SOURCE: "Is There Birth After Death" in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 16, 1993, p. 7.

In the following review of Woman of the Inner Sea, Rifkind focuses on the characterization of the book's heroine.

Australia, like America, was built on the promise of reinvention. Live here, it urged its immigrants, and be someone your old world would never permit. Thomas Keneally's 20th novel, Woman of the Inner Sea, reinvents the theme of reinvention. Set in the heart of Australia, the book asks a universal question. Is it possible to transform yourself after you have suffered the greatest loss you could ever imagine?

Keneally is an impeccable writer with a longstanding international reputation whose books have had settings as various as Nazi-dominated Europe (Schindler's List) and the interior of a hijacked airplane (Flying Hero Class). He has written about his native country many times as well. But, the contemporary Australia...