Vortex (Hall novel)

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Vortex
Vortex (Hall novel).jpg
Author Rodney Hall
LanguageEnglish
GenreNovel
Publisher Picador
Publication date
2024
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint
Pages464 pp.
Awards2025 The Age Book of the Year Award – Fiction, winner
ISBN 9781761560767

Vortex is a 2024 novel by the Australian author Rodney Hall originally published by Picador. [1]

Contents

It was the winner of the 2025 The Age Book of the Year Award – Fiction. [2]

Synopsis

The novel follows a cast of characters in Brisbane as the city prepares for the vist of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1954. It is also the coming-of-age story of 16-year-old Compton Gillespie who meets an older German immigrant, Beckmann, who becomes his mentor in life.

Critical reception

James Ley, writing in Australian Book Review noted that this book is "a substantial addition to Hall's already substantial body of work. It is a novel that draws its full measure of vitality from its concerted attempt to recreate a particular time and place. Capacious and richly descriptive, it at times earns the labels loose and baggy; it sets out to cover an extraordinary amount of historical ground." [3]

On The Conversation website, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth found much to admire in the writer's style and prose: "It would be remiss to not mention the beauty of this novel, which emerges at different scales. Most immediately, it is a joy to read the limpid prose that skips about with such mercurial agility. The style is somehow both languid and aphoristic. There is a stinging sharpness in the novel's droll humour that speaks to a certain foundational absurdity." [4]

Awards

Notes

Author's note: For my daughters, Imogen, Delia and Cressida (all unutterably dear to me) who - having constantly stimulated the work with facts and ideas - will each recognize her touch in these pages.

See also

References

  1. "Vortex by Rodney Hall". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  2. 1 2 ""A late-career marvel and an enriching memoir: The Age Book of the Year winners"". The Age, 8 May 2025. Retrieved 9 May 2025.
  3. ""A web of music: A substantial addition to Rodney Hall's oeuvre"". Australian Book Review, September 2024. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  4. ""Elegantly and chaotically, Rodney Hall falls into the vortex of history"". The Conversation, 20 September 2024. Retrieved 13 June 2025.