Novel
Redheap
Norman Lindsay · 1930
Synopsis
In a small town in Victoria, in the 1890s, Robert Piper, the draper's son, is nineteen and is involved with the publican's daughter and with the pastor's daughter. His mother hires a schoolmaster to keep him in check, Mr Bandparts, a reformed drunkard, who ends up drinking beer with him and courting the barmaid of the Royal Hotel. Around them, his brother Henry waits to take over the business, his sister Hetty watches over the family's morals, Ethel hides her seductions behind her shyness, and the grandfather who made the fortune is despised.
Context
The novel appeared in 1930 from Faber and Faber, and under the title Every Mother's Son in the United Kingdom and the United States, according to the Creswick museum. The imaginary town disguises Creswick, where the author had grown up, and several characters came from real inhabitants; the author also drew on his brother Lionel's diary, which set him at odds with his brothers. Victorians complained to the police, and the book was banned as early as 1930, the first novel in the country to suffer this fate; the ban was not lifted until 1958. The first part of a trilogy, it was adapted for television by the ABC in 1972.
Who it is for
A comedy of manners in English, a satire of provincial life rather than a novel of adolescence; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
The first Australian novel banned in its own country, it remained prohibited for twenty-eight years.
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