Bettany's Book

Bettany's Book is a 2000 novel by the Australian author Thomas Keneally.^[1]

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.

Writing in The Daily Mail (UK) reviewer Elizabeth Buchan noted: "Rich, measured and reflective, Bettany's Book requires time and concentration - but it is worth it."^[2]

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."^[3]

After the novel's initial publication in Australia, UK and USA by Doubleday in 2000,^[1] it was reprinted as follows:

• Sceptre, UK, 2000 and 2001^[4]
• Doubleday, Australia, 2002^[5]

• Dedication: To Rory Coverdale, fresh to Australia and the world.
• The author was interviewed by Dina Rabinovitch of The Independent (UK) about the novel.^[6]

• 2000 in Australian literature