A boat load of home folk

by Thea Astley

When the tourist ship Malekula arrives at a tropic island in the the Pacific the crushing heat and the looming hurricane intensify the hostilities and frustrations of the egocentric people on board. And when the hurricane bursts on the island the havoc it brings is less perhaps than the personal storms of man and wife, of spinster friends, of man and mistress, of erring priest. Only the force of a hurricane could reveal the deepest currents of their ordinary lives.

Genres: Australia, Fiction, Novels, 20th Century

218 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

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

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finish date: 22 November 2017
Genre: fiction (Australian classic)
Rating: A+++
Review: The book recounts the effect of a hurricane on a group of Australians are stranded on a Coral Island in the Pacific. Love, infidelity, passion and prejudice all come together in the ‘eye of a hurricane’.
Plot: is cleverly set within the saying of the Mass by a local Catholic Bishop.
Characters: are overwhelmed by their sinful unworthiness.
“Domine, non sum dignus…” (Lord, I am not worthy…).

Conclusion:

The book recounts the effect of a hurricane on a group of Australians
…stranded on a Coral Island.
Love, infidelity, passion and prejudice
…all come together in the ‘eye of a hurricane’.
The plot is cleverly set within the saying of the Mass by a local Catholic Bishop.
The characters are overwhelmed by their sinful unworthiness.
“Domine, non sum dignus…” (Lord, I am not worthy…).
Astley left the Catholic Church…..but she is not without God.
She show us how her characters (…as well as Astley)
found God outside of Christian practice.
Thea Astley is blessed with a ‘nose for the lurking detail’.
That is what makes her writing so exceptional in my opinion.
What is unique about Astley was her readiness to take a side track.
Her satire about the ‘steamy’ side of the Catholic clergy’s sexual urges
….that we now know more of… is bold!
Priest Father Lake is just bout to ‘crack’ under the oppressive heat and his vocation.
“…he could observe tantalizingly the brown John Terope (house boy)
…padding between the lime trees towards the water tanks behind the school.” (pg 27)
Even in the 1960’s Astley could see how it all
tied up and was not afraid to publish it in her books!
Tone: biting satire
Astley criticizes the Catholic belief system…yet again!
She exposes the weaknesses of the church adherents and the
…bishop is very unsympathetic
…and there is nothing ‘divine’ about him!
Marriage:
The bliss flaked off within months and there they were…
the contestants, one battered, one victor…
and the ropes sagging all around the ring.” (pg 60)
Lover:
“Taking a lover was no more to her than…
…an after work gin …” (pg 75)

One of my favorite images:
Miss Paradise and Miss Trump..
…genteel ladies trying to graciously climb into a dinghy to go ashore.
“…the orgy of leg and thigh and overbalance…” (pg 16)

[Debbie Robson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read Thea Astley for ages. Finally I have and it's not pretty! I am so surprised at the mysogyny of the novel. All the characters in
A Boat Load of Home Folk are sad, pathetic, very flawed and with virtually no redeeming features. I also had a lot of trouble with Astley's very unusual style. Take for instance this paragraph:
"The heat and stillness were cloaking her like plastic beyond the translucency of whose envelope she could perceive more than mere sea, mere houses. The players, small truncated by distance, were making gesture without meaning to each other but pertinent to self and all about them, in a non-violent way, wind curved." Really? What does it actually mean?
Many of the allusions and metaphors that Astley uses to bring her character's thoughts to life are for the most part beyond the thinking of those characters. I also found the florid style cramped the narrative. I have given the book three stars mainly because of the depiction of a place and lifestyle that have vanished.
A friend has argued that her later books are not so florid. She has leant me Its Raining in Mango. I might give myself a bit of a break before I return to her writing.

[Michael Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

A priest faces discharge after being found with a native boy in an inappropriate position. A hurricane is approaching and the passengers on a cruise ship docked in the harbor are all seeking sanctuary. Their lives and their secrets are all thrown together. It's a mess and they are scared. After a horrible night where roofs are blown off and people have slept in puddles of water, they wake to face the new day really not having reached any conclusions. It's a little depressing in its realism, but is highly recommended.

[Ed Parke · Rating 5 out of 5]

"He wanted to raise his hand in blessing but his fingers only took his glass to his own mouth which wanted to placate her, and he sucked in the last terrible juices and drowned his charity."

Astley really was the Graham Greene of Queensland writers, her A Boat Load of Home Folk (1968) an unsettling (and apparently unpopular) masterpiece. The cyclone battering the shabby Pacific nation where the story takes place strips both island and character to the bare bones—not only leaving the physical debris of "rubbish and the remnants of homes" in its wake, but also paring the "home folk" of the façade and accretion which the storms within themselves continue to stir.

Readers of Graham Greene, Patrick White, E.M. Forster, anyone who has prayed to Saint Brendan, or anyone whose postcode begins with a 4—you really ought to give Miss Astley's novel a red hot go.

[Malcolm Frawley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing on my mission to re-read all of Astley's books. This one is a bit of a challenge. Not that her writing is any less powerful. But I feel that her latent misanthropy rears its head in this tale of a motley collection of flawed humans stuck on a tropical island as a hurricane approaches & then strikes. It's not that the characters aren't well-drawn. I just found it difficult to really care for them. But she's still my favourite Australian author.

[Jenny Rock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great & brave to have gone there with priest paedophilia in 1968. Brilliant writing requires much deciphering and concentration and creates a layer in the text that insulates us from the characters so that they feel unreal, uninteresting and unrelatable
Sometimes brilliant writing is pithy, flowing and delivers it home. This doesn’t for me. I could only read short chunks at a time.

[Eric · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book confused me; is it meant to be serious or a dark satire? Why are none of the characters likable? What is the plot intended to convey? I cannot recommend this book.

[Andy P · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not an accessible book. The prose is obscure and haunting, it almost feels like poetry sometimes. The characters are all deeply flawed, some are downright despicable.

But it's left me with a haunting memory of this pathetic, blighted tropical island that I expect I will always carry with me. That's better than a lot of books ever manage.

It is certainly NOT a happy tale. If you are looking for something upbeat and cheery, this is certainly "not the book you are looking for..."