''Just Relations'' is a

Miles Franklin Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879– ...

-winning novel by Australian author Rodney Hall. The novel won the

, the FAW ANA Literature Award, and the

FAW Barbara Ramsden Award The Barbara Ramsden Award was administered by Fellowship of Australian Writers and awarded annually to an author and editor in recognition of the efforts of both parties to produce a quality fiction or non-fiction book. The winners receive a mem ...

for the Book of the Year, in 1982.

Abstract

"The back-of-beyond New South Wales hamlet of Whitey's Fall is the home of a secret, solitary boy seeking love, two young men who crave the same woman, and an earnest, bumbling, and provocative government man."

Critical reception

Marion Halligan Marion Mildred Halligan AM (born 1940) is an Australian writer and novelist. She was born and educated in Newcastle, New South Wales, and worked as a school teacher and journalist before publishing her first short stories. Halligan has served a ...

, writing in ''

The Canberra Times ''The Canberra Times'' is a daily newspaper in Canberra, Australia, which is published by Australian Community Media. It was founded in 1926, and has changed ownership and format several times. History ''The Canberra Times'' was launched in ...

'' noted that this novel was "the most exciting new book I have read in a long time." She then continued: "It is impossible to categorise such a book. It's farce, it's comedy, it's tragedy; it's grotesque and tender and dreadful. And full of wisdom; little essential drops of it well out of the narrative from time to time."

Publishing history

After the novel's initial publication by

Penguin Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapt ...

in 1982, it was then published as follows: *

Viking Press Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquir ...

1983, USA * Allen Lane 1983, UK *

Simon and Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...

1989, USA *

Faber & Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...

1990, UK *

Picador A ''picador'' (; pl. ''picadores'') is one of the pair of horse-mounted bullfighters in a Spanish-style bullfight that jab the bull with a lance. They perform in the ''tercio de varas'', which is the first of the three stages in a stylized bullf ...

2000, Australia

References

Middlemiss.org
1982 Australian novels Miles Franklin Award-winning works {{1980s-novel-stub

Abstract

Critical reception

Publishing history

See also

References