The Ancestor Game by Alex Miller (1-Sep-2003) Paperback

by Alex Miller

In the winner of Australia's top prize for fiction, three central characters explore their family histories over the centuries and across the continents, revealing the connections they share and discovering their spiritual destinies.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Australia, Novels, 20th Century

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Alex Miller is one of Australia's best-loved writers, and winner of the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2012.

Alex Miller is twice winner of Australia's premier literary prize, The Miles Franklin Literary Award, first in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game. His fifth novel, Conditions of Faith, won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the 2001 New South Wales Premier's Awards. In 2011 he won this award a second time with his most recent novel Lovesong. Lovesong also won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Awards, the Age Book of the Year Award and the Age Fiction Prize for 2011. In 2007 Landscape of Farewell was published to wide critical acclaim and in 2008 won the Chinese Annual Foreign Novels 21st Century Award for Best Novel and the Manning Clark Medal for an outstanding contribution to Australian cultural life. It was also short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the ALS Gold Medal and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Alex is published internationally and widely in translation. Autumn Laing is his tenth novel.

Reviews

[S'hi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting variation of the Australian international experience by both going back into the history of the characters and by the fluidity of movement between places and times of these cultural links. This is truer of my own experience of Australia as third and fourth generation of British ancestry than all the books foisted on me through and education paralleled by the European influx post WWII.
The depth and complexity of characters, and the development of their connections and discomforts, is aptly woven through a variety of forms of storytelling and artistic exploration. It enlightens to both the personal struggle to make sense of origins and influences, and the national questing and questioning. In particular exploring the deep roots below the surface of the White Australia policy is long overdue in our national sensibility. But doing so without any reference to such rampant prejudice shows the masterful touch Alex Miller exerts in this literary gem.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read The Deal last month (Miller’s most recent novel) I learned that he had used some of the material and characters from this 1992 Miles Franklin winner. I know I read Ancestor Game many years ago but couldn’t recall much at all except that it explored ideas of culture and ancestry (pretty obvious from the title!)

The main connection between the two books is the character of Lang Tzu, a Chinese resident of Melbourne. In this earlier book the narrator (a surrogate Miller) is Steven, who gets to know Lang and explores his family’s past in China. Steven also gets to know Gertrude, an artist whose father was a German doctor in Shanghai as the Japanese invasion threatened. He eventually brought the young Lang Tzu to Australia to boarding school and to find connections that Lang’s grandfather had had to Australia in the gold rush era.

The Ancestor Game is a much, more complex story than The Deal. In many ways it was a rewarding read, drawing in themes of dispossession, culture, fanaticism, art and writing and father and mother son relationships as well as interesting historical contexts. But I found it hard going at times and often had trouble working out who was who and managing the time shifts. Perhaps Miller has simplified his ideas as well as his style over the thirty years between this novel and The Deal. Or perhaps I just like the simpler style better. An interesting comparison though.

[Jarmby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found reading this book somewhat as a labour
Alex Miller is to praised as a wordsmith and his prose at time is a delight but too often I was not sure what he was saying and meaning But that of course may be due to my baser appreciation of literature

I found the characters tedious,the story when I could understand it tedious and for the last 100 pages wished wholeheartedly for it to end

[Wendy Yang]

A somewhat confusing read, I think in many parts written for the author's benefit rather than the reader's. But the subject matter is interesting-- what does it mean to inhabit a place without roots? (in China, estrangement from ancestry; in the European colonies, attempting to be observers/naturalists but inevitably impacting the colonised places)
Also a meditation on art as well.

[Denise White · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too complicated for me.

[Maree · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually did not really like the first half moving back and forth between the present and different times in the past but it really all came together in the second half and became very engrossing.

[Robyn Bauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some parts amazing, some unreadable.

[Chris Freudenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing story and beautifully crafted. I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it. I'm now keen to read The Deal.

[Dr G · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am afraid I cannot agree with either Robert Dessaix’s or Michael Ondaatje’s fulsome praise of this book, as expressed in the puffs printed on the book cover.
The author’s target is certainly grand and significant, if not startling. It is about transmission of character through the generations of families, and about the connection between those generations and the environments in which they are born and raised, or to which fate takes them, or in which they die.
The first problem, for me, was that I really never found any of the characters of sufficient interest to want to follow them. The author doles out information in a slightly haphazard manner which makes it tricky to maintain a grasp of them all. Tricky but not impossible, and it pays to keep a notepad and pen on hand. However, ultimately, they were, one and all, in my opinion, just two-dimensional ciphers. Not one did I invest any real interest in. They all moved through their lives, if with the complications of changing time perspectives, and their lives were of some interest, but not such that I approached any return to the book, inquisitive about what X would do next, or why Z behaved in such a way. I have to say that some of the characters actually seemed to be present only to bulk the whole thing up. Were Shu and Shin really necessary, or even helpful? Not as far as I could see.
The form of the story seemed to change periodically. Allowing for the fact that flashbacks prevented any sort of unity of time, the book was essentially a realist narrative: by and large, people acted as real people do or did, and so did the cosmos. However, occasionally, a quasi-fabulist dimension took over, as with Feng’s encounters with the, perhaps, mythic peasant woman.
I suppose the general premise, which I took to be about the confused continuities and discontinuities through generations and cultures, is potentially interesting. Perhaps the attempt to develop this through so many individuals ran the risk of muddying the whole idea.
I am afraid that, from time to time, I found the writing to be pretentious in both its verbosity and its reference to abstruse information:
“The wind had dropped and the rain had begun to fall heavily almost straight down, as it does in Hokusai’s woodcuts. The summerhouse was fortified by the suckers. As if the ground around it had been staked, the way the defenders of the village in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai staked the ramparts…”
“I began to see that the summerhouse was positioned at the trig-point of this triangular arrangement. The summerhouse, neither itself quite house nor clearing nor alluring space, but possessing elements of the features of all three, was in fact the interstitial place from which, with the cunning trigonometry of her fiction, she had surveyed her landscape.”
For me, it was trying too hard to impress, or to be deep, and it repelled me.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest, I have only read about halfway through and am disappointed. In many ways, I'm also disappointed that I'm disappointed. I've met Alex Miller, have heard him speak on a couple of different occasions, and have enjoyed some of his other writings and lectures. The Ancestor Game, while its themes of time, place, and belonging are intriguing, just didn't do it for me. I felt as though the characters were uninteresting and whiny. After months of trying to make myself read through the whole book, I've finally given up and will be reaching for another Alex Miller book soon.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a very difficult book to read. Its theme was real and interesting - where do we belong - where we are born or where we live. However, I had a lot of trouble following the characters, the time, the story. I am glad that I read the novel as it is highly regarded and a Mile Franklin award winner.

[Sstewa27 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written novel. Raises questions of Australian identity and our ties to our ancestors. How important is our own heritage or can we break free from it and create a new identity in a new country?

[Margaret Small · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually gave up about a third through, very disappointed after reading Coal Creek, which I thought was wonderful. The main character was so unappealing and I really couldn't come to grips with the story at all. Normally I enjoy novels which move backwards and forwards in time, but not this one.

[Maggie Xipolitos · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the theme of cultural displacement really interesting and the characters and story weaving intriguing but I was left absolutely mystified by the ending. I thought I was following quite closely but obviously I was mistaken. This is one novel I can't quite make sense of.

[Leah Cripps · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I'm glad I read this on a device so that I could keep checking the dictionary for unfamiliar word definitions. The characters were somewhat hard to follow but this was an enchanting story, if not a little too highbrow for me.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

drivel. merits less than one star. so far up it's own ambition as to be unbearable

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Miller writes prose as a poet and it was his writing that kept me in the book for two thirds of the way through. Then I tired of the plot mechanism and switched back to nonfiction.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still my favorite Miller book.

[Lesley Moseley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must re=read such a dense richness is not possible to grasp all his sutle nuances.

[Deborah Haines · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just couldn't get into it. Didn't like the characters , didn't care, and didn't even finish it