Winner of a Best Young Australian Novelist Award from the Sydney Morning Herald 2006; featured in the Books Alive Great Read Guide 2006.
Rhubarb has received rave reviews across Australia for its quirky, touching and humorous portrayal of people struggling to connect in the modern world.
A poignant and tender sort-of-love story about two damaged people tenuously connecting. Eleanor is blind and lives with her reclusive mother. Ewan is a cello player with agoraphobia. She is drawn to him through his music but cannot understand the difficulty he faces in forming a friendship. He does not understand her past nor the impact his music has on her. Amidst the heat of a Fremantle summer they stumble towards each other. Sad, funny and affecting, and peopled with characters that live and breathe, Rhubarb is the first novel from a young writer with an astonishing talent. With his sublime and playful use of language and his uncanny ability to reveal the human condition in all its vulnerability and fragility, Craig Silvey has created an extraordinary contemporary Australian story.
"The novel has the charm of early work such as Gustave Flaubert's Novembre and Jack Kerouac's The Subterranean." - Weekend Australian
"The playful words and images in this book are a sheer joy. More please." - Sydney Morning Herald
