Holden's Performance A Novel [Paperback]

Holden's Performanceby award-winning author Murray Bail is the story of Holden Shadbolt, a guileless and matter-of-fact innocent as he passes through the cities and landscape of Australia. His reassuring silent presence and photographic memory make him useful to men of power and women who appear to need his protection. He is surrounded by larger than life figures whose exploits and adventures Holden followsex-Corporal Frank 'Bloodnut' McBee, the scrap dealer who woos his mother; his uncle Vern, a shortsighted proofreader who likes facts and eating newspaper with is breakfast cereal; and the crippled artist Harriet, whose twists and curves appeal to Holden as he holds to his own unswervingly straight lines.Murray Bail's fiction, which includesEucalyptus, Homesickness, The Drover's Wife and other StoriesandCamouflage,has received many major awards, among them the Miles Franklin Award in Australia and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He is also the author of the non-fiction works,Ian FairweatherandLonghand: A Writer's Notebook.He lives in Sydney.

A work of dazzling imagination. Independent

Holden's Performanceis a triumph. The Australian

Bail is a writer of great talent and extraordinary concentration. Melbourne Age

Astonishing in its range . . . superbly written, much of it is like the click of a camera shutter in its sharpness and impassivity . . . extraordinarily wide-ranging and inventive. Times on Sunday