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The Devil's Eye
The Devil's Eye
The Devil's Eye
Ebook333 pages4 hours

The Devil's Eye

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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A forgotten fragment of Australia's past inspires a powerful new novel ...
It is 1899, and one of the fiercest storms in history is brewing - a hurricane named Mahina. to a remote part of the Queensland coast come the hundreds of sails of the northern pearling fleets, and a native policeman trying to solve a murder. Nearly two thousand men, women and children are gathering around Cape Melville, right in the path of the storm that is about to cause Australia's deadliest natural disaster. Based on real events, this is the story of an unstoppable force of nature and the birth and death of an Australian dream. Praise for Affection: 'a literary tour de force' the Australian 'this is strong stuff. the oppressive humidity of townsville seems almost to drip from the page and lends Affection a hypnotic, dreamlike quality that is hard to shake ... an astonishing novel' Vogue 'a bona fide page-turner' Sydney Morning Herald
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 1, 2010
ISBN9780730401032
The Devil's Eye
Author

Ian Townsend

Ian Townsend is a journalist who worked for many year with ABC Radio National. He has won four national Eureka Prizes for science and medical journalism, and an Australian Human Rights Award for journalism. His first novel, Affection, based on the 1900 plague outbreak, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the Colin Roderick Award, the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, the National Year of Reading, and was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC award. His second novel, The Devil's Eye, was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award. He lives in Brisbane with his wife, Kirsten MacGregor, and their three daughters.

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Rating: 2.857142857142857 out of 5 stars
3/5

7 ratings2 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This novel is somewhat slow and confusing to begin with but patience is rewarded. It just gets better and better as you read on.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    What a disappointment this was.After reading a really positive review and author background in Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper (the story is set in North Queensland in 1899) I added this to my list of 'must reads' and was able to secure a copy with a gift voucher my daughter had given me for Fathers' Day. So the good thing is that I'm not out of pocket!The story is unbelievably slow to get going - I guess the author is trying to give us a feel for the laidback life of turn-of-the-century tropical Queensland. In a book about a storm, it's page 237 before one of the pearling boats' captains comments about his barometer showing a drop in air pressure, and not for a few more pages before the first lightning "flickers".The descriptions of the storm are really quite good, and the desperation and despair of some of the characters is well drawn, but it ends with schmaltzy melancholy. When I first read about "The Devil's Eye" I thought I was going to get something like Simon Winchester's "Krakatoa" - an exciting and totally engrossing story of a major natural disaster. But I didn't.

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The Devil's Eye - Ian Townsend

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