12 Edmondstone Street

by David Malouf

Each house, like each place, has its own topography, its own lore. A complex history comes down to us, through household jokes and anecdotes, odd family habits, and irrational superstitions, that forever shapes what we see and the way in which we see it.

Beginning with his childhood home, David Malouf moves on to show other landmarks in his life, and the way places and things create our private worlds. Written with humour and uncompromising intelligence, 12 Edmondstone Street is an unforgettable portrait of one man's life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Australia, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir

134 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

David 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.

Reviews

[zed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have recently been reading theory on spatial literature online, discussions of space, place, and geography as major elements in the stories authors tell. With this very short book, spatial literature has been, and for the first time in my reading life, dominant in how I approached the text and tried to interlink its four parts.

This is an autobiographical book by the great Brisbane writer David Malouf, consisting of four essays written as observations from different stages of his life’s journey. The essays trace how place shaped his life. Malouf moves from the architecture of his childhood home to the wider geographies he inhabits later. Each essay treats space and objects (and that includes people) as cultural, sensory, and emotional

My previous two Malouf reads, Harland’s Half Acre and Johnno, had already convinced me what an excellent writer and storyteller he is, reflective at times, philosophical, and always deeply rooted in his memories. This vague memoir is small in size but expansive in its spatial imagination, especially rich in reflection and philosophical recollection.
After finishing the above scribbling, I searched online for commentary on the book’s spatial dimensions and found a PDF titled “The Mythology of Absence: David Malouf’s 12 Edmondstone Street and Stefan Ackerie’s ‘Skyneedle’.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/...

It is an excellent read for anyone interested in Brisbane literature and the city’s spatial and geographical transformations from past to present. I only wish I could express my own thoughts as coherently.

Essay one, 12 Edmondstone Street, is the first and definitively the major essay that covers his no longer existent childhood home in South Brisbane. I have passed this address countless times and my limited imagination could not bring to life that an author, I admire, had lived his life in a street as a child and is now essentially inner-city high rises and seemingly a permanent building site. Space, place, and geography dominate this essay.

Essay two, A Place in Tuscany, covers Malouf in a property he purchased in Tuscany to live and write in. While there he was interviewed and filmed for a documentary series called An Imaginary Life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVYcR...

Essay three, A Foot in the Stream, has Malouf in Bombay and observing not only an alien culture but his own shock.

Essay four, The Kyogle Line, goes back to his childhood and a train journey to Sydney in 1944. At a stop he sees three Japanese POWs in a train wagon and discusses the reaction around him and to why his father may have said nothing.

This compendium of his life and thoughts is not an autobiography in the traditional sense. The major essay is magnificent and being short, I wonder if the original publishers needed stories to fill the book out to its 134 pages. My Penguin edition was published in 1986, a year after its initial release, and it states that essays 2 and 3 had originally been published in the National Times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nat...
I wondered as to how I might have thought about this collection without having read about the theory of spatial literature, would I have been a little dismissive of what seems a hodgepodge of four seemingly differing stories. Essay one and essay four are certainly naturally linked, but the middle two are not. With that doubt in my mind, I still highly recommend this short book, essay one, 12 Edmondstone Street, is an utter gem of writing in terms of a bygone world, of space, place, geography and those long-gone childhood memories and Essay four The Kyogle Line was also very good.

Brisbane Literary walk 15 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

[Ed Parke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a fellow Brisbanite, I really enjoyed Malouf's little 'spatial memoir' of his upbringing in the River City - although the Brisbane described in this book disappeared long before I myself was born. As much a journey back into the nooks and crannies of childhood as into the inner recesses of memory, relationship, and identity. If you are looking for a more accessible (and infinitely more gripping) treatise on the poetics of space than Gaston Bachelard's abstruse work, definitely pick up Malouf.

[Robert Lukins · Rating 5 out of 5]

A memoirish sketch on the framework of memory; as terrific as you might expect.

[Donny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although it has been ages since I read about the place I had lived for the past five years, this is not the book for anyone who expects to learn about their immediate surroundings of the South Brisbane we know nowadays—full of gentrification under a slowly fading streetscape. It was, however, a slice of life of David Malouf's life and a small taster of his well-travelled works that was collected in this small book. It was a delight to read his voice for the first time of my life, sometimes weaving in thought-provoking philosophical dispositions. It makes you ponder, even in the smallest things one sees around him, what significance it can mean if we just spend a little more time in thinking about it (say his encounter of the Indian shoe-shining boy, full of vigor and life compared to the "observer" role a tourist who sees them as poor and impoverished streetster). I thoroughly love this short book despite it took me so long to read due to my busy life.

[Jen Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've long been a fan of David Malouf, and if you have the chance to listen to him (in person or online) I recommend it, he has a wise, measured way of speaking.

This wasn't my favourite work of his, but it does give a wonderful insight into growing up in Brisbane, the dos and don'ts, in a unique method of walking through his house.

I really admire some of the details and would call it an enjoyable read.

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only part of this I really enjoyed was the bit where David talked about his relationship with his Dad - it’s a shame that story was limited to the last 10 pages of the book.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 1985 collection of non-fiction, auto-biographical sketches with a great deal of nostalgic charm from one of Australia's best writers. I picked-up this slim volume for a song at WHSmith's Croydon branch, bearing the sticker on the front-cover with the ominous words for any writer...'Clearance 50p'. The best 50p I've spent for ages...with the title piece a model of great writing. Malouf's use of English belies his Anglo-Australian-Syrian-Lebanese roots, which he alludes to with rare sensitivity,and paints a vivid picture of a small boy's perceptions of his world,delineated by his characterful house & gardens,& local colours & smells. There are two shorter pieces dealing with,first, Tuscany,where Malouf is doing some filming fore a documentary, and, then, India, where he reacts to the assault on his refined senses of everyday India in all its squalor & vibrant life-affirming variety, with sustained wonder & enquiry.
Book-lovers!...pay closer attention to what you might find in piles of discounted books! With such vertiginous peaks of dross published daily, down in the troughs...there's plenty of tasty 'swill' to get your literary snouts stuck-into! 50p's worth of manna from heaven perhaps?

[Christine Bowker Osborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title refers to the address of his childhood home in Brisbane and the first part of this short book explores it intimately: I have never read a better description of a classic Australian weatherboard house.

This early part of the book is beautifully written from Malouf's acute childhood observations. But suddenly we are in Tuscany and what follows is a rather tedious account of film shot. Just as suddenly we are in Delhi being told that "air travel is a risky business". Then we jump onto a train on The Kyogle Line. I was unsure whether these abrupt changes slotted together under the title 12 Edmondstone Street, but in good form, Mr Malouf ranks with the best descriptive writers of the 20-21st century.

[Michael Burge · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second time I've read a Malouf book and been disappointed (the other was "Remembering Babylon").

The disappointment is in the plotting - Malouf diverges and tries to interest the reader in something less interesting than what seems to be the main story. It left me feeling like I've met someone less than likeable, but must endure for the sake of politeness.

He's a great writer, but this is not his best work.

Part one, about the title address, is wonderful. The rest is less so.

This title doesn't feel like a coherent expression, more a compendium encouraged by a publisher wanting to package disparate material.

[Lucy Somerhalder · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir is broken into four parts - each a different stage of Malouf's life. Beautifully written all the way through, however I was less engaged with the Tuscan chapter. Malouf writes with a kind of honesty that continually snuck up on me.. I found myself repeatedly taken aback by his lyrical frankness and sweet vulnerability. I especially liked the return to childhood in the fourth chapter. It was unexpected, and added some retrospective joy to the previous two chapters.

[Dani Ringrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five stars for the opening third about his youth in Brisbane. Purely because it brought back so many memories of growing up in West End as well, and the houses with similar architectures as he described. Rushed through the other sections without taking them in, very indifferent to them.

[Ira Rigaud · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different!

Really a series of essays, loosely connected. Great writing in here, love a lot of the childhood memories- nothing revolutionarily groundbreaking but great capturing of the boundaries and fears and priorities of childhood.

Enjoyed the chapter in a snowy Italy- had a fun madcap feel.

Was deeply rolling my eyes in the India chapter- but then he turns the lens on himself and is critical of his own analysis in an interesting and surprising way.

Want to read more Malouf after this!

[Ajk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really enjoyable, modernist prose about that mid-century era and thoughtful glimpses of how a Lebanese family meets Australianness. I enjoyed the memoir of his childhood, and the final section about his father on a trainride was beautiful. Wish they stood alone. The Italy bit was weird, and the little 15-page sojourn to India was racist as hell.
Reminds me of a mix of Dos Passos and Aciman, and again, I would really enjoy more like the last chapter. But the India stuff was gross.

[Susan Belperio · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the first of his books that I've ever managed to complete. The first part, evocatively written about his childhood home in Brisbane, resonated greatly with me, as I too am a Queenslander. The second half of the book was hard going, and consisted of largely disconnected segments of his later life. If I wasn't in self isolation, I would have given up half way through.

[Gay Harding · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unusual read, interesting but nothing like any of Malouf’s other books. I enjoyed the chapter describing the setting up of a short film on Malouf himself. I understand how the description of his childhood home and where it was located would resonate with people from there, but I just found it a little boring.

[Susan Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Malouf's autobiography is one of my favourites. I appreciated the way he was able to detail his world at large, both through memory and physicality. As he discusses the wonderful impacts that spaces and places have made on him, with reference to topographic changes when travelling overseas, one feels that they are engaging in such experiences with him. A great read :)

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of this book. It was so familiar and his descriptions of his were wonderful.
The other 3 sections felt more disjointed.
David Malouf is a keen observer and has an excellent turn of phrase.

[Knibbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed the section on his childhood home, but found the rest pretty unengaging. I skimmed through much of it.

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drags on a little but does some cool things and has some interesting ideas

[Ledya · Rating 1 out of 5]

this would be interesting if it was written by somebody more interesting

[Janice Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

He writes well , an easy read , with a sense of familiarity in the chapters describing Australian countryside .

[April Sarah Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

brisbane <3

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admittedly I am emotionally and geographically biased towards this book. The title story is about Malouf's childhood home, which was right next door to my workplace of four years and right in the heart of one of my favourite suburbs in Brisbane. There is another wonderful story about India which really rung true after my time there last year, and another describing a train journey through Northern New South Wales (The Kyogle Line) which happens to be another place closely tied in to my own story and life. On top of all that I read this in an unusual and beautiful hard cover edition which my fiancé (knowing the above) gave me for my birthday. So I guess you could say this book is close to my heart.

[Catherine Meyrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

12 Edmondstone Street by David Malouf is a memoir/essay which uses his childhood home in Brisbane in the 1930s and 1940s to gently observe the way the beliefs and experiences of a family’s past shape a child’s view of and relationship with the world as an adult. Room by room, down to the space beneath the Queenslander (a raised timber house with verandahs on all sides), he gives a child’s view of his family, their lives and interactions, and the objects within the house that have meaning for him. Malouf writes beautiful and poetic prose which evokes Brisbane as it was then.

Other reviews and more at https://catherinemeyrick.com/

[Venetia Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and deepy thoughtful. This is a memoir of places in Malouf's life. The title refers to the address of his childhood home in Brisbane and the first part of this short book explores it, room by room. But 21 Emondstone St is far more than a simple retelling of childhood memories - it is a reflection on memory, time and in particular how the body shapes one's perceptions of the spaces and things around. This is a book that bears many rereadings. It will certainly haunt the corners of my memory.

[Belle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book probably deserves four stars.
This piece is a beautifully nostalgic and sentimental description of four places that truly ruminate in the reader's mind.
I found it identifiably Australian, as if he were describing the very houses I have lived in (although this part of Australia is vastly different).
Definitely give it a go - it's not long, his writing voice is very natural and it will certainly connect with a childhood memory or two - and with the universal experience of humanity and how our perspectives are shaped.
Finally, a decent piece of Australian literature.

[Glenn Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Malouf’s sensitive prose never fails to impress. There are genuinely funny and warm moments in this memoir. His failure to grasp the meaning of social interactions serves as a recurring theme in this book. Either he is too young and the cryptic language of adults is beyond his reach, or he is too foreign and cultural complexities are too nuanced for him to understand. In the end though, I couldn’t help but think this book was like his pointless wander through the streets of a Tuscan village: all for the cameras and no destination in mind.

[Meredith Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Malouf’s writing is not bold and brash, but is often quite perfect in the way it articulates the most ordinary of thoughts. He isn’t verbose in his description, yet, when describing the house in which he grew up at 12 Edmonstone Street, he takes us into its nooks and crannies. Regardless of when or where you grew up, there are aspects of his reflection, with which you will be able to identify, such as the drag of time during an afternoon at play.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir anchored by place: his childhood home, a vacation home in Italy, travels in India and Australia.
I first read Malouf last year in Australia where I picked up some of his fiction. This book is nonfiction but the tone and voice are cohesive with his novels. I think he’s a great writer.
Calm, thoughful. Sometimes pensive. Redolent of time and place.

[AC Fick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Malouf, as always, is able to explore the nuances of private emotion and memory in prose both lyrical and compelling, making the process of exploring the past and reconstructing it in the present of writing seem effortless. Definitely one of the most rewarding examinations of childhood from the perspective of the misremembering adult any reader could come across.