Beachmasters

by Thea Astley

"The island is a green boxing glove, a baseballer's mitt. It has an insolent thumb." Kristi, the fictional South Pacific island that is the setting of Astley's novel, is in a state of upheaval. Led by the charismatic Tommy Narota, rebel forces make a futile attempt to overthrow the joint English and French government. A good part of the story is centered on young Gavi Salway, grandson of a prominent white plantation owner, who is shocked to learn the truth of his racial ancestry. Gavi is caught in the middle in more than one respect; he inadvertently becomes an accomplice to the rebels' gun-running activities. Astley's story is essentially a series of scenarios involving a number of the island's residents, including Narota, Gavi's grandfather, and the representatives of the English and French governments. The result is a fragmented narrative, held together by the poetry of Astley's writing, which is often haunting but occasionally overly ponderous. This gifted Australian author also wrote A Boatload of Home Folks. (May 1pThose who met the Aubrey family in The Fountain Overflows and This Real Night will certainly want to read this third volume, not finished by West but fully outlined in manuscript notebooks. West's signature talents are again meticulous rendering of period details, evocation of the spirit of an age through outspoken views on its music, art, fashion, politics and social mores. And again there are wonderful conversations that one wishes would go on and on. As before, the basic themes are the function of art and the eternal battle between good and evil, and here West continues to investigate the permutations of marriage, contrasting Rosamund's mysterious, sacrificial union with a repulsive millionaire, Nancy's contented domesticity with a science teacher, and Rose's ambiguous attitude toward and belated discovery of sexual love with the young composer she and her twin Mary had met on the day they received their music scholarships. There are times when West's mixture of mysticism and dry cynicism becomes irritating, and on occasion the prose tends to be overwrought, but her ability to spin a story is unimpaired.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Genres: Novels, 20th Century

Paperback

First published July 2, 1985

About the author

Thea Astley was one of Australia's most respected and acclaimed novelists. Born in Brisbane in 1925, Astley studied arts at the University of Queensland. She held a position as Fellow in Australian Literature at Macquarie University until 1980, when she retired to write full time. In 1989 she was granted an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Queensland.

She won the Miles Franklin Award four times - in 1962 for The Well Dressed Explorer, in 1965 for The Slow Natives, in 1972 for The Acolyte and in 2000 for Drylands. In 1989 she was award the Patrick White Award. Other awards include 1975 The Age Book of the Year Award for A Kindness Cup, the 1980 James Cook Foundation of Australian Literature Studies Award for Hunting the Wild Pineapple, the 1986 ALS Gold Medal for Beachmasters, the 1988 Steele Rudd Award for It's Raining in Mango, the 1990 NSW Premier's Prize for Reaching Tin River, and the 1996 Age Book of the Year Award and the FAW Australian Unity Award for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow.

Praise for Thea Astley:

'Beyond all the satire, the wit, the occasional cruelty, and the constant compassion, the unfailing attribute of Astley's work is panache' Australian Book Review

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beachmasters is a surprising novel: it's the first time I've read an Astley set outside Australia, and it's the first time I've seen her (or any other Australian author) tackle the issue of colonialism in our region.  It's an appraisal of a failed rebellion in a thinly disguised colonial Vanuatu, and while it has its 'Astleyan' challenges, they are not the usual cultural and linguistic allusions.  It's the best Astley I've ever read. Yes.

And yet, at Goodreads there is one brief (three-line) review describing it as Astley not at her best, though it's Astley, so it's very good.  There are seven three-star ratings; and less than 20 who've marked it 'to read'.  One of those is someone who follows this blog, so #FingersCrossed I can persuade him to pick up the book...

Some background first, lest you think Astley is having a laugh in her portrayal of the shambolic administrative arrangements for her fictional island of Kristi.  Vanuatu was, for most of the 20th century, governed jointly by historic foes, France and Britain.

Called the British-French Condominium, it was a unique form of government, with separate governmental systems that came together only in a joint court. The condominium's authority was extended in the Anglo-French Protocol of 1914, although this was not formally ratified until 1922. Melanesians were barred from acquiring the citizenship of either power and were officially stateless; to travel abroad they needed an identity document signed by both the British and French resident commissioners.

Many called the condominium the "Pandemonium" because of the duplication of laws, police forces, prisons, currencies, education and health systems. Overseas visitors could choose between British law, which was considered stricter but with more humane prisons, or French law, which was considered less strict, but with much worse prison conditions. In their book, Vanuatu by Jocelyn Harewood and Michelle Bennett, is this memorable passage referring to the 1920s: "Drunken plantation owners used to gamble... using the `years of labour' of their Melanesian workers as currency. Islanders used to be lined up against the wall, at the mercy of their employers' dice. Long after America's Wild West was tamed, Vila was the scene of the occasional gunfight and public guillotining."  (Wikipedia, viewed 22/8/20)

The 'Coconut War' (which I vaguely remember being reported with mild hilarity by the Australian press) was a brief and mostly non-violent rebellion on the island of Espiritu Santo which although militarily 'crushed' resulted in Vanuatu's independence in 1980.  The revolt was led by a charismatic politician of mixed European, Melanesian and Polynesian descent, called Jimmy Stevens a.k.a. Moses. Wikipedia tells us that at his subsequent trial, which led to his imprisonment for 14 years...

...it was revealed that Stevens and Nagriamel [his political movement] received US$250,000 from the American-based Phoenix Foundation, a libertarian group that previously attempted to establish an independent tax-haven state in Abaco Island, the Bahamas in 1973.

[BTW The Americans got what they wanted.  Wikipedia's article about the Vanuatu economy tells us it's now a 'flag of convenience' country, and a tax haven, *and* Vanuatu sells citizenship for about $150,000, and its passports allow visa-free travel throughout Europe.  (Who knew??)

Wikipedia also tells us that the trial also established that the French government had secretly supported Stevens in his efforts.

This is wonderful material for a novel, and it's amazing that only Thea Astley thought of doing it!

However...

The prologue is a bit off-putting.  Browsers in a bookshop may well have put it back on the shelf.  I couldn't make sense of it until after I'd finished the book.  It's written in an Italicised creole and it includes sentences like this:

And, too, oh in this litany, pray, your eyes east-west, pray for Hedmasta Woodful, now and at the hour of the changing, and for the Bonsers, mechanics of more than boat engines, for Planter Duchard and family, and above all, for the big man, the yeremanu, Tommy Narota, part Kristi, part Tongan, part Devon, who has taken on his new native name, abandoning that of his sea-faring adventurer daddy, along with his ceremonial dress of Bipi fringed tablecloth and lace antimacassar loin-wrapper.  (p. 1)

What were Penguin's editors thinking when they allowed Astley to get away with this, on the crucial first page?  Of course, she was formidable...

Fortunately, it's only one page long, and the rest of the novel is narrated by a comprehensible omniscient third person with a wry sense of humour and a compassionate anti-colonial view of proceedings. 

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/08/22/b...

[Noah Melser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focus on a revolution on a Melanesian island allowing contemplation on colonialism. Books are often limited by their readers and this was the case with me. Astley is so good in her sentences but as a distracted and tired reader I got through pages at a time only before drawn into sleep and, as a consequence, struggled to follow the threads. One of the most soporific novels I've read, nonetheless had some excellent scenes and it is a much better novel than the one I read.

[Robert Lukins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Melanesian island's revolt told through character sketches; as with so many of Astley's novels it's the author's poetry that keeps it all together. Not the greatest Astely, but it's Astely, so it's very good.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

MAY

by Thea Astley

Finish date: 29 May 2022
Genre: novella
Rating: D-
Review: Beachmasters (ISBN: 0140079122)

Bad news:
First few pages…did these pages hook me as a reader by hinting at what lies ahead? No...just a lot of 'triple-speak" (languages pidgin, seaspeak, French/English)…later in the book “rainspeak and tearspeak”. Mentioning all these “quirky” languages felt gimmicky.
Astlely uses Gavi a 13 yr old boy rummaging around a box of old photos to give us the backstory about his family history that is locked in these Kodak moments. He discovers that he is ‘hapkas’ mixed-race. Not impresssed so far….

Good news:
Pg 64-77: Finally I have found a glimmer of good writing but had read almost 50% of the book before I reached this point. The rebellion from the POV from Headmaster Woodful was good. I did not feel for any of the characters, but finally found an emotional connection with this man. There is a sacrifice he made for the islanders that is apparent and he truly feels for the islanders.
Note: Ashley bookends her story: pg 1 and on pg 185 Gavi and Uncle Narota (instigator of the rebellion) say goodbye at the prison gate.

Bad news:
Page 78 - 174 is a series of chapters highlighting 9 different characters. The idea was to describe the island revolution from their POV’s . Character development was pretty much non existent…beige characters just dipping in and out of the narrative for a brief moment. Still not impresssed…

Personal:
So disappointed with this story.
I finished it b/c my goal is to read all 15 novels by Astley
I’ve read 12 and it is clear to me that Thea Astley’s first 6 books written 1958-1972 are the best.
After that she seems to …..run out of steam.