Pobby and Dingan

Plot introduction

Reception

• According to the complete review reviews were "generally very positive, with some extremely impressed".
• Jeff Giles in the New York Times Book Review is full in his praise "Pobby and Dingan is an enormously touching, imaginative and unexpected novel that just glows in your hands... What's so extraordinary about Rice's novel is how unpredictable it is, how effortlessly it mingles whimsy and gravitas, how its plot races ahead long after you figured it would run out of gas."
• Lydia Millet in The Washington Post writes "At once delicate and down-to-earth, melancholy and coarse, Pobby and Dingan is a disarmingly modest and carefully rendered debut... Don't let the slimness of the volume dissuade you; the story has a quiet strength that makes it memorable."
• Robert McCrum in The Observer writes "Every character in this pocket masterpiece is speaking Australian with a vengeance. The way in which the rhythms of everyday speech are used to narrate this spellbinding and suggestive fable is just one of its exceptional qualities."