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Remembering Babylon
'In the 1840s, a ship's boy cast ashore in northern Australia is taken in by Aborigines; 16 years later he steps out of the bush and inadvertently confronts the new white settlers with their unspoken terrors. this dramatisation of an edge-of-the-world encounter between the "civilised" and the "primitive" is outstanding: a deft and economical evocation of an entire nascent society, punctuated by moments of dazzling, revelatory language and unforgettable images.'
Independent on Sunday
Independent on Sunday
201 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
120 people are currently reading
3915 people want to read
About the author
David Malouf
85 books305 followersDavid Malouf is a celebrated Australian poet, novelist, librettist, playwright, and essayist whose work has garnered international acclaim. Known for his lyrical prose and explorations of identity, memory, and place, Malouf began his literary career in poetry before gaining recognition for his fiction. His 1990 novel The Great World won the Miles Franklin Award and several other major prizes, while Remembering Babylon (1993) earned a Booker Prize nomination and multiple international honors.
Malouf has taught at universities in Australia and the UK, delivered the prestigious Boyer Lectures, and written libretti for acclaimed operas. Born in Brisbane to a Lebanese father and a mother of Sephardi Jewish heritage, he draws on both Australian and European influences in his work. He is widely regarded as one of Australia's most important literary voices and has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.
Malouf has taught at universities in Australia and the UK, delivered the prestigious Boyer Lectures, and written libretti for acclaimed operas. Born in Brisbane to a Lebanese father and a mother of Sephardi Jewish heritage, he draws on both Australian and European influences in his work. He is widely regarded as one of Australia's most important literary voices and has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.
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April 2, 2019
Somewhere, deep down inside, in everybody is hidden a memory of Babel, when all the nations were one.
“So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” Genesis 11:8-9
By confounding language and destroying the tower God had sown enmity among peoples...
Remembering Babylon is a very idiosyncratic novel about communicating and cognizance. Even the closest relatives often fail to understand each other. And even the best intentions are so often misunderstood… What obstacles stand in the way of mutual understanding?
All we need is a right word…
But “Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,” – William Blake: The Four Zoas.
“So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” Genesis 11:8-9
By confounding language and destroying the tower God had sown enmity among peoples...
Remembering Babylon is a very idiosyncratic novel about communicating and cognizance. Even the closest relatives often fail to understand each other. And even the best intentions are so often misunderstood… What obstacles stand in the way of mutual understanding?
He walked swiftly now over the charred earth and was himself crumbling. If he did not find the word soon that would let him enter here, there would be nothing left of him but a ghost of heat, a whiff as he passed of fallen ash.
All we need is a right word…
But “Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,” – William Blake: The Four Zoas.
April 3, 2019
UPDATE: I just read an article about David Malouf and the poetry of his prose, and it reminded me how much I loved this book.
5★
This book is impossible to categorise. It is certainly historical fiction—mid-nineteenth century setting—but it’s more a study than a story. The language is so rich and poetic, that I just wanted to read and enjoy every phrase.
When the British colonists (un)settled Australia, it was considered Terra Nullius, belonging to no one. A Scottish mother thinks,
“It was the fearful loneliness of the place that most affected her—the absence of ghosts.
“Till they arrived no other lives had been lived here. It made the air that much thinner, harder to breathe. She had not understood, till she came to a place where it was lacking, the extent to which her sense of the world had to do with the presence of those who had been there before, leaving signs of their passing and spaces still warm with breath—a threshold worn with the coming and going of feet, hedges between fields that went back a thousand years, and the names even further; most of all, the names on headstones, which were THEIR names, under which lay the bones that had made their bones and given them breath.
“They would be the first dead here. It made death that much lonelier, and life lonelier too.”
Now, of course, people are aware of the rich and ancient Aboriginal culture and the significance of Country and ancestors.
A truly lonely person is the central character, Gemmy Fairley, who belongs to nobody, nowhere.
He is an English street urchin—a rat-catcher’s small helper—who ends up on a ship as a plaything of the crew until they chuck him overboard. He washes up on a beach, where Aboriginal women help him and reluctantly allow him to tag along after them..
He is with them but not of them.
For the next 16 years, he soaks up their culture and loses what little he had of his own except for nightmares
When he sees white colonial families, he is intrigued, and one day, a group of children and their dog spot him watching them. The eldest boy swings his stick up to his shoulder like a rifle and challenges him. They all know it’s a stick, but the message is clear. This is ‘our’ land.
“The creature, almost upon them now and with Flash at its heels, came to a halt, gave a kind of squawk, and leaping up onto the top rail of the fence, hung there, its arms outflung as if preparing for flight. Then the ragged mouth gapped. ‘Do not shoot,’ it shouted. ‘I am a B-b-british object!’”
That is Gemmy’s life – forever precarious atop a boundary fence, almost unable to communicate, and at the mercy of all.
The story itself, takes place in the harsh, hot, humid climate, but the interest for me is the interior lives of the characters and how they manage to bump along together in spite of their differences. The characters are colourful and varied - the story is very real.
One thing that stood out for me was that although we hear little directly of the Aboriginal people, Gemmy’s knowledge of plants is invaluable to Mr. Frazer, the minister, who keeps a detailed field notebook and has dreams of using native plants and animals for the settlers. He records everything he can glean from Gemmy’s mangled language, and writes:
“We have been wrong to see this continent as hostile and infelicitous . . . It is habitable already.”
It’s a great story, which other reviewers have summarised well. I can’t recommend it highly enough, and anyone who has read Kate Grenville’s more recent novel The Secret River, or seen the television series, will have a sense of what the times were like near Sydney about the same time.
5★
This book is impossible to categorise. It is certainly historical fiction—mid-nineteenth century setting—but it’s more a study than a story. The language is so rich and poetic, that I just wanted to read and enjoy every phrase.
When the British colonists (un)settled Australia, it was considered Terra Nullius, belonging to no one. A Scottish mother thinks,
“It was the fearful loneliness of the place that most affected her—the absence of ghosts.
“Till they arrived no other lives had been lived here. It made the air that much thinner, harder to breathe. She had not understood, till she came to a place where it was lacking, the extent to which her sense of the world had to do with the presence of those who had been there before, leaving signs of their passing and spaces still warm with breath—a threshold worn with the coming and going of feet, hedges between fields that went back a thousand years, and the names even further; most of all, the names on headstones, which were THEIR names, under which lay the bones that had made their bones and given them breath.
“They would be the first dead here. It made death that much lonelier, and life lonelier too.”
Now, of course, people are aware of the rich and ancient Aboriginal culture and the significance of Country and ancestors.
A truly lonely person is the central character, Gemmy Fairley, who belongs to nobody, nowhere.
He is an English street urchin—a rat-catcher’s small helper—who ends up on a ship as a plaything of the crew until they chuck him overboard. He washes up on a beach, where Aboriginal women help him and reluctantly allow him to tag along after them..
He is with them but not of them.
For the next 16 years, he soaks up their culture and loses what little he had of his own except for nightmares
When he sees white colonial families, he is intrigued, and one day, a group of children and their dog spot him watching them. The eldest boy swings his stick up to his shoulder like a rifle and challenges him. They all know it’s a stick, but the message is clear. This is ‘our’ land.
“The creature, almost upon them now and with Flash at its heels, came to a halt, gave a kind of squawk, and leaping up onto the top rail of the fence, hung there, its arms outflung as if preparing for flight. Then the ragged mouth gapped. ‘Do not shoot,’ it shouted. ‘I am a B-b-british object!’”
That is Gemmy’s life – forever precarious atop a boundary fence, almost unable to communicate, and at the mercy of all.
The story itself, takes place in the harsh, hot, humid climate, but the interest for me is the interior lives of the characters and how they manage to bump along together in spite of their differences. The characters are colourful and varied - the story is very real.
One thing that stood out for me was that although we hear little directly of the Aboriginal people, Gemmy’s knowledge of plants is invaluable to Mr. Frazer, the minister, who keeps a detailed field notebook and has dreams of using native plants and animals for the settlers. He records everything he can glean from Gemmy’s mangled language, and writes:
“We have been wrong to see this continent as hostile and infelicitous . . . It is habitable already.”
It’s a great story, which other reviewers have summarised well. I can’t recommend it highly enough, and anyone who has read Kate Grenville’s more recent novel The Secret River, or seen the television series, will have a sense of what the times were like near Sydney about the same time.
December 20, 2016
’Til they arrived no other lives had been lived here. It made the air that much thinner, harder to breathe. She had not understood, ‘til she came to a place where it was lacking, the extent to which her sense of the world had to do with the presence of those who had been there before, leaving signs of their passing and spaces still warm with breath – a threshold worn with the coming and going of feet, hedges between fields that went back a thousand years, and the names even further, most of all, the names on headstones, which were their names, under which lay the bones that had made their bones and given them breath.
They would be the first dead here. It made death that much lonelier, and life lonelier too.
This is a novel of exile, both voluntary and involuntary. We’re dropped into mid-19th century colonial Australia, in a far-north outpost where European immigrants struggle to make a life out of the dust and rural isolation of their new land. They fear and misunderstand the native people, and both the immigrants and the aboriginals struggle with displacement. Gemmy, a white man raised by aboriginals for 16 years, becomes symbolism personified, neither here nor there, and for those of us who are immigrants ourselves the constant awkwardness was so brilliantly portrayed. Reverse culture shock was the most disorientating feeling I’ve ever experienced: that deeply lonely sense of being a two headed alien in your home country, and yet, still an outsider in your new one – Malouf nailed it. Both from Gemmy’s perspective, and from the Scottish immigrants who both long for home and struggle to put on a strong front and brave the elements. Identity is so deeply rooted in where we’re from and our early memories, and Thomas Wolfe was onto something when he said You Can’t Go Home Again.
The writing, quite simply, was beautiful. Lush, dreamy, emotional, and highly descriptive. Yet, this wasn’t a perfect book - mysterious characters disappeared when I wanted more of them, such as George the tortured schoolteacher, and Leona the “exotic” woman, and the ending felt a little rushed (“fast forward 50 years and this happened”), but it was a great introduction to Malouf’s work, and a dignified comment on culture, identity, and the beginnings of nationhood.
They would be the first dead here. It made death that much lonelier, and life lonelier too.
This is a novel of exile, both voluntary and involuntary. We’re dropped into mid-19th century colonial Australia, in a far-north outpost where European immigrants struggle to make a life out of the dust and rural isolation of their new land. They fear and misunderstand the native people, and both the immigrants and the aboriginals struggle with displacement. Gemmy, a white man raised by aboriginals for 16 years, becomes symbolism personified, neither here nor there, and for those of us who are immigrants ourselves the constant awkwardness was so brilliantly portrayed. Reverse culture shock was the most disorientating feeling I’ve ever experienced: that deeply lonely sense of being a two headed alien in your home country, and yet, still an outsider in your new one – Malouf nailed it. Both from Gemmy’s perspective, and from the Scottish immigrants who both long for home and struggle to put on a strong front and brave the elements. Identity is so deeply rooted in where we’re from and our early memories, and Thomas Wolfe was onto something when he said You Can’t Go Home Again.
The writing, quite simply, was beautiful. Lush, dreamy, emotional, and highly descriptive. Yet, this wasn’t a perfect book - mysterious characters disappeared when I wanted more of them, such as George the tortured schoolteacher, and Leona the “exotic” woman, and the ending felt a little rushed (“fast forward 50 years and this happened”), but it was a great introduction to Malouf’s work, and a dignified comment on culture, identity, and the beginnings of nationhood.
August 2, 2020
I have never read Malouf before, and found this book, which was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize, rather impressive and compelling. It is set in rural Queensland in the mid nineteenth century, where new settlers are establishing a farming community on the edge of wild land.
The plot centres on Jemmy, a young white man who has been living with Aborigines since being dumped at sea by a ship he was working on. Each chapter is told from a different character's perspective, as Jemmy's appearance unsettles the community and its fragile and untrusting relationship with their indigenous neighbours.
The plot centres on Jemmy, a young white man who has been living with Aborigines since being dumped at sea by a ship he was working on. Each chapter is told from a different character's perspective, as Jemmy's appearance unsettles the community and its fragile and untrusting relationship with their indigenous neighbours.
June 12, 2014
Warning: this is a beautiful review, but I want to alert the reader that reading it will ruin the plot and the process of suspense and mystery. I've given away too much but you'll love reading it when you have finished the book.
***********************************************
What is love?
I never thought an introductory query like this can be proper for a review of this novel with a Tarzan-like principal protagonist.
Sometime in the mid-19th century a young British boy named Gemmy Fairway, with some degree of mental retardation, was being used as a rat catcher by a cruel man named Willett. Later, he came aboard a British ship and was exploited for years as a cabin boy. When he was not needed anymore, he was cast ashore in Australia and was taken in by aborigines with whom he stayed for sixteen years, learning their ways and language, and almost forgetting those of the English.
The novel starts on the day Gemmy--all dirty, emaciated, practically naked and looking more like a wild animal than a man--was found by three young children: Janet, her sister Meg and their adoptive brother/cousin Lachlan, a boy who was a little older than them. They were of Irish descent, and belonged to a small European community established amidst the vastness of the untamed continent, at the time when communities like theirs still had fear of these natives/aborigines who were perceived to be savages and more numerous.
The three kids brought Gemmy home as if he was a cute, little, lost puppy they had found along the road. Lachlan was especially proud of him like he was something he caught while hunting. They clothed, cleaned and fed him. Then, trouble in paradise. Several of the neighbours thought Gemmy to be dangerous. That he was some sort of a spy for the blacks (aborigines) who raised him and intent on doing them harm. There were sub-plots here and several other interesting characters all written in a vivid and thrilling style that the characters and events came out alive from its pages.
A lot of other books are like this also, however. So what made it special to me that I gave it five stars? Well, this was what happened. Gemmy disappeared. Nine years later, when Lachlan was already a young man and working, he came to know of Gemmy's fate. Apparently he rejoined the blacks. Then he was killed when some marauding whites overran their community and massacred them.
Suddenly, it's 50 years after. Lachlan is now a high government official and Janet is a nun. Their parents had long died. Lachlan himself had lost a beloved grandson, Willie, who fought during world war 1 and this loss he constantly remembers day after day.
At this point, I was holding the book and saw there were only a few pages left. I said to myself, it's only about 3 stars, this novel is not going anywhere and it's about to end. Impossible for the author to establish a point in so few a pages.
Lachlan leaves the convent where he paid Janet a visit. Janet thinks of her present concerns then, later, reminisces about the past, remembering those she had loved now all gone.
I can't quote the entirety of it here, it's too tiresome to type it. And even if I reproduce it all here, you wouldn't understand because you do not know the stories and all the characters. But I shall copy the final four paragraphs here, FOR MYSELF, and for the pleasure of reading them again, slowly, as I punch the keyboards:
"When she glances up again, for she has been dozing, the misty blue out there has become indigo; the first lights have been doused, though the houses themselves do not fade from her mind, or the children who are sleeping in them. The first bright line of moonlight has appeared out on the mudflats, marking the ever moving, ever approaching, ever receding shore. All this a kind of praying. It does not make a house any less vivid out there because she can no longer see its light; or the children any less close because they no longer come to visit; or Willie because she has never known him except for what she has felt in Lachlan, and through him, in herself, the wedge of apple in his mouth; or her mother, long gone, standing out onn the hillslope in the dark, the dark of her body solid through the flimsy stuff, the moonlight, of her shift; or her father slumped at the breakfast table, the loose skin of her mother's hand, like an old glove, on the leathery back of his neck; or in darkness now, on the other side of the house, the single mind of the hive, closed on itself, on its secret which her own mind approaches and draws back from, the moment of illumination when she will again be filled with it; and Mrs Hutchence who has led her to this; and always, in a stilled moment that has lasted for years, Gemmy as she saw him, once and for all, up there on the stripped and shiny rail, never to fall, and Flash slicing the air with his yelps in clear dog-language, and his arms flung out, never to lift him clear; overbalancing now, drawn by the power, all unconscious in them, of their gaze, their need to draw him into their lives--love, again love--overbalanced but not yet falling. All these, Lord, all these. Let none be left in the dark or out of mind, on this night, now, in this corner of the world or any other, at this hour, in the middle of this war...
"Out beyond the flatlands the line of light pulses and swells. The sea, in sight now, ruffles, accelerates. Quickly now it is rising towards us, it approaches.
"As we approach prayer. As we approach knowledge. As we approach one another.
"It glows in fullness till the tide is high and the light almost, but not quite, unbearable, as the moon plucks at our world and all the waters of the earth ache towards it, and the light, running in fast now, reaches the edges of the shore, just so far in its order, and all the muddy margin of the bay is alive, and in a line of running fire all the outline of the vast continent appears, in touch now with its other life."
***********************************************
What is love?
I never thought an introductory query like this can be proper for a review of this novel with a Tarzan-like principal protagonist.
Sometime in the mid-19th century a young British boy named Gemmy Fairway, with some degree of mental retardation, was being used as a rat catcher by a cruel man named Willett. Later, he came aboard a British ship and was exploited for years as a cabin boy. When he was not needed anymore, he was cast ashore in Australia and was taken in by aborigines with whom he stayed for sixteen years, learning their ways and language, and almost forgetting those of the English.
The novel starts on the day Gemmy--all dirty, emaciated, practically naked and looking more like a wild animal than a man--was found by three young children: Janet, her sister Meg and their adoptive brother/cousin Lachlan, a boy who was a little older than them. They were of Irish descent, and belonged to a small European community established amidst the vastness of the untamed continent, at the time when communities like theirs still had fear of these natives/aborigines who were perceived to be savages and more numerous.
The three kids brought Gemmy home as if he was a cute, little, lost puppy they had found along the road. Lachlan was especially proud of him like he was something he caught while hunting. They clothed, cleaned and fed him. Then, trouble in paradise. Several of the neighbours thought Gemmy to be dangerous. That he was some sort of a spy for the blacks (aborigines) who raised him and intent on doing them harm. There were sub-plots here and several other interesting characters all written in a vivid and thrilling style that the characters and events came out alive from its pages.
A lot of other books are like this also, however. So what made it special to me that I gave it five stars? Well, this was what happened. Gemmy disappeared. Nine years later, when Lachlan was already a young man and working, he came to know of Gemmy's fate. Apparently he rejoined the blacks. Then he was killed when some marauding whites overran their community and massacred them.
Suddenly, it's 50 years after. Lachlan is now a high government official and Janet is a nun. Their parents had long died. Lachlan himself had lost a beloved grandson, Willie, who fought during world war 1 and this loss he constantly remembers day after day.
At this point, I was holding the book and saw there were only a few pages left. I said to myself, it's only about 3 stars, this novel is not going anywhere and it's about to end. Impossible for the author to establish a point in so few a pages.
Lachlan leaves the convent where he paid Janet a visit. Janet thinks of her present concerns then, later, reminisces about the past, remembering those she had loved now all gone.
I can't quote the entirety of it here, it's too tiresome to type it. And even if I reproduce it all here, you wouldn't understand because you do not know the stories and all the characters. But I shall copy the final four paragraphs here, FOR MYSELF, and for the pleasure of reading them again, slowly, as I punch the keyboards:
"When she glances up again, for she has been dozing, the misty blue out there has become indigo; the first lights have been doused, though the houses themselves do not fade from her mind, or the children who are sleeping in them. The first bright line of moonlight has appeared out on the mudflats, marking the ever moving, ever approaching, ever receding shore. All this a kind of praying. It does not make a house any less vivid out there because she can no longer see its light; or the children any less close because they no longer come to visit; or Willie because she has never known him except for what she has felt in Lachlan, and through him, in herself, the wedge of apple in his mouth; or her mother, long gone, standing out onn the hillslope in the dark, the dark of her body solid through the flimsy stuff, the moonlight, of her shift; or her father slumped at the breakfast table, the loose skin of her mother's hand, like an old glove, on the leathery back of his neck; or in darkness now, on the other side of the house, the single mind of the hive, closed on itself, on its secret which her own mind approaches and draws back from, the moment of illumination when she will again be filled with it; and Mrs Hutchence who has led her to this; and always, in a stilled moment that has lasted for years, Gemmy as she saw him, once and for all, up there on the stripped and shiny rail, never to fall, and Flash slicing the air with his yelps in clear dog-language, and his arms flung out, never to lift him clear; overbalancing now, drawn by the power, all unconscious in them, of their gaze, their need to draw him into their lives--love, again love--overbalanced but not yet falling. All these, Lord, all these. Let none be left in the dark or out of mind, on this night, now, in this corner of the world or any other, at this hour, in the middle of this war...
"Out beyond the flatlands the line of light pulses and swells. The sea, in sight now, ruffles, accelerates. Quickly now it is rising towards us, it approaches.
"As we approach prayer. As we approach knowledge. As we approach one another.
"It glows in fullness till the tide is high and the light almost, but not quite, unbearable, as the moon plucks at our world and all the waters of the earth ache towards it, and the light, running in fast now, reaches the edges of the shore, just so far in its order, and all the muddy margin of the bay is alive, and in a line of running fire all the outline of the vast continent appears, in touch now with its other life."
August 3, 2015
Back when I was a young and stupid undergrad I was forced to read this (probably meaning I read the first paragraph, the last paragraph, some random pages and took notes in the lecture). It was completely wasted on me back then! To the ignorant it seemed like quite a boring story where everyone hates each other and there is no happy ending, people just get older, go missing or whatever. Everyone seemed depressed and depressing (although even back then I did like Janet and the bees and kind of liked Leona too)
Rereading at age 40, I read a book I had not read before (much as some of the passages were familiar). In the interim I have become interested in sociology and social constructivism- the way people's identities are both their own choice AND constituted and limited by their relationships and context in place/time. The book looks at this glorious mess of identity in a complexly detailed mosaic of class, race, gender, age, family ties, use of (and relationship to) the land and dispossession. Gemmy is the clearest example, the character who has too many conflicting identities but somehow humbly navigates all of them.
But Janet was to me very interesting, especially in reference to Lachlan. Their relationship evolved in a way I completely didn't expect! (I don;t think that is a spoiler) and the young school teacher, George- not to mention Jock. Every character was a complex web of motivations, family background, emotional baggage, unrealised dreams, fears, social relationships, romantic involvements, pragmatism, race, class and gender. Desire in the book is dark and complex, and relationships are with the land and nature as well as with humans (but this is not romanticised or at least not too much)
If you want a feel good, straight forward story with a simple plot and a happy ending (as I used to) then don't even pick up this one. If you want to be challenged in your assumptions and think about what is the nature of human life, society and identity - especially exploring this from a critical post-colonial perspective then dive right into this bitter-sweet treat. (Please note it doesn't have long words and isn't all that hard to understand. I was personally just stupid when I was young)
Rereading at age 40, I read a book I had not read before (much as some of the passages were familiar). In the interim I have become interested in sociology and social constructivism- the way people's identities are both their own choice AND constituted and limited by their relationships and context in place/time. The book looks at this glorious mess of identity in a complexly detailed mosaic of class, race, gender, age, family ties, use of (and relationship to) the land and dispossession. Gemmy is the clearest example, the character who has too many conflicting identities but somehow humbly navigates all of them.
But Janet was to me very interesting, especially in reference to Lachlan. Their relationship evolved in a way I completely didn't expect! (I don;t think that is a spoiler) and the young school teacher, George- not to mention Jock. Every character was a complex web of motivations, family background, emotional baggage, unrealised dreams, fears, social relationships, romantic involvements, pragmatism, race, class and gender. Desire in the book is dark and complex, and relationships are with the land and nature as well as with humans (but this is not romanticised or at least not too much)
If you want a feel good, straight forward story with a simple plot and a happy ending (as I used to) then don't even pick up this one. If you want to be challenged in your assumptions and think about what is the nature of human life, society and identity - especially exploring this from a critical post-colonial perspective then dive right into this bitter-sweet treat. (Please note it doesn't have long words and isn't all that hard to understand. I was personally just stupid when I was young)
October 12, 2015
I thought this was a wonderful book - a poetic meditation on the power of language, fear, acceptance of difference and differing ways of looking at the world. It is beautiful and heart-breaking.
A 13 year old boy, put overboard because the crew fears that his illness is contagious, is taken in by Aborigines and learns their language and their way of being in the world. Sixteen years later he decides to join newly arrived white settlers. Instead of being welcomed, he is treated with great suspicion and fear by many in the group. He finds an unbridgeable gulf between most of them and himself, seen as a "white blackfeller".
(Pages 64-65) "But it was the other lot, those who were looking for the soft way, who gave him trouble. They could not understand why he was holding out on them. They were the peaceable ones, the ones who wanted to avoid bloodshed, couldn't he see that? Couldn't he tell the difference? Urgency made them desperate. They shouted at him, and then at one another.
And in fact a good deal of what they were after he could not have told, even if he had wanted to, for the simple reason that there were no words for it in their tongue; yet when, as sometimes happened, he fell back on the native word, the only one that could express it, their eyes went hard, as if the mere existence of a language they did not know was a provocation, a way of making them helpless. He did not intend it that way, but he too saw that it might be true. There was no way of existing in this land, or of making your way through it, unless you took into yourself, discovered on your breath, the sounds that linked up all the various parts of it and made them one. Without that you were blind, you were deaf, as he had been, at first, in their world. You blundered about seeing holes where in fact strong spirits were at work that had to be placated, and if you knew how to call them up, could be helpful. Half of what ought to have been bright and full of the breath of life to you was shrouded in mist."
A very interesting contrast to "The Secret River" by Kate Grenville.
Previously read November 2013
A 13 year old boy, put overboard because the crew fears that his illness is contagious, is taken in by Aborigines and learns their language and their way of being in the world. Sixteen years later he decides to join newly arrived white settlers. Instead of being welcomed, he is treated with great suspicion and fear by many in the group. He finds an unbridgeable gulf between most of them and himself, seen as a "white blackfeller".
(Pages 64-65) "But it was the other lot, those who were looking for the soft way, who gave him trouble. They could not understand why he was holding out on them. They were the peaceable ones, the ones who wanted to avoid bloodshed, couldn't he see that? Couldn't he tell the difference? Urgency made them desperate. They shouted at him, and then at one another.
And in fact a good deal of what they were after he could not have told, even if he had wanted to, for the simple reason that there were no words for it in their tongue; yet when, as sometimes happened, he fell back on the native word, the only one that could express it, their eyes went hard, as if the mere existence of a language they did not know was a provocation, a way of making them helpless. He did not intend it that way, but he too saw that it might be true. There was no way of existing in this land, or of making your way through it, unless you took into yourself, discovered on your breath, the sounds that linked up all the various parts of it and made them one. Without that you were blind, you were deaf, as he had been, at first, in their world. You blundered about seeing holes where in fact strong spirits were at work that had to be placated, and if you knew how to call them up, could be helpful. Half of what ought to have been bright and full of the breath of life to you was shrouded in mist."
A very interesting contrast to "The Secret River" by Kate Grenville.
Previously read November 2013
March 12, 2014
In the Australian bush, in the mid-19th Century, a small community of families from Scotland and England have set up homes. The settlers are surprised when a "black white man" appears at a farm at the edge of the bush. He is Gemmy Fairley who had been cast off a British ship near the northern shore of Australia at age 13. He was found by the aborigines and lived with them for 16 years. He only remembers a few words of English, and seems neither English nor aborigine. His childhood in England had been the horrific life of a street urchin before he went off to sea. Gemmy was taken in by the McIvor family, but does not feel truly part of either culture--European or aborigine. Some of the settlers fear the black aborigines, and do not trust Gemmy.
Told from the point of view of many of the colonials, the virtues, flaws, fears, and opinions of the people are shown. For example, the minister loves botany and values Gemmy as a resource for identifying edible plants used by the aborigines. The isolated group of settlers were the first Europeans to live in that part of Australia, and they had to cope with many unknowns. But some neighbors are so terrified that the aborigines will attack their families that the men attack the timid Gemmy in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the eccentric Mrs Hutchence extends kindness to all, including Gemmy.
The adjustment to a different land where they had no history, the loneliness, and the isolation was difficult for the settlers. The Scottish Mrs McIvor thought, "It was the fearful loneliness of the place that most affected her--the absence of ghosts....She had not understood, till she came to a place where it was lacking, the extent to which her sense of the world had to do with the presence of those who had been there before, leaving signs of their passing and spaces still warm with breath--a threshold worn with the coming and going of feet, hedges between fields that went back a thousand years, and the names even further..."
Neither the aborigines nor the colonials understood the others' culture. Gemmy was white, but his experiences gave him the skills to live in the bush and to communicate with the aboriginal tribe. The settlers had the fear of the unknown in a new land, and many expressed racial and cultural intolerance. The book has an interesting title, "Remembering Babylon". The Old Testament has many references to Babylon. One reference is to the Hebrews in exile in Babylon, away from their homeland in Zion. Another reference is about the confusion and inability to communicate as people spoke in different tongues during the construction of the Tower of Babel. Both Bible stories would seem to fit the themes of the book.
Told from the point of view of many of the colonials, the virtues, flaws, fears, and opinions of the people are shown. For example, the minister loves botany and values Gemmy as a resource for identifying edible plants used by the aborigines. The isolated group of settlers were the first Europeans to live in that part of Australia, and they had to cope with many unknowns. But some neighbors are so terrified that the aborigines will attack their families that the men attack the timid Gemmy in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the eccentric Mrs Hutchence extends kindness to all, including Gemmy.
The adjustment to a different land where they had no history, the loneliness, and the isolation was difficult for the settlers. The Scottish Mrs McIvor thought, "It was the fearful loneliness of the place that most affected her--the absence of ghosts....She had not understood, till she came to a place where it was lacking, the extent to which her sense of the world had to do with the presence of those who had been there before, leaving signs of their passing and spaces still warm with breath--a threshold worn with the coming and going of feet, hedges between fields that went back a thousand years, and the names even further..."
Neither the aborigines nor the colonials understood the others' culture. Gemmy was white, but his experiences gave him the skills to live in the bush and to communicate with the aboriginal tribe. The settlers had the fear of the unknown in a new land, and many expressed racial and cultural intolerance. The book has an interesting title, "Remembering Babylon". The Old Testament has many references to Babylon. One reference is to the Hebrews in exile in Babylon, away from their homeland in Zion. Another reference is about the confusion and inability to communicate as people spoke in different tongues during the construction of the Tower of Babel. Both Bible stories would seem to fit the themes of the book.
January 29, 2012
"Strange how unimportant eyebrows can be, as long as there are two of them"
In David Malouf's IMPAC-winning novel (novelette? 182 pages), a group of children in 1840s Queensland happen across a young man, unkempt and racially white, but exhibiting behaviour they and their community expect of the local Aborigines. The community is changed forever by Gemmy's arrival.
I don't understand how this won the IMPAC and was shortlisted for the Booker. It's So Incredibly Uninteresting. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters, the setting, the writing, just any of it. Maybe that's a criterion for book prizes.
Each chapter is from a different character's point of view - we get Gemmy, Lachlan (the boy who found him), Janet (Lachlan's jealous cousin), Jock (Janet's father), the teacher... and none of them is an interesting person by themselves. There are some vague hints of interesting colonial life (dialogue is written in a strange Scotch hybrid sometimes) but it's not explored. The writing is... meh. It's not even exhilerating writing.
Urgh. Take it away from me.
In David Malouf's IMPAC-winning novel (novelette? 182 pages), a group of children in 1840s Queensland happen across a young man, unkempt and racially white, but exhibiting behaviour they and their community expect of the local Aborigines. The community is changed forever by Gemmy's arrival.
I don't understand how this won the IMPAC and was shortlisted for the Booker. It's So Incredibly Uninteresting. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters, the setting, the writing, just any of it. Maybe that's a criterion for book prizes.
Each chapter is from a different character's point of view - we get Gemmy, Lachlan (the boy who found him), Janet (Lachlan's jealous cousin), Jock (Janet's father), the teacher... and none of them is an interesting person by themselves. There are some vague hints of interesting colonial life (dialogue is written in a strange Scotch hybrid sometimes) but it's not explored. The writing is... meh. It's not even exhilerating writing.
Urgh. Take it away from me.
March 11, 2018
During the 1850's in Australia's Queensland frontier, three distinguished characters meet and indelibly impact each other's lives. All are transplants from the UK. Janet and Lachan are the children of settlers. The third is a description defying misfit named Gemmy; a young man whose adult years have been spent living with a tribe of native Aborigines after being cast away from a British sailing ship. He is completely acculturated into the indigenous ways, barely able to converse with a few words of English.
The story is written in the third person by a narrator with limited omniscience, one that shifts from character to character with each chapter. Using this technique, the author skillfully develops complex relationships between his characters, as they act out their ambitions, intentions, and fears. Early on, Gemmy enjoys a secure, albeit undefined role in the community, living with a respected family. Within the boundaries of their homestead and through intuition and feelings, Gemmy develops relationships with each family member. Outside of their homestead and after the initial curiosity subsides, currents of fear and distrust arise. They quickly intensify and the story unfolds.
Right up until chapter 19 ends and 20 begins. At that point the author abandons this frontier community on the edge of outer darkness and declares that World War I is underway. Somehow, seventy years have passed. The reader is reintroduced to Janet, now/known/as Sister Monica, bee expert of international reputation and member of a cloistered convent. Hers is a life of devotion, beauty, and purpose. Lachan on the other hand, has become a high-ranking government official, grieving over the loss of his wife and their only son in the European war. Through Lachan and Janet’s conversation, the author attempts to resolve the reader’s curiosity and explain whatever became of Gemmy and some of the lesser characters. This final chapter is abrupt, short, and unsatisfying. It seemed to this reader, a cheap technique to end an otherwise gripping story.
The story is written in the third person by a narrator with limited omniscience, one that shifts from character to character with each chapter. Using this technique, the author skillfully develops complex relationships between his characters, as they act out their ambitions, intentions, and fears. Early on, Gemmy enjoys a secure, albeit undefined role in the community, living with a respected family. Within the boundaries of their homestead and through intuition and feelings, Gemmy develops relationships with each family member. Outside of their homestead and after the initial curiosity subsides, currents of fear and distrust arise. They quickly intensify and the story unfolds.
Right up until chapter 19 ends and 20 begins. At that point the author abandons this frontier community on the edge of outer darkness and declares that World War I is underway. Somehow, seventy years have passed. The reader is reintroduced to Janet, now/known/as Sister Monica, bee expert of international reputation and member of a cloistered convent. Hers is a life of devotion, beauty, and purpose. Lachan on the other hand, has become a high-ranking government official, grieving over the loss of his wife and their only son in the European war. Through Lachan and Janet’s conversation, the author attempts to resolve the reader’s curiosity and explain whatever became of Gemmy and some of the lesser characters. This final chapter is abrupt, short, and unsatisfying. It seemed to this reader, a cheap technique to end an otherwise gripping story.
Read
December 22, 2021"...hundreds of wee bright insects, each the size of his little fingernail, metallic, iridescent and the discovery of them, the new light they brought to the scene, was a lightness in him - that was what surprised him - like a form of knowledge he had broken through to. It was unnameable, which disturbed him, but was also exhilarating; for a moment he was entirely happy." [p97]
From REMEMBERING BABYLON by David Malouf, 1993.
#ReadtheWorld21 📍 Australia
A few months ago, a friend on Instagram posted this beautiful quote in his stories by David Malouf. I was familiar with his name but didn't know anything about him, and decided to try his work for this month's RTW21 focus on Australia.
I chose Remembering Babylon from Malouf's oeuvre on a whim - the historical setting of 19th-century Queensland, as well as the description of a child thrown overboard from a sinking British ship, to be found and raised by Aboriginal Australians, later to encounter white settlers in colonial Australia - intrigued me, as did its shortlisting for the Booker Prize back in 1993.
The inevitable questions of who is the actual "savage" and who is the "civilized" play into the narrative in the early scenes of encounter. From this point, we get a kaleidoscopic view of the settlers and their views of "Gemmy" as they call him, as well as the larger settler colonial mentality of claiming / stealing a land they believed to be their right...
No narrative of Gemmy, or of the peoples he lived with for decades, unfortunately.
The encounter of Gemmy emerging from the bush is the first plot drive of the book, but the sense that will stay with me the most is the way Malouf slows his narrative pace and captures these achingly beautiful scenes - often using natural images of flora and fauna, as the brief scene shared above in the quote.
Another scene from the book that I've seen several people mention in reviews of this book is a young girl completely covered in honeybees, yet so peaceful and calm... Such (stinging?) imagery that stays with the reader long after closing the pages.
Malouf's style stunned me multiple times and I'd love to check out more of his work.
From REMEMBERING BABYLON by David Malouf, 1993.
#ReadtheWorld21 📍 Australia
A few months ago, a friend on Instagram posted this beautiful quote in his stories by David Malouf. I was familiar with his name but didn't know anything about him, and decided to try his work for this month's RTW21 focus on Australia.
I chose Remembering Babylon from Malouf's oeuvre on a whim - the historical setting of 19th-century Queensland, as well as the description of a child thrown overboard from a sinking British ship, to be found and raised by Aboriginal Australians, later to encounter white settlers in colonial Australia - intrigued me, as did its shortlisting for the Booker Prize back in 1993.
The inevitable questions of who is the actual "savage" and who is the "civilized" play into the narrative in the early scenes of encounter. From this point, we get a kaleidoscopic view of the settlers and their views of "Gemmy" as they call him, as well as the larger settler colonial mentality of claiming / stealing a land they believed to be their right...
No narrative of Gemmy, or of the peoples he lived with for decades, unfortunately.
The encounter of Gemmy emerging from the bush is the first plot drive of the book, but the sense that will stay with me the most is the way Malouf slows his narrative pace and captures these achingly beautiful scenes - often using natural images of flora and fauna, as the brief scene shared above in the quote.
Another scene from the book that I've seen several people mention in reviews of this book is a young girl completely covered in honeybees, yet so peaceful and calm... Such (stinging?) imagery that stays with the reader long after closing the pages.
Malouf's style stunned me multiple times and I'd love to check out more of his work.
January 16, 2020
Romanzo molto bello.
Malouf racconta la vita dei coloni inglesi arrivati in Australia a metà dell'800 e del loro difficile rapporto con le popolazioni indigene. Il pretesto per la storia è l'arrivo di un uomo che ha vissuto per più di 10 anni tra i nativi a causa di un naufragio. Si scatenano i dubbi e i sospetti perché ha dimenticato l'inglese e fatto sue le abitudini delle popolazioni locali.
Malouf, capitolo dopo capitolo, indaga la psicologia dei vari personaggi, il loro pensieri, le loro preoccupazioni, le grettezze e le superstizioni, ma anche i sogni e le speranze. Fa un ritratto una natura lussureggiante e maestosa, ma anche ignota e spaventosa nei suoi silenzi solitari e nei suoi minacciosi scricchiolii.
Altra qualità è la capacità di creare nel lettore una sottile inquietudine, un senso di tensione che incolla alla pagina.
Malouf racconta la vita dei coloni inglesi arrivati in Australia a metà dell'800 e del loro difficile rapporto con le popolazioni indigene. Il pretesto per la storia è l'arrivo di un uomo che ha vissuto per più di 10 anni tra i nativi a causa di un naufragio. Si scatenano i dubbi e i sospetti perché ha dimenticato l'inglese e fatto sue le abitudini delle popolazioni locali.
Malouf, capitolo dopo capitolo, indaga la psicologia dei vari personaggi, il loro pensieri, le loro preoccupazioni, le grettezze e le superstizioni, ma anche i sogni e le speranze. Fa un ritratto una natura lussureggiante e maestosa, ma anche ignota e spaventosa nei suoi silenzi solitari e nei suoi minacciosi scricchiolii.
Altra qualità è la capacità di creare nel lettore una sottile inquietudine, un senso di tensione che incolla alla pagina.
March 17, 2021
"It does not make a house any less vivid out there because she can no longer see its light; or the children any less close because they no longer come to visit; or Willie because she has never known him except for what she has felt in Lachlan, and through him, in herself, the wedge of apple in his mouth; or her mother, long gone, standing out on the hillslope in the dark, the dark of her body solid through the flimsy stuff, the moonlight, of her shift; or her father slumped at the breakfast table, the loose skin of her mother's hand, like an old glove, on the leathery back of his neck..."
October 19, 2015
So I did like this novel for the the themes it explored, though I found the writing at times not so high quality. As I usually do when reading a novel, and for my own enjoyment not reading anything anyone else has said about it, just took the whole thing as literal. I soon realized that this could not be done and was not the author's intent. Questionable notion that a boy raised as English until the age of 13 would in a space of 16 years living with the aboriginal Australians lose almost complete memory of his past and even the ability to speak English? Even more the assertion that living among the Aborigines resulted in the physical alteration of Gemmy so that he becomes unrecognizable as a white person? The author even cites as an example of how this could be so in saying that whites who live for extended periods among the Chinese find their very physical features altered, including eye shape, through some sort of osmosis. Well no. I realized then that the book could not be taken that way, that the character of Gemmy was more of a symbol of the potential of what could be in common between the Aborigines and British settlers and what was unbridgeable.
Taken at that I liked the author's exploration of what could have been for the European settlement of Australia. Gemmy really represents the possibilities and limitations for that. Mr. Frazer representing the potential for the British to attempt to adjust to become part of the Australia land and perhaps coexist with those who were already living there. On the other hand most of the other white settlers are only eager to remake to the extent possible the new land into a copy of the England that they had come from. This made Gemmy, a white who had managed to assimilate, a threat beyond any reality. The existing human population is a threat to be feared and destroyed.
Of course in historical reality the deep racism that was in the mothers milk of the British who colonized the world at that time made any such cultural accommodation near impossible. And it was clear who would in the end prevail—"Guns, Germs, and Steel."
Taken at that I liked the author's exploration of what could have been for the European settlement of Australia. Gemmy really represents the possibilities and limitations for that. Mr. Frazer representing the potential for the British to attempt to adjust to become part of the Australia land and perhaps coexist with those who were already living there. On the other hand most of the other white settlers are only eager to remake to the extent possible the new land into a copy of the England that they had come from. This made Gemmy, a white who had managed to assimilate, a threat beyond any reality. The existing human population is a threat to be feared and destroyed.
Of course in historical reality the deep racism that was in the mothers milk of the British who colonized the world at that time made any such cultural accommodation near impossible. And it was clear who would in the end prevail—"Guns, Germs, and Steel."
March 12, 2014
I liked the book, but I was very disappointed at the end. I chose to read this book because I was hoping it would give me an inside story about the Aborigines from a white man who had lived with them. Was I wrong!
I knew it was a story of a young white man (Gemmy Fairley) who had lived with the Aborigines or blacks as they were called, for 16 years. He was 10 or 12 when he was found on the shore, more dead than alive. They tended to him allowed him to live with them.
“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.”
He had some kind of mental handicap that was really never explained. He stuttered and had nightmares. He hopped around and played the fool most of the time.
“He was a parody of a white man. If you gave him a word for a thing, he could, after a good deal of huffing and blowing, repeat it, but the next time round you had to teach it to him all over again.”
One day he appeared out of the forest to three white children. The white settlers were always leery of him and felt that he was skulking around and spying on them so that he could go back and tell the blacks things. Then, he disappeared one day. The story then jumped ahead 15 years and it was indicated that Gemmy had been killed, along with some other blacks. Then it jumped again and was 50 years later and two of the white children who had originally found Gemmy at the beginning of the story had a meeting. Weird.
The story started off great, and there were more than a few references to the Aborigines but no more than a glimpse. What I learned was that the English settlers were terrified of the blacks and lived in constant fear of being attacked. They never tried to understand them or comprehend what they wanted when they came around. There was only one white man interested discovering the plants and trees and vegetation to report back to the Governor of the colony and his text was never taken seriously. It was Gemmy that showed him around and pointed out fruits and vegetation that was good to eat. Mr. Frazer made meticulous drawings and notes. Gemmy was fascinated watching him. He believed that Mr. Frazer had captured the spirit of what he had been shown.
There were parts of the story that are very good, descriptive and sensitive. Most of the characters are so-so. The author writes things and gives no reasons or examples and you are just left to say to yourself "okay - that was strange".
I got to chapter 19 and it was like - where did the rest of the story go??? And - what - did everyone fall asleep and wake up 30 years later during WWI?
So much for a book short listed for the Booker Prize!
I knew it was a story of a young white man (Gemmy Fairley) who had lived with the Aborigines or blacks as they were called, for 16 years. He was 10 or 12 when he was found on the shore, more dead than alive. They tended to him allowed him to live with them.
“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.”
He had some kind of mental handicap that was really never explained. He stuttered and had nightmares. He hopped around and played the fool most of the time.
“He was a parody of a white man. If you gave him a word for a thing, he could, after a good deal of huffing and blowing, repeat it, but the next time round you had to teach it to him all over again.”
One day he appeared out of the forest to three white children. The white settlers were always leery of him and felt that he was skulking around and spying on them so that he could go back and tell the blacks things. Then, he disappeared one day. The story then jumped ahead 15 years and it was indicated that Gemmy had been killed, along with some other blacks. Then it jumped again and was 50 years later and two of the white children who had originally found Gemmy at the beginning of the story had a meeting. Weird.
The story started off great, and there were more than a few references to the Aborigines but no more than a glimpse. What I learned was that the English settlers were terrified of the blacks and lived in constant fear of being attacked. They never tried to understand them or comprehend what they wanted when they came around. There was only one white man interested discovering the plants and trees and vegetation to report back to the Governor of the colony and his text was never taken seriously. It was Gemmy that showed him around and pointed out fruits and vegetation that was good to eat. Mr. Frazer made meticulous drawings and notes. Gemmy was fascinated watching him. He believed that Mr. Frazer had captured the spirit of what he had been shown.
There were parts of the story that are very good, descriptive and sensitive. Most of the characters are so-so. The author writes things and gives no reasons or examples and you are just left to say to yourself "okay - that was strange".
I got to chapter 19 and it was like - where did the rest of the story go??? And - what - did everyone fall asleep and wake up 30 years later during WWI?
So much for a book short listed for the Booker Prize!
February 25, 2012
There are no words.
Malouf appears to be a lyrical master, who produces nothing but beauty with every stroke of a pen. Indeed, as he writes toward the end of this spectacularly moving novel, 'he was tying up one of the loose ends of his life, which might otherwise have gone on bleeding forever'. There is the very real sense that Malouf, in this novel and many of his others, is not just grappling with the questions that individually experienced traumas can inflict, but with the greater questions of our nationally developed identity; what we take from our collective history to form our sense of who we are, and those things that we might purposefully ignore because they don't support the picture we have painted of ourselves. From Gemmy, Lachlan, Janet, Ellen, George Abbott, Mr Frazer and Jock we learn that it is possible to move forward - however changed we may be from what came before - and continue to live, even though return is impossible. Return is impossible for these characters as their experiences and involvement with each other have forever changed who they were and how they understand the world they live in and the people around them. They have clarity. A lesson we could all stand to learn.
Malouf appears to be a lyrical master, who produces nothing but beauty with every stroke of a pen. Indeed, as he writes toward the end of this spectacularly moving novel, 'he was tying up one of the loose ends of his life, which might otherwise have gone on bleeding forever'. There is the very real sense that Malouf, in this novel and many of his others, is not just grappling with the questions that individually experienced traumas can inflict, but with the greater questions of our nationally developed identity; what we take from our collective history to form our sense of who we are, and those things that we might purposefully ignore because they don't support the picture we have painted of ourselves. From Gemmy, Lachlan, Janet, Ellen, George Abbott, Mr Frazer and Jock we learn that it is possible to move forward - however changed we may be from what came before - and continue to live, even though return is impossible. Return is impossible for these characters as their experiences and involvement with each other have forever changed who they were and how they understand the world they live in and the people around them. They have clarity. A lesson we could all stand to learn.
February 12, 2008
Moving. A lovingly written, poetically realzed novel about a shipwrecked boy growing up in the wilds of Australia who is taken into civilized British Colonial Society and suffers the exile and the torment of the clash of his identity.
Malouf is a poet, apparently a good one, and his prose is mild but incandescently so. It glows and he controls the tint as the story fits.
Very sad, very humble and moving. This is feeling of millions of people around the globe who find themselves somewhere between the borderlines of what is built for people and what is not.
The distance he keeps his characters from each other and the distance he keeps the reader from the action is marvelously balanced. It's this balance that drives a moral fable about colonized people and the influence of the Other in social change to true depth and simple purity.
It's on a bunch of curriculums, apparently, and it totally deserves to be.
November 15, 2015
Out of the darkness of the wild comes a boy…
The story gently sweeps along, weaving through a far-flung town’s hopes and fears as colonial and Aboriginal Australia uneasily coexist.
The story gently sweeps along, weaving through a far-flung town’s hopes and fears as colonial and Aboriginal Australia uneasily coexist.
March 21, 2024
Intresting themes... painfully boring book. I read it for uni and hated every second I had to endure this torture.
November 25, 2024
Set in the 1840s, Gemmy Fairley served as cabin-boy on a British ship from which he was cast overboard, washing up on the shores of Australia. He grew up among an aboriginal group, from whom he learned survival skills. The story opens many years later, when he is found by the children of white settlers. Gemmy’s presence disrupts the settlers’ orderly lives, and he becomes a focal point for the community’s fears and prejudices. As the novel progresses, the storyline shifts from Gemmy to the points of view of a handful of other characters. Malouf’s lyrical prose vividly depicts the Australian landscape. I particularly liked the female beekeeper who later becomes a nun. I quite enjoyed this book, and its examination of issues that are still relevant to contemporary discussions of race, culture, and the environment.
December 15, 2024
The writing is sentence perfect and beautiful, it’s like reading poetry. I listened to this as an audio and perhaps I was too distracted as I lost the thread and had to listen again to several sections. I think this is me not the story. Malouf is an exceptional writer so I will need to read this again to fully appreciate it. I think I struggled to hold all the characters in place as I’ve been attempting too much multi tasking (unsuccessfully).
July 15, 2025
um livro de Malouf que mais uma vez me conquistou. as personagens carregadas de estórias e vidas intensas. um livro sobre o "humano" e o que podemos ser ou não fruto das nossas experiências pessoais e da nossa história de vida.
June 9, 2024
Exceptional. Gorgeous prose (Malouf´s a poet and it shows),each character, however minor, is exquisitely drawn. A story of identity, family,belonging, love, losses.Lyrical. Malouf deserves the Nobel.
April 7, 2016
Although this high quality novel is set in the mid 19th century, I wouldn't really describe it as a "historical novel". It has a dreamlike feel and is probably closer to the magic realism genre. The setting is Queensland, amongst a group of English and Scottish families living at the very outer edge of European settlement. Beyond the settlement there is a vast, unknown and frightening "otherness", and the novel's central event is the arrival in the settlement of a near naked white man, speaking an Aboriginal language and seemingly sprung from the landscape itself, but holding onto a few ragged remnants of his former clothing as a badge of his previous existence. This is "Gemmy", one time ship's cabin boy, marooned years previously and adopted by the local Aboriginal people.
This is one of those novels that has little in the way of a conventional storyline. Gemmy is taken in by one of the local families, but with his arrival little cracks of dissension start to appear in the community. The novel minutely observes the shifts in relationship that develop as a result. I would say that this novel is mainly about identity, both group and individual, and about each person's place in the world. Definitely not one to read if you are looking for edge of the seat action, but it kept me intrigued throughout.
This is one of those novels that has little in the way of a conventional storyline. Gemmy is taken in by one of the local families, but with his arrival little cracks of dissension start to appear in the community. The novel minutely observes the shifts in relationship that develop as a result. I would say that this novel is mainly about identity, both group and individual, and about each person's place in the world. Definitely not one to read if you are looking for edge of the seat action, but it kept me intrigued throughout.
January 18, 2020
L'australia del Queensland, aspra, difficile, immensa; i coloni , che sono uguali in tutto il mondo: disperati, affamati, irrequieti e sospettosi; un uomo che compare dal nulla, dal bush, un uomo bianco che ha vissuto con i “neri” del luogo, un uomo che si è perfettamente integrato con loro e che per i nuovi abitanti è sospettoso e potenzialmente pericoloso. Le atmosfere magiche degli aborigeni sono ormai parte di Gemmy che vorrebbe tornare a essere uno dei bianchi, che si impegna ma che viene tenuto ai margini. La diversità spaventa, gli spazi immensi pure, il passato è una appendice che non ci possiamo scrollare di dosso. Un romanzo molto particolare , molto sopra le righe, dove niente è definito e dove tutto è possibile. Le ultime 20 pagine sono disarmanti!
July 7, 2017
I seem to have a way of picking opaque books to read when I have a cold and under heavy meds. I would have thought it's the other way around if it was any other book, that the book was opaque because I was under medication, but apparently I'm not the only one. I just learned that Malouf is also a poet, and that's probably why for most of the book, every sentence made perfect sense, but together it meant nothing.
There are some rather beautiful parts. Janet with her body covered in bees, her mind zoning out and tapping into that of the bees. Ellen with her childhood spent in the coal mines of Scotland, longing for home. But beyond that, not much else. It wasn't cohesive, and there were too many underdeveloped characters. None were compelling. I guess it would have been an interesting look into early colonial Australia, had it had a good enough plot, but as it is, it was boring.
There are some rather beautiful parts. Janet with her body covered in bees, her mind zoning out and tapping into that of the bees. Ellen with her childhood spent in the coal mines of Scotland, longing for home. But beyond that, not much else. It wasn't cohesive, and there were too many underdeveloped characters. None were compelling. I guess it would have been an interesting look into early colonial Australia, had it had a good enough plot, but as it is, it was boring.
April 5, 2021
REMEMBERING BABYLON exemplifies the very worst pitfalls of literary fiction. It is pretentious and boring. The mood is monochromatic. Worst of all, though it is ostensibly set in Australia's colonial past, it has no real sense of place. Instead, it exists in its own world - a nightmare realm that serves only as a stage for Malouf's stylistic onanism. Ironically, there is almost nothing quintessentially Australian about this book - no larrikin humour, no cynicism, no knowing sense of our tragicomic history. Instead we get something sickeningly sentimental, something quite foreign.
November 8, 2010
This is an absolutely beautiful book--I found myself quoting it constantly, i.e. "When she got up and walked out into the paddock, and all the velvety grass heads blazed up, haloed with gold, she felt under the influence of her secret skin, suddenly floaty, as if she had been relieved of the weight of her own life, and the brighter being in her was very gently stirring and shifting its wings."-- the character, Janet:
October 4, 2018
This book was pretty great. I enjoy historical fiction to a point and this was totally in my boundaries. Gemmy is amazing. My heart ached for him when we leared of his past. I love how janet, Meg and Lachlan brought him home and helped him. I love how they took him in and make him one of them. I didn't think that there was going to be anything interesting as I neared the end of the book. This is an awesome way of writing and I loved it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 1, 2011
What a difficult little book. I'm not sure what I would have made of this story had I not been familiar with Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic. Still, though high on intellectual delicacy, the narrative was a little low on nourishment. Is it possible for a writer to be too masterful to be interesting?
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