The Grisly Wife

The Grisly Wife is a 1993 Miles Franklin literary award-winning novel by the Australian author Rodney Hall.

The Miles Franklin Award Judges' Report called it "a novel with a rather surprising vision."

This novel is the second book in The Yandilli Trilogy (also referred to as A Dream More Luminous Than Love), though the third to be published, following the novels Captivity Captive in 1988, and The Second Bridegroom in 1991.

Synopsis
Catherine Byrne marries self-proclaimed prophet Muley Moloch and leaves 19th-century England with him and his eight female disciples to search for paradise on earth in the wilds of Australia. But things do not work out as planned, as a shipwreck, illness and death cause the small group to fracture.

Critical reception
Jeff Doyle in The Canberra Times noted: "Hall is not so basic nor simplistic to provide a kind of allegorical reading of these issues under his stories. No, such a naive, perhaps crassly simple, view is the job of a reviewer bent on hinting at the multiple ideas running through the book."

Awards

 * Miles Franklin Literary Award, 1994: winner
 * NBC Banjo Awards, NBC Banjo Award for Fiction, 1994: shortlisted