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Water Under the Bridge
Rich in character, Water Under the Bridge is a novel of surprise, bright dreams and foiled ambition, a tapestry of people whose lives, through time and circumstance, become entwined in several ways. Set in Sydney, it begins in 1932 as the Harbour Bridge opens and the future is full of promise.
At the core of the story are two people, Neil Atkins and Maggie McGhee. Neil is an aspiring actor torn by guilt and frustrated desire. Raised in poverty by a gutsy, passionate ex-showgirl, he wants to leave that life behind and win the love of intriguing, wealthy Carrie Mazzini, who is looking for a man to transform her.
Generous, expansive, Maggie has come from Winnidee to find work on a big-city newspaper. She becomes a successful columnist, yet despite her readiness to reach out to others, a love of her own proves elusive. The events of their lives and those of the people who form their realities take place through the thirties, the Depression and World War II, a time of shifting values and new horizons.
At the core of the story are two people, Neil Atkins and Maggie McGhee. Neil is an aspiring actor torn by guilt and frustrated desire. Raised in poverty by a gutsy, passionate ex-showgirl, he wants to leave that life behind and win the love of intriguing, wealthy Carrie Mazzini, who is looking for a man to transform her.
Generous, expansive, Maggie has come from Winnidee to find work on a big-city newspaper. She becomes a successful columnist, yet despite her readiness to reach out to others, a love of her own proves elusive. The events of their lives and those of the people who form their realities take place through the thirties, the Depression and World War II, a time of shifting values and new horizons.
367 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
1 person is currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Sumner Locke Elliott
30 books16 followersElliott was born in Sydney in 1917 to the writer Helena Sumner Locke and the journalist Henry Logan Elliott. His mother died of eclampsia one day after his birth. Elliott was raised by his aunts, who had a fierce custody battle over him, fictionalized in Elliott's autobiographical novel, Careful, He Might Hear You. Elliott was educated at Cranbrook School in Bellevue Hill, Sydney.
Elliott began acting and writing for radio during his teens, and showed signs of a promising career during his twenties before he was called for administrative military service in World War II. In 1948, Elliott relocated to the United States where he became a highly regarded television scriptwriter. As a fiercely intelligent and bold person, he made a name for himself, until the era of live television drama ended in the early 1960s.
Elliott remained in the United States for the remainder of his life, commencing a literary career in 1963 with his autobiographical novel "Careful He Might Hear You", which won the Miles Franklin Award and was subsequently made into a film. He published ten novels in total, several of which dealt with issues from his own childhood and experiences in Australia before the War. Although he increasingly developed a following among Australian readers, Elliott remained uncomfortable with his country of birth, in no small part due to his homosexuality, which had marked him out for difference during his youth. He spent his final years in New York City, dying of cancer in 1991.
For the final six years of his life, Elliott lived with the American writer Whitfield Cook. The two men had been close for several years, although the exact nature of their relationship has been disputed. Cook was a widower from a heterosexual marriage, however his most notable works included the homoerotic Alfred Hitchcock film "Strangers on a Train". Cook cared for Elliott until his death.
Elliott began acting and writing for radio during his teens, and showed signs of a promising career during his twenties before he was called for administrative military service in World War II. In 1948, Elliott relocated to the United States where he became a highly regarded television scriptwriter. As a fiercely intelligent and bold person, he made a name for himself, until the era of live television drama ended in the early 1960s.
Elliott remained in the United States for the remainder of his life, commencing a literary career in 1963 with his autobiographical novel "Careful He Might Hear You", which won the Miles Franklin Award and was subsequently made into a film. He published ten novels in total, several of which dealt with issues from his own childhood and experiences in Australia before the War. Although he increasingly developed a following among Australian readers, Elliott remained uncomfortable with his country of birth, in no small part due to his homosexuality, which had marked him out for difference during his youth. He spent his final years in New York City, dying of cancer in 1991.
For the final six years of his life, Elliott lived with the American writer Whitfield Cook. The two men had been close for several years, although the exact nature of their relationship has been disputed. Cook was a widower from a heterosexual marriage, however his most notable works included the homoerotic Alfred Hitchcock film "Strangers on a Train". Cook cared for Elliott until his death.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 13, 2013
I have known Elliott’s name for years, and have felt vaguely ashamed that I had never read him. I remember seeing the film Careful, He Might Hear You but all I recall is Wendy Hughes and a ferry disaster. Water Under the Bridge (first published in 1977) made me realise what a good writer Elliott is. Over a 40-year time span the characters remain believable as they mature and the plot is absorbing. The structure (for the most part) satisfies, and it’s fun to be able to identify from little internal references where we are geographically.
Read full review here: http://newtownreviewofbooks.com/2012/...
Read full review here: http://newtownreviewofbooks.com/2012/...
September 4, 2019
Just over a week ago, Writers NSW and the State Library of NSW hosted another in their Honouring Australian Writers series, with a tribute to the author Sumner Locke Elliott (1917-1991). Hearing about this event prompted me to retrieve his sixth novel Water Under the Bridge from the TBR where it had languished for far too long, and subsequently listening to the podcast* enhanced my reading of the novel. So I must acknowledge the speakers at the event: Sharon Clarke who wrote a 1996 biography of Sumner Locke Elliott; and the other speakers Kim Knuckey, an actor with a keen interest in Elliott's plays; the film producer Margaret Fink who produced the film based on Elliott's
Eden's Lost
in 1988; and Walter Mason who did some of the readings.
Sumner Locke Elliott is known to most of us as the winner of the 1963 Miles Franklin Award with his first and very poignant autobiographical novel
Careful, He Might Hear You
which I read years ago when it was made into a film in 1983. Much more recently I reviewed Fairyland (1990), which was the last of his novels and an autobiographical novel which reveals a rather grim Sydney in the days before homosexuality was decriminalised. Apart from Edens Lost (1969) and
Water Under the Bridge
(1977) which were both set in Australia, all the others were set in the US, where he lived from 1948. These included:
Some Doves and Pythons
(1966);
The Man Who Got Away
(1972);
Going
(1975);
Signs of Life
(1981);
About Tilly Beamis
(1985); and
Waiting for Childhood
(1987). In 1977 he won the Patrick White Award.
But apart from these novels which were internationally successful (including in translation), Elliott was also a successful playwright and scriptwriter, most notably for Rusty Bugles (1948) which was, according to one of the speakers on the podcast, the first play to feature the Australian vernacular, an homage more commonly applied to Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955) by Ray Lawlor. This may well have been because Rusty Bugles was promptly banned because of its bad language, which is apparently quite tame by contemporary standards. I'll leave that to others to judge.
What I learned from the podcast, and subsequently by poking around in my Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1985 edition), was that one way or another, all Elliott's novels were autobiographical, featuring orphaned boys brought up by lone surrogate mothers. Elliott's own mother died young, leaving him to the tender mercies of the aunts who waged a custody battle for him as fictionalised in Careful, He Might Hear You. In Water Under the Bridge, the mother is careless of him, dumping him on a theatrical friend while she goes to nurse the husband by whom she so besotted that she barely notices the child's existence. Both of them promptly die of the flu epidemic, leaving him in the dismayed hands of the friend.
The portrayal of Shasta, the ageing chorus-girl, is both brutal and sympathetic. She gives up her big break on the stage to take care of him all through the bleak years of the depression, but her resentment about this entrapment and the lost opportunities for fame and for love bleed through into hysterical rants which are legendary in the boarding house. When Neil comes home after the celebrations for the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932, he is warned to be wary:
Mrs Chauncey's warning does him no good at all. Shasta is awake, and she lures him into what starts as a genial conversation that then morphs into a tirade about his selfishness, about how she doesn't care about anything he does, but she's sick of being treated like a doormat, and so on. And on and on. Shasta has become an awful old harridan, tormenting Neil at every opportunity, and not evoking much of the reader's sympathy — not until a last opportunity for happiness arises. Elliott has set his novel in an era of real suffering — the Depression, and then the war, but he gives proper weight to Shasta's tragedy: the collapse of her long-held hopes and her fear of a lonely old age...
But it's not easy for Neil to escape.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/09/05/w...
Sumner Locke Elliott is known to most of us as the winner of the 1963 Miles Franklin Award with his first and very poignant autobiographical novel
Careful, He Might Hear You
which I read years ago when it was made into a film in 1983. Much more recently I reviewed Fairyland (1990), which was the last of his novels and an autobiographical novel which reveals a rather grim Sydney in the days before homosexuality was decriminalised. Apart from Edens Lost (1969) and
Water Under the Bridge
(1977) which were both set in Australia, all the others were set in the US, where he lived from 1948. These included:
Some Doves and Pythons
(1966);
The Man Who Got Away
(1972);
Going
(1975);
Signs of Life
(1981);
About Tilly Beamis
(1985); and
Waiting for Childhood
(1987). In 1977 he won the Patrick White Award.But apart from these novels which were internationally successful (including in translation), Elliott was also a successful playwright and scriptwriter, most notably for Rusty Bugles (1948) which was, according to one of the speakers on the podcast, the first play to feature the Australian vernacular, an homage more commonly applied to Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955) by Ray Lawlor. This may well have been because Rusty Bugles was promptly banned because of its bad language, which is apparently quite tame by contemporary standards. I'll leave that to others to judge.
What I learned from the podcast, and subsequently by poking around in my Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1985 edition), was that one way or another, all Elliott's novels were autobiographical, featuring orphaned boys brought up by lone surrogate mothers. Elliott's own mother died young, leaving him to the tender mercies of the aunts who waged a custody battle for him as fictionalised in Careful, He Might Hear You. In Water Under the Bridge, the mother is careless of him, dumping him on a theatrical friend while she goes to nurse the husband by whom she so besotted that she barely notices the child's existence. Both of them promptly die of the flu epidemic, leaving him in the dismayed hands of the friend.
The portrayal of Shasta, the ageing chorus-girl, is both brutal and sympathetic. She gives up her big break on the stage to take care of him all through the bleak years of the depression, but her resentment about this entrapment and the lost opportunities for fame and for love bleed through into hysterical rants which are legendary in the boarding house. When Neil comes home after the celebrations for the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932, he is warned to be wary:
The front hall light had been left on for him which would mean sixpence would be added to the rent. The house had a peculiar smell of old carpet, frying and stale beer. The vestibule was a slight cut above the neighbours', with threadbare carpeting rather than lino. There was a lithograph of 'Hope' crouched blindfold in despair over the globe of the world, and a framed mirror that had tarnished into golden measles. On the fumed-oak dropleaf table was a bowl of dusty wax grapes that looked like tumours and a china Tyrolean couple probably won at Luna park years ago. Mrs Chauncey reluctantly took telephone messages and one or two of these were propped up against the grapes. One read 'Neil'.
In the uncertain light he read 'Cave. V.B.M.' Chauncey liked a bit of Latin. Cave was Latin for Beware. [...] V.B.M. meant Very Bad Mood. Good old Chauncey, what a pal. Neil unlaced his shoes and took them off and went up the stairs using the extreme side which was less inclined to squeak. (p.57-8.)
Mrs Chauncey's warning does him no good at all. Shasta is awake, and she lures him into what starts as a genial conversation that then morphs into a tirade about his selfishness, about how she doesn't care about anything he does, but she's sick of being treated like a doormat, and so on. And on and on. Shasta has become an awful old harridan, tormenting Neil at every opportunity, and not evoking much of the reader's sympathy — not until a last opportunity for happiness arises. Elliott has set his novel in an era of real suffering — the Depression, and then the war, but he gives proper weight to Shasta's tragedy: the collapse of her long-held hopes and her fear of a lonely old age...
She lay awake and thought about being rescued from the descending spiral of shabby rooming houses, each one worse. Of the diminishing of old pals, the eventual state home for the aged, recognised the fact that in all her born days of entertaining men in and out of bed, she'd never before had a legitimate proposal of marriage.
Most of all she thought about the horror of ending her life in any kind of hospital or institution. She could never forget going to visit broken-down old Queenie Dawn in one of those places, the stench of disinfectant, the rows of beds with the old women lying in their own wet or shuffling up and down the ward in their institutional grey cotton bathrobes, the cold disinterested attendants. And Queenie saying, 'You're the only one who's ever come to see me, Shast.' Even at that she couldn't ever go back. (p.285)
But it's not easy for Neil to escape.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/09/05/w...
November 5, 2012
Fantastic story set against a backdrop of the Depression in Australia of the 30s.
January 26, 2014
I am currently re-reading this book as it is a favourite of mine. It is a wonderful account of Sydney, Australia during the depression.
December 18, 2020
A sprawling (at times a little too sprawling) saga of an eclectic bunch of characters living in Sydney from 1932-1973. Funny and touching and full of dinky-di Aussie vernacular.
August 8, 2021
Having read and enjoyed Elliot's "Careful her might hear you," I sought out any other titles that were still in print. This book is also based on Elliott's life and describes the love-hate relationship between Neil Atkins, a young would-be actor and Shasta, ex-vaudeville showgirl who was his guardian after he was orphaned as a baby.
It follows Neil's life from 1932 to 1975, through various romantic entanglements and eventual departure for England where he finally makes his fortune, and in a sense is a sequel to "Careful..." Written with the same witty prose, it has a sparkling array of characters, presented in episodic style. I recall seeing an excellent TV adaption starring Robyn Nevin as Shasta, many years ago.
It follows Neil's life from 1932 to 1975, through various romantic entanglements and eventual departure for England where he finally makes his fortune, and in a sense is a sequel to "Careful..." Written with the same witty prose, it has a sparkling array of characters, presented in episodic style. I recall seeing an excellent TV adaption starring Robyn Nevin as Shasta, many years ago.
April 19, 2020
Argh! Incredible characters, especially Shasta. And the language is genuinely Australian. Sydney is well described and familiar. But such a harrowing time for most if not all f the characters. Hard to read right now. Feels real. But good.
July 19, 2023
2.5 rounded down to 2
June 14, 2020
(03/11/12)
Una fiesta de año nuevo es el punto de partida desde donde el autor va desarrollando la historia, a lo largo de la cual se recorre la vida de los diversos personajes, con sus encuentros y desencuentros. Varias tramas paralelas muestran una visión más bien gris de la vida, donde priman los fracasos y desilusiones frente a escasos logros y triunfos. Si bien esto pretende explicarse por los cambios sociales de la posguerra, a mi juicio el autor no logra una conexión suficiente entre los personajes y su entorno como para justificar esta visión. En cambio, creo que su principal mérito consiste en que logra crear personalidades bastante complejas, y desarrollar relaciones interpersonales sumamente interesantes. Pese a ser relativamente extenso, la narración es bastante ágil y amena, lo que también es un punto a favor.
Una fiesta de año nuevo es el punto de partida desde donde el autor va desarrollando la historia, a lo largo de la cual se recorre la vida de los diversos personajes, con sus encuentros y desencuentros. Varias tramas paralelas muestran una visión más bien gris de la vida, donde priman los fracasos y desilusiones frente a escasos logros y triunfos. Si bien esto pretende explicarse por los cambios sociales de la posguerra, a mi juicio el autor no logra una conexión suficiente entre los personajes y su entorno como para justificar esta visión. En cambio, creo que su principal mérito consiste en que logra crear personalidades bastante complejas, y desarrollar relaciones interpersonales sumamente interesantes. Pese a ser relativamente extenso, la narración es bastante ágil y amena, lo que también es un punto a favor.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews