The Deep Field: A Novel

by James Bradley

One of Australia's "most ambitious and talented younger writers" (Sydney Morning Herald), delivers a gripping novel about a young woman's emotional awakening against the backdrop of global conflict and political chaosJames Bradley exploded onto the literary landscape in 1999 with the publication of his award-winning debut novel, Wrack. With his new novel, The Deep Field, Bradley demonstrates that he deserves the praise of reviewers who have compared him to Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie.

The Deep Field introduces us to a brilliant young photographer named Anna Frazier, whose latest project is a photographic study of shell fossils called ammonites. At a museum in Sydney she meets Seth La Marque, a blind paleontologist who senses that Anna is hiding something from her past that has wounded her and made her shut down her emotions. Slowly, as they become friends and then lovers, Anna reveals her tumultuous and obsessive love affair with a Hong Kong-based financier and the painful ing that left her drained and empty. At the same time, her twin brother, Daniel, disappeared in China during a period of incredible upheaval and chaos, and Anna feels her life is on hold until she can find him. Set just over a decade from now, The Deep Field portrays a world very much like the present, yet subtly and unsettlingly different. At once steely and compassionate, it weaves elements of photography, science, and philosophy into a meditation on love, time, and loss.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James is the author of five novels: the critically acclaimed climate change narratives, Ghost Species (Hamish Hamilton 2020) and Clade (Hamish Hamilton 2015); The Resurrectionist (Picador 2006), which explores the murky world of underground anatomists in Victorian England and was featured as one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads in 2008; The Deep Field (Sceptre 1999), which is set in the near future and tells the story of a love affair between a photographer and a blind palaeontologist; and Wrack (Vintage 1997) about the search for a semi-mythical Portuguese wreck. He has also written The Change Trilogy for young adults. a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and edited two anthologies, The Penguin Book of the Ocean and Blur, a collection of stories by young Australian writers. His first book of non-fiction, Deep Water: the World in the Ocean will be published in 2024.

Twice one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists, his books have won The Age Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Fellowship of Australian Writers Literature Award and the Kathleen Mitchell Award, and have been shortlisted for awards such as the Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the NSW Premier's Christina Stead Award for Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction and the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and have been widely translated. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and collections, including Best Australian Stories, Best Australian Fantasy and Horror and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories, and has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for Best Science Fiction Short Story and Best Horror Short Story.

As well as writing fiction and poetry, James writes and reviews for a wide range of Australian and international newspapers and magazines. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Australia's Critic of the year.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masterful handling of the different threads of this story - of state oppression, deep time, space exploration, art, our senses - in a package that has science fiction elements but never feels like 'just' a sci fi novel. I don't know how he did it, but Bradley creates a feeling of otherworldliness, of terrible things happening just off-screen, off hope and strangeness and even doom, that never appear in the narrative itself.

[Kelly Munro]

love is not completeness, it is perpetual incompleteness towards a boundary that is always in view but never attainable. it is the desire for immersion, for the oneness we can never have, a reaction against the very nature of what we are, our aloneness

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting the assumptions which were created in this book and how focused it was on the characters. I think in the end, the futuristic side wasn't terribly relevant, but that didn't really matter as it was an enjoyable read with some wonderful characters!

[Bryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing book, l like the characters perceptions coming to them through their skills or professions and then applied to life. Good depth of character making many of the proponents interesting.

The shifting of timelines is not always smooth and the lack of “quotation” marks requires extra commitment for compression.

The plot is more than one so whilst finding out what happens to Daniel is expedient I find the delving into the characters more interesting and satisfying.

This may well be a literature style novel as in the first half I was looking up words in a dictionary and found one word in particular was somewhat transient in meaning. Guess which one?

[Alan Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an engrossing tale even if I couldn’t understand how some of it fitted.
There are several threads running through it: a paleontology thread, including a blind paleontologist ….a missing brother ….a romance ….heartbreak ….a crackdown on dissidents in China …an economic collapse with inevitable consequences for the poor and homeless people in Sydney…. a space flight to Mars…
The story is set somewhere in the near future. I am not sure why this had to be so.
I think I missed some of the connections but all that aside I really enjoyed it.

[Memphis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quotation marks were invented for a reason; books were invented to communicate to others. It is arrogant on the part of the writer to assume that HIS version of brilliance doesn't need punctuation. If you're going to jettison quotation marks, then why use periods or even paragraphs if he wanted to transcend modern prose?

Tedious style, peppered with enough post-apocalyptic tropes to cause some reviewers to call this book sci fi.

Bleargh.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost put this book away because the first half had some pretty flowery prose which I was struggling to connect to anything. The second half focussed more on storyline and characters and I enjoyed it much more.

[Michael Reffold · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing was quite good but the plot wasn't.

[Cori Dulmage · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just wasn’t in the mood

[Kelv · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat dystopian book which is written elegantly. The plot / story was, for me, slow and uninteresting. Anna came across as being lost with little direction. Seth was smart, tough and perhaps lacking ?empathy / emotion. Sonja's death was a poor decision and is a throw away plot changer (which is needed to make the ending work). The forwards / backwards in time seemed unnesscary and a distraction.

I did enjoy the style of writing and story cohesion - i think if a new book had a connection to real dates and a good story it would sell like hot cakes (that simple ;) ).

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I happened to pick up this book in a second-hand bookstore, and I'm so glad that I did. It's captivating. The beautiful prose creates a dreamy atmosphere that lingered with me long after I had finished the book.
The world that Bradley has created is fascinating, and Anna's relationships with other characters are so well drawn. The themes of loss, time and change are handled so realistically. It's a shame that this book hasn't received more attention because I couldn't stop thinking about it after I had finished reading it. A truly haunting read.