A Fringe of Leaves by Patrick White (Random House, 1976)
An English woman with a complex background (born poor, marries rich) is shipwrecked off the coast of Australia and struggles to survive life with Aborigines and then once again when returned to “civilization.” White in top form — engaging action, complex characters, a vividly sensual description of the physical world coupled with a sensitive evocation of the interior, all written in ambitious, idiosyncratic sentences: a wooly sweater, a dense torte: a real novel.
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