Thomas Keneally is frequently spoken of as "the other" major Australian novelist. But in the present instance comparison is unfair. "Season in Purgatory" … is entertainment with only intermittent and infelicitous pretensions to anything more. (p. 132)

[One] asks oneself just why Mr. Keneally, whose previous novels show an oddly costive but unmistakable stylishness and adultness, should turn out this purple tripe. He is obsessed by the sensual texture of history, by the immediate impress of political and military drama on the nerve and marrow of those involved. Like Patrick White, this novelist out of a new, almost "nonhistorical" continent is immersing himself in the dense, equivocal European past. His immediately preceding book, "Gossip from the Forest," a highly schematic, allegorized portrayal of the Compiègne armistice talks of 1918, was an interesting failure. "Season in Purgatory" is a boring success. (p. 134)

George Steiner, in The New Yorker (© 1977 by The New...