A Kindness Cup
{{Short description|Book by Thea Astley}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}
{{infobox Book |
| name = A Kindness Cup
| title_orig =
| translator =
| image = File:AKindnessCup.jpg
| image_caption = First edition
| author = Thea Astley
| illustrator =
| cover_artist =
| country = Australia
| language = English
| series =
| genre =
| publisher = Nelson Books, Australia
| release_date = 1974
| english_release_date =
| media_type = Print (Paperback)
| pages = 154
| isbn = 0170050157
| preceded_by = The Acolyte
| followed_by = An Item from the Late News
}}
A Kindness Cup (1974) is a novel by Australian author Thea Astley.{{cite web|title= Austlit - A Kindness Cup by Thea Astley |publisher= Austlit|url= https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C127223|accessdate= 12 July 2023}} It won the 1975 The Age Book of the Year Award.{{cite web|title="Book award" |publisher= The Canberra Times, 22 November 1975, p3|url= http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article102187219|accessdate= 12 July 2023}}
Plot summary
The novel is set in a cane-country town on the north Queensland coast. It deals with a wave of racist brutality in the 1860s and the attempts, some twenty or so years later, to rectify the wrongs caused.
Reviews
Malcolm Pettigrove in The Canberra Times was not overly impressed with the book stating: "When Miss Astley drops the prose of the stylist and begins to function simply as a writer with a tale to tell her work becomes stark, tense, and most effectively dramatic."[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article110635126 "God and Mammon in the Cane" by Malcolm Pettigrove, The Canberra Times, 31 January 1975, p9]
Kate Grenville reread the book in 2018, upon it being reissued. She called Astley "ahead of her time" and that "Thirty years beforehand she had known what some of us were only just waking up to: that our own history provides a powerful engine for fiction, and that the voice of fiction can say the unspoken about that history."{{cite web |last1=Grenville |first1=Kate |title=A Kindness Cup by Thea Astley {{!}} An essay by Kate Grenville |url=https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/a-kindness-cup-thea-astley/ |website=Sydney Review of Books |accessdate=20 January 2020 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200120165740/https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/a-kindness-cup-thea-astley/ |archivedate=20 January 2020 |language=en-AU |date=24 May 2018}} Steve Walker, of Stuff wrote "Astley's work is characterised by her irony and her unflinching scrutiny of social injustice. In A Kindness Cup, she was at the top of her impressive form."{{cite news |last1=Walker |first1=Steve |title=Book review: A Kindness Cup, by Thea Astley |url=https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/104230077/book-review-a-kindness-cup-by-thea-astley |accessdate=20 January 2020 |work=Stuff |language=en}}
References
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See also
{{Thea Astley}}
{{The Age Book of the Year Awards – Fiction (or Imaginative Writing) Award}}
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Category:1974 Australian novels