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Seven Poor Men of Sydney
In this poetic and impressionistic novel, Catherine Baguenault and the seven men of the title, are held together by the tenuous associations of their city, by the fickle bonds of love and friendship, and by an encompassing and defeating poverty. The inner landscapes are as tangible as the city and as intense as the elements.
358 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1934
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310 people want to read
About the author
Christina Stead
42 books133 followersChristina Stead (1902–1983) was an Australian writer regarded as one of the twentieth century’s master novelists. Stead spent most of her writing life in Europe and the United States, and her varied residences acted as the settings for a number of her novels. She is best known for The Man Who Loved Children (1940), which was praised by author Jonathan Franzen as a “crazy, gorgeous family novel” and “one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century.” Stead died in her native Australia in 1983.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
October 29, 2017
I now understand why generations of Australian writers hold Stead in such high esteem. This, her second novel, is a breath-takingly ambitious modernist masterpiece displaying a literary chutzpah that invites comparison with James Joyce's debut, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'. In her introductory essay Delia Falconer claims Stead's novel is 'far more daring' as 'Portrait' depicts a single consciousness while Stead plumbs the depths of a whole cohort of personalities. The many moods of the working harbour and shabby beauty of the city mythologise Sydney in lush but precise poetic detail, all the more remarkable for the fact Stead wrote the novel while abroad.
Set in late 1920s Sydney with its half-built bridge and its grinding poverty, the main arc of the story follows the fates of the half-siblings Michael and Catherine Baguenault who have grown up in a fictionalised Watsons Bay (Fisherman's Bay) and both suffer from an intensity of soulfulness bordering at times on insanity. The other six poor men of the title include their mild-mannered cousin Joseph and his fellow employees at a printing works, the ruthless, plotting Tom Withers, the intellectual Baruch Mendelssohn, and the pathetic owner Chamberlain. Michael has a feverish friendship of mutual dependency with a debilitated young man Kol Blount who half-worships Michael for his detachment from social norms while librarian Tom Winter is a no-holds-barred communist preaching revolution at this loose collection of lost souls.
The milieu is one of working class and bohemian left-wing political awareness and debate set around worker's education lectures, socialist meetings and rallies and late night drunken parties. The cast also includes the north-shore dwelling Folliots, husband and wife sponsors of socialist activism, with whom Michael and Catherine each become romantically entangled. The book abounds with a youthful fervour of sensitivity to ideals and ideas, joyous at times and giddily dangerous at others, and consists of many lengthy conversations and speeches which are so heightened in use of language as to burst the bounds of realism.
Even so, many of the scenes in this book are well-grounded in a grasp of the real-world politics of capitalism (I think here of the way the weak boss, Chamberlain, has his printing business stolen from him and the memorable speech by the ambitious, grasping foreman Withers as to why he will not answer the call to revolution by socialist leaders who are happy to see workers blood spilled).
Yet none of this disrupts our empathy for and interest in the individual consciousness of these sharply drawn characters, each damaged and flawed in their own way. Some escape the soul-crushing prison of Sydney's poverty (Baruch sails to the USA for a political career while the Follets beat a retreat to England). Michael treads a predestined path to self-destruction while Catherine, taken for granted by the men around her, proves to be a tough survivor.
The book was criticised at the time (by contemporaries such as Miles Franklin) for being too clever. And yes, it is a very challenging read at times, particularly some of the later chapters where Catherine embarks on a Joycean stream of consciousness story-telling spree. But the writing is so compellingly beautiful, complex and, at the same time, vivid and precise, I was happy to take the ride. It is certainly a book I will read again as its riches cannot all be appreciated on a first reading.
Set in late 1920s Sydney with its half-built bridge and its grinding poverty, the main arc of the story follows the fates of the half-siblings Michael and Catherine Baguenault who have grown up in a fictionalised Watsons Bay (Fisherman's Bay) and both suffer from an intensity of soulfulness bordering at times on insanity. The other six poor men of the title include their mild-mannered cousin Joseph and his fellow employees at a printing works, the ruthless, plotting Tom Withers, the intellectual Baruch Mendelssohn, and the pathetic owner Chamberlain. Michael has a feverish friendship of mutual dependency with a debilitated young man Kol Blount who half-worships Michael for his detachment from social norms while librarian Tom Winter is a no-holds-barred communist preaching revolution at this loose collection of lost souls.
The milieu is one of working class and bohemian left-wing political awareness and debate set around worker's education lectures, socialist meetings and rallies and late night drunken parties. The cast also includes the north-shore dwelling Folliots, husband and wife sponsors of socialist activism, with whom Michael and Catherine each become romantically entangled. The book abounds with a youthful fervour of sensitivity to ideals and ideas, joyous at times and giddily dangerous at others, and consists of many lengthy conversations and speeches which are so heightened in use of language as to burst the bounds of realism.
Even so, many of the scenes in this book are well-grounded in a grasp of the real-world politics of capitalism (I think here of the way the weak boss, Chamberlain, has his printing business stolen from him and the memorable speech by the ambitious, grasping foreman Withers as to why he will not answer the call to revolution by socialist leaders who are happy to see workers blood spilled).
Yet none of this disrupts our empathy for and interest in the individual consciousness of these sharply drawn characters, each damaged and flawed in their own way. Some escape the soul-crushing prison of Sydney's poverty (Baruch sails to the USA for a political career while the Follets beat a retreat to England). Michael treads a predestined path to self-destruction while Catherine, taken for granted by the men around her, proves to be a tough survivor.
The book was criticised at the time (by contemporaries such as Miles Franklin) for being too clever. And yes, it is a very challenging read at times, particularly some of the later chapters where Catherine embarks on a Joycean stream of consciousness story-telling spree. But the writing is so compellingly beautiful, complex and, at the same time, vivid and precise, I was happy to take the ride. It is certainly a book I will read again as its riches cannot all be appreciated on a first reading.
Did Not Finish
August 17, 2023Marking this as 'abandoned' even though I may come back to it. Probably wasn't a good idea to take a break in the middle to read the almost 600-page Lanark that I was afraid of not finishing before it was due back at the library. This one, however, is not due back for a very long time at a different library with a much more generous lending period. So...it is still possible I will return to it, although I will admit that upon my recent return to it I felt rather underwhelmed (which could have just been post-Lanark letdown).
March 8, 2016
For a first novel published in the 1930s by an Australian author, Christina Stead’s Seven Poor Men of Sydney is a very forward-thinking novel, though it almost never came to light at all. Initially rejected for 5 years prior to finally being picked up by publisher Peter Davies, even they didn’t want to take the risk on printing it as a debut, so released Stead’s book of stories The Salzburg Tales first. Most likely Stead’s Modernist approach and scent of Marxist themes throughout the novel were the cause of alarm, especially in a time when Australians had always revered the social realist form over all else, and Modernism hadn’t quite taken its place—not really finding that place until some decades later with Patrick White, a great admirer and in later years a friend of Stead. Some may even argue that Modernism still struggles to find readers there.
On the surface this, much like most of Stead’s other novels from what I have seen, looks a very simple affair. The novel tells of seven working class men and one woman, all trying to make their way through the toils of life in Sydney in the 1920s. However, there is a lack of conventional plot to speak of, instead Stead chooses to concentrate and propel the novel forward through the personal and social relationships of its characters and their surroundings, where thematic patterns start to emerge and weave their way throughout each chapter. The most impressively handled and unexpected theme being that of the effects of war on the returning soldier, with the character Michael being arguably the most impressive creation as he struggles with the alienation and depression of a post-WWI Sydney. There are also a number of sections where characters will embark on long, maddened discussions about politics and social structures, the most effective of these in the conversations between the characters Joseph, a financially struggling printer, and Baruch, a jewish intellectual who is a prominent member of the local Marxist group. When these two are pontificating about the society and city that surrounds them, the pages move past very quickly, such is the way their words draw the reader in. Stead also uses techniques that remind of Virginia Woolf in many ways, where a character will look internally to evaluate their current plight in what Delia Falconer (who wrote the introduction to the latest edition of the book for Miegunyah Press) describes as “metaphysical soliloquies”. These techniques never seem to settle on the one character for too long, with the shift of focus from character to character throughout, allowing the reader a better insight into the minds and motivations of all of the novels main participants. And though the plot may seem thin on the surface, it’s what lies beneath and inside these people that makes this novel so remarkable.
Stead also has a brilliant way of using lush, euphonious language to describe the setting of Sydney, in many ways, the true star of the novel. The reader gets a exceptional feel of the era and the city at the time, not just what it looked like, but Stead has a way of making you feel the settings, see the trees and the bay, feel the touch of the air on the skin. There’s an energy that moves through her descriptions that is often missing from many other novels:
“The hideous low scarred yellow horny and barren headland lies curled like a scorpion in the sliding sea and sky. At night, house-lamps and ships’ lanterns burn with rousing shine, and headlights of cars swing over Fisherman’s Bay, In the day, the traffic in the village crawls along the skyline, past the lighthouse and signal station, and drops by cleft and volcanic gully to the old village that has a bare footing on the edge of the bay. It was, and remains, a military and maritime settlement.”
The only real downside to this fantastic debut, is that at times, in between all the beautiful descriptions of the landscape and scenery and the interesting dialogues between these endearing characters, is that with the absence of plot, the novel does tend move into lulls which can move the reader’s interest through ebbs and flows. Overall though, this is a brilliant piece of work, and probably an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to read some of Stead’s work (a largely ignored author in her home country) before moving into the heavier and more well-known titles like The Man Who Loved Children or For Love Alone.
On the surface this, much like most of Stead’s other novels from what I have seen, looks a very simple affair. The novel tells of seven working class men and one woman, all trying to make their way through the toils of life in Sydney in the 1920s. However, there is a lack of conventional plot to speak of, instead Stead chooses to concentrate and propel the novel forward through the personal and social relationships of its characters and their surroundings, where thematic patterns start to emerge and weave their way throughout each chapter. The most impressively handled and unexpected theme being that of the effects of war on the returning soldier, with the character Michael being arguably the most impressive creation as he struggles with the alienation and depression of a post-WWI Sydney. There are also a number of sections where characters will embark on long, maddened discussions about politics and social structures, the most effective of these in the conversations between the characters Joseph, a financially struggling printer, and Baruch, a jewish intellectual who is a prominent member of the local Marxist group. When these two are pontificating about the society and city that surrounds them, the pages move past very quickly, such is the way their words draw the reader in. Stead also uses techniques that remind of Virginia Woolf in many ways, where a character will look internally to evaluate their current plight in what Delia Falconer (who wrote the introduction to the latest edition of the book for Miegunyah Press) describes as “metaphysical soliloquies”. These techniques never seem to settle on the one character for too long, with the shift of focus from character to character throughout, allowing the reader a better insight into the minds and motivations of all of the novels main participants. And though the plot may seem thin on the surface, it’s what lies beneath and inside these people that makes this novel so remarkable.
Stead also has a brilliant way of using lush, euphonious language to describe the setting of Sydney, in many ways, the true star of the novel. The reader gets a exceptional feel of the era and the city at the time, not just what it looked like, but Stead has a way of making you feel the settings, see the trees and the bay, feel the touch of the air on the skin. There’s an energy that moves through her descriptions that is often missing from many other novels:
“The hideous low scarred yellow horny and barren headland lies curled like a scorpion in the sliding sea and sky. At night, house-lamps and ships’ lanterns burn with rousing shine, and headlights of cars swing over Fisherman’s Bay, In the day, the traffic in the village crawls along the skyline, past the lighthouse and signal station, and drops by cleft and volcanic gully to the old village that has a bare footing on the edge of the bay. It was, and remains, a military and maritime settlement.”
The only real downside to this fantastic debut, is that at times, in between all the beautiful descriptions of the landscape and scenery and the interesting dialogues between these endearing characters, is that with the absence of plot, the novel does tend move into lulls which can move the reader’s interest through ebbs and flows. Overall though, this is a brilliant piece of work, and probably an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to read some of Stead’s work (a largely ignored author in her home country) before moving into the heavier and more well-known titles like The Man Who Loved Children or For Love Alone.
June 7, 2023
‘The hideous low scarred yellow horny and barren headland lies like a scorpion in a blinding sea and sky.’
Set in Sydney in the 1920s, this novel constructs a portrait of seven poor men (and one woman) based on their personal and social relationships. The seven men are Joseph Baguenault, Tom Withers, Baruch Mendelssohn, Gregory Chamberlain, Michael Baguenault, Tom Winter, and Kol Blount. The woman is Catherine Baguenault, Michael’s half-sister.
The first two chapters of the novel are focussed on Michael, and paint a portrait of an introspective and intense young man who has rejected ties to his family (except Catherine), his church and his school. After falling in love and being rejected, Michael had enlisted in World War I, and then returns to Australia alienated and suffering from nervous disorders. Once back in Australia, Michael takes up with several of the young socialists with whom Catherine - an idealistic political activist- works.
Their cousin Joseph Baguenault, a devout Catholic, is a printer, who works with Baruch Mendelssohn, a young Jewish intellectual at Gregory Chamberlain’s printing press. Chamberlain is incompetent: business is bad and payments to his staff are two months in arrears. Tom Withers, also employed by Chamberlain, is plotting to take over the press. Socialism and capitalism are discussed, with each of the characters responding in accordance with their own viewpoints. But talk does not lead to improvement.
‘A suicide at the Gap was a commonplace affair. Everyone knew why a person committed suicide: if it was a man, because he couldn’t pay his bills or had no job; if a woman, because she was going to have a baby.’
While each of the characters is subjected to forces outside their control, it is Michael who loses his life:
‘He takes a step nearer the edge, and at the same moment this idea splits him from head to foot: “What if I should fall upon a rock?” He falls into the sea, the wave a moment later cracks his skull against the submerged pediment of the cliff, and his brains flow out among the hungry sea-anemones and mussels.’
Shocked by this event, Catherine is eventually driven into an asylum, and Joseph’s religious faith is shaken. None of the eight main characters was able to achieve either economic security or a satisfying life in Australia. Youthful idealism provides no escape from lives blighted by poverty. Neither capitalism nor socialism has the answers. But this isn’t a novel about salvation and solutions. In part it’s about conflict and relationships between characters, and about class oppression. But it’s also a window into their inner lives, and a reflection of the times.
‘I live with men who make buildings, newspapers, machines, designs for cloth. You housewives are absolutely ignorant of the world; you don’t know how stories are fabricated in newspapers or in scriptures, how the house is put together, how cloth is made or dyed.’
I will reread this novel, not so much because of the story but because of the language used and the relationships depicted. This is one of those novels that made me stop frequently, to think about how life may have changed, or not, for the poor and the idealistic.
In her introduction to this edition, Delia Falconer writes that this novel:
‘.. is a dark love letter to Sydney, a portrait of madness, and the study of a lost generation. It is brimful of overlapping visions, realist, modernist, collective and Nietzschean.’ I don’t think it’s necessary to recognise all of those overlapping visions in order to appreciate the story.
This was Christina Stead’s first novel, and the only novel set entirely in Australia.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Publishing for the opportunity to read this new publication of ‘Seven Poor Men of Sydney’ which was first published in 1934.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Set in Sydney in the 1920s, this novel constructs a portrait of seven poor men (and one woman) based on their personal and social relationships. The seven men are Joseph Baguenault, Tom Withers, Baruch Mendelssohn, Gregory Chamberlain, Michael Baguenault, Tom Winter, and Kol Blount. The woman is Catherine Baguenault, Michael’s half-sister.
The first two chapters of the novel are focussed on Michael, and paint a portrait of an introspective and intense young man who has rejected ties to his family (except Catherine), his church and his school. After falling in love and being rejected, Michael had enlisted in World War I, and then returns to Australia alienated and suffering from nervous disorders. Once back in Australia, Michael takes up with several of the young socialists with whom Catherine - an idealistic political activist- works.
Their cousin Joseph Baguenault, a devout Catholic, is a printer, who works with Baruch Mendelssohn, a young Jewish intellectual at Gregory Chamberlain’s printing press. Chamberlain is incompetent: business is bad and payments to his staff are two months in arrears. Tom Withers, also employed by Chamberlain, is plotting to take over the press. Socialism and capitalism are discussed, with each of the characters responding in accordance with their own viewpoints. But talk does not lead to improvement.
‘A suicide at the Gap was a commonplace affair. Everyone knew why a person committed suicide: if it was a man, because he couldn’t pay his bills or had no job; if a woman, because she was going to have a baby.’
While each of the characters is subjected to forces outside their control, it is Michael who loses his life:
‘He takes a step nearer the edge, and at the same moment this idea splits him from head to foot: “What if I should fall upon a rock?” He falls into the sea, the wave a moment later cracks his skull against the submerged pediment of the cliff, and his brains flow out among the hungry sea-anemones and mussels.’
Shocked by this event, Catherine is eventually driven into an asylum, and Joseph’s religious faith is shaken. None of the eight main characters was able to achieve either economic security or a satisfying life in Australia. Youthful idealism provides no escape from lives blighted by poverty. Neither capitalism nor socialism has the answers. But this isn’t a novel about salvation and solutions. In part it’s about conflict and relationships between characters, and about class oppression. But it’s also a window into their inner lives, and a reflection of the times.
‘I live with men who make buildings, newspapers, machines, designs for cloth. You housewives are absolutely ignorant of the world; you don’t know how stories are fabricated in newspapers or in scriptures, how the house is put together, how cloth is made or dyed.’
I will reread this novel, not so much because of the story but because of the language used and the relationships depicted. This is one of those novels that made me stop frequently, to think about how life may have changed, or not, for the poor and the idealistic.
In her introduction to this edition, Delia Falconer writes that this novel:
‘.. is a dark love letter to Sydney, a portrait of madness, and the study of a lost generation. It is brimful of overlapping visions, realist, modernist, collective and Nietzschean.’ I don’t think it’s necessary to recognise all of those overlapping visions in order to appreciate the story.
This was Christina Stead’s first novel, and the only novel set entirely in Australia.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Publishing for the opportunity to read this new publication of ‘Seven Poor Men of Sydney’ which was first published in 1934.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
March 27, 2021
My favorite Stead thus, the language in this one, god damn does she do descriptions like the best, that high modernism i love so much, think Broch, think Faulkner.
June 18, 2020
I think my favourite Stead so far. Stead, in my opinion, is easily one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. She is certainly mine. I've now read The Man Who Loved Children, Seven Poor Men of Sydney, The Beauties and Furies, and For Love Alone. All 5+ stars. She talked about things everyone else was too much of dog turd to talk about. On to House of All Nations.
May 16, 2023
"Under many hoods and hats, we are all the same creature all the time trying to make its way out of a thicket. There are cuirassed guards waiting to hack us down at every thinning of the bush, so we try to escape, as a bird, a bat, a floating vampire head, a shadow, a skeleton, a deer, a rat, and what you will. Stability, that is the only character we have never - but we are always in that state of delirium, folly, passion or drunkenness, which is our life. Such a life is without time, it is out of the presumption of clocks. We are willing to cast away our life because we are always at the end of it, every moment is an experience. We are willing to begin anew because our strength is always fresh. We are insensible to great disasters, because we have met them often and often on our path in company with death; they are old acquaintances. We feel small things so sharp because they mock our heroics."
"Why are we here? Nothing floats down here, this far in the south, but is worn out with wind, tempest and weather; all is flotsam and jetsam. They leave their rags and tatters here; why do we have to be dressed? The sun is hot enough; why can't we run naked in our own country, on our own land, and work out our own destiny? Eating these regurgitated ideas from the old country makes us sick and die of sickness. Are we vultures to eat the corpses come down here to bleach their bones in the antipodes? This land was last discovered; why? A ghost land, a continent of mystery : the very pole disconcerted the magnetic needle so that ships went astray, ice, fog and storm bound the seas, a horrid destiny in the Abrolhos, in the Philippines, in the Tasman Seas, in the Southern Ocean, all protected the malign and bitter genius of this waste land. Its heart is made of salt : it suddenly oozes from its burning pores, gold which will destroy men in greed, but not water to give them drink. Jealous land! Ravishers overbold! Bitter dilemma! And lost legion! Our land should never have been won."
"Why are we here? Nothing floats down here, this far in the south, but is worn out with wind, tempest and weather; all is flotsam and jetsam. They leave their rags and tatters here; why do we have to be dressed? The sun is hot enough; why can't we run naked in our own country, on our own land, and work out our own destiny? Eating these regurgitated ideas from the old country makes us sick and die of sickness. Are we vultures to eat the corpses come down here to bleach their bones in the antipodes? This land was last discovered; why? A ghost land, a continent of mystery : the very pole disconcerted the magnetic needle so that ships went astray, ice, fog and storm bound the seas, a horrid destiny in the Abrolhos, in the Philippines, in the Tasman Seas, in the Southern Ocean, all protected the malign and bitter genius of this waste land. Its heart is made of salt : it suddenly oozes from its burning pores, gold which will destroy men in greed, but not water to give them drink. Jealous land! Ravishers overbold! Bitter dilemma! And lost legion! Our land should never have been won."
March 12, 2024
Yeah really odd book. Big effort to read. Classic modernist ramblings and lofty speeches with a pretty slow and unspectacular plot. Moments of depth and sadness throughout with reflections on life and death for these characters who are truly poor - financially, emotionally, spiritually, etc.
Stead is pretty ruthless about religion which is uncomfortable.
But all-together interesting… wouldn’t have a clue who to recommend this to.
Stead is pretty ruthless about religion which is uncomfortable.
But all-together interesting… wouldn’t have a clue who to recommend this to.
November 3, 2017
Don't know why I fell into this book again but probably mostly to do with being in Sydney right now. I guess the lure of the book and its main strength is the ambience, the haunting descriptions of the built and natural city, urban poverty of the 30s, the seaside colony, etc. The actual, interpersonal plot of the book - the central characters and their conversations - really is difficult, quite boring and thinly veiled (is this what makes it 'modernist') pretexts for the author's musings, and what seem like mostly redundant dramas of the great socialist cause. There are so many gear changes where it is unclear what is at stake, or what's at stake is completely latterly reevaluted. This is what made my first reading of this book more of a skimmy dream than a close examination, pace-by-pace. Knowing the environment of the city this time around really helped. I guess I instrumentalised it as an account of why the old parts of Sydney look the way they do, and how much has changed.
Towards the end the drag of the novel became more palpable, as there were these half-hearted attempts at reconciliation; vague if looping revisits to the church and the printers and the old houses in Vaucluse. There is even an attempt at nostalgia towards the end, something I was actually shocked at, given that it follows this quite schizoid series of final chapters. The narrative dissolves into parables, particularly surrounding place, and catalysed by Catherine's move to the asylum and Baruch's to the US.
Michael's death is implicated as symptomatic of the problems of place, the product and prophecy of a 'haunted' Sydney. I was surprised to find this at the culmination of the novel - his death is a distinctly gothic moment, generically, and moves the narrative into a reason-motivated exposition afterwards; 'Catherine's narrative' being set up as a police report, but reading like a modernist dreamscape. This is what I mean by schizoid. It was strange to observe this return to the idea of 'land' and settler interactions with it, colonial trauma and bloodshed. But it stops short at acknowledging dispossession of Indigenous peoples, as the figures of trauma seem to be invariably convict, or else Michael/Michael's ghost. Kol Blount's speech in the final chapter is the most direct on this theme. It's strange, half-thought, or afterthought. It sits too large at the end to constitute a proper subtext.
Chamberlain's bankruptcy, as the other thread in all of this, also feels half-elaborated. As one of the 7 men, it's hard to count him first as a peer, because he owns the press and employs the others, and then as a real characters. He's more of a caricature of the failed colonial entrepreneur. His daughter and wife are the same (the latter literally veiled the whole time.. all we hear is about this skin disease and that she betrays him). And as a caricature, he fails to evoke the appropriate emotional response, like joy or violence, or what? Does Montague as well, as his like more successful/more evil counterpart? I guess what I see is a crisis in the values of the novel: so the relations between some things and others, and why. I think of Catherine as the novel's keeper, 'That is my life and only a madman knows it'. Her choice to go to the asylum, but actual *lack* of insanity is perhaps a cop-out, but also a narratological cop-out.
Towards the end the drag of the novel became more palpable, as there were these half-hearted attempts at reconciliation; vague if looping revisits to the church and the printers and the old houses in Vaucluse. There is even an attempt at nostalgia towards the end, something I was actually shocked at, given that it follows this quite schizoid series of final chapters. The narrative dissolves into parables, particularly surrounding place, and catalysed by Catherine's move to the asylum and Baruch's to the US.
Michael's death is implicated as symptomatic of the problems of place, the product and prophecy of a 'haunted' Sydney. I was surprised to find this at the culmination of the novel - his death is a distinctly gothic moment, generically, and moves the narrative into a reason-motivated exposition afterwards; 'Catherine's narrative' being set up as a police report, but reading like a modernist dreamscape. This is what I mean by schizoid. It was strange to observe this return to the idea of 'land' and settler interactions with it, colonial trauma and bloodshed. But it stops short at acknowledging dispossession of Indigenous peoples, as the figures of trauma seem to be invariably convict, or else Michael/Michael's ghost. Kol Blount's speech in the final chapter is the most direct on this theme. It's strange, half-thought, or afterthought. It sits too large at the end to constitute a proper subtext.
Chamberlain's bankruptcy, as the other thread in all of this, also feels half-elaborated. As one of the 7 men, it's hard to count him first as a peer, because he owns the press and employs the others, and then as a real characters. He's more of a caricature of the failed colonial entrepreneur. His daughter and wife are the same (the latter literally veiled the whole time.. all we hear is about this skin disease and that she betrays him). And as a caricature, he fails to evoke the appropriate emotional response, like joy or violence, or what? Does Montague as well, as his like more successful/more evil counterpart? I guess what I see is a crisis in the values of the novel: so the relations between some things and others, and why. I think of Catherine as the novel's keeper, 'That is my life and only a madman knows it'. Her choice to go to the asylum, but actual *lack* of insanity is perhaps a cop-out, but also a narratological cop-out.
April 10, 2017
As you can see from the lyrical opening lines from her first novel, Seven Poor Men of Sydney, Christina Stead had vivid memories of her favourite places in Sydney, even though she had fled Australian parochialism some years before her final revision of the novel for publication in 1934. But although she came from a middle-class background, she also had vivid memories of the deprivation she had witnessed, and the first chapter paints a poignant picture of childhood poverty with her depiction of the childhood friend of her central character, Michael Baguenault:
These children would be labelled ‘free-range children’ by the disapproving helicopter parents of our time, for they were free to roam around the harbour and to mingle with the fishermen and other working men. Stead does paint a negative portrait of their parents – not as neglectful – but rather as irrelevant. By the time Michael is a teenager he has with considerable hostility rejected his mother’s pious Catholicism, and seems relieved to discover that the man who brought him up is not his father after all. It is his presumed biological father who has lifted the family into middle-class respectability by leaving them a substantial legacy, which enables the two older girls to take up university scholarships, and for Michael and his sister to continue their secondary education.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/11/09/s...
Annie Prendergast lived with her family in part of the house. The little girl was thin, with black eyes and hair. She scratched her head and body all the time, and always smelled of ingrained dirt. In the corners of the house bats flew, swallows dropped mud and dung from every beam, and from all the cracks of the great whitewashed stones at the back ran cockroaches, beetles and rats. Cockchafer beetles, cicadas and mosquitoes shouted loudly in summer evenings in the tall trees; large spiders hung in the outhouses, and fearsome-looking, but innocent crickets and slaters dwelt under the bits of wood and sheets of corrugated iron fallen off the roof into the grass. The house attracted Michael and the other children with the same charm as a stagnant gutter. (p.4)
These children would be labelled ‘free-range children’ by the disapproving helicopter parents of our time, for they were free to roam around the harbour and to mingle with the fishermen and other working men. Stead does paint a negative portrait of their parents – not as neglectful – but rather as irrelevant. By the time Michael is a teenager he has with considerable hostility rejected his mother’s pious Catholicism, and seems relieved to discover that the man who brought him up is not his father after all. It is his presumed biological father who has lifted the family into middle-class respectability by leaving them a substantial legacy, which enables the two older girls to take up university scholarships, and for Michael and his sister to continue their secondary education.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/11/09/s...
July 21, 2021
A slog at times, but innovative soft boi content from the 1920s. Throw me into the sea Aus lit mummy.
February 11, 2025
delicious prose, so one of a kind. beautiful passages about nature, sydney, politics. some strange subplots, heavy on the fantastical insanity…
March 13, 2024
Unusual and unsettling, but tended to drag.
April 11, 2018
i feel as if i've read enough to say that i read it, but like...
November 29, 2021
[SPOILERS] Really, really, truly, incredibly god-awful. If I didn’t have to read it for work I would have given up about 20 pages in. Genuinely don’t understand why people think it’s a classic. It is both pretensious and exceedingly boring. Every single character is extremely unlikable and unimpressive, self-indulgent and whiney but without suitable reason to be so other than *vaguely gestures at The System*. Populated with unnecessary and lengthy, winding descriptions of things that simply do not matter. Shallow politics, poorly expressed. And just a soupçon of incest as a cheap plot point cop out to explain an incredibly tedious and drawn out suicide that frankly was a massive relief because the character was so excruciating. Absolutely hated it. If I could give it zero stars I would. Appalling book.
August 4, 2024
a remarkable first novel by one of Australia’s great modernists
A difficult read in places, in the same way that Joyce’s Ulysses, after which it is modelled in part. The main character is really Sydney in the 1920s and I can’t think of a novel that evokes the city in all its loud, clanging wealth and poverty like this one. Some purple prose but mostly dramatic surges of writing, long lists of nouns and adjectives, flights of madness, and a marvellously realistic portrait of the poor and the different. I’m glad I read it.
A difficult read in places, in the same way that Joyce’s Ulysses, after which it is modelled in part. The main character is really Sydney in the 1920s and I can’t think of a novel that evokes the city in all its loud, clanging wealth and poverty like this one. Some purple prose but mostly dramatic surges of writing, long lists of nouns and adjectives, flights of madness, and a marvellously realistic portrait of the poor and the different. I’m glad I read it.
December 26, 2025
This is classic Australian literature, full of lush scenery, diverse characters, Depression-era poverty and politics, tangled love interests, complex psyches, ... and I didn't like it. I felt it rambled on and on, with no direction, and there was not enough to keep me interested. I don't know if I'm disappointed in the novel or in myself for giving up after 150 pages.
June 4, 2021
I concede this may well have been a'forward thinking book' in its time (1930's) but for me it was just dull. Even though set in the area of Sydney I grew up I found reading it was an effort so much so DNF.
April 8, 2025
This book would have been twice as good if it was half as long. The dialogue exchanges and socio political commentary are endless and so ham fisted that it distracts from Stead’s skill as a gifted prose writer who effectively establishes time and place.
April 23, 2023
Probably 3 1/2 not quite 4 stars but it was fun to dip into Australian modernism and learn about socialism in Sydney !
March 17, 2024
Somehow this has been the most interesting and boring book I’ve read in a long time. Don’t quite know how she did it.
June 9, 2015
I don't know what to rate this book. It's one of the most difficult things I've ever read.
Fantastic in its portrayal of Sydney and its exploration of politics and the lives of the characters. But also quite dense, with language that meanders and is overwrought.
I think it's one of those novels that I was not quite ready yet to read, and will have to approach it sometime in the future with a different mindset.
Fantastic in its portrayal of Sydney and its exploration of politics and the lives of the characters. But also quite dense, with language that meanders and is overwrought.
I think it's one of those novels that I was not quite ready yet to read, and will have to approach it sometime in the future with a different mindset.
August 9, 2007
A wonderful sense of place. You really 'feel' Sydney in this book.
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