David Malouf Books

Child's Play, an early tour de force, showcases Australian author David Malouf's remarkable versatility and his focus on ideas and themes. Taking us into the mind of a terrorist/assassin as he waits to commit a murder, Malouf shows him to be a "normal" person with the same thoughts and reactions to the world around him as everyone else. Malouf keeps us at a distance from the killer, however, restricting the killer's consciousness to his sense impressions about the world around him, his remembrances and warm feelings toward his childhood and family, his everyday life, and his philosophical musings about his predestined relationship with his chosen victim.

Though this novella was probably considered shocking when it was written in 1982, its impact has been lessened to the point of insignificance by recent events. The reader is given no clue about what has made this man a terrorist or what his ultimate purpose might be, and Malouf provides no sense of significance or context for what otherwise appears to be a motiveless killing by an intelligent and sensitive man. The assassin is, in many ways, like a child playing a very deadly game.

Malouf uses a similar technique in The Bread of Time to Come, also known as Fly Away Peter, though this novella is more emotionally involving than Child's Play. Here the main character, Jim Saddler, the opposite of the assassin in many ways, also seems detached from his life and also naïve. A young man whose chief pleasure is acting as a guide at a bird sanctuary in coastal Queensland, he has been protected from many of life's cruel realities by Australia's physical isolation from the wider world. This changes when he finds himself, along with his employer/friend Ashley Crowther, fighting in France during World War I.

From the opening scene, which sets up dramatic contrasts between a bird and a biplane, Malouf emphasizes the contrasts between the "civilized" and "natural" worlds and between the Garden of Eden of the bird sanctuary, and the violence and killing of war. Jim's discoveries about life and about himself are straightforward and are enhanced by the author's use of repetitions, a great deal of symbolism, and numerous contrasts: Even during war, Jim sees migrating birds.

In both books, Malouf presents dense imagery of sights, sounds, and smells; lovely vignettes about country life; and characters who seem both intelligent and sensitive. The "civilized" world of Europe is, in both cases, seen to be fraught with violence and random cruelty. The Bread of Time to Come, however, reveals a character who comes to realizations about his place in the universe. The terrorist in Child's Play has no world view. Dramatic and thought-provoking, Malouf's novels richly reward the reader looking for intelligent and vibrant prose. Mary Whipple