David Malouf Books

THANK YOU, IT WAS THE RIGHT BOOK THAT I NEEDED FOR CLASS, CHEAPER THAN B&N AND CAME ON TIME.

Publius Ovidius Naso was born in 43 B.C. and died in 18 A.D.
Augustus banished him for unknown reasons to Tomi, a barren place near the coast of the Black Sea.
Another famous work. Scholars agree that it's his best achievement. Ovid is a master in describing feminin emotions ( see also 'Heroides').
It would be wrong to see 'The Art of Love' as some sort of a manual. It's a parody of the poetical manuals that existed in his time.

I read the Duane Humphries translation. His preface is superbly written, so one would hope that his translation possesses similar flair. Since I don't read Latin, I cannot attest to his accuracy.

He observes in his preface the commonalities between Ovid's scene and that of our contemporary world. You will get a strong sense of a society that was very similar to that of our own.

This is one of the best books that i have read on "love".Intellectual eroticism always gives a sophisticated veneer to less lofty primordial sexual impulses.Throws new light on the Roman decadence and hedonistic society.So if you want to take a journey and delve into the very essense of Ovid's eroticism and human sexuality or just learn to show some 'love' read this book.

It took me a while to get through Johnno, despite its less than 200 pages, but I must say I thoroughly enjoyed each page. The slowness was more a function of my available time than of the novel's quality. Johnno is a little gem, a wonderful chronicling of a young man's coming of age, and his relationship with Johnno, a slightly troubled young man, in Brisbane right after World War II. David Malouf is a wonderful writer. Each sentence is a work of art--but nothing is too precious, too anything. It's an enjoyable book that I highly recommend.

I read this book in 1997, having avoided studying it a dozen years earlier in school. Since leaving school I had inexplicably held out on reading what is regarded as the best work of fiction set in and about my home town of Brisbane. Once I started reading I could not stop. In amongst the beautiful prose and vivid description lies Johnno, a character we all know, love, loathe, and long for.

An excellent book. As it turns out I'm glad I held out until I was old enough to really appreciate David Malouf's style, which is rich, evocative and so very (tempted to say 'real', but this is fiction) believable.

In less than two-hundred pages, Malouf manages to capture the coming-of-age angst of the entire Australian post-war generation. Only Malouf could be telling the story of two youths and, virtually on the same page, effortlessly synthesize the realities of Australian experience with European philosophical themes, and connect them both to the whole tangled mess of our national identity. And yet for all its efficiency and high intent, 'Johnno' still reads like an affectionate and deeply-felt memoir, never shying away from the emotional, physical and sexual confusion of youth, nor from the contradictions inherent in what it means to be an 'Australian man'. But that's the genius of Malouf, and it's something we find him doing again and again: telling an apparently simple story about ordinary people, yet with this richly poetic, philosophical undercurrent which can suddenly reach up and pull you under. For Australian readers, this is a particularly important skill. Not only does Malouf deal with significant human issues, but he brings them home. He takes them out of the realm of abstract philosophy and makes them implicit in this place. This makes his work at once deeply personal and resolutely public in the best sense: he has something to share with all of us, something important, and he shares it beautifully.

Malouf's stories are so quietly intense you can be breathless at any ending. Savor each with a long pause in between. I used the library but need my own copy!

Jane Eyre / 0-451-52655-4

Unlike many of the classics, which contain a superb message under vernacular that is sometimes hard for us to read, Jane Eyre still flows easily to our ears and eyes, and the plot is gripping and suspenseful.

While Jane may seem, to our modern sensibilities, to be something of a weak heroine in her jealousy of her master's suitor, her insistence upon actual marriage in spite of the cruelty of the situtation, and her weak acceptance of her missionary suitor's almost vampiric leaching of her spirit (in spite of his own sisters' exhortations to stand up for herself, no less!), Jane is still a strong and modern female in light of the standards of her own day. Her bravery in taking up her post as governess in a strange land, her 'presumptuousness' in courting (or being courted) by her master, her daring in considering to be a missionary's wife, and her final decision to set out again in search of her lost love all point to a strength of will and character which would have made her character - at the time - to be quite 'mannish' indeed! We can admire Jane her strength and will, while marvelling happily at how far things have come, and wonder hopefully at how much farther they may yet go.

What can I say about this beautiful classic that hasn't already been said?
My only word of caution: DO NOT READ THE INTRODUCTION if you've never read this book before. Ms. Jong feels the need to fill you in (spoil is more I like it) on several key details/events that any hungry reader would rather devour on their own. Skip her.

I consider 'Jane Eyre' to be one of the greatest works of art ever achieved. Certainly better than almost any other work of literature and on a par with Michelangelo's 'David' and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Jane Eyre is the story of a young girl who grows up and is forever contrary to her society. The book foreshadows the penalties that society gives for such opposition, but Jane still remains opposed to the role society wants her to have. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses foreshadowing, symbolism, and conflict to show her society how a woman can overcome the conventions of her society to live a happy and full life.
An example of foreshadowing comes during Jane's engagement. First there is the splitting of the chestnut tree (page 226), soon after Rochester and Jane become engaged: "Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adele came running in to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away." This event foreshadows how the upcoming wedding between Jane and Rochester will divide the two, sending one away, because they are not ready for marriage. It is not until Jane and Rochester both overcome the conventions of their society that they can have a happy marriage.
The most dramatic example of foreshadowing comes right after Jane's dreams. After waking from her disturbing dreams, Jane sees a light in her room and finds a grotesque female figure standing over her (250). The figure is Bertha Mason, who came to terrify Jane out of marriage. After rending Jane's veil in two, Bertha leaves and Jane collapses. The rending of the veil foreshadows the obstacle still in front of Jane's upcoming marriage, and it is not until this obstacle is dealt with that Jane can marry.
Aside from foreshadowing, Charlotte Bronte uses symbolism, mostly of birds, to show how Jane's society confines her. For example, Jane's surname comes from the word for a bird's nest, aerie. Rochester gives an additional example of the bird symbolism on page 232 when he says "Jane, be still, don't struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation." Rochester says this when he is trying to convince Jane that they can be married. At this time Jane is struggling with the barriers that her society places on their union. Jane is the bird that society traps in a cage, keeping her away from the man she wants to marry. Eventually, Jane does find a way to overcome her cage and obtain happiness with Rochester.
Bronte also uses people to symbolize certain aspects of her society. Mr. Brocklehurst, for example, is the epitome of hypocrisy, as shown during his inspection of Lowood. While surveying the girls in the school, Mr. Brocklehurst condemns one for having naturally curly hair, a vanity of the world in his opinion, and yet Brocklehurst goes so far as to buy curled wigs for his wife and daughters. In addition to this, Brocklehurst manages the funds of Lowood and never allocates enough money to keep the girls sufficiently warm or well fed. Instead of teaching the girls to live pious and frugal lives, he leaves them weakened in front of the onslaught of winter illnesses. These characteristics of Mr. Brocklehurst make him a symbol of the typical man from Jane's society. Jane's ability to overcome the wrongs he does to her shows her society how to rise above society and obtain a happy life.
Throughout this book, Jane clashes with the conventions of her society until she rises above them. The greatest example of Jane's opposition to her society is in her successful marriage to Rochester. "Reader, I married him," Jane says on page 397. Jane does not say that they were married, or that Rochester proposed to her again. Instead, she states that she took the active role and married Rochester. Such assertion from a woman went against the standard role of women in Bronte's time. Jane opposes the role that society has established for her and rises above it, obtaining the thing that truly made her happy.
Charlotte Bronte focuses on overcoming the conventions of her society by having Jane Eyre oppose and surmount them. Foreshadowing shows how society will react to such opposition, such as when Jane and Rochester are initially engaged. Symbolism also helps to illustrate the confines of convention; they cage Jane just like a bird. And the various clashes between Jane and other characters, even her society, further illustrated the limitations of conventionality. But opposing and overcoming the conventionality of society can lead to true and lasting happiness.

Jane Eyre is my favorite book. I love it.
I read it first when I was 10, but it did not appeal to me at all, so I stopped reading it. I tried a year later. It immediately became my favorite book. I have read many other good books too, like Rebecca, but Jane Eyre is #1! I have recommended it to all my friends who love reading. This book is very great for someone my age (12) who is not bored with descriptive writing. (I've read worse.)
You should definitely try this book!

This is a remarkable book - about what it means to be human - and how we would live our life if we could invent it from scratch with no reference to our culture and family. Malouf writes with a poetic beauty that is enthralling. I have been unable to read any more of his books in case they were not as magical as this one!
Yes it is true he is a fellow Australian, but his ancestry is from Lebanon I think, and the book is set in the ancient Roman empire, so my bias might be taken as minor.

This is an extraordinary, fascinating, and deeply moving book. Malouf brilliantly takes Ovid's exile to the furthest outpost of the Roman empire and makes of it a beautifully written, beautifully executed meditation on imagination and "what it is to be human." It is a strangely liberating book, for, to quote the text, "We are free to transcend ourselves. If we have the imagination for it."

A brilliant short novel about civilization and it's relative disadvantages. It is ostensibly about the poet Ovid's exile from Rome in the fist century A.D. and his developing relationship weather feral child on the outskirts of the empire: Civilization vs. Nature. The importance of language in the novel is questioned, makes a good departure for a book group that will discuss the impact of words. We used Malouf's flowing novel to launch our book club, and the discussion touched on various topics such as Ovid, religion, Roman history.

Excellent tale, seeking to define qualities that make one human. Social graces, intelligence, superstition, one with nature. And who better to question the concept but an outstanding poet, whom we know of two millenia after his death. Who was fully human, the boy or the poet, or the villagers? Give me the poet any day.

"An Imaginary Life" is one of the most mesmerizing books I've ever read and it's certainly the most poetic and beautiful. There isn't much of a plot in this book nor is it a character study. To me, it's more akin to a long prose poem (and Malouf is also a poet as well as a novelist), though it really isn't a prose poem, either. "An Imaginary Life" is a poetic flight of fancy, an impossibly beautiful reverie and a dazzling story of "what might have been yet could never be."

Most of the events this book relates are, of course, imagined. We know that Ovid was exiled and we know to where, but about what happened during that exile, we know nothing, not even the date or exact place of Ovid's death.

Malouf has used this absence of known facts regrding Ovid's exile to weave a gorgeously ephemeral portrait of a man and a boy who, together, find the wellspring of both humanity and love, something neither could have done alone, despite Ovid's reputation in Rome.

While the storyline of "An Imaginary Life" isn't particularly mesmerizing on its own, Malouf's lush, poetic prose makes it so. This is a short book, really more of a novella than a novel and I can't imagine anyone not reading it in one sitting. One sentence simply flows into the next and I was riveted from the first page to the last.

Highly recommended to anyone.

I must admit that I didn't' choose to read this book myself, it was placed on our reading list for Literature so it was with slight apprehension and curiousity that I approached White's nobel prize winning novel. Reading the first few chapters made me realize why it was a nobel prize worthy, White's style was so different and at times confusing - it had never been done, it was strange, so it won. Of course as i slowly ploughed my way through the eccentric shadows of Xanadu which was Ms. Hare's home I gradually grew to appreciate the novel.
The novel centres around four main protaganists in post WWII Australia: Ms. Hare, Alf Dubbo, Himmelfarb and Mrs. Godbold. All of whom in some way are seeking redemption as outsiders. His novel is strongly critical of our society and it's one of those novels that makes you ask rather than answer questions that it poses. It highlights the cruel abuse of Aborigines and Jews within our world, showing the perhaps inevitable traits of humanity, that any country at any time must inexplicably have a scapegoat to fall back on.
It's a powerful novel and although slightly relieved when I was finished I was glad that I had read it. Raising many questions about human nature, White is a skilled writer that doesn't reach the finish line in the biggest, most obvious path but takes his time, weaving subtly and skillfully through metaphors and symbols to take you by surprise, emotionally and mentally to the finish line.
However it is not for those without patience, but give it a go and I can guarantee you will be hooked after the first 70 pages.

What makes a great novel? Many things, but among them I would certainly list Scale, Characters, and Moral Vision. All three of these qualities are to be found in this towering novel by Patrick White. It is the first book by the Nobel laureate that I have encountered; it will certainly not be the last.

This is a long book (640 pages), but a very easy one to read. In any case, when speaking of scale, physical length is less important than breadth of implication. White concentrates on a small group of people living on the outskirts of Sydney after WW2, but makes them seem emblematic of the entire continent. There is also a wide range of origin and social class; the characters include the last survivor of a once-rich aristocratic family, a German Jewish professor fleeing the Holocaust, a poor washerwoman who emigrated from England as a child, and a half-aboriginal painter. Since each character is given almost 100 pages of back-story, the novel is by no means confined in place or period either; the section set in Germany between the wars can hold its own with the best Holocaust writing anywhere, with particular insights into Jewish social, intellectual, and spiritual life. But the most important aspect of the book's scale is the feeling held by each of the four major characters that the universe is an immensely greater place than anything they may see around them.

White has the great gift of loving his characters. Each of the four is something of an outcast. Miss Hare, the faded aristocrat, is clearly mad; Himmelfarb, the professor, now chooses to work in a menial job, without possessions or other signs of status; Mrs. Godbold, the washerwoman, lives with her many daughters in a tumble-down shack; Alf Dubbo, the half-caste painter, works by day as a janitor and is given to fits of drunkenness. And yet White writes so convincingly through the eyes of each that we do more than feel sympathy for them; we begin to see the others around them as impoverished of spirit, living only partial lives. White is brilliant in creating a gallery of semi-comic secondary characters -- some bad, some well-meaning, some merely lacking in imagination -- to set off the qualities of his principal quartet, but even these have dimension and are far from caricatures.

One of the curious aspects of the book is that the four characters hardly ever meet, although they recognize an immediate kinship when they do. For all four are religious visionaries. Their visions may occur only once or twice in their lives, but the image is the same for each: the approach of Ezekiel's fiery chariot, both wonderful and terrible. I can think of few books that are so successful at portraying the mystical dimension while being so firmly rooted in the mundane. This is clearly a religious book, but not at all a sectarian one. It is White's strength that he endows his visionaries with everyday failings, and gives each a very different religious background. Miss Hare's religion, if she has one, is a pantheism rooted in the plants and animals on her moldering estate. Himmelfarb has returned to Judaism only after years of secular life, and considers himself morally unworthy. Mrs. Godbold is a staunch evangelical, but her religion shows more in her practical kindnesses to others than in any doctrinal fundamentalism. And Alf Dubbo, though raised by a preacher and especially inspired by religious subjects, is dissolute and virtually autistic in his day to day life.

A fourth quality that I might have mentioned is Style. White's writing, as I say, is easy to read, but very varied and always appropriate to the tone of the moment. While he can neatly skewer the social pretensions of the Rosetrees (the employers of Himmelfarb and Alf), he can also shift to the kind of description that portrays everyday things as symbolic of eternal conflicts or reflections of the infinite. His descriptions of Alf Dubbo's paintings, for example, are equaled by no author I can think of except perhaps Chaim Potok in MY NAME IS ASHER LEV, in their ability to convey a truly incandescent artistic vision. Such mastery of style is essential because, as loners, his characters cannot interact much together in terms of everyday plot, and in narrative terms the concluding section of the book is less compelling than the long set-up. But where the characters do meet is in their common vision, their unspoken sense of rightness, and it is precisely in White's evocative language that this sounds, resonates, and resounds.

Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White's international superseller at the time, was born from an incident in the late 40s, when a taxi driver, demanding the full fare of the journey from Sydney's Central Station to Petty's Hotel, was refused by White and began screaming "Go back to Germany!" White later confessed: "I think it was this more than anything which persuaded me to write the novel Riders". Fortunately, such germ was the foundation of one, perhaps the greatest, of the 20th century literary monuments, dense as the greatest novels are, but fleshy in the end, too much indeed. It is a plotless novel-as are most works by White, and if there's a plot, its one of living and surviving. The novel traces the lives of the 4 characters from their origin to their ends (something White is an undoubtful master doing, and White puts his hand on marvellous devices of narration as stream of conscioussness, epiphanies and of course, the wonderful and hillarious use of adjectives, though sometimes the image, nearer to incongruency but finally well put, is difficult to convey.
The chariot, itself, was familiar to Blake, Ovid, the apocalyptic writers of the Bible and to Redon. In White's chariot, as David Marr reported, "the riders are those who have known illumination as he had experienced it in mystical ecsatsy, in creation, music", etc. White wrote, according to his letters (to his Viking editor Ben Huebsch in February 1959): "What I want to emphasise through my four "Riders" - an orthodox refugee intellectual Jew, a mad Erdgeist of an Australian spinster, an evangelical laundress, and a half-caste Aboriginal painter- is that all faiths, whether religious, humanistic, instinctive, or the creative artist's act of praise, are in fact one". And for example, is a brilliant detail that in general, the novel is a study of GOOD people pitted against EVIL; nowadays... how nice!
Riders in the Chariot is not a novel easy to read, neither meant to be read to relax. As one of the 40 best Australian books ever, it's a work of pleasure for the deep and restless mind. A novel written to music, something important to the writer and the reader, and like a baroque piece exhibiting a down-to-earth accumulation of detail, this work is a must for anyone interested in the best literature of the past century and an innovative psychological narrative art that, in the hands of this Australian Nobel Prize winner, soars to the highest ranks.

About a quarter of the way into this book I realized I was reading a brilliant treatise on mystical theology written in the form of a novel. This is a magnificent piece of work that brings together several realms of meaning, various settings, and divergent attitudes and dispositions about what it means to be truly human and live among other humans. There are four major protagonists of widely differing backgrounds. Each represents a peculiar moral stance that makes them capable of some unexpected actions and disables them with regard to others. Most of the action takes place in and around Sydney, Australia, but there are "lead up" sections in England and Germany. Mary Hare is ugly, less than intelligent, and stark raving mad. She lives in a crumbling mansion and experiences difficulty in trying to communicate with other people. For her, words are fragile and sometimes breakable and people use them in cruel ways. Yet she is an attractive personality whom we come to like because she is described from the inside. That is, we know what she feels, suffers and, most of all, remembers. Himmelfarb is a German Jew, a brilliant professor of philosophy whose father inexplicably converts to Christianity, thereby causing his mother to fade slowly away from sadness and a sense of being betrayed and victimized. He escapes the "final solution" by immigrating to Australia and taking a meaningless job in a factory owned by another German Jew who has also "converted." Ruth Godbold, a saintly laundress who lives in a shed with four daughters and an abusive husband, communicates mainly through acts of kindness. She nurses Mary Hare during a long illness and takes care of Himmelfarb in his last agony when some redneck thugs at the factory try to crucify him. Alf Dubbo, a native Australian brought up by religious people whose religiosity is questionable, develops his talent at painting and communicates through art. His ability to make moral decisions is confounded by his early experience with the preacher who kept sticking his hand into Alf's trousers.

These four have little contact and less communication with each other. None of them understands what the others are saying, except in a pre-linguistic sense. At a certain level, they already know what the others are saying, but they know it on a non-conscious level, like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible (whence the book's title is derived).

These four major personages suffer physically and morally and profoundly. This book zeroes in on the reality of human suffering and shows that we suffer or cause others to suffer because of some flaw in our own characters, in the sense of Sophocles. This is not, of course, the "message" of the novel (novels don't have messages; we all know that). More importantly, we see throughout the book the collective and communitarian dimension of suffering and its intellectual connections to some prophetic books of the Old Testament that emphasize the unitary nature of humankind and the need for a "suffering servant" to atone and expiate for the sins of others.

As a prose stylist, Patrick White is impressive, maybe supreme. This is the most well written book I have read in many years. His sentences are beautifully fragmented and fractured. His language (use of adjectives, etc.) is extraordinarily rich. In fact, it is gorgeous. Words and ideas have colors and smells. He omits unnecessary direct-object pronouns and even definite articles. Even the sound of his prose is amazingly satisfying: he makes liberal use of alliteration, especially in initial consonants, but in other contexts as well. Figures and tropes abound, even zeugma. And finally, if anyone wants an example of a memorable sentence, let me offer this one from page 26:

Mrs. Hare had soon taken refuge from Mary in a rational kindness, with which she continued to deal her a series of savage blows during what passed for childhood.

This is not a particularly cheery book. It deals with the lives of outcasts and what we today would, callously, call freaks. The book, while it does go into meticulous detail of the biographical material of the main characters' respective lives, is not primarily concerned with these elements. The book is centred around the visionary, otherworldly qualities of each, particularly a shared vision each of the four main characters has of a chariot mentioned in the book of Ezekiel.-This quality separates them from the world and people around them, which are clearly meant to be disparaged.-As Miss Hare cogitates in regard to the danger one of these normal people, Mrs Jolley: "But she did sense some danger to the incorporeal, the more significant part of her."-That significant part in all the four characters is the essential matter of the book.

Other people in the book are given to insubstantial matters, cruelty, and obliviousness, frequently rendered comically by White:

The other ladies glanced at her skin, which was white and almost unprotected, whereas they themselves had shaded their faces, with orange, with mauve, even with green, not so much to impress one another, as to give them the courage to confront themselves (p.323)

All very well. But it is this Manichean dualism between the saintly four characters and, well, everybody else which leads me to refrain from giving it five stars. Anyone who has encountered the world in its chaos of identities, acts of kindness, visionary aspects, thuggish and sadistic aspects knows that we all carry in us both the visionary, sensitive private individualism of the main characters, on the one hand, and the thuggish herd instinct of----everyone else in this book.

Still, it's well worth the read. White is a remarkable writer, and the work, despite my misgivings, is one every thoughtful person should not merely have on his or her bookshelf, but have read, from beginning to end. Its insights into prelinguistics subconscious perception are not to be surpassed---anywhere.

I am not going to give you a summary of the book, but it does have very good plot and detailed characters. The book describes characters through flashbacks on their past and what they've had to deal with in the past. I usual like a book with a little more actual conversations and I did find it confusing at time when flashbacks became reality again. I did the author did a good job showing the emotions of each character, you could easily which character was the angry one, the friendly one, and so on and so forth. Overall it wasn't my favorite book just because the dialogue was weak but it is a good read.

David Malouf is not only a novelist, but a published poet as well. His work, "The Conversations At Curlow Creek", contain passages that could stand alone as solitary poems with little change to their form. This is only the third work of his I have read, so even if combined with the fourth I am reading, I still feel this Author's range is remarkable. Australia is not a place where the word confine would seem to be appropriate, however with this story Mr. Malouf creates a very intimate setting that even when expanded, rarely grows larger.

As he has done before he brings people from Scotland, or Ireland and tells his story in Australia. When I said he expands the setting without literally enlarging it as well, I meant that his players might roam their memories and share those of others, while remaining all but immobile during the tale. Two men from Ireland share an evening. One represents the authority of law in its most final form, the other a man whose outlaw life should hold values in complete opposition to his jailer. An then there is a third man, also from Ireland, raised as a brother to the lawman, and the possible leader of the group the prisoner is the only surviving member of.

The night can be a strange time for thoughts and memories, and when one of the men is supposed to be hung at dawn, every minute is arguably critical. The passage of time seems to obsess the jailer more. When asked the time he wonders if he should just say the half hour, or the actual 28 minutes past. He contemplates the value these 2 additional minutes would mean to the condemned. He uses time to gain information about this man's leader, probing to see if the man is his foster brother last seen when 16 years of age. The jailer sensitive to the man's diminishing time is desperate for the knowledge, but becomes increasingly respectful of the convict.

The travels outside the room they share often read as a recollection, until the waking of the dreamer disturbs the memory. It's a more subtle form of recall than just turning the page and finding you are jumping back and forth between dates. As the night passes the ides of forgiveness, redemption, and morality are discussed with the jailor playing the reluctant philosopher/priest. Mr. Malouf is very clever in taking issues that seem so black and white, and making them gray. He examines the two paths in life these men have followed, and the possible life of the third man. All three are very different, but two may have decided to live outside the confines of society's laws, while the third became a custodian of the same society's structure.

The book comes to an ending that I doubt many will find expected, and some may argue is ambiguous. Mr. Malouf leaves a great deal of room for his readers to either find the thread he leaves, or to allow space to be filled by the reader. His writing is unique and compelling, and will either hold great appeal, or certain frustration for readers.

This is one of my all time valued books. A splended writer, Malouf uses language as a poet, brings his two main characters to vivid life, makes the reader care about both of them...the convict and the soldier (possibly his executioner). What particularly moved me and sets this book above most is how skillfully Malouf raises the question of morality (without moralizing) relative to the judgement of others...Who is not guilty? Or if guilty, what about the compassion of another. These are to me primary questions in a worldwhere finger-pointing is so prevalent. Malouf is a man whose breadth and depth of insight deserve much attention and applause.

The suspense of the novel is provided by the reader's wondering if Adair will hang an illiterate Irish convict at dawn or if he will yield to compassion after talking and reminiscing with the man through the night. The convict relates a story about a time that he was given a job to impersonate someone under very mysterious circumstances which turned out to be the only instance in the man's life that he was ever treated with any kind of tenderness. This story is marvelously told and does arouse the reader's sympathy. Soldier and convict are united by their Irish backgrounds and the fact that they were both orphans whose fortunes, however, were widely divergent. The reader comes to wonder which position is more difficult: the convict's necessity of facing death at dawn or the soldier's duty to be the executioner. The author uses this situation as a focus for a meditation on mortality that is philosophical and sometimes mysterious. This would be a good selection for a book group as multiple interpretations of the meaning of the book are certainly possible.

Michael Adair is far from his native Ireland. In the scrub of New South Wales, he's been assigned the supervising of the execution of a bushranger. With no priest present, Adair undertakes the task of providing company, if not consolation, for the doomed raider. Carney, an Irishman like Adair, was a member of a gang led by a renowned leader, Dolan. Dolan, famous for his physical stature and cunning, is of particular interest to Adair. The last survivor of the mob, Carney seeks some level of absolution for his sins, which appear minimal. Frontier justice is always grim and Carney expects no favours from his watcher.

As the night progresses, Adair's mind drifts back to his childhood in Ireland. An orphan taken in by a comfortable, if troubled, family, he reflects on his foster parents' son. From early days when Adair was caregiver to Fergus to later, more competitive times, the relationship of the two boys was close. It became strained only as they achieved maturity and Virgilia, a neighbour, becomes a tutor to the pair. Carney, it appears, may be a link to that distant past. A link less remote and vague than the circumstances of the lonely night suggest. Reminiscing may lead to connections both men may not welcome, yet each reaches tentatively for the other regardless of the outcome. The dynamics of this tale are intense and compelling.

In Australia, there's a long-standing tradition of the "bush ballad" - a mix of fable, poetry and music. The ballads reflect the stark, unforgiving land and the lives of the people coping with it. The verses are wistful with longing for better times and places, yet reflect the "battler's" striving to overcome adversity. Malouf's prose reflects that tradition in both style and content. He's parsimonious with words, yet precise and vividly descriptive. He's presented us with a story of profound depth and wide-reaching scope, yet managed it within an astonishing few pages. No words are wasted, but each conveys the fullest meaning within the story. Malouf is a masterful writer, and this book will long stand as a sterling example of his abilities. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

The Great World engaged me in the beginning and through the war, then seemed to drag on to a slow, boring end. Perhaps that's the point of the book, how war dries up life from life in those who survive it.

David Malouf is a masterful storyteller. His multiple award winning novel, "The Great World", is a coming-of-age tale of lost innocence of two lads (Digger and Vic) whose separate childhoods in the outbacks of Australia and their shared experiences as interns in the Second World War helped shape the course of their future together. It's difficult to characterise the relationship these two men have with each other. To call it friendship would be to simultaneously overstate and understate the position. They were never really buddies - hell, Digger didn't even like Vic - but fate had different ideas and kept intervening at critical moments to draw them together whenever their lives took separate turns after the war. Of the two, Vic is the more colourful and vividly drawn character. The early rejection of his natural father - a weak and sorry piece of low life - and his obsessive need for self determination provide more than a clue to our impression of him as a steely hearted "user" (of Digger, his adoptive family, etc) of family and friends for his own ends. The sad irony is that Vic is as much a victim as the people he uses and only his wife, Ellie, is privileged and burdened by knowledge of the truth when she catches a glimpse of his real self in the dark. More disappointment follows when his son Greg turns out to be a sloganeering liberal. Digger, on the other hand, is arguably the novel's moral centre but as a character, he seems curiously underwritten. His part is that of the moon to Vic's sun. He possesses a vulnerability that is simply incandescent. Even Jenny, his retarded sister, sees through Vic, but Digger remains trusting and accepting to the end. But "The Great World" is far from a two man show. There are loads more characters that Malouf creates who are truly memorable. Mac, their war time mate, may have been given limited script space, but his spirit lives on long after he has been written out. It's also a wonderfully uplifting moment for the reader when Pa and Ma, Vic's adoptive parents, find their true vocation in life as poet and businesswoman, respectively. Malouf is a classic writer in the best of the old fashioned tradition. He knows how to tell a story and keep you enthralled from start to finish. His prose is warm, accessible and true. Reading "The Great World" may not change your life but it will show you what it is to be human. A great novel. I highly recommend it.

Malouf is a master storyteller! He writes vivid, sensual, evocative novels, and this is one of his best. Very cinematic and emotional. I've loaned my copy of this book to several people who've never read Malouf before, and they each loved it and were deeply affected by the subject matter.

Mr. Malouf is a gifted communicator, creator, and conjuror. I am even tempted to use literary alchemist for he does not just take words and arrange them, he selects words, assembles them with care and thought, and truly creates writing that is altogether new. This holds true whether he is dealing in pure fiction, or fiction that is historically based. The books that result from his efforts are almost uniformly excellent, and at there best incorporate the various types of writing he has such a wonderful grasp of. For Mr. Malouf is a Novelist, a Poet, and a Librettist, each an accomplishment, when combined extraordinary.

I have one of his novels left to read, and having come this far into his work I recommend them all without condition. "The Great World", is different from the previous works I have read and commented upon, and this is due primarily to its length. I once read that a movie is an epic if it takes its time. If that is the criterion here, then this work certainly qualifies. If you have read any of his shorter works, and have been amazed with the scope he can cover, the illusion of time and length he conveys, imagine it tripled or quadrupled, and you will get an idea of the panorama of lifetimes this work relates.

To narrow the comments on this work to an observation or two is unfair. There are just so much and so many players that are important. However to focus on Vic and Digger and the lifetime's experiences they share, takes a good deal of the book into account. Vic is at once an enigma and a cliché. This is a man who will continue to removes cookies after being caught in the act, and then risk his life to save that of the friend whose jar he had plundered. He is an exploiter of human friendship a businessman of questionable ethics he is faithful, faithless. He is a montage of all that is meant to be human. Superficially he is in control, beneath the veneer, he is simply human wreckage.

Digger is the friend you would like to have, a man that Vic feels he justifiably targets and exploits, but I never felt that Digger was the person who was deluding himself. Even "simple" Jenny always knew what Vic was. Vic was accommodated by Digger when others who would meet him instantly were put off. He was his silent apologist, his passive defender, not because he believed Vic to be good, merely in need of pity.

There are many events in the book that are important, but one is critical. It is one of those moments when a person finds out what they are or are not capable of. As a solitary experience it can be painful, when it involves another it can be shattering. Vic has this experience while a POW with Digger and others, and it governs his life forever. His time as a POW finalizes who Vic is, while others integrate it as an episode of their life.

Mr. Malouf has written a remarkable study of men in captivity, men who spend the majority of the War as prisoners without the opportunity to prove themselves, defend their Country, or earn the right to say, "I was there". This study of human nature alone makes the book worthwhile, but as I mentioned it is one of many human explorations Mr. Malouf takes the reader upon.

For anyone who enjoys excellent writing, Mr. Malouf will greatly enhance your reading experiences, even with topics you might not normally tend to choose. He is certainly an Author who will never disappoint you.

I read this bbok while in my early twenties and naive to so many of the horrors of war. It had a profound impact on me. Ten years later, after spending the first two years of her life in India, my daughter was gravely ill. My recollections of this book and the Cholera symptoms that Malouf described in his characters... prompted me to confront the Dr's with my fear. I was correct, she had Cholera. The vivid descriptions of what those men must have suffered during those times had never left me, and Malouf's clarity and attention to detail in his writing saved my daughters life. A life changing read for me!

Generational Family Trees are often found at the beginning of Biographies. Mr. Malouf's, "Harland's Half Acre", is a novel so the Families are fictitious, however the complexity of the relationships are very real, so a pen a paper may help keep all in order. The Author is not a writer of clichés, and the people and how they relate are in no way contrived. There is some unusual movement of players, and they sometimes concur with the death of another key character, it may just have been me, however there seemed much to follow.

This is the fifth work of the Authors that I have read, so I have by no means even reached the halfway mark in his work. Of the works I have read this is my favorite. This book is neither as complex as, "An Imaginary Life", nor as seemingly straightforward as, "The Conversations At Curlow Creek". The works I have read that were about the settlement of Australia were placed at the beginning of the earlier settlers history while this work shows the results and failures of the descendents of those pioneers.

The artist in the book reminded me of another Author's portrayal of a painter in. "The Moon And Sixpence", by W. Somerset Maugham. The artist's personalities are very different, and the issues they struggle with differ as well. I make the reference as it may cause an association to the better-known work. Mr. Malouf's work is every bit as good a read.

All of the attributes about the Author's work I have mentioned before I will try not to repeat, however in this work the manner with which he had his characters experience death was interesting to me. His writing of death and its dismantling of life is very well done, however the way he chose to deal with the actual instant of death was new as a reader for me. It occurs more than once, so I believe the note is something the Author wanted to make a point of. Death is hardly a new area, but as he has done in his previous books, he writes about aspects of what you believe you are familiar with and he brings a fresh perspective. His work is not derivative, it is unique as he takes a detail, a moment in time, and causes it to be a noteworthy event.

A wonderful writer, I look forward to the balance of his work.

The thesaurus is not needed to read this book, but to describe Malouf's work. There is certainly no single term that can encompass his superb writing abilities. "Opulent" might cover his descriptive powers, but fails to address the strength of Malouf's chronicle of Frank Harland. "Gripping" isn't appropriate to a life so realistically portrayed - with its tumultuous events mixed with the mundane. Artist Frank Harland is anything but mundane, however. Raised in a rural, hilly environment, Harland is buffeted by lasting poverty, overborne by deep loyalties to father and brothers, never losing sight of the meaning of "place." That place is the one-room house of his birth. No matter how far he strays from that locale, it haunts his life and his paintings. In the end, he confines himself to the "Half Acre" in solitary exile. What the thesaurus fails to convey for the reviewer, Malouf's own words will keep you embedded in this real life story.

This early book presages why many awards are granted Malouf for his writing. He was the first winner of the IMPAC award, the richest in publishing. The story of Frank Harland captures the reader from the first page. His father, an indolent dairy farmer, imparted a sense of story in Frank from his earliest days. He applies his learning to drawing instead of text, giving a fresh image of his home and its people throughout his life. Affected by the powers experienced in the hill country, the various intensities of light and shadow, the wonder-generating storms that beset the hills, the flora and fauna encountered, he struggles to impart his feelings to his art. Using any available medium, Frank paints on wood, cardboard panels, paper or whatever is at hand. The work gains wide circulation, almost unknown to Frank. Success and fame are not his aim, however, but getting through life remains the dominant theme throughout this work. In the background, he remains beset by "place," which is translated into spending his earnings on enlarging his father's land holdings.

Malouf's great strength is in characterization. Every person in this story is vividly depicted, Frank, father Clem, Tam the stepbrother and Phil the lawyer. Would you like these people? It's doubtful. Frank, caught up in his art, is slovenly, his various residences a chaos, his appearance ragged. Phil is hesitant, charmless and limited in scope. Little wonder he remains unmarried throughout his life. There is little to attract in any of these people. Still, Malouf manages to portray them sympathetically. His prose keeps you attentive, following their fates, no matter how distasteful their personalities might seem. It is Malouf's honed skills that keeps this book timeless.

David Malouf's Harland's Half Acre is by every standard a great book. Malouf has elected to deal the life of Frank Harland, a fictional Australian painter based loosely on real-life painter and recluse Ian Fairweather. Thematically, Malouf's book is comparable to Patrick White's The Vivisector, although Malouf's book certainly is a less demanding and far more beautiful read. As usual, Malouf's almost liquid prose is beyond reproach, and the central characters are more substantial than in previous works. Harland's Half Acre has not received as much acclaim as other novels by David Malouf, which is a great pity. The novel is not as grandly imagined as Malouf's masterpiece An Imaginary Life, yet it follows in the footsteps of Johnno, 12 Edmondstone St. and The Great World by painting an intensely personal picture of Australian history/memory.

I read this for a class on British Lit Post-WWII. It's one of those books that I know I wouldn't have picked up off a shelf on my own, but I enjoyed it. Malouf uses a lot of imagery to convey the emotions in both characters and the community as they cope in their own ways with Gemmy. A very interesting story about a white man who is lost overboard a ship as a child, and raised by the aborigines until he comes upon a settlement of whites. Definitely an intriguing look at race (he is known among the settlers as the "black-white man"), community, and identity.

Lachlan Beattie, a boy of Queensland, encounters Gemmy Fairley, a ragged castaway. Gemmy had learned the speech of the Aborigines and he had lived among them. He was not quite a Kaspar Hauser, but nearly one. He was taken in by Jock and Ellen McIvor, Lachlan's aunt and uncle. Gemmy had jerking stammering fits. People wondered if he was a spy. He was white but had acquired a native look.

George Abbot, the schoolmaster of the settlement, is very young, but likes to pretend that he is older. Abbot hates the petty tyrannies of his job, hitting the students with a ruler. He had been a charming child, but as an adult he was plain. Alisdair Robertson, a relative, had helped George as a child. He was the person who had urged George to go teach at the settlement. George felt that he had come to a not very promising end. Gemmy tagged after the children when they went to school. George Abbot was the sort of person who tried to maintain his proficiency in French by practicing.

When Gemmy is seen speaking to two natives, he is considered to be disloyal and Jock McIvor's associates want him to leave the settlement. Jock seeks to resist mob action but as unexplained events begin to take place something has to happen to change Gemmy's circumstances. He is moved to the household of a bee keeper. Lachlan is surprised to learn that the school teacher is a visitor there, a place where two rather cultured women live.

The minister, Frazier, sees that Gemmy is caught between two worlds and that he is a figure of the future. Gemmy had been a ratcatcher's helper. He had loved the ratcatcher. Smelling a piece of wood in furniture at his new abode with the bee keeper, memory of his past is triggered. After being a ratcatcher's boy, he was at sea for two or three years until he became a castaway. Lachlan, in manhood a politician, feels that Gemmy's presence has remained with him for his whole life.

This novel is a part of the wonderful and growing literature of the British diaspora.

A coming-of-age/awakening/search-for-identity novel that moves beyond the angst felt in the search for truth/self to interesting modes of revelation and insights into human nature. The story is more complex than many novels because the revelations are multiple-each character develops new insights and ways of knowing. Other themes developed by Malouf in this novel deal with man-nature relationships; fear of of the unknown, the alien, or the misunderstood; and cultural bias, esp. toward other ways of thinking/knowing. A fine story that is rich in ideas.

"One day in the middle of the nineteenth century, when settlement in Queensland had advanced little more than halfway up the coast, three children were playing at the edge of a paddock when they say something extraordinary." So begins David Malouf's poetic novel "Remembering Babylon," a tale based on the true historical character named Gemmy Morril. The fictionalized Gemmy Fairley is the "something extraordinary" the three children, sisters Janet and Meg McIvor, and their cousin Lachlan Beattie find and later provide shelter for at the McIvor farm home. Gemmy is twenty-nine years old; sixteen years earlier he was thrown overboard from a British ship and has since been living with the aborigines.

Upon being threatened by a stick made to appear as a gun by Lachlan, Gemmy spits out, "Do not shoot, I am a B-b-british object." How apropos those words turn out to be as the town treats Gemmy more like a carefully watched dangerous animal than the prodigal son. Malouf is a native of Australia, but his mixed ancestry (mother is of Portuguese Jewish descent, father is Lebanese Christian) has surely prompted him to explore identity. One running theme and fear is losing one's whiteness. "Poor bugger, he had got lost, and as just a bairn too. It was a duty they owed to what they were, or claimed to be, to bring him back, if it was feasible, to being a white man. But was it feasible? He had been with them, quite happily it appeared, for more than half his life: living off the land, learning their lingo and all their secrets, all the abominations they went in for. Were they actually looking at a man, a white man?"

At times Malouf's writing jumps too quickly from different vantage points such as the schoolteacher George Abbot; Jock and Janet McIvor, who protect and treat Gemmy fairly; Mr. Frazer, the minister; and other smaller side characters. But after regaining one's bearings, the reader will step into a rhythm and word choice that befits a well-crafted poem. Malouf earned his writing chops via poetry ("Bicycle and Other Poems," 1970); "Remembering Babylon" sparkles with visual imagery thanks to the author's writing foundation of poetry. Happily the ending does not fall into maudlin sentimentality or cliché. However, one perhaps would have like to read and delve into knowing Gemmy more. Nonetheless, Malouf's "Remembering Babylon" is a powerful look at what happens when one encounters the "other."

Bohdan Kot

The novel "Remembering Babylon" by David Malouf deals with the cultural clash between 19th century white settlers in Australia and the native Australian world view. Praised by many critics, the book won the 1996 International Impac Dublin Literary Award and was short-listed for the 1993 Booker Prize.
In this novel, David Malouf, an Australian himself, describes the story of Gemmy Fairley, who was cast ashore in northern Australia as a boy and then raised by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, he steps out of the "absolute darkness" of the outback and makes himself known to a small community of white settlers. Trying to find his former self, Gemmy has to deal with not only the cruelty and racism of the villagers but also with the demons of his own past. In the course of his stay, he changes the settlers' view on the natives as well as their view on themselves.
I read this book for English class, and I must say that it is not easy to read for a non-native speaker if you really want to understand the book. It took some time to get absorbed into the story, but once I had gotten the hang of it, it was an interesting and enjoyable read. Malouf uses a very poetic language and many metaphors that help get an impression of the native culture. He is also great at describing nature and impressions of it to the reader, making it easy to imagine everything. One thing I did not particularly like about this book is the fact that the narrator reveals information about Gemmy's past only in small bits, so the readers keeps on guessing and wondering what is going on sometimes. On the other hand, this way of giving facts about Gemmy is certainly what makes the reader keep on reading.
All in all, I can only recommend this book to anybody who is interested in getting to know other cultures and in learning more about "cultural clashes". Even though the story takes place in 19th century Australia, the message of "Remembering Babylon" is universal and still important today, maybe more than ever.