Nine-year-old Henry Page is a club-footed, deep-thinking loner, spending his summer holidays reading, roaming the melting streets of his suburb, playing with his best friend Janice and her younger brother and sister. Then one day Janice asks Henry to spend the day at the beach with them. He declines, a decision that will stay with him forever.
Time's Long Ruin is based loosely on the disappearance of the Beaumont children from Glenelg beach on Australia Day, 1966. It is a novel about friendship, love and loss; a story about those left behind, and how they carry on: the searching, the disappointments, the plans and dreams that are only ever put on hold.
Praise for Time's Long Ruin:
'Stephen Orr is the custodian and celebrant of Adelaide's darkest mysteries - the great unsolved Somerton Man case, hidden pedophilia, The Don's business dealings, three children lost forever at the beach and everything that the ominous word "Snowtown" can connote. In
Time's Long Ruin he has conjured up the suburban claustrophobia of the Fifties and added to it streaks of these darker pigments. His Thomas Street, Croydon - particularly on hot days, when no one has enough to do and everyone gets on each other's nerves - is Adelaide's very distinctive version of Winton's Cloudstreet, Malouf's Edmondstone Street and White's Sarsaparilla; but the quality and vividness of Orr's evocation of those stultifying times ensures he can hold his head high in such illustrious company.
Time's Long Ruin is a compelling page-turner.' - Richard Walsh
'... eloquent, unusual, bold but responsible retelling of a veritable urban nightmare that still haunts the Australian imagination.' - Peter Pierce,
Sydney Morning Herald
'Orr’s depiction of childhood in 1960s Australian suburbia, a place where ‘kids were always off somewhere’, is astonishingly vivid. Through profuse, descriptive detail he subtly evokes the innocence and simplicity of that time, while simultaneously suggesting menace; it is Orr’s cleaving of the ordinary to the unspeakable that gives the novel its potency and brings it within the margins of the Australian Gothic … disturbingly poignant.' – Hannah Kent,
The Big Issue
Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award
Winner, Unpublished manuscript award, Adelaide Festival awards for literature
South Australian winner, 2012 National Year of Reading awards
Read the speech Stephen made when accepting the National Year of Reading award
Stephen Orr is an award-winning literary author, and has twice been longlisted for the Miles Franklin. He contributes essays and features to several magazines, journals and newspapers. He lives in Adelaide.
