The Young Desire It

by Kenneth Mackenzie, David Malouf (Introduction)

It was dark under the trees, and heavy drops had begun to fall from the branches...he knew there was someone there, walking on the leaves like rain.

It was a girl, a stranger.


Fifteen-year-old Charles Fox is sent away to boarding school from the isolated farm where he has grown up. There he must deal with both the bullying of the other boys and the intense affection of Penworth, one of the masters. But then, home for the holidays, he meets Margaret, a girl staying at a nearby farm, and a passionate bond develops between them.

Published in 1937 to extraordinary acclaim when Kenneth Mackenzie was in his early twenties, The Young Desire It is an unparalleled account of erotic awakening.

‘Among Australian novels it is unique and very nearly perfect, a hymn to youth, to life, to sexual freedom and moral independence.’ David Malouf

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Classics, Coming Of Age, 20th Century

345 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Kenneth Ivo Brownley Langwell (Seaforth) Mackenzie (1913-1955), poet and novelist, was born on 25 September 1913 in South Perth, son of Australian-born parents Hugh Mackenzie, farmer, and his wife Marguerite Christina, née Pryde-Paterson. After his parents were divorced in 1919, Kenneth was raised by his mother and maternal grandfather. Educated at South Perth and Pinjarra state schools, and (as a boarder) at Guildford Grammar School, he took no interest in sport and studied only when he felt inclined. At 16 he ran away from school and refused to return. Finding Muresk Agricultural College even more uncongenial than boarding school, he entered the University of Western Australia in 1932 to read law. He gained a reputation for spasmodic brilliance and eccentricity, and left before the end of his first year.

Following occasional employment as a journalist on the West Australian, Mackenzie travelled to Melbourne in 1933. In the height of the Depression he took a job as a scullery-assistant and survived on the charity of his father's sisters. He moved to Sydney in the following year. There he reviewed books, films and drama for the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote for Fox Movietone News and contributed to Smith's Weekly, through which he met Kenneth Slessor. Impressing Norman Lindsay, he was admitted to his Bohemian circle: wherever Mackenzie was, 'wild comedy and wild adventures tended to break out'. He was strong, muscular and blonde, and immensely attractive to certain women. On 24 December 1934 at the registrar general's office, Sydney, he married Kathleen Bartlett, née Loveday; born in England, she was a 25-year-old widow who had taken a job as a pastry-cook.

His first novel, The Young Desire It, was published (1937) under the pseudonym 'Seaforth' Mackenzie by Jonathan Cape in London; sensitive, vital and erotic, it was to win the Australian Literary Society's prize in 1939. A sense of moral ambiguity and impending chaos, evident in Mackenzie's second novel, Chosen People (London, 1938), began to invade his own life as he became addicted to alcohol. The outbreak of World War II destroyed what vague plans he had to make a name as a writer in England. Mobilized in the Australian Military Forces, he began full-time duty on 8 April 1943, but was rejected for active service because of poor eyesight. Mackenzie was posted to the 22nd Garrison Battalion at Cowra prisoner-of-war camp. In August 1944 he witnessed the Japanese break-out, the subject of his third novel, Dead Men Rising (New York, 1951). Two collections of his poetry were published in his lifetime, Our Earth (Sydney, 1937) and The Moonlit Doorway (Sydney, 1944). Medically unfit, he was discharged from the army on 11 June 1945. His drinking habits (claret with breakfast) and lack of qualifications meant that he was virtually unemployable.

In 1948 the family moved to Kurrajong at the foot of the Blue Mountains where Kate had bought 14 acres (6 ha) with her child-endowment money. When they failed to make a living there, she returned with the children to Sydney. Left alone, Mackenzie devoted himself to his writing. He was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Fund fellowship for that year and for 1955; he edited (1951-52) Australian Poetry and published another novel, The Refuge (London, 1954). None the less, his financial situation and personal life were fast deteriorating. He was accidentally drowned on 19 January 1955 while bathing in Tallong Creek, near Goulburn; survived by his wife, daughter and son, he was cremated with Anglican rites. Douglas Stewart edited the Selected Poems of Kenneth Mackenzie (Sydney, 1961), and Evan Jones and Geoffrey Little co-edited a further anthology in 1972.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macke...

Reviews

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful novel is hypnotically seductive in its descriptive language and sense of place and time. It’s also one of the most moving and tragic pieces of literature that I’ve ever read.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Young Desire It is the first novel by Australian author, Kenneth Mackenzie, and this volume has been published under the Text Classics banner. The 11-page introduction by David Malouf is both very insightful and quite informative about the author. At fifteen, Charles Fox, serious, intense, sensitive and introspective, is sent to boarding school in the city where he meets, for the first time, other boys of his own age, is taught by young English Masters and lives an unfamiliar, regimented existence. During a longed-for break back home, he encounters Margaret, spending her school break on a neighbouring farm, and falls passionately in love. On the surface, it may seem that not much happens in this novel, but a great deal occurs within, as Charles matures and realises “a mind continually awakening to its own innocence.” The narration lies mostly with Charles, but also jumps between a fellow student, Mawley, the young Master who befriends Charles, Penworth, Charles’s mother, and Mr Jolly, and this can sometimes lead to confusion until the context or content clarifies the matter. While this novel touches on paedophilia, masturbation and sex between minors, as befits a novel written in the 1930’s, these aspects are merely hinted at, so some reading between the lines is required, and here Malouf’s introduction is helpful also. This novel’s great strength is the wonderful prose. Mackenzie captures the West Australian summer with consummate ease: “The whole earth and all nature sank into a still swoon beneath the eternal ravishment of the sun, and the ceaseless, passionate susurrus of the insects gave sound to the heat, as already mirage was giving it a shaking visibility, clear and refractory like water.” and his prose has universal appeal. His descriptions are sometimes verbose, sometimes beautifully succinct: “They smiled with the sincerity of cats.” His descriptions of characters, too, are marvellous: “It was a humorous and kindly face, mobile from much talking and an inexhaustible ability to express surprise; the lines around the sly keenness of the eyes showed how often laughter closed them.” This edition has gorgeous cover art by W.H. Chong. Text do well to include this beautiful novel under their Classics banner: it was the Winner of the 1937Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and is indeed a timeless Australian classic.

[Margot McGovern · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Young Desire It by Kenneth Mackenzie is my new favourite Australian novel, and possibly the best coming-of-age novel I've ever read. I gushed about it here: http://margotmcgovern.wordpress.com/2...

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The Young Desire It' may well be my new Favourite Australian novel. In sensuous, evocative prose Mackenzie takes us through the fifteenth year in the life of Charles Fox, a boy with girlish good looks who has grown up as something of a wild child, ranging at will his mother's extensive property in Australia's wheat belt with little formal education but a deep understanding of nature's rhythms. But as he turns fifteen his mother decides it is time for him to attend one of Australia's premier boys' boarding schools which has formed the minds of many of the young country's best and brightest. This is the nineteen-twenties and Australia is still very much part of the Empire - the Masters at the school are mostly shipped out from England, many of them recent Oxbridge graduates, as innocent in the ways of the world as Charles is. The boys, mostly lads who have grown up in the bush, seem older than their years, while the Masters, having lived a life of the mind and Reason, can seem younger, so that they could almost be of an age. Penworth, a classics teacher and Charles's junior Housemaster, forms a close bond with Charles, one that strays from an ill-advised friendship to something far more uncomfortable - Penworth sees his love as being very much in a classical Greek tradition; Charles is confused by the teacher's advances but a growing awareness of his own erotic life gradually informs him that Penworth's behaviour is wrong. At the same time, Charles (on a holiday back at home) has met and fallen for Margaret, the niece of a couple who farm on his mother's land.
Through these relationships, mostly told via Charles' internal wrestlings, Mackenzie shows us a youthful awakening, a loss of innocence, and a yearning for freedom (freedom being the 'it' which the titular young desire) - freedom to act, freedom to choose.
Mackenzie's nature writing is of the first order - the shimmering grasses, the trees like green cumulus low over white trunks, the chorus of the cicadas: images and sounds assail the reader on every page and drown the senses.
What is perhaps most remarkable is that Mackenzie wrote the novel, based on his own schooldays, when he was just twenty-three in the space of five weeks. As a first novel by such a young author it is stupendously good and deserves to be seen as an Australian classic. Three cheers for Text for introducing it to a whole new generation of readers, and here's hoping they reissue some of his other novels in due course.

[Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story follows Charles Fox, a fifteen-year-old, as he navigates his experience in a top-tier Australian boarding school during the 20th century. Charles is an unsocialized, sensitive young man who grew up with his single mother on her extensive property in the Australian countryside. Upon his fifteenth birthday, Charles' mother decides to send him to the all-male boarding school. From Charles' perspective, we follow him as he comes of age. Throughout the novel, he navigates experiences of exclusion by his boisterous classmates, an intellectually stimulating, yet sexually predatory relationship with his Greek tutor Penworth, a growing independence from his mother, and his first love, Margaret.
I can only echo the other reviewers in that I absolutely loved Mackenzies writing - the book reads in a beautiful rhythm and evokes marvelous visuals in the reader's mind through very fresh metaphors.
Additionally, the fact that Mackenzie tackles difficult topics seems extremely progressive for the 1930s.
While I greatly enjoyed the majority of the book, I found the encounters between Charles and Margaret hard to read - they clearly feel a deep attraction towards one another, but as single children growing up in solitude, their relationship causes them much emotional confusion. Personally, I found it hard to relate to their halting, limited dialogue and their relationship that seemed to largely unfold without words.
Margaret seems to be an extremely interesting character and I wish we had gotten to know more about her, outside of Charles' male gaze.
Nonetheless, a really beautiful book that I would highly recommend to anyone who likes poetic prose.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kenneth Mackenzie's 1937 classic 'The Young Desire It' was simply mesmerising. Written in beautiful, evocative prose it traced one year in the life of 15-year-old Charles Fox, taken from his simple country upbringing to board at an all-boys college. With his angelic face and innocent demeanour he's a target for the bullies as well as a particular young teacher, Penworth whose relationship with the boy is told so poignantly that in some ways Penworth is the major character. Then, during the summer holidays on the family farm Charles meets a young girl. The boy's adolescent awakening (and his desire to be free to make his own choices - as alluded to in the title) is a pure joy to read; painful at times, sensitive, lyrical and honest. Mackenzie perfectly captures the atmosphere of blistering hot Western Australian summers and the brittle beauty of the bush. The novel was written when Mackenzie was 24 years old and he admitted that the character of Charles drew heavily on his own experiences.

[Gary Reger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming-of-age novels are a dime a dozen. But Kenneth Mackenzie's The Young Desire It stands out. It's a brilliant evocation of an adolescent discovering his sexuality in the context of a boarding school and home visits, where he meets a girl with whom, eventually, he loses his virginity (and she hers, too).

Charles Fox--that's the boy--also finds himself the object of a pedophile teacher at school. Charles doesn't quite seem to grasp the teacher's goals--his desires, as it were.

The Young Desire It deserves a wide readership.

[Buchdoktor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Fox, der bisher zu Hause von seiner Mutter unterrichtet worden ist, kommt als Fünfzehnjähriger in ein australisches Jungeninternat. Als fleißiger Schüler hatte Charles sein tägliches Lernpensum bisher stets schnell erledigt und verbrachte den Rest des Tages ungebunden in der Natur. Charles hat seinen Vater nie kennengelernt, er lebte allein mit der Mutter auf deren Farm, die zum Teil verpachtet ist. Zum Abschluss einer höheren Schule gibt es nur diesen Weg von vier Internatsjahren, darüber gibt es mit Charles Mutter keine Diskussion. Charles muss als Neuer im Internat als Initiationsritus verharmloste sexuelle Gewalt älterer Schüler über sich ergehen lassen, für die englische Internate berüchtigt sind. Die Meute spürt, dass dieser rothaarige Neue anders ist als sie und doch gern dazugehören würde.

Direktor Fox schlägt Charles vor, aufgrund guter Leistungen ein Schuljahr zu überspringen. Charles erhofft sich, so die verhasste Schule in kürzerer Zeit hinter sich bringen zu können. Zur Vorbereitung auf die nötige Prüfung soll Mr. Penworth Charles zusätzlichen Unterricht geben. Der erst 25-jährige Penworth, aus England an die australische Schule abgeordnet, wird selbst mit der Einsamkeit nicht fertig und missbraucht Charles Isolierung an der Schule in deutlich pädophiler Absicht. Dem Kollegium und der Klasse gegenüber verbirgt Penworth seine verbotene Zuneigung zu einem Abhängigen hinter unpassenden Bemerkungen zu Charles „unmännlichem“ Aussehen. Der Missbraucher wirft sein Opfer der Klasse zur Vernichtung vor, anstatt seiner Verantwortung für die Schüler nachzukommen. Dass Charles zuvor weder männliche Bezugsperson noch gleichaltrige Freunde hatte, lässt ihn in der Schule zum willkommenen Mobbingopfer und zum leichten Opfer des fachlich und menschlich inkompetenten Penworth werden. Nach einheimischen Maßstäben ist Penworth ein Versager, den außerhalb der Schule niemand ernstnehmen würde, erkennt Charles. Direktor und Kollegium sind mit eigenen Machtkämpfen beschäftigt; Penworth „unnatürliche“ Empfindungen gefährden das ohnehin labile Gleichgewicht zwischen den Lehrern. Unter diesen alptraumhaften Bedingungen entwickelt Charles Fox sich weitgehend normal. Im Klassenkameraden Mawley findet Charles einen Vertrauten und verliebt sich in den Schulferien in das Mädchen Margaret.

„The Young Desire it“ war vermutlich der erste australische Roman, der sich mit der Innenwelt seines Protagonisten befasst, stellt David Malouf in seinem Vorwort zur englischen Klassikerausgabe des Buches fest. MacKenzie war mit seiner Darstellung des pädophilen Interesses eines Lehrers an dessen minderjährigem Schüler seiner Zeit weit voraus. Sein großartiger Entwicklungsroman lässt den Lesern breiten Raum für eigene Interpretation und spricht vielfältige Probleme an. Penworth und seine Kollegen repräsentieren als Vertreter des britischen Empires kurz vor seinem Verfall ein im Scheitern begriffenes koloniales Bildungssystem, das als letztes Lebenszeichen einem anderen Kontinent unreflektiert sein humanistisches Bildungsideal aufdrückt. MacKenzie zeigt das Verhältnis zwischen heranwachsendem Sohn und seiner alleinerziehenden Mutter als von beiden empfundenen Normalzustand, der so in der Literatur selten zu finden ist. Auch seine offene Darstellung von Strukturen in einer Bildungseinrichtung, die Mobbing und Pädophilie stützen, dürfte bis heute selten sein. Schließlich bietet MacKenzie Lesern der Moderne die Möglichkeit, sich in die Empfindungen von Jugendlichen einzufühlen, die vor 80 Jahren aufwuchsen. Vieles wird in diesem Roman nur angedeutet, mögliche Konflikte zwischen Mutter und Sohn, Charles körperliche Entwicklung, seine Liebe zu Margaret, wie es sich für die damalige Zeit gehörte. MacKenzie hat seinen Roman selbst als Jugendlicher begonnen und ihn beendet als er so alt wie Penworth war. Für einen jungen Autor finde ich auch MacKenzies zurückhaltende Zeichnung der circa fünfzigjährigen Mutter und der Figuren älterer Lehrer (aus der Perspektive des Jungen gesehen) ungewöhnlich einfühlsam.

[John Purcell · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is nothing so seductive and yet elusive as the memories of our first experiences in love. We can recall the actions - shared glances, a sweet paralysis, then the first touch, perhaps a chaste kiss - but this is not what we desire. We want to feel again the fear, the pleasure, the tremors and the foreign breath. But it is this that eludes us.

Unless we stumble across an artist who can recreate these feelings for us.

Recently Text Publishing sent me a copy of The Young Desire It by Kenneth Mackenzie. Published to acclaim in 1937 and virtually lost to us since Mackenzie's early death in 1955, The Young Desire It is another great find and perfect fit for the Text Classics collection.

This is very much the work of a young novelist. Recounting a home schooled adolescent's experiences after he is sent to boarding school, there is very little story beyond this transformational transition from boy to man. Mackenzie was just seventeen when he started writing the novel and twenty-five when it was published. He was as close to the subject as any artist can hope to be and within these pages Mackenzie has captured for all time the sensation of first love. For which we must all be thankful though some may find the poetical prose hard going.

[Simon Bate · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In time he put up his arms, to undo the green ribbons that swung at the ends of her heavy fair plaits; and at last, like a silken fall of cloth, her hair spread free, shutting in their two faces.They could not smile now, nor speak, not even to say each other's name that was loudly in the mind of each.The day had too sure a power over them; though they might evade it in cool shadow, they were a part of its triumph, and it forced them together, encouraging them with the illusion that what they did they did by the blind volition of their own single will.In its cruel majesty it echoed mockingly her one cry, that was a cry of relief from a long tyranny."
Beautiful writing but so coy that one is never sure what has actually occurred.

[Philip Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: Fine Writing. Dense metaphors and many of them.
I had mixed feelings about reading this in the first place, and different mixed feelings afterwards. First, the topic concerns "erotic wakening" according to the cover note and it is set in a boy's grammar school. You can read between the lines here and you would be right. However, the material is handled with such delicacy and objectivity I could hardly be concerned. Also, the characters are mostly dealing with emotional confusion rather than action. It's not some kind of "50 Shades of..." There is also, and perhaps this is the main theme, the beautifully rendered infatuation the main character has with his first girlfriend.
The book it modern in style. Echoes of Joyce, Woolf, Proust, etc. And not a little Shakespearean in language. In fact, Mackenzie's metaphors are frequently startling in their freshness. And sometimes obscure in their meaning. This latter fault, if one considers it so, renders the climax rather ambiguous. Probably Mackenzie intended this, but it left me unsatisfied. I do like a nicely wrapped up ending. There is not one here.
Fortunately, Malouf's introduction is clear as stream water. I read it before and after and it helped.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps an underrated Australian classic, this first novel from the 1930s shows a very strong DH Lawrence influence. It has some nicely written passages but is somewhat overwrought in trying to describe the heightened feelings of the naive narrator as he deals with boarding school and falling in love. I recently reread The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, written thirty years later but also set in a school in the 1930s and I longed for Spark's lightness of touch when reading this portentous account. Still, it's worth checking out.

[Nathan Hobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a beautiful prose-poem, a novel about adolescence which amazed me again and again with its evocation of states of mind and the experience of landscape. It tells of a year in the life of fourteen-year-old Charlie Fox, as he begins at a boarding school in Perth, with interludes at his mother’s farm in the South-West where he falls in love with a neighbour’s visiting niece. It’s shocking to read in 2019, with the sexual assault of Charlie by the other students as a hazing ritual in the novel’s opening and the grooming by a paedophile teacher presented as a normal part of school life.

[Penny O'shea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed parts of this book very much - some lovely descriptive turns of phrase in particular. There was just a bit too much description and too little action for my liking. It seemed to drag in parts. A very bold and provocative book considering it was written in the 1930s.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tedious. Starts well and then grumbles to a stop

[Mela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried and my soul felt every word

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The style was just tooooooo ostentatious for me especially after reading simple little kokoro.... story was sublime but really ruined by over flowery prose .....

[Text Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The Young Desire It is a revelation: a coming-of-age novel from 1937 that deserves a place alongside the classics in this genre. It’s a feverish, fascinating, and surprising look into the mind of an adolescent discovering a sense of self in his quest for love. It’s also a remarkably nuanced and moving portrait of the struggles of those around him to come to terms with their own lives and longings.’
Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club

‘A book to set beside James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man…The best novel I’ve read in a long, long time…One of the great stories of first love…Why isn’t this stunning novel famous?’
Michael Dirda, Washington Post

‘A hymn to youth, to life, to sexual freedom and moral independence.’
David Malouf

‘A beautifully written story of a sensitive boy’s movement towards adult love.’
Sydney Morning Herald

‘Mackenzie’s prose is at its most sparkling and most sensuous in this novel, and he evokes the hot Western Australian landscape with rare force…[The Young Desire It] is a pastoral charged with the awakening of desire, like spring.’
Douglas Stewart

‘The Young Desire It is an extraordinary novel, dazzling in its texture, wholly original in its vision, and heartbreaking in the power and freshness of the story it tells.’
Peter Craven, Australian Book Review

‘The Young Desire It is one of the most brilliant, confident and unusual instances of a Bildungsroman in Australian literature.’
Peter Pierce, Sydney Review of Books

‘Sensitive, vital and erotic.’
Veronica Brady, Australian Dictionary of Biography

‘The Young Desire It reminds us there is more than a single line of descent in Australian literature…Mackenzie, who died, penniless and forgotten in his 50s, turns out to be a missing link in our literary tradition. The family tree burgeons at his return.’
Weekend Australian

‘An extremely impressive work of fiction that well deserves this reissue by Text Publishing…A novel to be welcomed back to Australian literature’s available past.’
Age

‘The novel is distinguished by a rare sensitivity and an impressive ethical and psychological wisdom…its seamless narrative is able to probe the depths and ambiguities of its characters’ personalities and lives.’
SMH/Canberra Times

‘The Young Desire It presents the adolescent boy’s view with power and poignancy.’
The Times

‘A first novel of exceptional interest and originality.’
Spectator

‘The Young Desire It is suffused in such rich language and evocative allusions it is surprisingly hard to put aside.’
NZ Weekend Herald

‘This intensely personal work is a beautiful ode of colonial childhood.’
Dominion Post/Weekend Press

‘The growing intimacy between the two young people unfolds subtly and with great delicacy…With the power of language, Mackenzie creates an atmosphere of intimacy that is all his own.’
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

[Lukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It's so beautiful to live; but it seems difficult too. Most of the things we want to do we can't, and the other things we must
. . . Can't we just live, without thinking? It spoils everything."- Charles Fox

. . .

This is a coming of age novel that has been executed with total finesse. Reading this book was like dancing with a very meticulous partner who took their time, memorizing me with simplicity, while leaving me to marvel in complex gestures one after the next.

MacKenzie delivered beautiful depictions of the farm life in which Charles loved so much--I was able to picture the scenery so well and get enthralled in a sense by the connection between Charles and the land he grew up on. This was one of the reasons why this book made a such an impact on me, it was slow, delicate and really made me read each word in order to grasp and imagine each account of nature that Charles picked up on.

The type connection demonstrated between Charles and Margaret is something I haven't read in a novel before--the nature of their relationship is saturated with this sense of innocence that is teeming with desire. Their connection was powerful and you could see how they both affected each other-they wanted each other and this connection mattered to them so much although the adults in their lives didn't see things in the same light. Charles and Margaret have this maturity beyond their years (more so Charles)and say things that are complex.

MacKenzie also did a great job in displaying the aspects of a teenagers life that may or may not coincide with what they want or who they are. For example,the boarding school, filled with bullies, headmasters to capitulate to, and school work to drown in--all things in which he didn't want to deal with-such is the case with most teenagers growing up. In addition Charles mother who wanted the best for him but simply could not understand him--which explains the complexities of going through puberty without any real guidance in a household in which there's no one to relate to.

You really get to see the separation of worlds between adults who are experienced and know the in and outs of growing up or love and teenagers who don't know these things but are drowning in intense feelings and contradictory thoughts.

The whole book is accurate and I get it and I just all but drooled over this authors knack for detail, figurative language, and his ardent use of literary devices.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Young Desire It starts with an evocative title and moves forward from there. Our protagonist, Charles Fox, is a fifteen-year-old who has grown up on the wilds of his mother's Australian farm. When she decides to send him for a proper education at a public school where many of the masters are Oxbridge graduates.

Charles is a beautiful young man and, more importantly, completely unaware of his attractiveness. He is also unsocialized, and an immediate target for the other boys. He finds a friend in Penworth, a classics master, but even Penworth has selfish motivations in his relationship with Charles. While home on holiday, Charles meets Margaret and their mutual attraction is immediate. Charles and Margaret are separated until the next holiday when they are both on the farm, and able to consummate their feelings.

MacKenzie's prose is flowing and provocative. Of what I've read, this novel most reminded me of D.H. Lawrence, but with an Australian tang not found in Lady Chatterley's Lover. There isn't too much in the way of plot, the focus is Charles' actions, reactions, and attempts to understand why others treat him as they do, and to understand what he himself is feeling. This is an atmospheric, internal novel, and I wouldn't recommend it if you are looking for something faster paced and plot-driven. Still, it is a naive comeing-of-age tale set almost 100 years earlier in a rougher Australia than we have today.

[Margot McGovern · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Young Desire It is an exemplary piece of Australian literature: a young man growing up in a young nation. Both are wild, beautiful and struggling to understand their place in a much older world. Read my full review.

[Calzean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evocative, sensual, a literary brilliant novel as it follows young Charles Fox in his 15th year and first at an all boys boarding school. I assume this is a semi-autobiography story as it carefully tells of the death of the headmaster, sexual advancements by Charles' tutor, Charles loneliness and his first love with Margaret. Another great Australian novel bought back to modern readers by Text.

[Suzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful coming of age story. The depth of feeling from such a young author is amazing. Originally published in 1937, but still fresh and absorbing today.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I completely loved, loved The Young Desire It. I got lost in the usage of language. A beautiful read. I highly recommend it.