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The Following
Marcus Friendly was the Australian Prime Minister of the people. His legacy was a following to be unraveled by the next generations of Laborites.
The world was run by knots and methods of knots.
Years ago, in a midnight encounter, a young boy meets a stranger with a powerful secret, a gift of uncanny understanding.. The boy, Marcus Friendly, learns through the encounter. His ideas of himself take shape. Marcus Friendly rises to become Australia's sixteenth prime minister. The night he dies, in 1951, the stranger returns, and a young boy, Ross Devlin, witnesses what happens.
Years later, on an outback station, Ross Devlin finds himself working for Kyle Morrison, son of Australia's most famous poet, 'The Bounder'. All his life Kyle Morrison has lived in his late father's shadow. In a part of the country where the Friendly political tradition is despised, Kyle Morrison needs help, and a young union organiser, Max Petersen, steps in to find a way.
Now, after years in parliament, Max Petersen hopes for a ministry. He is the inheritor of the Marcus Friendly tradition in more ways than one. He awaits the PM's call while immersed in a crisis among friends and family in the heart of his Crater Bay electorate. On Tiger Yeoman's property they all look to what they inherited and their impact on this world.
The world was run by knots and methods of knots.
Years ago, in a midnight encounter, a young boy meets a stranger with a powerful secret, a gift of uncanny understanding.. The boy, Marcus Friendly, learns through the encounter. His ideas of himself take shape. Marcus Friendly rises to become Australia's sixteenth prime minister. The night he dies, in 1951, the stranger returns, and a young boy, Ross Devlin, witnesses what happens.
Years later, on an outback station, Ross Devlin finds himself working for Kyle Morrison, son of Australia's most famous poet, 'The Bounder'. All his life Kyle Morrison has lived in his late father's shadow. In a part of the country where the Friendly political tradition is despised, Kyle Morrison needs help, and a young union organiser, Max Petersen, steps in to find a way.
Now, after years in parliament, Max Petersen hopes for a ministry. He is the inheritor of the Marcus Friendly tradition in more ways than one. He awaits the PM's call while immersed in a crisis among friends and family in the heart of his Crater Bay electorate. On Tiger Yeoman's property they all look to what they inherited and their impact on this world.
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 20, 2013
The Following is written in three parts, three novellas connected across time and space. The title is a pun: the book traces the lives of generations which follow, and the political following that degenerates from idealism to ‘pragmatism’. There are no chapters to disrupt the flow of events. The writing is superb: at its best it reminded me of reading Patrick White because of the way the prose forces the reader to stop and re-read and mull over its impact. But it is a demanding book: McDonald expects his readers to be conversant with historical events and patterns, and Aussies who have by-passed their own history may perhaps not recognise some of its treasures.
The first novella, entitled ‘The Friendly Knot’ was my favourite because it’s a loose fictionalisation of the life of Australia’s great reforming prime minister, Ben Chifley (1945-9). The book renames Chifley as Marcus Friendly and it begins just before WWI when the romance of the railways was still supreme. As I read in David Day’s very readable biography, Chifley: A Life there was a time when engine drivers had the prestige now accorded to airline pilots, and for the same reason: they held the lives of hundreds of people in their hands, in the days when there were none of the (hopefully) fail-safe mechanisms that operate in rail transport today. In McDonald’s novel, Friendly does what Chifley did – as the railways snaked across New South Wales in its rural heyday he rose from dire poverty through the ranks to become an engine driver, and progressed from union activist to political representative. Throughout his life the fictional Friendly enjoys the same admiration and respect as Chifley did: even today you can still meet elderly people who will nod sagely, and tell you that Chifley was the best prime minister Australia ever had.
This is a ‘political novel’ in the sense that it depicts how politics shaped the lives of ordinary people in ways now often forgotten. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and the revelations about Stalinism, socialism is almost universally derided but in the early days of the 20th century it offered hope to the working class desperate for improvement in their living conditions, and there were welfare and industrial reforms which only occurred because socialism empowered working people to articulate their demands. The poverty described in such unmelodramatic fashion by McDonald is extreme: fettlers (the men who did track maintenance) and their families live in tents, and many are in such dire circumstances that they depend on largesse from the Dutchy Wolffs, father and son, who slaughter the ‘road kill’ flung aside by the trains as they hurtle through the night.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/10/20/th...
The first novella, entitled ‘The Friendly Knot’ was my favourite because it’s a loose fictionalisation of the life of Australia’s great reforming prime minister, Ben Chifley (1945-9). The book renames Chifley as Marcus Friendly and it begins just before WWI when the romance of the railways was still supreme. As I read in David Day’s very readable biography, Chifley: A Life there was a time when engine drivers had the prestige now accorded to airline pilots, and for the same reason: they held the lives of hundreds of people in their hands, in the days when there were none of the (hopefully) fail-safe mechanisms that operate in rail transport today. In McDonald’s novel, Friendly does what Chifley did – as the railways snaked across New South Wales in its rural heyday he rose from dire poverty through the ranks to become an engine driver, and progressed from union activist to political representative. Throughout his life the fictional Friendly enjoys the same admiration and respect as Chifley did: even today you can still meet elderly people who will nod sagely, and tell you that Chifley was the best prime minister Australia ever had.
This is a ‘political novel’ in the sense that it depicts how politics shaped the lives of ordinary people in ways now often forgotten. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and the revelations about Stalinism, socialism is almost universally derided but in the early days of the 20th century it offered hope to the working class desperate for improvement in their living conditions, and there were welfare and industrial reforms which only occurred because socialism empowered working people to articulate their demands. The poverty described in such unmelodramatic fashion by McDonald is extreme: fettlers (the men who did track maintenance) and their families live in tents, and many are in such dire circumstances that they depend on largesse from the Dutchy Wolffs, father and son, who slaughter the ‘road kill’ flung aside by the trains as they hurtle through the night.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/10/20/th...
August 20, 2016
Gave up on it - all a bit turgid
October 20, 2014
This book was difficult to follow in places but ultimately worth reading with some sections really well handled. The first of the three stories is easily the best and the last story has some very fine writing around the 'Sonia' character, anyone who has shared a similar experience will find it strikes a chord. I got a bit lost in the middle book and didn't warm to the characters at all. Rarely do I read a book twice but this one deserves another go, it will be fun to concentrate on the quality of the writing rather than trying to connect the characters.
July 18, 2014
I loved this book. Rich, dense, perceptive prose, not plot-driven, maybe a bit cerebral for some, but despite that it is a rollicking yarn that I hope to revisit soon.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews