Hammers Over the Anvil

In a rural community in Australia at the turn of the century, handicapped teenager Outhred discovers the mysteries of the adult world when he becomes the unwitting go-between in the affair of lusty horse-trader Crowe and romantically inclined Englishwoman Rampling, wife of the local landowner. The result with its voice-over documenting the artistic growth of the teenager, its glimpses of half-understood sexuality, and its trail of conflict between father and son - isn't badly made, just familiar. Ann Turner's Celia, an arresting rites-of-passage story about the terrors of childhood, promised better than this literary saga.