A plane crashes in the vast Northern Territory of Australia, and the only survivors are two children from Charleston, South Carolina, on their way to visit their uncle in Adelaide. Mary and her younger...
A plane crashes in the vast Northern Territory of Australia, and the only survivors are two children from Charleston, South Carolina, on their way to visit their uncle in Adelaide. Mary and her younger...
Due to publisher restrictions, your digital library cannot purchase additional copies of this title. We apologize if there is a long holds list. You may want to see if other editions of this title are available from your digital library instead.
Due to publisher restrictions, your digital library cannot purchase additional copies of this title. We apologize if there is a long holds list. You may want to see if other editions of this title are available from your digital library instead.
Description-
A plane crashes in the vast Northern Territory of Australia, and the only survivors are two children from Charleston, South Carolina, on their way to visit their uncle in Adelaide. Mary and her younger brother, Peter, set out on foot, lost in the vast, hot Australian outback. They are saved by a chance meeting with an unnamed Aboriginal boy on walkabout. He looks after the two strange white children and shows them how to find food and water in the wilderness, and yet, for all that, Mary is filled with distrust. On the surface Walkabout is an adventure story, but darker themes lie beneath. Peter’s innocent friendship with the boy met in the desert throws into relief Mary’s half-adult anxieties, and the book as a whole raises questions about what is lost—and may be saved—when different worlds meet. And in reading Marshall’s extraordinary evocations of the beautiful yet forbidding landscape of the Australian desert, perhaps the most striking presence of all in this small, perfect book, we realize that this tale—a deep yet disturbing story in the spirit of Adalbert Stifter’s Rock Crystal and Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica—is also a reckoning with the mysteriously regenerative powers of death.
About the Author-
James Vance Marshall is the pseudonym of Donald Payne (b. 1924). Only half a dozen Marshall novels have appeared in the last fifty years but they have sold several million copies and been translated into seventeen languages. Two, including Walkabout, have been made into films. Walkabout is a work of collaboration between Donald Payne and the Australian James Vance Marshall (1887–1964). Marshall spent much of his life in the outback of Australia—a part of the world he knew intimately and loved deeply. He wrote a series of articles about the people, flora, and fauna of the outback, and with his permission, Payne used these articles as background for their novel Walkabout. Subsequently, and with the consent of Marshall’s son, Payne continued to publish under the pseudonym Marshall; his most recent book is Stories from the Billabong (2008), a collection of Aboriginal legends retold as stories for children. Lee Siegel is the author of four books, including Against the Machine: How the Web Is Reshaping Culture and Commerce—and Why It Matters and Are You Serious: How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly. He has written essays and reviews for many publications, including Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Times. In 2002, he received the National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism.
Reviews-
Elizabeth Janeway, The New York Times
"[Walkabout] is pared down to its bare bones, like the ancient life in the desert, but if it is simple, it is not oversimplified, and it does not hesitate to face, honestly and unsentimentally, the questions it raises. . . . There will be many who not only enjoy it, but long remember it."
Booklist
An "Australian-outback classic"
New Statesman (London)
"Very tender, very touching, and sketched out with no sign of strain. The descriptions of the Australian bush are first-rate."
Times Literary Supplement (London)
"A deeply-felt book, filled with information about desert flora and fauna."
Title Information+
Publisher
New York Review Books
OverDrive Read
Release date:
EPUB eBook
Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
A portion of your purchase goes to support your digital library.
Sorry, no retailers are currently available for this title. Please check back later.
| Sign In
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
Renewing this title won't extend your lending period. Instead, it will let you borrow the title again immediately after your first lending period expires.
You can't renew this title because there are holds on it. However, you can join the holds list and be notified when it becomes available for you to borrow again.