Drylands

In the dying town of Drylands, Janet Deakin sells papers to lonely locals.

At night, in her flat above the newsagency, she attempts to write a novel for a world in which no one reads―‘full of people, she envisaged, glaring at a screen that glared glassily back’. 

Drylands is the story of the townsfolk’s harsh, violent lives.

 Trenchant and brilliant, Thea Astley’s final novel is a dark portrait of outback Australia in decline.