Oceana Fine

Oceana Fine is a 1990 Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Tom Flood.

Synopsis

Finlay Torrent is a university student who goes to work on a Western Australian wheat silo during his summer holidays. Beneath the land lie unused mine shafts, and above, the wheat silos. This novel is part mystery, part psychological thriller and part fantasy as it follows the rises and falls of a farming family.

Awards

Australian/Vogel Literary Award, 1988
Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, 1990
Miles Franklin Literary Award, 1990

Critical reception

Marian Eldridge in The Canberra Times notes that the novel "takes on the soaring characteristics of magic realism as Flood seeks to create myth through evocation of landscape, family histories, legend, and through memory. There is a youthful sexual encounter that, upon its retelling - or reliving - or beginning afresh - has subtly changed as the narrator has changed. Time rolls forward, then, like a change of wind across a wheat field, rolls back again."