Isn't the internet wonderful? On Sunday morning, still thinking about D'Arcy Niland's The Shiralee, I decided to hunt out all his previous novels. He had five in total, all sadly out of print, but thanks to AbeBooks.co.uk I managed to track down four of them (the only one I didn't find was The Apprentices).
And so, trying not to think too much about the cost (£32 in total), I clicked and clicked and clicked and clicked. And within half-an-hour I had ordered the lot from four different booksellers, here in England and Northern Ireland.
Three of them arrived yesterday, the fourth today. Their conditions vary, but they're all clean, readable copies.
- Call Me When the Cross Turns Over (1957); first edition hardcover
- Gold in the Streets (1959); a paperback from 1966
- The Big Smoke (1959); a paperback from 1978
- Dead Men Running (1969); a first edition hardcover
They're all a bit musty smelling, and the pages look ready to fall out of a couple of them, but I love the old-fashioned covers, especially The Big Smoke with its young Aboriginal couple on the front and the hustle and bustle of Sydney behind them.
I'm now toying with the idea of having a D'Arcy Niland reading binge, where I work my way through them in chronological order in the space of a month, or would that be overkill? I'll keep you posted...
