Sofie Laguna’s fifth novel for adults draws on the ancient idea of a land to which the dead must journey and reside. This landscape has been depicted many times. It is associated with the classical myth of the ferryman Charon and his barge across the River Styx. It evokes the gloomy nature of Hades, the presiding god of the underworld.
In Laguna’s novel, the classical underworld is woven into the fabric of the story, but as a psychological counterpoint. Starting in 1974 and finishing in the early 1980s, The Underworld is a coming-of-age story that contributes in interesting ways to an emerging body of writing on Australia in the 1970s, and to an international tradition of women writers concerned with the complexities of gender and emerging sexuality.
