Country Australia Publisher Constable, London Media type Print Originally published 1953 Genre Fiction Followed by The Sun in Exile | Language English Publication date 1953 Pages 409pp Preceded by Say No to Death | |
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Similar Picnic Races, A bough in hell, The Half‑Burnt Tree, The Sun in Exile, Black Lightning | ||
Southern Steel (1953) is a novel by Australian writer Dymphna Cusack.
Contents
Story outline
Set in Newcastle, New South Wales, during World War II, the story concerns three brothers who all work at varying levels of a local steel maker.
Critical reception
A reviewer in The Sydney Morning Herald, while praising some values in the novel, was rather disappointed, noting: "'...there is an underlying sentimentality, a pausing on non-significant details of domesticity, a shapelessness of structure, an animated discursiveness like the monologue of a long-winded telephone-caller."
On the other hand a reviewer in The Age was impressed: "Miss Cusack has tackled her problem with an energy and courage which go far beyond what began with such elan in Come In Spinner. She controls her squad of characters, keeps them always, or for most of the time, in some sort of significant dramatic relationship with each other. She allows hate, affection, fear, loss to make their full impact. Her story works out as she intended it should and leaves no loose ends, no ambiguities, like those of Come In Spinner, to throw doubt on the total message, if one may call it that."