Their Brilliant Careers is a 2016 short story collection by the Australian author Ryan O'Neill.[1]

It was the winner of the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Awards for Fiction.[2]

Synopsis

The collection consists of 15 short stories, all published here for the first time, each of which is a biography of a different fictional Australian writer.

Contents

  • "Rand Washington (1919-2000)"
  • "Matilda Young (1899-2000)"
  • "Arthur Ruhtra (1940-1981)"
  • "Addison Tiller (1874-1929)"
  • "Robert Bush (1941-1990)"
  • "Dame Claudia Gunn (1885-1975)"
  • "Francis X McVeigh (1900-1948?)"
  • "Rachel Deverall (1969-2016)"
  • "Catherine Swan (1921-1970)"
  • "Frederick Stratford (1880-1933)"
  • "Edward Gayle (1928-2008)"
  • "Vivian Darkbloom (1901-1976)"
  • "Helen Harkaway (1940-1993)"
  • "Donald Chapman (1903?-1937?)"
  • "Stephen Pennington (1935-2009)"

Notes

  • Dedication: "For my late wife, Rachel"
  • The title is inspired by Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career.

Critical reception

Writing in Australian Book Review critic David Wright described the book as "a chocolate box of parodic Aussie portraits: some are bitter, some have gooey sentimental hearts, and some are just plain nuts." He went on to note that the book "brims with crackerjack wit" and that it "is interconnected in a way that tests believability, but so too are the real events into which its web entwines."[3]

While reviewing each of the books on the short list for the 2017 Miles Franklin Award writer Jen Webb pondered how close the author sails "to the wind of defamation", before commenting: "Like a supremely confident stand-up comic, he pushes the joke from initial humour through infuriating repetition to helpless laughter...Literary giant after literary giant, publisher after publisher, is kneecapped by these excoriating and hilarious accounts of the players, their work, and the impossibly interwoven lives they lead."[4]

Awards

Publishing history

After the novel's initial publication in Australia by Black Inc, it was reprinted in the UK by Lightning Books in 2018.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Their Brilliant Careers by Ryan O'Neill". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  2. ^ a b ""Prime Minister's Literary Awards - Shortlist and winners: 2021-2008"". Creative Australia. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  3. ^ ""Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers by Ryan O'Neill"". Australian Book Review, August 2016. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  4. ^ ""Heart-warming, biting, tragic, funny: the Miles Franklin shortlist will move you"". The Conversation, 6 September 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  5. ^ "Love, death, power and ego permeate 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist". Perpetual. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  6. ^ "Their Brilliant Careers by Ryan O'Neill — Awards". Austlit. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  7. ^ "Their Brilliant Careers by Ryan O'Neill". Austlit. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
Allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Their_Brilliant_Careers
No tags for this post.