"She [Newton] has an exquisitely observant eye for those fragile tucks in behaviour that tell us more about ourselves than being in the full glare of the spotlight. This creates an emotional resonance and you care what happens to these people. ... History is always best-learnt from unselfconsciously Australian tales such as [this]."
The Age
"Newton's book is a fine piece of writing. The characters come to life through a gesture, a laconic exchange of dialogue, a captured recollection. And there are memorable passages about their relationship with place: how Flinch learns to read the ocean, how generations have been drawn to the bay, how an ancient history inhabits the landscape. Through the characters, a resolution between the town and its new-age influx is achieved. ... Newton's is a developing talent. ... she has a refreshing breadth of vision. ... It's salutary to have novels presenting such honest views of such a mythologised place. ... Newton's, with its generosity and its resonant images of our coastal life, will be the one to endure."
The Bulletin
"In keeping with its torpid climate, baked geography and isolated characters, Death of a Whaler has a stillness in the telling, which, like the moment before a storm breaks, builds into an event which unleashes such power that it truly takes your breath away. Newton is an exceptional wordsmith, and in Flinch she has created an altogether memorable character."
Vogue Australia
"It is not unusual for the articulate novelist to rally to the cause of the inarticulate, and Nerida Newton has produced a sensitive, sympathetic portrait of a severely disadvantaged and depressed young man, frozen in a moment of tragedy that he can neith let go nor allay. ... a novel hearteningly different from Newton's award-winning debut, The Lambing Flat, but one which shares that book's best features: its assured underpinning of painstaking research, its clean, evocative prose and its shapely, satisfying architecture."
The Advertiser, Adelaide
"...the novel is satisfying... It's clear that Death of a Whaler has been researched thorougly, and the lyrical descriptions of the sea and the whales, are appealing. Extracts from Herman Melville's classic, Moby Dick, have been fitted neatly into the story. Over all, Death of a Whaler is about humanity and healing."
The Courier Mail
"...Newton is on to something here... Newton's story is built on a solid foundation of cultural history ... Newton writes in thoughtful prose."
Sydney Morning Herald
