Home | Books By Year | Books from 1957
Outbreak of Love (novel)
Buy Outbreak of Love (novel) now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the book. And once you've experienced the book, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Outbreak of Love' (1957) is a novel by Australian writer Martin Boyd. It is the third in the author's "Langton Tetralogy" (which comprises 'The Cardboard Crown', 'A Difficult Young Man', 'Outbreak of Love' and 'When Blackbirds Sing').
Story outline
The novel is concerned with the marriage of Diana and Wolfie von Flugel in the years leading up to World War I. After Diana damages a tooth on a hard piece of toast she travels to Melbourne to have it repaired. There, on Collins Street, she meets Russell Lockwood, a man from her childhood who has long admired her.
Critical reception
In her essay "Much Else in Boyd : The Relationship between Martin Boyd's Nonfiction Work and his Later Novels" in 'Southerly' magazine in 1978, Susan McKernan notes that Boyd's novels "have been regarded as shrewd social commentaries, or witty novelettes rather than novels of argument. They appear to concentrate on the niceties and absurdities of social exchange rather than the more basic and universal problems of human life. Boyd's role has often been seen as that of the social chronicler, not the committed creative artist." In particular "'Outbreak of Love' documents the increasing influence of the intellectual whose knowledge is based on a denial of the spiritual life and of those who enjoy power for its own sake. They are more widespread than the Cousin Hettys, Sarahs, and Bert Craigs of the earlier novels. Boyd provides us with a whole society dominated by the puritanical principles he despises."[http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/0?nodeType=fullText&ftdir=7425720139388105297-39639&ftaid=C237614 Austlit - "Much Else in Boyd The Relationship between Martin Boyds Nonfiction Work and his Later Novels" by Susan McKernan, 'Southerly' vol. 38 no. 3, September 1978]
Television adaptation
An television adaptation of this novel was released in Australia in 1981. It consisted of three one-hour episodes and was written by Howard Griffiths, directed by Oscar Whitbread, and featured Rowena Wallace, Tony Bonner and Sigrid Thornton.[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138687/ IMDB - 'Outbreak of Love']
See also
* 1957 in Australian literature
Notes
The novel was re-issued in 2013 as a part of the Text Publishing Text Classics series, with an introduction by Chris Womersley.[https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/outbreak-of-love Text Classics - 'Outbreak of Love' by Martin Boyd]
References
Category:Novels by Martin Boyd
Category:1957 novels
Category:Novels set in Melbourne
Buy Outbreak of Love (novel) now from Amazon
<-- Return to books from 1957