Olive as tragic hero: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

Below is the text of a talk I gave at the Wheeler Centre last month as part of the series Australian Literature 101. I was asked to discuss Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, which allowed me to expand some of my earlier responses. Most of all, I'm struck by how Olive has most often been seen as a secondary and ultimately childish character, when I've always thought the principal