What do you think?
Rate this book
Homesickness
Thirteen men and women on a world tour, a package of pool-sides, museums, hotels and shops. But no matter where they go they find nothing as they expected. Challenged by unexpected propositions, differences and subtleties - of life, history, themselves - Bail's tourists find themselves repelled, attracted and altered.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
6 people are currently reading
223 people want to read
About the author
Murray Bail
26 books50 followersMurray Bail (born 22 September 1941) is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction.
He was born in Adelaide, South Australia. He has lived most of his life in Australia except for sojourns in India (1968–70) and England and Europe (1970–74). He currently lives in Sydney.
He was trustee of the National Gallery of Australia from 1976 to 1981, and wrote a book on Australian artist Ian Fairweather.
A portrait of Bail by the artist Fred Williams is hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. The portrait was done while both Williams and Bail were Council members of the National Gallery of Australia
He was born in Adelaide, South Australia. He has lived most of his life in Australia except for sojourns in India (1968–70) and England and Europe (1970–74). He currently lives in Sydney.
He was trustee of the National Gallery of Australia from 1976 to 1981, and wrote a book on Australian artist Ian Fairweather.
A portrait of Bail by the artist Fred Williams is hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. The portrait was done while both Williams and Bail were Council members of the National Gallery of Australia
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
May 30, 2014
A victim of false marketing: many goodreads reviewers complain that there's no plot here. They are correct. But since Bail isn't interested in a standard plot, that's not his fault. Nor is it the readers' fault. Anyway.
The introduction in this 'Text Classics' edition describes Bail as a cross between Patrick White and Don Delillo, which is pretty much accurate, except that he's far funnier than Delillo. His strength is set pieces, and he plays to it here: a group travels the world; we see them in hotels and in museums, and that's about it.
I found this wonderful to begin with--the first museum, in an unnamed African country, is essentially dedicated to the detritus of colonialism, and our naive Australian travelers aren't very comfortable with this. Later, in England, we get a museum of corrugated iron. Possibly only Australians will actually understand the humor and pathos here, but trust me, corrugated iron is next to Vegemite in the Australian national identity. So after failing to understand the deep history of colonialism, the travelers get to confront the far gentler version of the Australian colony. In South American they see the museum of the leg, specifically designed to tire and bore attendees, so they become aware of their own legs.
And at this point it becomes clear that Bail is also up to metanarrative tricks: this 'boring' museum comes along just at the point when his readers will be bored with the constantly recurring museum set scenes. Homesickness, from this perspective, demands more of its readers than you might expect. You have to fight through the boredom of the unexpected, and the rewards are great.
After the leg museum the relationships between the characters take on a new strength, which reinforces the book's more intellectualized points. In the U.S. we see a museum of marriage, the strongest section of the book. It brings together the more or less dysfunctional relationships between the characters, or in their history, and the way that 'romance' is used in fiction to the detriment of more interesting or relevant material. Just in case you didn't get it, the chapter ends with our travelers being led to a treehouse, from which they are invited to observe black men raping a white woman--and, quite possibly, encouraged to shoot the men.
Towards the end the book veers into Kafka territory, which isn't particularly interesting, but does point to the ambition and seriousness of the book; an ambition which Bail matches, in a very Australian way, with slapstick (one of the travelers is a blind photographer; he often falls over).
If you've read any of Michel Houllebecq's books about tourism and been even remotely intrigued, Bail's is far better, and brings far more to the table than the Frenchman. If you like Delillo's set scenes, Bail gives you a different take on them. If you like Patrick White's prose, Bail gives it to you with much more good humor. Highly recommended.
The introduction in this 'Text Classics' edition describes Bail as a cross between Patrick White and Don Delillo, which is pretty much accurate, except that he's far funnier than Delillo. His strength is set pieces, and he plays to it here: a group travels the world; we see them in hotels and in museums, and that's about it.
I found this wonderful to begin with--the first museum, in an unnamed African country, is essentially dedicated to the detritus of colonialism, and our naive Australian travelers aren't very comfortable with this. Later, in England, we get a museum of corrugated iron. Possibly only Australians will actually understand the humor and pathos here, but trust me, corrugated iron is next to Vegemite in the Australian national identity. So after failing to understand the deep history of colonialism, the travelers get to confront the far gentler version of the Australian colony. In South American they see the museum of the leg, specifically designed to tire and bore attendees, so they become aware of their own legs.
And at this point it becomes clear that Bail is also up to metanarrative tricks: this 'boring' museum comes along just at the point when his readers will be bored with the constantly recurring museum set scenes. Homesickness, from this perspective, demands more of its readers than you might expect. You have to fight through the boredom of the unexpected, and the rewards are great.
After the leg museum the relationships between the characters take on a new strength, which reinforces the book's more intellectualized points. In the U.S. we see a museum of marriage, the strongest section of the book. It brings together the more or less dysfunctional relationships between the characters, or in their history, and the way that 'romance' is used in fiction to the detriment of more interesting or relevant material. Just in case you didn't get it, the chapter ends with our travelers being led to a treehouse, from which they are invited to observe black men raping a white woman--and, quite possibly, encouraged to shoot the men.
Towards the end the book veers into Kafka territory, which isn't particularly interesting, but does point to the ambition and seriousness of the book; an ambition which Bail matches, in a very Australian way, with slapstick (one of the travelers is a blind photographer; he often falls over).
If you've read any of Michel Houllebecq's books about tourism and been even remotely intrigued, Bail's is far better, and brings far more to the table than the Frenchman. If you like Delillo's set scenes, Bail gives you a different take on them. If you like Patrick White's prose, Bail gives it to you with much more good humor. Highly recommended.
August 20, 2008
I read this shortly after returning from a hiking trip in Ireland, where I had joined a group of 6 who were strangers to me. Group travel is fascinating and maddening- Bail captures this madness and intimacy in wonderfully witty and bizarre detail. Parts are laugh out loud funny, though this didn't strike me as a comic novel. His detail is arresting and spot on. I'd think twice, three, four times before signing on again to travel with strangers...Definitely get my own room next time... :)
February 11, 2020
From the author who brought you "man tries to sell his daughter"...this was a hard slog and only through my innate stubbornness did I get to the end. Written in 1980, it hasn't aged well, is self-congratulatory and truly did nothing for me. Plenty of great Australian authors around to explore who have interesting things to say. Give it a miss.
December 29, 2016
What a ridiculous book ! I stopped reading when I realised it was just a laundry list of each museum... Not funny, just tedious. The only laugh I had was the last two pages I went to, and saw how right I was to only skim the rest..
February 20, 2022
I didn't like the aimlessness of this book or the structure and decided to cut my misery short and move on to something better. DNF.
2.5/10
2.5/10
April 17, 2020
Took awhile to get it as not a traditional story but intriguing and humerous and loved most of it. Shows a light on tourists and being one at times myself I related to the group experience. Give it a go and enjoy.
March 9, 2015
A little irony goes a long way, and I found the tone of the book so ironic that it bored me. The bizarre museums were funny at first, but became tedious through repetition.
And I get it-- "first-world travelers are oh-so-shallow," but I felt hit over the head with the idea.
A "wild life expedition" which involved the travelers watching the gang rape of a woman was unfunny and distressing. The travelers, because they did nothing to intervene, became absolutely detestable to me.
And what's with all the near-rapes of the women travelers, the casual way the women themselves treat them, and the nudge-nudge wink-wink attitude the male travelers take towards rape?
And I get it-- "first-world travelers are oh-so-shallow," but I felt hit over the head with the idea.
A "wild life expedition" which involved the travelers watching the gang rape of a woman was unfunny and distressing. The travelers, because they did nothing to intervene, became absolutely detestable to me.
And what's with all the near-rapes of the women travelers, the casual way the women themselves treat them, and the nudge-nudge wink-wink attitude the male travelers take towards rape?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 6, 2019
Was seriously disappointed with this novel. I loved the authors book "Eucalyptus", which for me, is one of my all time favourite Australian novels.
So I started "Homesickness" thinking I'd get more of the same. It was an award winner after all. However it wasn't to be. It was very dated, and I can't say I was surprised it hasn't been released in the the US, and to be frank I'd glad it hasn't!!
None of the characters are likeable, and indeed they are stereotypes, and many thankfully aren't as prevalent as they once were, and that's a good thing.
The book meanders about, and it's surreal at times, but it just felt dated. Read "Eucalyptus" - it's brilliant and this is not.
So I started "Homesickness" thinking I'd get more of the same. It was an award winner after all. However it wasn't to be. It was very dated, and I can't say I was surprised it hasn't been released in the the US, and to be frank I'd glad it hasn't!!
None of the characters are likeable, and indeed they are stereotypes, and many thankfully aren't as prevalent as they once were, and that's a good thing.
The book meanders about, and it's surreal at times, but it just felt dated. Read "Eucalyptus" - it's brilliant and this is not.
January 24, 2017
‘A visual writer with great understanding of sensual man.’
Patrick White
‘Homesickness is most remarkable for its exhilarating breadth, its effervescent inventiveness and its polymathic connoisseurship of culture, as well as for the harder-headed comedy that tethers its aeronautical fancies to the ground. In 1980 it was an astonishing debut—a comic epic about a bashful country that was then beginning to emerge from its seclusion at the bottom of the world and on the margins of the world’s literature.’
Peter Conrad
Patrick White
‘Homesickness is most remarkable for its exhilarating breadth, its effervescent inventiveness and its polymathic connoisseurship of culture, as well as for the harder-headed comedy that tethers its aeronautical fancies to the ground. In 1980 it was an astonishing debut—a comic epic about a bashful country that was then beginning to emerge from its seclusion at the bottom of the world and on the margins of the world’s literature.’
Peter Conrad
fic-guided
July 19, 2020Bail is one of a select company of indisputably world-class Australian novelists currently practising. One can justifiably rank him alongside Carey, Keneally, and Coetzee in the Oz pantheon. But although his peers are famous the wider reading world has not taken much notice of Murray Bail. Homesickness was first published in the author’s home country in 1980, where, among the discriminating, it enjoys classic, or Patrick White, status. (’Great Australian Novel’ is not, as satirists might think, a contradiction in terms.) Homesickness was not published by a British or American publisher until 1999. Bail’s career as an international writer has not been helped by his snail-slow rate of production. By his late fifties he had a scant three novels to his name. At the time of writing (2013) the count is five, and he’s seventy-two. Neither does it help that Bail rarely gives interviews, and the fabric of his fiction is notably lacking in self-revelation. Bail-watching is not an easy sport. But it’s well worth rising to the challenge.
Homesickness is a fictional cogitation on the dubious pleasures of mass tourism, that debased descendant of the heroic emigration that, a century ago, made modern Australasia. The form of the novel is simple (Bail reveres the native tradition of the ‘yarn’ – embodied in the fiction of Henry Lawson). We follow a ‘package’ (meaningful word) of thirteen Australians (meaningful number – the disciples plus Judas, or Christ, take your pick) on a ‘trip-of-a-lifetime’ world tour. Their peregrinations take them to Africa, Britain, South America, the United States and the Soviet Union. The itinerary would make more sense to the Flying Dutchman than a travel agent. The tourists are uninteresting and some downright repulsive. They include a foul-mouthed drunk; a zoologist who has fallen out of love with his profession and whose wife (‘she was in zoology too’) has just died of cancer; a couple who photograph everything obsessively (the husband may be blind, or just pretending – one of the few notes of suspense); a sexual predator; a sex-starved spinster; and a married couple who indulge in unsavoury sex games faintly audible through the hotel walls. None of the tourists are presented to us in depth. We do not get to know them, nor – frankly – do we regret the omission. It’s rather as if Chaucer had made his entire band of pilgrims as unappealing as the Pardoner.
Tourism means, literally, going round in circles. Bail’s narrative coils around itself repetitively. The tourists land at a featureless international airport and check in at their featureless international hotel. They gawk at the strange landscapes and townscapes. Their principal activity is to visit museums – all of which are surreal and baffling collages. Among the clutter in an African museum of handicrafts there is a colour television that, because ‘there is no television in Africa, the dark continent’, is filled with ‘lime green water and three brightly colored fish . . . chased by a baby crocodile’. It gets stranger. In the lost property office of a London train station, the objets trouvés include 820 umbrellas and a stuffed galah from western New South Wales. (Don’t ask.) At the Science Museum, Bail’s travellers inspect the ‘Great Brains’ on pickled display, then go on to a Corrugated Iron Museum. In Ecuador, they visit a Museum of Legs. No odder, one well-travelled member of the party thinks, than Reykjavik’s Museum of the Potato – and legwork is, after all, the essence of tourism. In New York, they solemnly visit an Institution of Marriage. The establishment features a slice of Queen Victoria’s wedding cake and live (married) sex shows. Bail, one deduces, does not much like New York. Or anywhere else.
The novel ends in a brightly lit museum in the Soviet Union where – to the tourists’ consternation – there is nothing on display. They look at themselves and realise, in a moment of brilliant enlightenment, that they are the museum’s bric-à-brac.
If there is a theme to Homesickness, it is that thanks to late-twentieth-century tourism, nothing is real any more. Nowhere is home; everywhere is abroad.
Homesickness is a fictional cogitation on the dubious pleasures of mass tourism, that debased descendant of the heroic emigration that, a century ago, made modern Australasia. The form of the novel is simple (Bail reveres the native tradition of the ‘yarn’ – embodied in the fiction of Henry Lawson). We follow a ‘package’ (meaningful word) of thirteen Australians (meaningful number – the disciples plus Judas, or Christ, take your pick) on a ‘trip-of-a-lifetime’ world tour. Their peregrinations take them to Africa, Britain, South America, the United States and the Soviet Union. The itinerary would make more sense to the Flying Dutchman than a travel agent. The tourists are uninteresting and some downright repulsive. They include a foul-mouthed drunk; a zoologist who has fallen out of love with his profession and whose wife (‘she was in zoology too’) has just died of cancer; a couple who photograph everything obsessively (the husband may be blind, or just pretending – one of the few notes of suspense); a sexual predator; a sex-starved spinster; and a married couple who indulge in unsavoury sex games faintly audible through the hotel walls. None of the tourists are presented to us in depth. We do not get to know them, nor – frankly – do we regret the omission. It’s rather as if Chaucer had made his entire band of pilgrims as unappealing as the Pardoner.
Tourism means, literally, going round in circles. Bail’s narrative coils around itself repetitively. The tourists land at a featureless international airport and check in at their featureless international hotel. They gawk at the strange landscapes and townscapes. Their principal activity is to visit museums – all of which are surreal and baffling collages. Among the clutter in an African museum of handicrafts there is a colour television that, because ‘there is no television in Africa, the dark continent’, is filled with ‘lime green water and three brightly colored fish . . . chased by a baby crocodile’. It gets stranger. In the lost property office of a London train station, the objets trouvés include 820 umbrellas and a stuffed galah from western New South Wales. (Don’t ask.) At the Science Museum, Bail’s travellers inspect the ‘Great Brains’ on pickled display, then go on to a Corrugated Iron Museum. In Ecuador, they visit a Museum of Legs. No odder, one well-travelled member of the party thinks, than Reykjavik’s Museum of the Potato – and legwork is, after all, the essence of tourism. In New York, they solemnly visit an Institution of Marriage. The establishment features a slice of Queen Victoria’s wedding cake and live (married) sex shows. Bail, one deduces, does not much like New York. Or anywhere else.
The novel ends in a brightly lit museum in the Soviet Union where – to the tourists’ consternation – there is nothing on display. They look at themselves and realise, in a moment of brilliant enlightenment, that they are the museum’s bric-à-brac.
If there is a theme to Homesickness, it is that thanks to late-twentieth-century tourism, nothing is real any more. Nowhere is home; everywhere is abroad.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 15, 2023
I fount this book at an English secondhand bookshop in Munich this summer. Anticipating living abroad, I felt drawn toward the title, not knowing yet the peculiar, funny, confusing, uncomfortable story that awaited me. The nonlinear, surrealist plot follows a group of Australian travelers in their unpredictable and strange journeys across the globe. Themes of connection, tourism, photography, ignorance, cultural exchange, ignorance, reflection, and identity accompany them on their travels.
I experienced a myriad of emotions during this read, and I give it 3 stars because of the fact that I didn’t know how to describe the experience of reading it at first, and I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, maybe both?
I experienced a myriad of emotions during this read, and I give it 3 stars because of the fact that I didn’t know how to describe the experience of reading it at first, and I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, maybe both?
August 5, 2022
"Distance = novelty and a desire to conquer."
Thoroughly enjoyed this whirlwind and bizarre world tour. The negative reviews here seem to dwell on the lack of plot and slowness. However, if you appreciate picaresque humor and omnivorous erudition, this may be your cup of tea. Bail managed to really capture the acquisitive greed of tourism and make it very, very funny.
Thoroughly enjoyed this whirlwind and bizarre world tour. The negative reviews here seem to dwell on the lack of plot and slowness. However, if you appreciate picaresque humor and omnivorous erudition, this may be your cup of tea. Bail managed to really capture the acquisitive greed of tourism and make it very, very funny.
February 12, 2023
A very funny book and observations about some Australians on a world tour in the early 80s. At times brilliant and other times very weird/hard to understand what the author was going for, it wasn't an 'easy read' but worth the effort. Murray Bail is a very intelligent writer and I didn't quite get him at times.
March 24, 2023
Well written and occasionally comedic, it is hard to see where the bizarre plot is next headed. Quintessentially Australian characters form unlikely bonds over the course of a Cook's package tour covering disparate and sometimes unlikely global destinations, leaving a trail of political incorrectness in their wake.
November 21, 2025
I didn't find it 'wildly funny' at all. I found it ponderous and boring, with no particular point. A 1970s book written in a style that would have seemed outdated even at the time. The idea of a tour group travelling the world was preposterous. The attempts to show human relationships within the group fell flat.
Want to read
January 15, 2025I had marked this as read, and rated it rather harshly, but I think I confused it with a collection of short stories by a different author. It's a novel, not short stories.
So now I've ordered a copy to read 'again' to see what's what.
So now I've ordered a copy to read 'again' to see what's what.
May 23, 2019
I've reviewed a couple of Murray Bail books here in the past, and have never been quite sure what to make of his work, and his style. Homesickness, his first novel, hasn't got me any closer to working out my feelings toward his work.
Charting the journey of a group of Australian tourists through Africa, England, New York and Russia, Homesickness is a meditation on travel, the western tourist, experience, photography, and love. Bail shows us, through his characters, and through their experiences, something about the Australian psyche (as it was in 1980), and the shallowness of the touristic experience.
Bail uses the trope of the museum to say a lot about tourism, and Australia. The reader gets a first inkling that this book is going to be different when the group head into the jungle to the pygmy museum, only to see pygmies dressed as westerners, doing things that westerners do. This will not be the first time that the concept of the museum is turned on its head. The museum of corrugated iron they visit in Yorkshire is an occasion for Bail - through the scene and characters - to expound on the practicality of the Australian psyche, on how we take things for granted, and on the Australian cultural cringe, which co-exists with the Australian desire to explain to the World how great the country is.
Bail also writes about art and photography. One of the characters is an inveterate photographer, who also happens to be blind, and while in London one of the group is disgusted to find that all the art galleries have replaced their exhibitions with photographs. Although he couldn't know it at the time, this is a wonderful comment on today's photographic culture, where the photograph is more important than the experience being photographed. The concept of a blind photographer is apt - so busy taking photographs that he can't see, and has to have his experience explained to him by his wife.
The group is diverse and yet homogeneous, an unlikely group of travelers who become more familiar with each other, and with the reader, as the book progresses. We have many archetypes, the Ocker, the know-it-all, the snob, the middle-class prude, all reacting differently to each experience. We never do discover why or how they came to be travelling in a group, and they never question it either, or leave, even when they are unhappy.
The travel by the group is in many sense aimless, and seems to become more so as the book progresses - perhaps yet another comment on the phenomena of tourism; what is learnt, what is gained from such travel? The experiences always tend toward the banal, even when, as here, they are completely bizarre, such as the museum of gravity in Moscow....a completely strange surreal place, but the traveller's reactions are the typical ones you would hear in any group.
So, to go back to my opening lines, what to make of this book? I'm still unsure....I enjoyed reading it though.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
Charting the journey of a group of Australian tourists through Africa, England, New York and Russia, Homesickness is a meditation on travel, the western tourist, experience, photography, and love. Bail shows us, through his characters, and through their experiences, something about the Australian psyche (as it was in 1980), and the shallowness of the touristic experience.
Bail uses the trope of the museum to say a lot about tourism, and Australia. The reader gets a first inkling that this book is going to be different when the group head into the jungle to the pygmy museum, only to see pygmies dressed as westerners, doing things that westerners do. This will not be the first time that the concept of the museum is turned on its head. The museum of corrugated iron they visit in Yorkshire is an occasion for Bail - through the scene and characters - to expound on the practicality of the Australian psyche, on how we take things for granted, and on the Australian cultural cringe, which co-exists with the Australian desire to explain to the World how great the country is.
Bail also writes about art and photography. One of the characters is an inveterate photographer, who also happens to be blind, and while in London one of the group is disgusted to find that all the art galleries have replaced their exhibitions with photographs. Although he couldn't know it at the time, this is a wonderful comment on today's photographic culture, where the photograph is more important than the experience being photographed. The concept of a blind photographer is apt - so busy taking photographs that he can't see, and has to have his experience explained to him by his wife.
The group is diverse and yet homogeneous, an unlikely group of travelers who become more familiar with each other, and with the reader, as the book progresses. We have many archetypes, the Ocker, the know-it-all, the snob, the middle-class prude, all reacting differently to each experience. We never do discover why or how they came to be travelling in a group, and they never question it either, or leave, even when they are unhappy.
The travel by the group is in many sense aimless, and seems to become more so as the book progresses - perhaps yet another comment on the phenomena of tourism; what is learnt, what is gained from such travel? The experiences always tend toward the banal, even when, as here, they are completely bizarre, such as the museum of gravity in Moscow....a completely strange surreal place, but the traveller's reactions are the typical ones you would hear in any group.
So, to go back to my opening lines, what to make of this book? I'm still unsure....I enjoyed reading it though.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
October 22, 2008
Homesickness is the second novel I've read by Bail. It reads well though not as well as 'Eucalyptus'. From my own limited experience in traveling, 'Homesickness' does an excellent job of capturing the stereotypical tourist comparing every country to their own, usually in a less than flattering manner, sending home postcards with generic statements, and trying to go native. The museums the characters of the novel visit are strange, bordering on plain weird. From the (literal) Institution of Marriage to a corrugated metal museum, Bail leads us through each one with subtle humor. His sketch of each destination is done well, especially New York City and Russia. While this is an interesting novel, though the average reader might get lost by references to various aspects of Australia culture, I liked his more recent novel, 'Eucalyptus'. I think readers who travel a lot will find much of this novel amusing and dead on. A few of the sentence structures are strange such as missing commas or the syntax is in unusual order that I had to reread a second time to understand. Just before Bail dumps the Australian tourists on their last trip to Russia, he provides his own experiences in Russia, which seemed like he wanted to include this extra material for the heck of it.
February 22, 2013
I love a good story, but I didn't find one in this book. The premise is brilliant, the characters are interesting and the observations are uncomfortably real, but there's no story or character development; just a series of "incidents" involving a group of people in different locations. Some of the incidents were outright weird and I struggled to get the context. A criminal incident in New York was especially disturbing and didn't make great sense to me. I find that in Australian literature, the books that win awards are generally quite off-beat and the "cracking good yarns" miss out. What's wrong with a great plot and characters that aim to entertain, rather than preach?
I did however appreciate the "cleverness" of the book, but it didn't necessarily make it easy to read and I found myself getting really bogged down and bored. I'm glad I read the book, but I was even more glad when I finished it.
I did however appreciate the "cleverness" of the book, but it didn't necessarily make it easy to read and I found myself getting really bogged down and bored. I'm glad I read the book, but I was even more glad when I finished it.
January 26, 2011
Interesting style, and I guess the symbolism is way over my head. Enjoyed the characters, as much as I was allowed to get to know them.....just left me wanting more - I guess I was just looking for a regular story. Couldn't wait to get it over with.
February 16, 2013
This book had a very good review in the NY Times Book Review. It won a couple of Australian book awards. I'm sure it's a good book, I just had trouble getting into it. The writing seemed very dry to me. I made it to about page 16 and then skimmed other parts.
June 5, 2014
It took me a long time to finish this book, which I attribute partly to its dream-like quality. I would wander in and out of the story, sometimes confused, sometimes delighted. It felt like reading a long, abstract metaphor though for what I'm not exactly sure. Beautiful, bold writing.
February 15, 2016
MurrayBai's 'Homesickness'. For a writer like me who churns out a novel every ten years, Bail’s pauses between novels are almost encouraging. http://gatesyread.blogspot.com.au/201...
March 21, 2008
The guy can really write, his own style, great command of language. Australian. Novel about a bunch of people traveling the world together. Respected it but can’t recommend it.
September 21, 2010
Stunningly astute and elegant observations. Dear to my heart.
September 20, 2010
Try as i might - just could not get into the story and found the whole experience annoying. Book felt very dated and the surreal touches pretentious.
March 18, 2013
terrible
December 14, 2016
Sorry, I tried to like this but just confused. Maybe I missed the point but I enjoyed "Eucalyptus" much more.
November 4, 2015
Could NOT get into this one...
December 26, 2017
way to disconnected for me - no story line, nothing to follow, couldn't get a handle on the characters - mostly just skimmed it
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews