Oceana Fine

by Tom Flood

Librarian's Note: an alternate cover edition can be found here.

"Beneath a vast constructed/deconstructed landscape (both human and geographic) lies a labyrinth of disused mineshafts. It is a landscape in which vast saline lakes suddenly appear overnight, in which wheat babies disappear into wheat fields, in which lizards are mistaken for rocks, in which a huge grain silo becomes a cathedral and a gold front-end loader the angel of the apocalypse. It is a place where history repeats/mirrors itself and is populated by doppelganagers and we find ourselves following the after-image of the phosphene as though it was a manuscript hoping for illumination.

The book deals with multiplicity of perception - through history/memory, national mythologies, families and writing (blood and ink), puzzles and their reasons - which might be said to be their execution."

Genres: 20th Century, Australia, Novels

94 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[zed · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story of the Cleaver Family as narrated by one of the three sons James.

A strange book that never held me as much as I expected after a riveting first couple of chapters. At times the writing absolutely enthralled me but the plot less so. Plot? More family history with stream of conscious narrative thrown in. The main focus of attention has Cleaver families past, present, its land and its wealth explained. What is Oceana Fine? It is a high grade of wheat. With that the author’s descriptive prose gave me as the reader a sense of the wide open fields that stretched and the endless blue sky as an entity as big as the universe. But the fantasy that was inserted seemed to meander to the point I was lost in its point as to the plot. I get why this would have won a Miles Franklin Award back in 1990. The judges, I could imagine, would have found the prose a challenge up their alley. Sadly not mine. I wish it was otherwise. Maybe a reread one day would be more rewarding?

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An original family saga, part magical realism, part realist novel set in rural Western Australia over the 1910s to 1980s. The Ceaver family have been successfully growing wheat on the land. There is an old gold mine on the property. There are many finely written descriptive paragraphs about the landscape. There are many characters and a number of short stories of the various characters.

The novel begins with a university student going to work as a sampler on a Western Australia wheat silo. He notices irregularities and sees two dead bodies, then disappears himself. We then are taken into some back stories about how the original farm became established with sisters Grace and Chloe. Rex Ceaver runs the property and has three sons, two having left the farm to pursue their own interests. The Ceavers do not get on with their neighbours, the Mazzones.

I found the novel a little hard to comprehend at times. The plot seems to become secondary to the different events that occur. For example, there are a number of tragedies that occur, with no one being held accountable.

An odd, unique reading experience!

This book won the 1990 Miles Franklin Award.

[Frank Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oceana fine is a fine read. A deserving winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Although he subject matter is not my usual thing. I am more into coast and sea based fiction. I am sailor and hate being away from the sight and smell of the sea. Tom Flood is the land locked Conrad. His descriptions of the sea of grain environment and it's inhabitants explode images in my mind, like a Rimbaud poem or a Dylan song. Characters and environment unequally Australian but not just he big image, the detail is exact and enlightening. You will never the Australian landscape the same way again. I have read the book twice.

[Zoe Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found Oceana Fine a complex and fascinating tale, full of brilliant language and visual descriptions which immediately conjured many images in my mind's eye. The web of history and many lives is intricately woven and I did have to re-read some of it to stay on the journey. Very deserving of The Miles Franklin Award, this book has also won The Australia/Vogel Award and the Vance Palmer prize for fiction. If you want to be swept into another earthy world read Oceana Fine.

[Rhonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got to the end of this without having fully grasped the whole story but more because I was so deeply immersed in the telling that extricating my reader self while still only, I thought, teetering on the edge of achievable illumination was impossible. The only other author who has managed to keep me enmeshed in a similar state of constant sifting and backtracking to keep the unfolding narrative coherent is Gerald Murnane. Both took me on literary journeys and into the spaces between description and inner worlds that were totally engrossing - an effect you want from anything you read whatever the style or theme. I need to read it again listing characters and events and recording page numbers where reference to hallucinations and dreams occur to get more of a grip on the shifts. Offsetting the shifting reality are characters and a setting both powerfully and poetically drawn. It deserved the award, but it not an easy read.

[Jarmby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn’t finish
Life is too short to read books that you can’t comprehend

[Owen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Miles Franklin Award winner? Must not have been a great year. When a book loses a reader on the first page through elementary faults that needs must be corrected prior to publication, if only by a reasonably competent editor, it hardly ranks as a prize winner of any kind. "He licked his cracking lips and turned..." There are two characters so far mentioned in the space of a few lines. Which one is this? Search me... And unfortunately, this is just a start. Maybe there is some unfathomable reason behind this mystery? Hope so.