Leavers, loners and little ones lost : an exploration of Australian suburban fiction

"... in Australian fiction, when writers engage with suburban life, they do so in an overwhelmingly negative way. It seems that Australia has a national habitus that accommodates both a pro-suburban lifestyle and an anti-suburban sentiment. This thesis takes a broad view of Bourdieu's theories on habitus and applies them to a range of suburban fictions .... [to] demonstrate how the ambivalence that defines the Australian relationship with suburbia is manifested in our fiction. The study of Australian fiction exposes not just the anti-suburban fiction, but also reveals a number of tropes that provide a way to negotiate the habitus: the expatriate, the lone hand, and the lost child"--Abstract.