The Slow Natives

The Slow Natives (1965) is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley.

It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1965, the second of her record number of four wins.

Plot summary
Set in sub-tropical Queensland, the novel examines the relationships between suburban Brisbanites including a priest, nuns and a couple and their teenage son.

Style and themes
The novel represents a departure for Astley from her earlier novels in that rather than focusing on one or two particular characters, she moves "freely among a group, switching attention omnisciently from one to another. Almost all the characters suffer from some form of spiritual aridity; in Astley's vision, there often seems nothing between repression, and empty or even corrupt sexuality".

Astley's characters in this novel often only realise their failings after disaster has beset them. The father, for example, only realises after his teenage son has lost his leg in a "joy-riding accident", that he has "failed to give his son 'the sort of discipline ... [he] wanted more than anything in the world'."

Critical reception
Ruth Lesley, in The Canberra Times noted: "She works on two levels, that of the everyday world of meals, work, parties and squabbles, which she describes with wit and penetration, and that of the lonely inner world of each of her characters. There is very little action as such, but her analysis of the characters and the subtleties of their relationships makes very interesting reading."

Awards

 * Miles Franklin Award, 1965
 * Melbourne Mooma Festival Award, 1965