The World Beneath
a novel
Cate Kennedy
‘The World Beneath is the first novel by Cate Kennedy, often cited as Australia’s queen of the short story. In the longer format Kennedy doesn’t disappoint, delivering her characters with unnerving accuracy — the disdain of a teenager, the searing frustration of a man whose life has passed him by — while the Tasmanian wilderness looms as vividly as anyone else on the page.’
Time Out Sydney
Once, Rich and Sandy were environmental activists, part of a world-famous blockade in Tasmania to save the wilderness. Now, twenty-five years later, they have both settled into the uncomfortable compromises of middle age — although they’ve gone about it in very different ways. The only thing they have in common these days is their fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie.
When Rich decides to take Sophie, whom he hardly knows, on a trek into the Tasmanian wilderness, his overconfidence and her growing disillusion with him set off a chain of events that no one could have predicted. Instead of respect, Rich finds antagonism in his relationship with Sophie; and in the vast landscape he once felt an affinity with, he encounters nothing but disorientation and fear.
Ultimately, all three characters will learn that if they are to survive, each must traverse not only the secret territories that lie between them but also those within themselves.
Reviews
‘Cate Kennedy is a brilliant storyteller. She possesses the power to find in ordinary lives their poetic and mythic dimensions and to remind us that vernacular speech and everyday experiences betoken the tender mysteries that lie beneath family life.’
Gail Jones
‘The World Beneath is pitch perfect, an exquisite story of an estranged middle-aged couple and their alluring, disenchanted daughter, of a family in wilderness. Cate Kennedy inhabits these characters so sensually and truly, exploring souls that feel like our own. If she doesn’t touch your heart, it may be you don’t have one.’
David Francis, author of Stray Dog Winter
» All reviews for this title‘The vast terrain of relationships and family ties proves to be as much uncharted territory as the Tasmanian wilderness that Cate Kennedy describes with such stunning clarity. Here, ordinary lives are caught in a compelling story that grips tight until its exhilarating end. She exposes the perilous gap between ideal and delusion, between noble aspiration and mere ambition, against a mighty landscape that remains unpredictable despite the reverence it receives. I read the final third with a sense of thrilling fear, for the characters’ plights, for the hazards created by both their actual and emotional insecurity.'
Debra Adelaide, author of The Household Guide to Dying
