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The Refuge
Late at night Lloyd Fitzherbert, police reporter with the Sydney Gazette, is picked up by his man in CIB for a ‘last-minute job that won’t take a minute’ at the morgue. A body has been found in the harbour. Irma, a beautiful young woman who fled persecution in Nazi Europe, is dead.
She was Fitzherbert’s lover. And, though the police don’t know it yet, he killed her.
Gripping and atmospheric, The Refuge is a murderer’s confession — a tale of wartime Sydney, with its paranoia about communism and spies. Kenneth Mackenzie’s last novel is utterly different to his lauded debut, The Young Desire It, yet it shares that book’s psychological acuity and mastery of language.
She was Fitzherbert’s lover. And, though the police don’t know it yet, he killed her.
Gripping and atmospheric, The Refuge is a murderer’s confession — a tale of wartime Sydney, with its paranoia about communism and spies. Kenneth Mackenzie’s last novel is utterly different to his lauded debut, The Young Desire It, yet it shares that book’s psychological acuity and mastery of language.
- GenresAustralia
425 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
2 people are currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth Mackenzie
4 books2 followersLibrarian 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 13, 2015
‘It was, I found, the most difficult night telephone call I had ever made.’
Lloyd Fitzherbert is the police reporter with the Sydney Gazette. Each night, he rings the CIB. The night the novel opens he expects to be told of a body found in Sydney Harbour. It is the body of Irma, Fitzherbert’s lover, a beautiful young woman who fled persecution in Nazi Europe. Lloyd Fitzherbert is the narrator of this story and we know, because he tells us in the opening pages, that he has killed Irma.
Over the course of the novel, narrated entirely by Fitzherbert, we learn about how and where they met, of Irma’s flight from Europe where she had been connected with both the Communists and the Nazis. Fitzherbert tells us of how he has protected Irma within Australia from those suspicious of her difference and possible connections. It’s post-war Australia, paranoid with concern about communists and spies. Fitzherbert tells us about his friend Barbara and his teenage son Alan. The story is unfolded within some beautiful descriptions of the city of Sydney (surely a character in her own right) and the Blue Mountains.
‘One question’s answer seems merely to ask another question, until I feel I am getting nowhere.’
There’s plenty of tension in the novel for, although we know Irma has been murdered by Fitzherbert, there’s plenty of past to be navigated before we know why she was murdered. Fitzherbert is controlling the narrative, and the past is important.
What made this novel work for me was Kenneth Mackenzie’s use of language. Somehow, finding out why Irma was murdered became secondary to following Fitzherbert’s story. Yes, within a few pages of the end I had worked out why Fitzherbert murdered Irma, but somehow (by that stage in the novel) the reason for the murder seemed less central to the story than trying to understand who these people were, and why they acted in particular ways. It really shouldn’t work, this slow retracing of events, but it does. The novel is a tragedy. And by the end of it, I was wondering about the various meanings of refuge.
This novel was first published in 1954, a year before Kenneth Mackenzie died. He wrote four novels and published two books of poetry. This is the first of his novels that I have read.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Lloyd Fitzherbert is the police reporter with the Sydney Gazette. Each night, he rings the CIB. The night the novel opens he expects to be told of a body found in Sydney Harbour. It is the body of Irma, Fitzherbert’s lover, a beautiful young woman who fled persecution in Nazi Europe. Lloyd Fitzherbert is the narrator of this story and we know, because he tells us in the opening pages, that he has killed Irma.
Over the course of the novel, narrated entirely by Fitzherbert, we learn about how and where they met, of Irma’s flight from Europe where she had been connected with both the Communists and the Nazis. Fitzherbert tells us of how he has protected Irma within Australia from those suspicious of her difference and possible connections. It’s post-war Australia, paranoid with concern about communists and spies. Fitzherbert tells us about his friend Barbara and his teenage son Alan. The story is unfolded within some beautiful descriptions of the city of Sydney (surely a character in her own right) and the Blue Mountains.
‘One question’s answer seems merely to ask another question, until I feel I am getting nowhere.’
There’s plenty of tension in the novel for, although we know Irma has been murdered by Fitzherbert, there’s plenty of past to be navigated before we know why she was murdered. Fitzherbert is controlling the narrative, and the past is important.
What made this novel work for me was Kenneth Mackenzie’s use of language. Somehow, finding out why Irma was murdered became secondary to following Fitzherbert’s story. Yes, within a few pages of the end I had worked out why Fitzherbert murdered Irma, but somehow (by that stage in the novel) the reason for the murder seemed less central to the story than trying to understand who these people were, and why they acted in particular ways. It really shouldn’t work, this slow retracing of events, but it does. The novel is a tragedy. And by the end of it, I was wondering about the various meanings of refuge.
This novel was first published in 1954, a year before Kenneth Mackenzie died. He wrote four novels and published two books of poetry. This is the first of his novels that I have read.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
August 22, 2021
This is a book that I have struggled to know what I think about. Luckily I read it alongside someone else and it really helped me to discuss it and get a different perspective. Parts of it I really loved - especially the portrayal of Sydney during wartime. I liked the fact that the ‘mystery’ around Irma was so mysterious and didn’t go in the obvious direction and I found much of the writing absolutely beautiful. But, for much of the second half it felt as if there was way too much pointless (maybe?) introspection - and that’s where another perspective came in to try and understand why it was the way it was. Of course the answer could be anything from being a genius portrayal of a troubled and unreliable narrator’s mind to just needing a better edit (we persuaded ourselves of the former), but regardless it added a significant dimension - and although part of me wished there had been more plot and less pontificating, it would have been a more run of the mill affair had it been so. This is one that I would be cautious about recommending to too many people, but that in the end I found quite a worthwhile read.
March 22, 2016
This was a pleasant surprise - another coup by Text in bringing some forgotten Australian writers to the modern reader.
This is a book that defines the usual genres. It is not a thriller, murder mystery (the killer of the refuge Irma is the narrator and crime reporter Lloyd Fitzherbert and that is known within the first few pages), historical drama, coming of age etc. It could be classed as a tragedy but it is also reminder of when newspapers actually provided news, of the traumas behind refugees, betrayal and psychopathic behaviour.
It is also full of great writing and description of the Australian bush, Sydney and human emotions.
This is a book that defines the usual genres. It is not a thriller, murder mystery (the killer of the refuge Irma is the narrator and crime reporter Lloyd Fitzherbert and that is known within the first few pages), historical drama, coming of age etc. It could be classed as a tragedy but it is also reminder of when newspapers actually provided news, of the traumas behind refugees, betrayal and psychopathic behaviour.
It is also full of great writing and description of the Australian bush, Sydney and human emotions.
January 24, 2017
‘The history of a crime told as excitingly and with as much dramatic tension as anything byGraham Greene or Raymond Chandler.’
Kenneth Slessor, Sun
‘Remarkable…A genuine personal tragedy.’
A. D. Hope, Sydney Morning Herald
‘Fascinating, extremely skilful and subtle.’
Sun-Herald
‘One of our most gifted novelists.’
Sunday Observer
‘The Refuge is also a stunning enactment of its central idea. It could have been filmed by Hitchcock.’
Age
Kenneth Slessor, Sun
‘Remarkable…A genuine personal tragedy.’
A. D. Hope, Sydney Morning Herald
‘Fascinating, extremely skilful and subtle.’
Sun-Herald
‘One of our most gifted novelists.’
Sunday Observer
‘The Refuge is also a stunning enactment of its central idea. It could have been filmed by Hitchcock.’
Age
December 15, 2015
A newspaper police reporter in 1940s Sydney knows more about a murdered young woman than he is letting on. With a premise like that, it was hard not to be intrigued by this novel that I came across by chance in Readings.
The first third was brilliant. It was extremely well-written, interesting, mysterious and really fascinating to get a glimpse of life at a major newspaper at a time when the press was a huge part of daily life and at a time in Sydney when there were major changes both within Australia and internationally.
There were some very beautiful pieces of writing throughout the novel that I had to put the book down and just think about for a bit.
Like these sentences:
"She began to feel that there was nothing she could not do, no part she could not play."
"i felt that these few minutes in the company of that young stranger...were so many minutes apart in my life, to be lived only once but remembered always, with that catch at the throat for something exquisite for ever gone which in the end becomes a conviction that an obscure and priceless opportunity within one's grasp was in that instant irretrievably lost."
"My friend," she said almost sharply, "you are happier than you know. The change you suggest would soon make you realise it."
It is always the same, said reason: what you want and obtain ceases to be what it was, becomes its opposite. The most fair becomes the most foul. The more embracing the possession, the more irrecoverable the loss.
Ultimately, however, the story was lacking in the middle and final parts.
The first third was brilliant. It was extremely well-written, interesting, mysterious and really fascinating to get a glimpse of life at a major newspaper at a time when the press was a huge part of daily life and at a time in Sydney when there were major changes both within Australia and internationally.
There were some very beautiful pieces of writing throughout the novel that I had to put the book down and just think about for a bit.
Like these sentences:
"She began to feel that there was nothing she could not do, no part she could not play."
"i felt that these few minutes in the company of that young stranger...were so many minutes apart in my life, to be lived only once but remembered always, with that catch at the throat for something exquisite for ever gone which in the end becomes a conviction that an obscure and priceless opportunity within one's grasp was in that instant irretrievably lost."
"My friend," she said almost sharply, "you are happier than you know. The change you suggest would soon make you realise it."
It is always the same, said reason: what you want and obtain ceases to be what it was, becomes its opposite. The most fair becomes the most foul. The more embracing the possession, the more irrecoverable the loss.
Ultimately, however, the story was lacking in the middle and final parts.
Read
January 27, 2018I found this book interesting and mostly well-written though often prolix. And exhausting. I was intrigued by how much of a reliable narrator Lloyd Fitzherbert was meant to be. I found him repellent in almost every way and kept wondering if Mackenzie was setting him up, showing what a complete fraud he was morally. That was the only mystery in the book for me - I guessed the 'reason' for Fitzherbert's murder of his lover within the first couple of pages (not a spoiler as you know whodunnit right away - only question is 'why').
But by the end I was pretty sure that the author thinks his narrator is a hero - Rothwell who wrote the introduction to this edition doesn't seem in any doubt, calling Fitzherbert a tragic hero. No. He's the most thoroughgoing prig and misogynist and the woman-hatred is so relentless and overwhelming that it is tiring to read. It's also disgusting, the way so many men romanticise and agonise over their murder of beautiful women they 'love' - in art and in life - they are the real victims, they had to do it! They were forced to, you see, no choice, poor things, and it's startling that there's not a single comment by Rothwell or any other reviewer about this. I'm not that interested in critiquing Mackenzie personally for misogyny- I have no doubt he is accurately reflecting much of the attitudes of the time but my god it is wearing to read on virtually every page stuff like this:
'To women, I had noticed, war remains to the end a series of mystifying and reasonless happenings unconnected by any thread of purpose.' p. 330 - (he goes on to 'explain' that men can understand war better because they look at it more impersonally) or:
'Women do not react to torture and other methods of terrorism as profoundly as do men, chiefly because their nervous system is not nearly so cerebral and complex.' p.126
'[Jack] had built a big brick fireplace and set himself up, solitary but not lonely, silent but always ready with an answer and a sharp jest (especially about marriage and the horribleness of women),...'p.171
'The beautiful ones [women] are usually too vain to be frightening and the plain ones too frightened to be anything but - pathetic.' p.385
'So no wonder they [doctors] tend to find women a nuisance.' p.386
'To the end, and beyond, I loved her in a way I think sanity will not pardon, nor my god condemn.' p.408 Sounds like every jealous man's justification for killing the woman he 'loves.'
I could go on, pulling literally dozens if not hundreds of generalisations like this from the book. On virtually every page the narrator and the charmingly 'wise' and 'amused' fellow misogynists his son Alan and his retainer Jack pontificate thus on the nature of 'all' women and all men, always to the effect that women are instinctive, emotional, irrational, don't think, are virtually animals. He even compares his lover, mostly unfavourably, with his dog. It's so depressing and exhausting and I don't doubt the majority of men at this time thought and felt this way and let's face it, many still do, ie the idiotic memo by Damore in which he pontificates that women are less suited to IT than men.
What's even more worrying is that this misogyny is still so baked into our culture that readers and reviewers don't even see it. You'd hope they'd criticise a book in which black characters are compared to apes on virtually every page (yep plenty of racism in this book too) but write about women in this way and no-one even notices.
But by the end I was pretty sure that the author thinks his narrator is a hero - Rothwell who wrote the introduction to this edition doesn't seem in any doubt, calling Fitzherbert a tragic hero. No. He's the most thoroughgoing prig and misogynist and the woman-hatred is so relentless and overwhelming that it is tiring to read. It's also disgusting, the way so many men romanticise and agonise over their murder of beautiful women they 'love' - in art and in life - they are the real victims, they had to do it! They were forced to, you see, no choice, poor things, and it's startling that there's not a single comment by Rothwell or any other reviewer about this. I'm not that interested in critiquing Mackenzie personally for misogyny- I have no doubt he is accurately reflecting much of the attitudes of the time but my god it is wearing to read on virtually every page stuff like this:
'To women, I had noticed, war remains to the end a series of mystifying and reasonless happenings unconnected by any thread of purpose.' p. 330 - (he goes on to 'explain' that men can understand war better because they look at it more impersonally) or:
'Women do not react to torture and other methods of terrorism as profoundly as do men, chiefly because their nervous system is not nearly so cerebral and complex.' p.126
'[Jack] had built a big brick fireplace and set himself up, solitary but not lonely, silent but always ready with an answer and a sharp jest (especially about marriage and the horribleness of women),...'p.171
'The beautiful ones [women] are usually too vain to be frightening and the plain ones too frightened to be anything but - pathetic.' p.385
'So no wonder they [doctors] tend to find women a nuisance.' p.386
'To the end, and beyond, I loved her in a way I think sanity will not pardon, nor my god condemn.' p.408 Sounds like every jealous man's justification for killing the woman he 'loves.'
I could go on, pulling literally dozens if not hundreds of generalisations like this from the book. On virtually every page the narrator and the charmingly 'wise' and 'amused' fellow misogynists his son Alan and his retainer Jack pontificate thus on the nature of 'all' women and all men, always to the effect that women are instinctive, emotional, irrational, don't think, are virtually animals. He even compares his lover, mostly unfavourably, with his dog. It's so depressing and exhausting and I don't doubt the majority of men at this time thought and felt this way and let's face it, many still do, ie the idiotic memo by Damore in which he pontificates that women are less suited to IT than men.
What's even more worrying is that this misogyny is still so baked into our culture that readers and reviewers don't even see it. You'd hope they'd criticise a book in which black characters are compared to apes on virtually every page (yep plenty of racism in this book too) but write about women in this way and no-one even notices.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews