Down under, between destinations

[Extract] In 1966, Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey published The Tyranny of Distance, a work that described how Australia’s history had been shaped by its geographical distance from the centers of Western culture. A new novel by Michelle de Kretser, The Life to Come, reimagines this dilemma in the second decade of the 21st century as one not of distance but of propinquity. Globalization has made Australia a place where domestic comforts provide as much alienation as they do ease, and where the very idea of domesticity finds itself disturbingly vulnerable to unsettling dislocations. Moving between Australia, Europe, and Asia, and with a global narrative viewpoint that follows the intertwined destinies of several characters across time and space, The Life to Come highlights displacement in both its style and its content.