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Happy Valley
Happy Valley is a place of dreams and secrets, of snow and ice and wind. In this remote little town, perched in its landscape of desolate beauty, everybody has a story to tell about loss and longing and loneliness, about their passion to escape. I must get away, thinks Dr. Oliver Halliday, thinks Alys Browne, thinks Sidney Furlow. But Happy Valley is not a place that can be easily left, and White's vivid characters, with their distinctive voices, move bit by bit towards sorrow and acceptance.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1939
31 people are currently reading
401 people want to read
About the author
Patrick White
82 books368 followers There is more than one author by this name on Goodreads. For the Canadian Poet Laureate see "Patrick^^^^^White".
Patrick Victor Martindale White was an Australian author widely regarded as one of the major English-language novelists of the 20th century, and winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Born in England while his Australian parents were visiting family, White grew up in Sydney before studying at Cambridge. Publishing his first two novels to critical acclaim in the UK, White then enlisted to serve in World War II, where he met his lifelong partner, the Greek Manoly Lascaris. The pair returned to Australia after the war.
Home again, White published a total of twelve novels, two short story collections, eight plays, as well as a miscellany of non-fiction. His fiction freely employs shifting narrative vantages and the stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature."
From 1947 to 1964, White and Lascaris lived a retired life on the outer fringes of Sydney. However after their subsequent move to the inner suburb of Centennial Park, White experienced an increased passion for activism. He became known as an outspoken champion for the disadvantaged, for Indigenous rights, and for the teaching and promotion of art, in a culture he deemed often backward and conservative. In their personal life, White and Lascaris' home became a regular haunt for noted figures from all levels of society.
Although he achieved a great deal of critical applause, and was hailed as a national hero after his Nobel win, White retained a challenged relationship with the Australian public and ordinary readers. In his final decades the books sold well in paperback, but he retained a reputation as difficult, dense, and sometimes inscrutable.
Following White's death in 1990, his reputation was briefly buoyed by David Marr's well-received biography, although he disappeared off most university and school syllabuses, with his novels mostly out of print, by the end of the century. Interest in White's books was revived around 2012, the year of his centenary, with all now available again.
Sources: Wikipedia, David Marr's biography, The Patrick White Catalogue
Patrick Victor Martindale White was an Australian author widely regarded as one of the major English-language novelists of the 20th century, and winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Born in England while his Australian parents were visiting family, White grew up in Sydney before studying at Cambridge. Publishing his first two novels to critical acclaim in the UK, White then enlisted to serve in World War II, where he met his lifelong partner, the Greek Manoly Lascaris. The pair returned to Australia after the war.
Home again, White published a total of twelve novels, two short story collections, eight plays, as well as a miscellany of non-fiction. His fiction freely employs shifting narrative vantages and the stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature."
From 1947 to 1964, White and Lascaris lived a retired life on the outer fringes of Sydney. However after their subsequent move to the inner suburb of Centennial Park, White experienced an increased passion for activism. He became known as an outspoken champion for the disadvantaged, for Indigenous rights, and for the teaching and promotion of art, in a culture he deemed often backward and conservative. In their personal life, White and Lascaris' home became a regular haunt for noted figures from all levels of society.
Although he achieved a great deal of critical applause, and was hailed as a national hero after his Nobel win, White retained a challenged relationship with the Australian public and ordinary readers. In his final decades the books sold well in paperback, but he retained a reputation as difficult, dense, and sometimes inscrutable.
Following White's death in 1990, his reputation was briefly buoyed by David Marr's well-received biography, although he disappeared off most university and school syllabuses, with his novels mostly out of print, by the end of the century. Interest in White's books was revived around 2012, the year of his centenary, with all now available again.
Sources: Wikipedia, David Marr's biography, The Patrick White Catalogue
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
December 30, 2024
Happy Valley is written in the fanciful modernistic style and the narration is mostly a polyphonic stream of consciousness.
Happy Valley is a one horse town so its inhabitants are interconnected with all kinds of relationships… The novel is psychologically complex.
One of the principal participants is a local doctor…
A young unmarried woman is a lonely music teacher…
The town is small but there are plenty of dark undertows and invisible secret currents…
Families and bachelors… Wives and husbands… Parents and their children… Love and loathing… Lovers and mistresses… Love affairs and adulteries…
Human passions, in the extreme, tend to become destructive and then everything ends in tragedy.
Happy Valley is a one horse town so its inhabitants are interconnected with all kinds of relationships… The novel is psychologically complex.
One of the principal participants is a local doctor…
When he got back from Europe he looked at them and there was nothing there. Life was a toy, you rattled it. But the country was old, older than the forest at Fontainebleau, there was an underlying bitterness that had been scored deep and deep by time, with a furrow here and there and pockmarks in the face of black stone. Over everything there was a hot air of dormant passion, of inner war, that nobody seemed to be conscious of.
A young unmarried woman is a lonely music teacher…
She read too. She had started some of the Russians, Anna Karenina, and Turgeniev, but Tennyson sounded funny now, she could not read him any more. She liked to sit down at tea, and take off her shoes, and read a chapter of Anna Karenina, though sometimes she found it a bit of an effort and lapsed to the Windsor Magazine. Tolstoi was interesting though. She had spilt some tea on the seventysecond page. It gave the book a comfortable, intimate appearance, and she liked it better after that, as if she had always had it with her and had read it several times.
The town is small but there are plenty of dark undertows and invisible secret currents…
Happy Valley became that peculiarly tenacious scab on the body of the brown earth. You waited for it to come away leaving a patch of pinkness underneath. You waited and it did not happen, and because of this you felt there was something in its nature peculiarly perverse. What was the purpose of Happy Valley if, in spite of its lack of relevance, it clung tenaciously to a foreign tissue, waiting and waiting for what? It seemed to have no design. You could not feel it. You anticipated a moral doomsday, but it did not come. So you went about your business, tried to find reason in this. After all, your existence in Happy Valley must be sufficient in itself.
Families and bachelors… Wives and husbands… Parents and their children… Love and loathing… Lovers and mistresses… Love affairs and adulteries…
The rain was still coming down on the roof, a grey, infrequent sound of rain, that was no longer isolation, as in the hollow of the darkness their bodies touched. They existed in a kind of mutual agreement of touch, for which speech could find no expression, only the language of touch. After a groping with words you discarded these, and everything was suddenly explicit without.
Human passions, in the extreme, tend to become destructive and then everything ends in tragedy.
June 28, 2022
Australia’s only Nobel Laureate for Literature, Patrick White, published Happy Valley, his first novel (set in the Monaro district in south-east New South Wales), in 1939, just as WWII was about to begin. It was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society in 1941, the same year in which he published his second novel The Living and the Dead (set in London in the ’30s). It could be argued that it was only after he met the love of his life Manoly Lascaris in Greece during the War (White was an RAF Intelligence Officer in the Middle East and Greece during the War) that he found his true voice, with the publication of his astonishing The Aunt’s Story in 1948, going on to produce masterpiece after masterpiece throughout his life. Such an assessment, while in a sense true, would unjustly reflect on these two earlier novels, which are as robust, mature and confident as any other written during those years.
Happy Valley has been perhaps the most affected, as it was the only book White did not permit reprinting during his lifetime (allegedly, this was because of possible litigation problems stemming from some of the characters in this work). It was only in 2012 that Text Classics finally republished the work, in celebration of the centennial of White’s birthday, making it available once again to the wider public.
Happy Valley is a wonderful work, already showing the germs of White’s primary concerns: ‘ordinary’ people, often marginalised, who yet experience special ‘spiritual’ insights into their own pedestrian lives, but which gives them a kind of special power that belongs only to them, whether they are aware of it or not. White is always concerned with exposing the extraordinary within the ordinary, with creating main characters who experience mystical feelings and emotions which they are unable to express adequately in language or even in actions. As such, they tend to be ‘misunderstood’, ‘misinterpreted’, and generally dismissed as weird, or eccentric, or even mad. Inside their minds, however, they know they are perfectly sane — just ‘different’. The externals relating to these people are almost banal, insignificant, not really interesting, and often enough they are perceived as ‘ordinary’, un-beautiful, sometimes even despicable — but the real drama is occurring ‘inside’ in their real awareness, their "minding" (i.e. 'mind' being used as a verb, not as a noun) of what they consider to be more important things.
This quality is one which makes, for example, filming of his work very difficult indeed, since with film one is limited too much by the externals (a necessary consequence of cinematography) whereas all the ‘excitement’ is hidden. It also requires the novelist to employ modernist techniques of writing which can sometimes be problematic: a pedantic reader might find this kind of writing irritating, impenetrable, unnecessarily difficult. This is probably because such readers will find themselves ‘fighting’ against White (whereas the best way to deal with it is to relent and let White have his way — and with any luck it will suddenly click into place…). In his introduction to this new edition Peter Craven has things to say about this which are worth quoting:
“He [White] admitted that ‘he was very much under the influence of Gertrude’ (Stein) who is, among all the world’s writers, the most improbable to have tinkling in the background of a novel of Australian pastoral and small-town life. He also saw himself as having been ‘drunk with the technique of writing’ and said he ‘had gone up that cul de sac the stream of consciousness’.
“In practice Gertrude Stein seems to have led him to a bit of decorative patterning, to rhythmic repetitions and paratactical [i.e. the placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words to indicate coordination or subordination] touches of phrasing that sometimes makes his sentences somewhat overloaded or too heavily coloured, but the other side of this, the so-called stream of consciousness, is in fact a pretty impressive and flexible adaptation of what can be learned from James Joyce and, rather surprisingly, doesn’t get in the way of the narrative.
“Happy Valley dispenses with quotation marks [a technique he also uses in The Living and the Dead but not in any of his other novels] to indicate speech and it uses a very flexible roving point-of-view, with bits of inserted monologue, but the effect is the opposite of slow-moving or obscure.”
This is a quintessentially Australian book. It is also a darn good read! And after you have read it, then dare to venture into the strange but wonderful worlds of his great masterpieces — and if White ‘clicks’ with you, you will not be disappointed!
Happy Valley has been perhaps the most affected, as it was the only book White did not permit reprinting during his lifetime (allegedly, this was because of possible litigation problems stemming from some of the characters in this work). It was only in 2012 that Text Classics finally republished the work, in celebration of the centennial of White’s birthday, making it available once again to the wider public.
Happy Valley is a wonderful work, already showing the germs of White’s primary concerns: ‘ordinary’ people, often marginalised, who yet experience special ‘spiritual’ insights into their own pedestrian lives, but which gives them a kind of special power that belongs only to them, whether they are aware of it or not. White is always concerned with exposing the extraordinary within the ordinary, with creating main characters who experience mystical feelings and emotions which they are unable to express adequately in language or even in actions. As such, they tend to be ‘misunderstood’, ‘misinterpreted’, and generally dismissed as weird, or eccentric, or even mad. Inside their minds, however, they know they are perfectly sane — just ‘different’. The externals relating to these people are almost banal, insignificant, not really interesting, and often enough they are perceived as ‘ordinary’, un-beautiful, sometimes even despicable — but the real drama is occurring ‘inside’ in their real awareness, their "minding" (i.e. 'mind' being used as a verb, not as a noun) of what they consider to be more important things.
This quality is one which makes, for example, filming of his work very difficult indeed, since with film one is limited too much by the externals (a necessary consequence of cinematography) whereas all the ‘excitement’ is hidden. It also requires the novelist to employ modernist techniques of writing which can sometimes be problematic: a pedantic reader might find this kind of writing irritating, impenetrable, unnecessarily difficult. This is probably because such readers will find themselves ‘fighting’ against White (whereas the best way to deal with it is to relent and let White have his way — and with any luck it will suddenly click into place…). In his introduction to this new edition Peter Craven has things to say about this which are worth quoting:
“He [White] admitted that ‘he was very much under the influence of Gertrude’ (Stein) who is, among all the world’s writers, the most improbable to have tinkling in the background of a novel of Australian pastoral and small-town life. He also saw himself as having been ‘drunk with the technique of writing’ and said he ‘had gone up that cul de sac the stream of consciousness’.
“In practice Gertrude Stein seems to have led him to a bit of decorative patterning, to rhythmic repetitions and paratactical [i.e. the placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words to indicate coordination or subordination] touches of phrasing that sometimes makes his sentences somewhat overloaded or too heavily coloured, but the other side of this, the so-called stream of consciousness, is in fact a pretty impressive and flexible adaptation of what can be learned from James Joyce and, rather surprisingly, doesn’t get in the way of the narrative.
“Happy Valley dispenses with quotation marks [a technique he also uses in The Living and the Dead but not in any of his other novels] to indicate speech and it uses a very flexible roving point-of-view, with bits of inserted monologue, but the effect is the opposite of slow-moving or obscure.”
This is a quintessentially Australian book. It is also a darn good read! And after you have read it, then dare to venture into the strange but wonderful worlds of his great masterpieces — and if White ‘clicks’ with you, you will not be disappointed!
September 17, 2013
I don't fully understand why White suppressed the re-publishing of this novel during his life, because there is nothing to be ashamed about it. Already we have classic White with his interest in domestic relationships & suburban morality.
The novel might be set in a small country town, but the pettiness, gossiping & morality that he would develop later in such books as The Eye of the Storm & The Twyborn Affair are all here. There are some style techniques that he didn't use later & I have to be honest - he is a complete master in them, as they came as a complete surprise. One is to have opposing "thought bubbles" occur within a paragraph. So, the 1st sentence might be the feeling of the 1st character, the immediate sentence the 2nd character's reaction. Occasionally, the sentences are combined. Sounds weird & I am finding it hard to describe, but after the 1st one the reader encounters, it does work & occasionally with such power.
The dialogue of the three town gossips during the Races Ball scenes are wonderful - all start with "Mrs X said Mrs Y said Mrs Z said....." which is exactly how it would have been played out in actuality. I also loved the bitchiness he set towards Mrs Furlow (yes, she is the early archetype that he used in many of his books); she is such a clownish character trapped in a world of obligations & appearances completely of her own construction.
I found the conclusion and resolution of the murder of Mrs Moriarty slightly unsatisfactory, but I do excuse him for this. More could be explored, I felt, but also I think White felt that this wasn't important but rather the strange twist it has on Mrs Furlow & her social status with her cronies. The paragraph on the terminating of the letter writing is distilled vitriol & typical of White's attitude towards upper class matrons.
When I think of what the Palmers or Pritchard were writing 10-20 years later, their books pale in comparison with White, and he definitely is worthy of the world stage. If you are a White fan, this is definitely not a piece of juvenalia that you wish you hadn't opened.
The novel might be set in a small country town, but the pettiness, gossiping & morality that he would develop later in such books as The Eye of the Storm & The Twyborn Affair are all here. There are some style techniques that he didn't use later & I have to be honest - he is a complete master in them, as they came as a complete surprise. One is to have opposing "thought bubbles" occur within a paragraph. So, the 1st sentence might be the feeling of the 1st character, the immediate sentence the 2nd character's reaction. Occasionally, the sentences are combined. Sounds weird & I am finding it hard to describe, but after the 1st one the reader encounters, it does work & occasionally with such power.
The dialogue of the three town gossips during the Races Ball scenes are wonderful - all start with "Mrs X said Mrs Y said Mrs Z said....." which is exactly how it would have been played out in actuality. I also loved the bitchiness he set towards Mrs Furlow (yes, she is the early archetype that he used in many of his books); she is such a clownish character trapped in a world of obligations & appearances completely of her own construction.
I found the conclusion and resolution of the murder of Mrs Moriarty slightly unsatisfactory, but I do excuse him for this. More could be explored, I felt, but also I think White felt that this wasn't important but rather the strange twist it has on Mrs Furlow & her social status with her cronies. The paragraph on the terminating of the letter writing is distilled vitriol & typical of White's attitude towards upper class matrons.
When I think of what the Palmers or Pritchard were writing 10-20 years later, their books pale in comparison with White, and he definitely is worthy of the world stage. If you are a White fan, this is definitely not a piece of juvenalia that you wish you hadn't opened.
January 29, 2017
It is no wonder really that the last of Patrick White's novels that I have read should be the first that he had written, as he had it withdrawn after its initial printing in 1939. The reason, given in the introduction, was that he was unhappy with his portrayal of the Chinese family in the novel, and admittedly there are a few descriptions which make for uncomfortable reading. Overall, however, the book is an excellent first novel, filled with his trademark stream of conciousness passages (more than in many of the later books, but some a little stilted as he was probably finding his feet), a string of intriguing characters, and a winding set of plots that swerve around each other until the dramatic conclusion brings them crashing together. For anyone like me who has been anticipating this book being reissued, I can only say it was worth the wait!
Want to read
December 20, 2012from More Intelligent Life:
"Happy Valley by Patrick White (Cape, hardback, out now). When this first novel appeared in 1939, reviewers including Graham Greene came together in a chorus of praise. Then Patrick White suppressed it. Reissued now to mark his centenary, it turns out to be a masterpiece. Happy Valley is a small Australian town, a microcosm through which White explores the passions simmering below the surface of apparently unexceptional lives. The only Australian writer to win a Nobel prize, he is brilliant on the gulf between thought and speech, and the sleights of mind we develop to cope with anguish. The spinster piano teacher withdraws from the "formless and volatile" present into an idealised past; the bullied child inhabits an imaginary future; the asthmatic schoolmaster harbours anger, finally released in the murder of his wife. White’s prose slides between dialogue and interior monologue, subtle but never obscure. "Will they read me when I’m dead?" he used to ask. They should."
(Maggie Fergusson, "A Lost Masterpiece")
"Happy Valley by Patrick White (Cape, hardback, out now). When this first novel appeared in 1939, reviewers including Graham Greene came together in a chorus of praise. Then Patrick White suppressed it. Reissued now to mark his centenary, it turns out to be a masterpiece. Happy Valley is a small Australian town, a microcosm through which White explores the passions simmering below the surface of apparently unexceptional lives. The only Australian writer to win a Nobel prize, he is brilliant on the gulf between thought and speech, and the sleights of mind we develop to cope with anguish. The spinster piano teacher withdraws from the "formless and volatile" present into an idealised past; the bullied child inhabits an imaginary future; the asthmatic schoolmaster harbours anger, finally released in the murder of his wife. White’s prose slides between dialogue and interior monologue, subtle but never obscure. "Will they read me when I’m dead?" he used to ask. They should."
(Maggie Fergusson, "A Lost Masterpiece")
January 8, 2019
It is so unbelievable he prevent this from being republished for so long. Happy Valley was a fantastic read. Easily a five star. The language and stream of consciousness was employed masterly.
October 17, 2023
An interesting, character based novel, set in a small New South Wales country town in the 1930s. Happy Valley is a dull town with not much happening. The novel focuses on the fates of several of its families and inhabitants.
Dr Halliday is married to Hilda and they have two sons, Rodney aged nine, and George aged four. Rodney doesn’t fit in well at the small local school. The Halliday’s have ambitions of moving to Queensland and Rodney going to a school in Sydney.
Alys Browne is a single woman who went to a convent to learn piano and needlework when she was fifteen. She came back to Happy Valley where she lives alone, giving piano lessons and living off inheritance money. She dreams of going to California. She is attracted to Dr. Halliday.
Margaret Quong is thirteen and a friend of Rodney’s. She helps in her parents store. Her father is Chinese and her mother a white Australian. The Quong’s are treated as misfits in the town.
The Furlows are well off property owners. They hope Sidney, their nineteen year old daughter, becomes engaged to the well connected Roger Kemble.
The characters are vividly described. The characters make decisions with the outcomes not immediate or expected. A very good debut novel.
This book was first published in 1939.
Dr Halliday is married to Hilda and they have two sons, Rodney aged nine, and George aged four. Rodney doesn’t fit in well at the small local school. The Halliday’s have ambitions of moving to Queensland and Rodney going to a school in Sydney.
Alys Browne is a single woman who went to a convent to learn piano and needlework when she was fifteen. She came back to Happy Valley where she lives alone, giving piano lessons and living off inheritance money. She dreams of going to California. She is attracted to Dr. Halliday.
Margaret Quong is thirteen and a friend of Rodney’s. She helps in her parents store. Her father is Chinese and her mother a white Australian. The Quong’s are treated as misfits in the town.
The Furlows are well off property owners. They hope Sidney, their nineteen year old daughter, becomes engaged to the well connected Roger Kemble.
The characters are vividly described. The characters make decisions with the outcomes not immediate or expected. A very good debut novel.
This book was first published in 1939.
September 14, 2012
‘Waiting, waiting for what, Happy Valley waiting in the dark is the question without answer.’
The novel opens with a hawk's-eye view of the (fictional) Snowy Mountains townships of Happy Valley, Moorang and Kambala. Then, as the Kambala publican's wife gives birth, the narrator tells us that the towns were founded as a consequence of gold prospecting, and still have some inhabitants of Chinese descent. It's a peaceful place that Clem Hagan has to work at, as overseer for the Furlows. Or is it? As the reader is drawn in from the panoramic view of the hawk, to the specifics of the town of Happy Valley and its inhabitants it seems that peace is an illusion for many. Most want to escape.
`Mr Furlow hadn't a mind, only a mutual understanding between a number of almost dormant instincts.'
The Furlows are the wealthy landowners of Glen Marsh. Their daughter Sidney wants to escape, but not by marrying the man selected for her by her mother.
`Miss Cortine prepared her girls for life with a course of tea-pouring and polite adultery.'
In the town of Happy Valley, Amy and Arthur Quong own the general store and the picture theatre, while their brother Walter owns the garage. Other characters include Walter's daughter Margaret, the local doctor and his family (the Hallidays), the asthmatic school teacher and his wife (the Moriartys), the piano teacher Alys Browne, cart driver William `Chuffy' Chambers, and Mrs Belper the bank manager's wife, who `in spite of breeding dogs had her Artistic side'.
`Autumn was a season of preliminary cold and suppressed winds.'
And in this small community, there is adultery, tragedy and murder. Some lovers come to their senses, while others strike bargains in order to escape. Happiness is elusive for many, impossible for some. Duty and poverty can be hard to escape.
`The air was intricate with conversation.'
Patrick White was 27 when this, his first, novel was published. He did not allow it to be republished in Australia during his lifetime and for many, this 2012 republication will be a first opportunity to read it. It's not perfect - I found some scenes jarring - but it's indisputably Patrick White. His depiction of children - especially Margaret Quong and Rodney Halliday - is unsentimental, and sometimes unsettling. Alys Browne is, to me, the finest character. I could wish that she and Margaret Quong could escape and leave Happy Valley behind them. In this novel there is more than a hint of the great novels yet to come.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
January 4, 2024
Patrick White's first published novel, Happy Valley came out in London in 1939 and was not reissued in White's lifetime. Described as the lovechild of Lawrence and Joyce by the British critics, and influenced by Gertrude Stein (according to the introduction by Peter Craven) the novel received an Australian prize but also attracted much controversy — especially among the people in the small towns where the novel is set (I don't know if the towns in the novel are real places or not, but real feelings were hurt).
The reasons White forbid the novel being reissued are murky; Craven suggests that White "was fearful of its heavy-handed (actionable) bits of literalism."
The characters are all struggling in Happy Valley, struggling with loneliness, boredom, envy, and so on. This is a novel of adultery and lust, as well as one of childhood dreams and unfulfilled desires.
The small sections possibly inspired by Stein, riddled with repetition and nonsense, are not White's finest moments. In double negative phrasing, Craven says as an aside: "(which is not to say that White did not retain his unevenness throughout his career)." Ouch!
In his massive biography, David Marr states that White had four unpublished novels that he destroyed, but only one, "Nightside", that he regretted destroying. This lost novel "Nightside" continues to haunt me.
Happy Valley is not a perfect book, yet the reader is always aware that the writer is skilled, daring, and masterful.
Four stars in the Patrick White universe, because it is not his best work.
The reasons White forbid the novel being reissued are murky; Craven suggests that White "was fearful of its heavy-handed (actionable) bits of literalism."
The characters are all struggling in Happy Valley, struggling with loneliness, boredom, envy, and so on. This is a novel of adultery and lust, as well as one of childhood dreams and unfulfilled desires.
The small sections possibly inspired by Stein, riddled with repetition and nonsense, are not White's finest moments. In double negative phrasing, Craven says as an aside: "(which is not to say that White did not retain his unevenness throughout his career)." Ouch!
In his massive biography, David Marr states that White had four unpublished novels that he destroyed, but only one, "Nightside", that he regretted destroying. This lost novel "Nightside" continues to haunt me.
Happy Valley is not a perfect book, yet the reader is always aware that the writer is skilled, daring, and masterful.
Four stars in the Patrick White universe, because it is not his best work.
November 12, 2012
It was a pleasure to read this first novel of Patrick White's. Do we really know why, after its publication in 1939, the author did not want it reissued? Was he embarrassed by his early work or protecting the identity of some of the people who were inspirations for the characters?
I find the area of southern New South Wales where the book is set a beautiful place; although I have never lived there I have that sensation of coming home when I visit. This immediately drew me to the place of the novel. The confused, uncertain characters who people the novel are people I know or their thoughts ones I have had.
The prose poetry fragments sit between James Joyce and Jack Kerouac (eat your heart out!) and are a surprise at first and then a pleasure. Despite the sadness there is beauty in this story and how it is told.
I'm inspired to reread White's 'The Tree of Man' which I loved despite reading it as a final year school student:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56...
Also another modern novel set in the same region, the Monaro:
http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/m...
I find the area of southern New South Wales where the book is set a beautiful place; although I have never lived there I have that sensation of coming home when I visit. This immediately drew me to the place of the novel. The confused, uncertain characters who people the novel are people I know or their thoughts ones I have had.
The prose poetry fragments sit between James Joyce and Jack Kerouac (eat your heart out!) and are a surprise at first and then a pleasure. Despite the sadness there is beauty in this story and how it is told.
I'm inspired to reread White's 'The Tree of Man' which I loved despite reading it as a final year school student:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56...
Also another modern novel set in the same region, the Monaro:
http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/m...
August 31, 2017
Such a hard life for the people of "Happy" Valley, somewhere in remote Australia. The local doctor is compassionate but weak in that he seeks the company of Miss Alys Brown instead of his wife, Hilda. Their son Rodney is bullied at school and has one friend, the local Chinese store owner's daughter. Rodney has great aspirations and like Margaret Quong because she is smart. The elite Furlow's are shallow and seem only to admire wealth, diamonds & horses. Their daughter Sydney is head-strong to say the least......and is obsessed with their hired man, Hagan. The local schoolmaster is an asthmatic whose wife also needs something more in her life and ends up having an affair with Hagan. The story ends with a surprise announcement from Sydney after the schoolmaster & his wife are found dead by the doctor & Alys who are detoured from "running away" by finding his body in the road. There are so many victims of passion in this realistic story that we must feel sad for them living in a place & culture where convention and appearances mean more than being "happy".
Read
March 12, 2013Four stars (the actual star images have disappeared from this site) Text have done serious readers a service by re-publishing this Patrick White first novel which he suppressed. If you've read Tree of Man and The Aunt's Story, his masterpiece, you'll see where they came from. However, it's a most enjoyable and approachable read in its own right. I was reminded of its re-publication by my recent reading of Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel (Allen & Unwin)as she left tantalising references to White in her text. See my review.
November 22, 2018
My sis-in-law revisited a Patrick White novel, so I decided it was high time I actually read one. So I started with his first novel, Happy Valley. Interestingly White refused to allow reprints on this novel.
White takes the reader deep into the lives of a few families in a small NSW country town, Happy Valley. All want to escape the drudgery and boredom of this place. The story was quite sad. The helplessness of people in the late 1930s stuck in a rut they had no hope of leaving, and how that shapes a persons life.
I’ll definitely pick up a few more of Whites novels to read.
White takes the reader deep into the lives of a few families in a small NSW country town, Happy Valley. All want to escape the drudgery and boredom of this place. The story was quite sad. The helplessness of people in the late 1930s stuck in a rut they had no hope of leaving, and how that shapes a persons life.
I’ll definitely pick up a few more of Whites novels to read.
July 9, 2022
Patrick White is one of my favorite all time writers. This title is one of his lesser known books, an early, or perhaps his first effort.
I struggled somewhat as I don’t think the story flowed. Regardless, the characters were quite memorable and I really loved this book despite its imperfections.
I struggled somewhat as I don’t think the story flowed. Regardless, the characters were quite memorable and I really loved this book despite its imperfections.
January 19, 2016
Review comping soon!
January 18, 2018
The formative work of a future master.
Read
December 29, 2012While this is, by no means, the author at the height of his powers, it is nevertheless a sure indicator of the excellence to come. The incorrectly-named Happy Valley is peopled by the type of characters we will come to know well in White's later works, and their generic and particular unhappinesses and frustrations are familiar to us even today.
White's keen descriptions of the landscape, and characters' relationships with it, are exceptional. Equally engaging is his use of stream of consciousness - so redolent of other Modernist writers. I could hear Thomas, Joyce and Woolfe in the voices of his characters.
Reading this early work makes me determined to retread my favourites, especially The Tree of Man, which I have long considered White's best and most accessible novel.
Recommended.
White's keen descriptions of the landscape, and characters' relationships with it, are exceptional. Equally engaging is his use of stream of consciousness - so redolent of other Modernist writers. I could hear Thomas, Joyce and Woolfe in the voices of his characters.
Reading this early work makes me determined to retread my favourites, especially The Tree of Man, which I have long considered White's best and most accessible novel.
Recommended.
August 4, 2018
An Aussie Steinbeck
February 11, 2021
Terrifyingly assured for a debut novel, although the build up to the ending is a little loose. A restrained, beautifully written modernist work that marked the birth of perhaps the most formidable career in Australian letters.
March 10, 2024
This edition contains several typos, misprints like “Army” instead of “Amy”, “in” instead of “it”. Irritating, but one can get past it.
A descriptive wonder of a book. Late 1930s small town Australia, with its intense heat and bothersome cold from season to season, its buzzing fly monotony, the seething emotional range of its occupants, from existential despondencies to resignation, and from torrid illicit passions to the tragic finality of violent deaths.
The author touches on many of the exact points that are common in human thought and pondering.
“I dare say most of us are afraid, he said. Not of the same things, perhaps. We start off being afraid of the dark. Then your fear probably moves its centre to something more tangible. And most of it rises out of a feeling of being alone. Being alone is being afraid. Perhaps one day we’ll all wake up to the fact that we’re all alone, that we’re all afraid, and then it'll just be too damn silly to go on being afraid.” P.149.
“They each had their own problem, and nobody else had theirs, which is only natural perhaps, it is usually like that.” P. 269.
“She followed her mind down the vague avenue of the future, only a little way, she preferred to stop, because it seemed meaningless and nothing would take shape, no definite image of [herself] either here or elsewhere, as if she had been discarded from the pattern of time. But I have meant something, she said, it is not altogether wasted if I have meant something, as he said, he said, this was my purpose, to know it, above all that, to realize.” A desperate attempt at self-consolation in the face of a seemingly meaningless existence. P. 274
“You knew you would die, and you did not know, it was like that. The smoke wreathed up against a star. You stopped breathing because it suddenly caught you, death. You knew what it meant, in the yard, in the dark. You wanted to run away. [He] stood still. This moment when death assumes a personal bearing… is a moment of significance. It was perhaps the first significant moment in [his] life. Over against his fear, a sense of importance. Fixed upon this sheet of black, like a star, in his own distinct circumference, his life, till the intervention of death. He was himself. [His family], the idea of corporate safety, were no longer this, we’re distinct too. The safety line is broken by the consciousness of death.” P. 320.
And the deep thoughts and pondering continue, and circumstances unravel.
A descriptive wonder of a book. Late 1930s small town Australia, with its intense heat and bothersome cold from season to season, its buzzing fly monotony, the seething emotional range of its occupants, from existential despondencies to resignation, and from torrid illicit passions to the tragic finality of violent deaths.
The author touches on many of the exact points that are common in human thought and pondering.
“I dare say most of us are afraid, he said. Not of the same things, perhaps. We start off being afraid of the dark. Then your fear probably moves its centre to something more tangible. And most of it rises out of a feeling of being alone. Being alone is being afraid. Perhaps one day we’ll all wake up to the fact that we’re all alone, that we’re all afraid, and then it'll just be too damn silly to go on being afraid.” P.149.
“They each had their own problem, and nobody else had theirs, which is only natural perhaps, it is usually like that.” P. 269.
“She followed her mind down the vague avenue of the future, only a little way, she preferred to stop, because it seemed meaningless and nothing would take shape, no definite image of [herself] either here or elsewhere, as if she had been discarded from the pattern of time. But I have meant something, she said, it is not altogether wasted if I have meant something, as he said, he said, this was my purpose, to know it, above all that, to realize.” A desperate attempt at self-consolation in the face of a seemingly meaningless existence. P. 274
“You knew you would die, and you did not know, it was like that. The smoke wreathed up against a star. You stopped breathing because it suddenly caught you, death. You knew what it meant, in the yard, in the dark. You wanted to run away. [He] stood still. This moment when death assumes a personal bearing… is a moment of significance. It was perhaps the first significant moment in [his] life. Over against his fear, a sense of importance. Fixed upon this sheet of black, like a star, in his own distinct circumference, his life, till the intervention of death. He was himself. [His family], the idea of corporate safety, were no longer this, we’re distinct too. The safety line is broken by the consciousness of death.” P. 320.
And the deep thoughts and pondering continue, and circumstances unravel.
January 24, 2017
‘[Patrick White] was a prophet, and from his sublime mountaintop, he sent down lightning bolts on our callow heads. Some of these bolts are vivid in Happy Valley, his first novel, published in 1939 and now reissued…The novel stands up well in the high company of its later brethren. It prefigures the greatness to come, and is a more adventurously wrought than many of our own age. White is a mesmerising narrator whose prose illuminates the most ordinary object and event in new and gripping ways.’
Thomas Keneally, Guardian
‘Happy Valley will be a joy for any fan. Here we see a sensibility not so much forming as finding, and owning, itself.’
Weekend Australian
‘This is a remarkable first novel, already discernible as the performance of a master whose apprentice work cannot be glimpsed. We are fortunate indeed that Text has reopened the front door in the house of Patrick White’s fiction.’
Canberra Times
‘My favourite Australian novel was by a newcomer — well, a newcomer in 1939. A sardonic, grotesque, oddly moving ensemble of piece about thwarted lives in a dismal country town, Happy Valley presages the later Patrick White, but is also refreshingly original and feels as contemporary as the latest bestseller.’
Jane Sullivan, Australian Book Review
‘Happy Valley is a harsh and unsparing picture of a prematurely exhausting, life-denying Australia. It’s a world full of violence, adultery and financial ruin, in which nothing will ever change. White’s main focus, as in his great later novels, is the thwarted spiritual yearning of his characters. But this is also a superb anatomy of Australian society.’
Metro Magazine (NZ)
Thomas Keneally, Guardian
‘Happy Valley will be a joy for any fan. Here we see a sensibility not so much forming as finding, and owning, itself.’
Weekend Australian
‘This is a remarkable first novel, already discernible as the performance of a master whose apprentice work cannot be glimpsed. We are fortunate indeed that Text has reopened the front door in the house of Patrick White’s fiction.’
Canberra Times
‘My favourite Australian novel was by a newcomer — well, a newcomer in 1939. A sardonic, grotesque, oddly moving ensemble of piece about thwarted lives in a dismal country town, Happy Valley presages the later Patrick White, but is also refreshingly original and feels as contemporary as the latest bestseller.’
Jane Sullivan, Australian Book Review
‘Happy Valley is a harsh and unsparing picture of a prematurely exhausting, life-denying Australia. It’s a world full of violence, adultery and financial ruin, in which nothing will ever change. White’s main focus, as in his great later novels, is the thwarted spiritual yearning of his characters. But this is also a superb anatomy of Australian society.’
Metro Magazine (NZ)
June 26, 2016
At the beginning, this was very promising. The narrative is character-driven, detailed, with interesting plot points and a focus on domestic life, which interested me. Despite the detailed description of each character, I still felt very detached from them - I think this was because White used their full names when referencing them, which put me off a little. I couldn't feel sympathy, dislike, anything towards the characters because I simply didn't care enough about them. This made anything that happened to them completely redundant in my mind.
What bothered me most were the apparent streams of consciousness that White included. These were generally dense paragraphs of unfinished sentences describing what I can only assume are the characters thoughts, and I didn't understand them at all. Unfortunately, they appeared so frequently that most of the time I had no clue what was going on. This only served to detach me further from the storyline.
The last 100 pages was utter hell to read. I just wanted it to end. To top it all off, the ending was abrupt and anticlimatic.
I can't give this one star as I must give credit where it's due - I will happily believe that White's other works are better than this, this having been his debut. However, that is not to say I will be picking up another of his novels anytime soon.
What bothered me most were the apparent streams of consciousness that White included. These were generally dense paragraphs of unfinished sentences describing what I can only assume are the characters thoughts, and I didn't understand them at all. Unfortunately, they appeared so frequently that most of the time I had no clue what was going on. This only served to detach me further from the storyline.
The last 100 pages was utter hell to read. I just wanted it to end. To top it all off, the ending was abrupt and anticlimatic.
I can't give this one star as I must give credit where it's due - I will happily believe that White's other works are better than this, this having been his debut. However, that is not to say I will be picking up another of his novels anytime soon.
September 16, 2017
I can't pretend this wasn't a bit of a slog in parts. It is White's first novel, and given his prestige, I have to assume his stream-of-consciousness style improved with later books. Its use here made a couple of chapters almost entirely indecipherable. That said, overall it is an interesting story with (some) very well drawn characters and is certainly evocative of the specific place and time, 1930s rural NSW. And it did pique my interest enough that I would still like to read some of his later works.
April 11, 2018
The first Patrick White novel I've read, and the first he wrote. Reading it right after #menwritingwomen became a thing on Twitter, I did notice the way the women were written (and how often they think about their breasts), not to mention the racial issues with the characterisation of the Chinese family - which is the reason White wouldn't allow reprints of the book in his lifetime. This is a very close portrait of a small town and all of the drama and love and mess that entails.
September 25, 2012
Small-town Australia under a microscope.... Small-town anywhere for that matter.
"There is something relentless about the hatred induced by human contacts in a small town. At times it seems to have a kind of superhuman organisation, like the passions in a Greek tragedy, but there is seldom any nobility about the passions of a small town..."
"There is something relentless about the hatred induced by human contacts in a small town. At times it seems to have a kind of superhuman organisation, like the passions in a Greek tragedy, but there is seldom any nobility about the passions of a small town..."
March 13, 2014
This one started a bit slow and thoughout the book theres parts that get very long winded but I overall theres enough to the story and to keep it interesting. I liked the insights into the different characters and while this book isnt one I'd recommend to anyone, I did enjoy it & thought it worth reading. Was published in 1939 and is a much different style to books published more recently.
April 7, 2016
This was... fine. The writing style seemed erratic, yet I couldn't help but become attached to some of the characters, particularly Alys. At times, I did feel like the frequent change in perspective was distracting, but overall it was an okay novel. I do look forward to reading more of Patrick White's work!
September 18, 2018
It was exciting to read White's 1st novel (not reprinted in his lifetime). Ther were clunky bits, and self-consciously Joycean moderbuat touches, and obvious imagery (Woman playing with snake = prick-teaser), and he's none too keen on women, but I LOVED it. Grim, but beautiful. Very much the embryonic White. Very disappointed that it is the only White novel available on Audible.
July 28, 2018
Brilliant character writing. Feels like the archetypal Australian novel with the bored inhabitants of small-town Australia dreaming of better lives and watching everyone else around them. Lots of threads that mostly get drawn together.
May 10, 2016
A story of loss and loneliness set in a desolate town.
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