"He had spent so many hours in the consideration of it because the law she had lived by was so like his own. What he was left wonder was how, when the time came, he might let go of things without believing, as she had, that he was not only losing them but had never in any real sense had them. "

Insulation against power, Geilston Bay, February 2021.

I am glad to have turned to David Malouf at this stage in life. Others I know recoil at his name, having suffered through dreary forced reading in high school. While I love how he vividly writes of physical spaces and their relationship with a character's inner journey, there is little more tiresome than being forced to decode and recite back the tricks of the authorial trade just before lunchtime in a broiling schoolroom.

The Great World is a fantastic read. As ever, Malouf writes in a lyrical and mesmerising tone. He beautifully ties together several markedly different stories across decades and continents. Moreover, he humanised the inhuman, and while there is a great deal of pain and trauma here, it's conveyed with such a lightness of touch and loving tone that you suspect some alchemy at play.

Can you guess that I loved this book?

Although utterly different in approach, tone and subject matter, I couldn't help but think of Sally Rooney's Normal People, which I felt a worthy but flawed novel. What made me think of this was the relationship between Digger and Vic, two traumatised characters with whom we share their rich and nuanced inner lives, yet remain burdened by the lack of a capacity to articulate their thoughts, pain and dreams with those around them. Where I was never quite convinced by Rooney's book, this one had me utterly compelled.

A beautiful novel.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Comments

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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