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A review by scribepub
Ironbark by Jay Carmichael
Jay Carmichael's Ironbark does the extraordinary. It achieves what we readers want from the best of fiction: to tell a story anew, and to capture a world in all its wonder, ugliness, tenderness, and cruelty. This is a novel of coming of age and of grief that astonishes us by its wisdom and by its compassion. It's a work of great and simple beauty, so good it made me jealous. And grateful.
Christos Tsiolkas
Jay Carmichael approaches the world as a poet, from an angle that is all his own. He reveals a hidden, pulsing reality beneath the surface of the everyday.
Miles Allinson, Author of Fever of Animals
In sparse and quiet prose, Jay Carmichael's debut is an enveloping novel about grief, survival, and the futility of finding peace in a place you don't belong.
Shaun Prescott, Author of The Town
[An] accomplished debut … Carmichael has a poetic turn of phrase, and he plays with time, moving the story back and forth … keeping readers on their toes.
Books+Publishing
What Ironbark captures beautifully is the yearning one might feel while growing up unable to understand or express love and attraction freely; a yearning to kiss your best friend, a longing for an end to a loneliness, like cracked land waiting for rain. Ironbark is a still, quiet, compelling novel that reaches an ending both sad and peaceful.
Good Reading
The novel draws deeply on the love of nature that once inspired Carmichael to pursue botanical science … It is almost poetic in its descriptions of a slightly surreal landscape overcome by an oncoming storm that seems to mirror Markus’ silent struggles.
sbs.com.au
[A] subtle, impressionistic novel about adolescent alienation and masculinity in rural Australia … Carmichael paints an exquisitely tender portrait of doomed adolescent longing and love.
The Monthly
Christos Tsiolkas
Jay Carmichael approaches the world as a poet, from an angle that is all his own. He reveals a hidden, pulsing reality beneath the surface of the everyday.
Miles Allinson, Author of Fever of Animals
In sparse and quiet prose, Jay Carmichael's debut is an enveloping novel about grief, survival, and the futility of finding peace in a place you don't belong.
Shaun Prescott, Author of The Town
[An] accomplished debut … Carmichael has a poetic turn of phrase, and he plays with time, moving the story back and forth … keeping readers on their toes.
Books+Publishing
What Ironbark captures beautifully is the yearning one might feel while growing up unable to understand or express love and attraction freely; a yearning to kiss your best friend, a longing for an end to a loneliness, like cracked land waiting for rain. Ironbark is a still, quiet, compelling novel that reaches an ending both sad and peaceful.
Good Reading
The novel draws deeply on the love of nature that once inspired Carmichael to pursue botanical science … It is almost poetic in its descriptions of a slightly surreal landscape overcome by an oncoming storm that seems to mirror Markus’ silent struggles.
sbs.com.au
[A] subtle, impressionistic novel about adolescent alienation and masculinity in rural Australia … Carmichael paints an exquisitely tender portrait of doomed adolescent longing and love.
The Monthly