SOURCE: "Perspectives on Thomas Keneally," in Southerly, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1968, pp. 54-67.

In the following essay, Cantrell traces the development of Keneally's novels through Bring Larks and Heroes.

Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney in 1935. He has written two plays and three novels, and though his work has usually been favorably received, it is only with his latest novel, Bring Larks and Heroes (1967), that he has suddenly been acclaimed as the author of the "long-sought Great Australian Novel". His first book, The Place at Whitton (1964), Mr. Keneally is reported as having "intended … as a pure thriller but (he) feels now that the book couldn't make up its mind what to be". It reveals the interest in Catholicism that is to persist in the later novels (Mr. Keneally studied for the priesthood to within months of taking orders) and it seems not unfair to suggest that in The Place at...