Bettany's Book

Bettany's Book is a 2000 novel by the Australian author Thomas Keneally.

Synopsis

Prim and Dimp Bettany are sisters whose parents were killed in a car accident. Dimp becomes rather famous as a filmmaker while Prim escapes Australia for Sudan to work for Austfam, as an aid worker. The sisters are drawn back together when Dimp is given a copy of an ancestor's journal of 19th-century frontier Tasmania.

Critical reception

Writing in The Daily Mail reviewer Elizabeth Buchan noted: "Rich, measured and reflective, Bettany's Book requires time and concentration - but it is worth it."
A critic in The Guardian commented: "The first thing to be said about Thomas Keneally's new novel, Bettany's Book - indeed, the first thing to be said about almost any Keneally novel - is that it is very long. Keneally can always be depended upon: wherever and whenever they are set, his books are reassuringly thick and dense. There is nothing dilletantish, frittering or minor about them."

Publishing history

After the novel's initial publication in Australia, UK and USA by Doubleday in 2000, it was reprinted as follows:

Sceptre, UK, 2000 and 2001
Doubleday, Australia, 2002