowners ( the plainsmen) in the hope of finding a patron. An unnamed narrator arrives in a remote country town familiar to most Australians in outline but in other ways completely strange. The plot of The Plains, to call it that, is simple. First published in 1982, this little book has attained an almost mythical status in the Australian literary landscape-and around Murnane himself has rightly gathered a good deal of writerly mystery. Over his long career he has published novels, short fiction and essays but for many of his followers and fans The Plains remains his most memorable work. Murnane is an Australian writer now in his eighties who, having spent most of his adult life in the Melbourne suburb of Macleod moved in 2009 to Goroke, a small town in Victoria’s Wimmera region. I first read Gerald Murnane’s The Plains in 1985-I was a young man then-and much later, in 2012, I wrote the introduction to the Text Classics re-issue of it. But keep in mind that a slim book can sometimes hold the kinds of riches a big book never could.

It’s a slim book, and you could easily miss it.

Inland by Gerald Murnane