SOURCE: Lawson, Neroli. “Face Values.” New Statesman and Society 120, no. 4055 (18 October 1991): 36.

In the following review, Lawson criticizes Turning Back the Sun, calling the work “shallow” and “crude.”

If you are fond of Colin Thubron, do not spoil it by reading this novel [Turning Back the Sun]. It has some dense, elliptical prose and some fertile imagery. But these fine patches only show up the rest as pedestrian and obvious.

The story concerns white men's ignorance and hostility, out in frontier country, towards native blacks. Rayner, our white hero, espouses the black cause. The moral crisis is illustrated by having Rayner and his childhood friend act out opposing parts. Thubron is looking at questions of the city versus the wilderness, and of the savage versus the civilised ethos. His savages, black and earth-connected, feel like Australian aboriginals. His terrain is lofty and unforgiving, like the Silk Road of China...