The first novel to be nominated for both Australia's leading SF Prize (the Aurealis, which it won) and for its leading literary award (the Miles Franklin), From the Wreck is a novel of strange and wonderful imagination, imbued with beauty and feeling, existential loneliness and a deep awareness of the interdependence of all life.
'This strange story of love and loneliness, which explores how we all long to belong, is simply wonderful.' Daily Mail
When, in 1859, George Hills is pulled from the wreck of the steamship Admella, he carries with him the uneasy memory of a fellow survivor: someone else - or something else - kept him warm as he lay dying, half-submerged in the freezing Southern Ocean, kept him bound to life.
As George adapts to his life back on land, he can't quite escape the feeling that he wasn't alone when he emerged from the ocean that day, that a familiar presence has been watching him ever since. What the creature might want from him - his life? His first-born? Simply to return to its home? - will pursue him, and call him back to the water, where it all began.
'[A] singular novel . . . [From the Wreck] movingly explores themes of loss, loneliness and guilt.' Guardian
'An absorbing, disturbing read, full of deep currents and lurking fears.' Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of The Children of Time
Something approaching an old-fashioned historical yarn spliced with Cronenbergian body horror . . . The commonplace rubbing shoulders with the supernatural adds to the book's considerations of mourning and absence a vivid hue . . . a genuine tension and sense of dread.
