Forty-Seventeen

by Frank Moorhouse

What could he tell her now, now that he was forty and she was no longer seventeen?.

He is a failed writer turned diplomat, an anarchist learning the value of discipline. He moves in a world which takes him from the Australian wilderness to the conference rooms of Vienna and Geneva; from the whore-house to warzone he feels the pull of the genetic spiral of his ancestry. At the sharp axis of his mid-life he scans the memorabilia of his feelings in the hope of giving answers..

His story is told with characteristic Moorhouse style - candid, wryly insightful and morbidly comic - and, in this resonant and acclaimed book achieves a new virtuosity.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, 20th Century

Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Frank Thomas Moorhouse AM (21 December 1938 – 26 June 2022) was an Australian writer. He won major Australian national prizes for the short story, the novel, the essay, and for script writing. His work has been published in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States and also translated into German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Serbian, and Swedish.

Moorhouse was perhaps best known for winning the 2001 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel, Dark Palace; which together with Grand Days and Cold Light, the "Edith Trilogy" is a fictional account of the League of Nations, which trace the strange, convoluted life of a young woman who enters the world of diplomacy in the 1920s through to her involvement in the newly formed International Atomic Energy Agency after World War II.

The author of 18 books, Moorhouse became a full-time fiction writer during the 1970s, also writing essays, short stories, journalism and film, radio and TV scripts.

In his early career he developed a narrative structure which he has described as the 'discontinuous narrative'. He lived for many years in Balmain, where together with Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes, he became part of the "Sydney Push" - an anti-censorship movement that protested against rightwing politics and championed freedom of speech and sexual liberation. In 1975 he played a fundamental role in the evolution of copyright law in Australia in the case University of New South Wales v Moorhouse. - Wikipedia

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was about to turn forty I called my Dad and asked him what I could expect from my forties. He said, reassuringly, your forties will be great, you won't notice any decline until you reach 50. The males in my family tend to stay in pretty good shape. We are active, athletic, and actually enjoy using our muscles to move things. We do though occasionally check out early. My grandfather died from a massive heart attack at the age of 45 while carrying two pails of milk from the barn to the milk house. 45 is an age of concern for my family. We tend to buy more life insurance, hug our family more, and monitor our blood pressure a little more closely. I'm 45 this year and this nail biting age might be part of why I enjoyed this book so much.

Ian or Sean, how you refer to him depends on at what point in his life you knew him, is suffering from a midlife crises that begins sometime in his late 30s when he hooks up with a 17 year old girl. He debauches her during a cross country (Australia) trip and even though they part he insists that they make plans to reunite once he turns 40 for a trip to Spain. He finds her youth stimulating, but also frustrating.

"He remembered once chiding her for what he saw as her negativity and conversational passivity. He'd shouted at her. But then he'd read Henry James' Watch and Ward- a novel about a thirty-year-old man who adopts a ten-year-old girl to raise as his wife. The narrator finds the adolescent girl 'defiantly torpid' but then realizes that her listless quietude covered a great deal of observation and that growing may be a soundless process."

Ian/Sean wanders from woman to woman never really connecting with any of them mainly because he can not connect with himself. He drinks too much and for a time even has to quit drinking for six months to clear up some liver malfunctions. He at one point forgets and drinks at a party and has to start his six months over again. Drinking was such a part of his life, as normal as breathing, that I really could see him in a relaxed situation forgetting not to drink.

It's not unusual to feel lost as we age. It seems easier to accomplish things when we are younger. We are not as encumbered with our own history of failures when we are younger. We don't fear losing near as much as we do as we get older. Ian/Sean finds himself trying to remember that he has lived.

"You read your CV with a comfortable curiosity to find out 'what you really are.' You run through your credentials and life experiences to remind yourself that you have 'fully lived'. You find yourself sitting in a bar reading your passport reminding yourself of the world you've seen, about which you seem to recall so little."

He tries to reconnect with his young friend after turning 40. He finds that her circumstances has changed drastically since he last knew her. She is unwilling to accompany him on the fantasy Spanish trip. He insists on seeing her again, but feels infantile in her presence. Life has hardened her and the dynamic between them has shifted.

Ian/Sean ends up pursuing the history of his Great Grandmother who made the family fortune whoring (that gem of information was never discussed at the family dinner table). He loses his job, which given the aimless approach he had for life, I can only imagine he was not seen as a ball of fire at the office. He ends up living in the old hotel from which his great grandmother had plied her trade and starts living exclusively off the endowment that she left her descendants.

This book is very witty and the dialogue and observations are sharp and biting. I had to limit the number of quotes I shared in this review because I didn't want the trailer to feel like the movie.

Ian/Sean is not a sympathetic character. I do not embrace his pain, but I do understand his bafflement with the universe. He never does figure out what it really means to turn forty, but he does start to understand that answers will remain elusive. "You are unable to determine whether you have led the richest of lives or the most miserable and deformed of lives." At 40 maybe that isn't the best time to make that determination for most of us a lot more water will pass under the bridge.

I had someone say to me that Frank Moorhouse may be Australia's most important writer. Although I am not ready to agree with that statement yet,I will certainly be reading more of his work and seeing if I can one day say I agree.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frank Moorhouse can see inside people's heads. He can write about someone and for a second you might think, 'wait, when did I tell Frank I feel like that?' I felt unsatisfied by the overall sketchiness of this bunch of connected and overlapping stories that add up to some kind of maybe a novella? If you like that kind of thing this will crank your dial. But I cannot fault his insight and his humour and his wit and his unsparing incisiveness.
PS if you are reading the Edith Campbell Berry Trilogy and you aren't finished yet, don't read this, as it has epic spoilers.

[Andrew De Sousa · Rating 3 out of 5]

7/10

[Stephen Hickman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong Australian literature. I found the opening chapter difficult but warmed to the styles and themes. The MC is a cold character, some might say a pervert, a man of high education who having scaled intellectual heights in his career is trying to understand what is missing as he reaches his fortieth birthday. He is drawn to his Great Grandmother, a whore, and researches her past while conducting a relationship with a 17 year old girl, Belle, an apprentice whore if you will. He has an x-wife who dies of cancer. He struggles to touch her in a painful near death reunion, then in a fond memory of a friendship with one of her x-lovers, Mark, recalls a touch between Mark and himself that suggests a potential homosexual connection that he cannot consumate. There is a similar intimation in an exchange with a Russian diplomat. I came out of this book thinking of loneliness and neediness and the tragedy of being too clever by half. I found the chapter 'Portrait of a Virgin Girl' somewhat sudden and difficult to orient my way around. Was this Robin his x, who we hadn't yet been introduced to or Belle or some other early girlfriend? At the time I was unclear and therefore read the missives with some disconnection and frankly it was a bit of an info dump set aside from the prevailing narrative. The story of elderly Edith helped give the story some multi generational existential heft but her trip to Beirut perhaps could have allowed for a discovery rather than the somewhat procedural U-turn after her apparent heart attack in the back seat, presumably at the fright of a gunshot. Overall I found it difficult not to see the MC as the author, the book had that sort of smarty pants show-through that made me wonder if it was semi-autobiographical, in the intellectual detachment and superiority particularly. The book certainly made me review a few events I had forgotten in my life, some fond memories, others cringe making. Well worth reading.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. An odd story, but glittering insights into life are scattered throughout, and as always with Moorhouse wonderful writing. He captures the struggle of an intelligent, but perhaps not brilliant, mind to find its place and deal with the longings and weaknesses that come along in, well, 40 years. Despite the title, and most descriptions of the novel, the focus is only peripherally on the relationship between our narrator and a young girl, and she is only 17 in old memories. It is more on Sean's striving to be something that he cannot quite work out, and dealing with the failures that accumulate along the way. For those that loved "Grand Days" (as I did) there are a few connections you'll enjoy.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had its moments. Quite interesting to see Edith make an appearance.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review coming

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took a little while to get into, but once the plot kicked in, and Frank Moorhouse began to work his magic with words and sly humour, and the usual feeling that what was a chapter could be a short story its own right, I began to enjoy it so much more. There are lots of typical plot devices, including a conference, troubled relationships and curious sexualities, all of which add to a great little book by a master storyteller.

[Jason Towers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the salacious Lolita-riff the misleading title might suggest. Not exactly a novel, either — more a collection of linked stories (in fact I discovered Moorhouse through finding two of this book's chapters in a short story anthology). Whatever it is, it artfully captures a facet of the human experience. Insightful and eminently quotable.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharp and witty. Reminiscent of Joyce Cary.

[Gavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A meandering novella of vaguely linked thoughts. Sometimes felt a bit dated & sometimes quite confusing to follow. Interesting nonetheless ...