When Alex Miller and M J Hyland commend a book as they do on this one’s blurb, a new author appears to have it made, but I can’t quite make up my mind about The Vintage and the Gleaning.

The writing is mostly beautiful, the characters credible, and the plot’s intriguing, but there were times when the dialogue was just plain exasperating.

The story takes place in a town in the north-eastern wine-making region of Victoria. The characters all seem to have had a charisma bypass. The central character, Smithy, used to be a shearer but now he’s a labourer who’s taking a break from heavy drinking on doctor’s orders. He’s in poor health but still working in a vineyard, doing demanding physical labour and spending his days with the hard-drinking labourers who form the team. It was their dialogue which tested my patience almost beyond endurance.

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Somehow this book reminded me of Camus’ The Outsider. It’s been 20 years since I read that so I can be challenged on the detail, but The Vintage and the Gleaning is an existentialist quest for meaning and its themes include angst, (Charlotte’s), nihilism (the town’s) and alienation and stoicism (Smithy’s). So despite my doubts, this is a young writer with promise, and definitely one to watch.

To read the rest of this review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/the-vintage-and-the-gleaning-by-jer... ( )