Submitted by Paul Daley on
My Brother Jack and Clean Straw for Nothing both won the Miles Franklin, but his third in the trilogy – which mirrors the author’s own life amid a changing Australia – is the most elegant and melancholic
I frequently reread the Australian novels of my youth – and few more so than George Johnston’s autobiographical “Meredith Trilogy” of My Brother Jack, Clean Straw for Nothing and A Cartload of Clay.
The first two, which were published in 1964 and 1969 and both won him the Miles Franklin, have certainly eclipsed the third in national memory. But for me A Cartload of Clay – unfinished when Johnston died, 50 years ago this month – emerges with rereading as equally compelling, and as the most stylistically elegant and, without doubt, melancholic, of the trilogy.
Related: My Brother Jack at 50 – the novel of a man whose whole life led up to it
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