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Yandilli Trilogy #1-3
A Dream More Luminous than Love: The Yandilli Trilogy
This trilogy contains previously published works;
The Second Bridegroom
"Hauntingly lyrical and visually stunning, The Second Bridegroom is the spellbinding tale of one man's exile - from family, country, and religion. Set in the early nineteenth century, it tells the story of a young convict transported to Australia, where he escapes into the bush and becomes the centre of a ceremonial journey which he has no means of understanding.
"In exquisitely crafted prose, Hall subtly - sometimes ironically - explores the boundaries of art and illusion, magic and religion, innocence and guilt, savagery and civilization.
"The first novel in a trilogy that concludes with Captivity Captive, The Second Bridegroom is a work of mythic resonance - intensely magical and shimmering with insight. It will confirm Miles Franklin Award winner Rodney Hall's stature as one of our most inspired contemporary writers."
The Grisly Wife
"In this stunning new novel, Rodney Hall tells the story of Catherine Byrne, a nineteenth-century English missionary who travels to remotest Australia with her prophetic husband and his band of women disciples, the Household of Hidden Stars. Named Muley Moloch after the famous Irish lay preacher whose soul he is determined to save, he is a man of miraculous powers who leads his followers through severe hardship - shipwreck, disease and death - in their millenarian quest.
"Set in 1863 at the dawn of the modern era (with photography, steam power and domestic machines such as the lawn mower revolutionizing people's understanding of their world) The Grisly Wife resonates with echoes and presentiments just beneath the surface of colonial Australia.
Captivity Captive
"Two sisters and a brother are found bludgeoned and shot to death in a paddock in 1898. The case is never solved - until Patrick Malone, more than half a century later, decides the time has come to sift the truth from the lies.
"What rises up to haunt us is a huge tribe of a family turned in upon itself, locked in its ignorance of anything else.
"This is a deeply disturbing novel with all the tension of a thriller - about the dark side of the lives and memories of pioneers who carved small farms from the ancient Australian forest."
The Second Bridegroom
"Hauntingly lyrical and visually stunning, The Second Bridegroom is the spellbinding tale of one man's exile - from family, country, and religion. Set in the early nineteenth century, it tells the story of a young convict transported to Australia, where he escapes into the bush and becomes the centre of a ceremonial journey which he has no means of understanding.
"In exquisitely crafted prose, Hall subtly - sometimes ironically - explores the boundaries of art and illusion, magic and religion, innocence and guilt, savagery and civilization.
"The first novel in a trilogy that concludes with Captivity Captive, The Second Bridegroom is a work of mythic resonance - intensely magical and shimmering with insight. It will confirm Miles Franklin Award winner Rodney Hall's stature as one of our most inspired contemporary writers."
The Grisly Wife
"In this stunning new novel, Rodney Hall tells the story of Catherine Byrne, a nineteenth-century English missionary who travels to remotest Australia with her prophetic husband and his band of women disciples, the Household of Hidden Stars. Named Muley Moloch after the famous Irish lay preacher whose soul he is determined to save, he is a man of miraculous powers who leads his followers through severe hardship - shipwreck, disease and death - in their millenarian quest.
"Set in 1863 at the dawn of the modern era (with photography, steam power and domestic machines such as the lawn mower revolutionizing people's understanding of their world) The Grisly Wife resonates with echoes and presentiments just beneath the surface of colonial Australia.
Captivity Captive
"Two sisters and a brother are found bludgeoned and shot to death in a paddock in 1898. The case is never solved - until Patrick Malone, more than half a century later, decides the time has come to sift the truth from the lies.
"What rises up to haunt us is a huge tribe of a family turned in upon itself, locked in its ignorance of anything else.
"This is a deeply disturbing novel with all the tension of a thriller - about the dark side of the lives and memories of pioneers who carved small farms from the ancient Australian forest."
692 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
1 person is currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Rodney Hall
63 books21 followersBorn in Solihull, Warwickshire, England, Hall came to Australia as a child after World War II and studied at the University of Queensland. Between 1967 and 1978 he was the Poetry Editor of The Australian. After a period living in Shanghai in the 1980s, Hall returned to Australia, and took up residence in Victoria.
Hall has twice won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and has received seven nominations for the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, for which he has twice won ("Just Relations" in 1982 and "The Grisly Wife" in 1994).
Hall has twice won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and has received seven nominations for the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, for which he has twice won ("Just Relations" in 1982 and "The Grisly Wife" in 1994).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 22, 2020
Just exquisite from start to finish. My (brief) reviews can be found at the pages of the individual novels: The Second Bridegroom, The Grisly Wife, Captivity Captive. Brought together, these three novels detail the lives of the alienated and bitter residents of a small settlement on the east coast of Australia throughout the 19th century, in a dense, lyrical prose that moves this reader to tears.
August 6, 2011
As a whole this trilogy is an interesting read on colonial Australia, and the stories of the three generations are subtly tied in for a very nice effect.
Each story brings its own wit and tragedy. The tales are dark, complex, gripping - the description given to this book as a 'great colonial saga' is an apt one.
I found it took me forever to get through though. The style of writing is very descriptive and rich in metaphor, but sometimes so much so, it makes you feel like the author has veered off the story into some other world. Also the use of exceedingly long sentences (some a third of a page!) make reading these books cumbersome at times.
Although a gripping read, definitely not light or easy reading. I would recommend this trilogy to people who enjoy books they can really 'sink their teeth into'.
Each story brings its own wit and tragedy. The tales are dark, complex, gripping - the description given to this book as a 'great colonial saga' is an apt one.
I found it took me forever to get through though. The style of writing is very descriptive and rich in metaphor, but sometimes so much so, it makes you feel like the author has veered off the story into some other world. Also the use of exceedingly long sentences (some a third of a page!) make reading these books cumbersome at times.
Although a gripping read, definitely not light or easy reading. I would recommend this trilogy to people who enjoy books they can really 'sink their teeth into'.
February 19, 2026
Every time I read Rodney Hall I am reminded how good a writer he is - whether it's his poetry, or the novels I've read over the years, his descriptive power and skilful narrative style has sucked me into a different and challenging world, that stays with me long after I've put down the text.
A Dream More Luminous than Love is a collection of three novels (The Second Bridegroom, The Grisly Wife, and Captivity Captive) that cover over a hundred years of white settlement at the fictional Yandilli, on the South Coast of New South Wales. While each novel is of a piece (in fact Hall wrote the third part of the trilogy before the first, and the second after the other two), as a collective they trace the settlement of Australia, the dispossession of the natives, and the development of a particular type of Australian character, born from the origins of the settlers and the vicissitudes of the country they found themselves in.
Which brings me to the issue of reviewing this work - three separate stories, yet linked through time, and more especially, place. I've decided to write some general comments on the trilogy, and then append separate reviews of each book at the end of the general comments (full review available on my blog site - link at the end of this review).
Taken as a whole, I think A Dream More Luminous than Love looks at a few themes. The (changing) European reaction to Australia runs through each book. Escaping into the bush in The Second Bridegroom, the forger takes the country and the indigenous inhabitants as they come, adapting himself as far as possible to the country, rather than trying to adapt the country to himself, as the Atholls are attempting. In The Grisly Wife we see the land and Aboriginals becoming more peripheral to the story - Muley, Catherine and the disciples arrive determined to make a mark on society with their beliefs, but instead turn inward, owing to the noticeable "Australian" culture that was beginning to form in the 1800s. While the naked bush is still feared, the "naked savage" is more a curiosity than a threat. In Captivity Captive, it is clear that the general thought is that the land is there to be won for human use (although Nature in the form of drought still has something to say about that), the original inhabitants are now merely stock background for fairground photographs and completely excluded from life, which has become an Australian shadow of Europe's clans and religions.
The Forger, Muley and his disciples, and the Malone family are all outsiders in the societies they inhabit. All of them learn to rely on their own devices to make their way in the world. While the forger is mostly alone, the group dynamics of both the disciples and the Malones are investigated fully, and Hall comes to some disturbing conclusions about how we humans exercise control over others, and use what powers we have to wound our brothers and sisters. While there is little that is truly evil in these novels, there is precious little that is good, and those who are thoughtful and introspective are the ones that are in the most danger from the others, especially because perceptions of others can be wrong.
The dangers of love run through each book as well - driving people mad, driving them to murder, and consuming lives, misguided love destroys every protagonist in these books - the forger, Catherine Byrne and Patrick Malone all have their lives destroyed by loving when they shouldn't. It is not good to be alive in these times, whether it be as a convict on the run in the early 1800s, part of a religious cult in the mid 1800s, or the son of a harsh father on a small selection in the late 1800s. Australia may have been a land of opportunity, but it was not for those people that populate these novels.
A Dream More Luminous than Love, taken as a whole, is a wonderfully well-written trilogy of novels about time, place, and human desire - well worth reading.
For my complete review, and to check out my other reviews, go to
https://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com/
A Dream More Luminous than Love is a collection of three novels (The Second Bridegroom, The Grisly Wife, and Captivity Captive) that cover over a hundred years of white settlement at the fictional Yandilli, on the South Coast of New South Wales. While each novel is of a piece (in fact Hall wrote the third part of the trilogy before the first, and the second after the other two), as a collective they trace the settlement of Australia, the dispossession of the natives, and the development of a particular type of Australian character, born from the origins of the settlers and the vicissitudes of the country they found themselves in.
Which brings me to the issue of reviewing this work - three separate stories, yet linked through time, and more especially, place. I've decided to write some general comments on the trilogy, and then append separate reviews of each book at the end of the general comments (full review available on my blog site - link at the end of this review).
Taken as a whole, I think A Dream More Luminous than Love looks at a few themes. The (changing) European reaction to Australia runs through each book. Escaping into the bush in The Second Bridegroom, the forger takes the country and the indigenous inhabitants as they come, adapting himself as far as possible to the country, rather than trying to adapt the country to himself, as the Atholls are attempting. In The Grisly Wife we see the land and Aboriginals becoming more peripheral to the story - Muley, Catherine and the disciples arrive determined to make a mark on society with their beliefs, but instead turn inward, owing to the noticeable "Australian" culture that was beginning to form in the 1800s. While the naked bush is still feared, the "naked savage" is more a curiosity than a threat. In Captivity Captive, it is clear that the general thought is that the land is there to be won for human use (although Nature in the form of drought still has something to say about that), the original inhabitants are now merely stock background for fairground photographs and completely excluded from life, which has become an Australian shadow of Europe's clans and religions.
The Forger, Muley and his disciples, and the Malone family are all outsiders in the societies they inhabit. All of them learn to rely on their own devices to make their way in the world. While the forger is mostly alone, the group dynamics of both the disciples and the Malones are investigated fully, and Hall comes to some disturbing conclusions about how we humans exercise control over others, and use what powers we have to wound our brothers and sisters. While there is little that is truly evil in these novels, there is precious little that is good, and those who are thoughtful and introspective are the ones that are in the most danger from the others, especially because perceptions of others can be wrong.
The dangers of love run through each book as well - driving people mad, driving them to murder, and consuming lives, misguided love destroys every protagonist in these books - the forger, Catherine Byrne and Patrick Malone all have their lives destroyed by loving when they shouldn't. It is not good to be alive in these times, whether it be as a convict on the run in the early 1800s, part of a religious cult in the mid 1800s, or the son of a harsh father on a small selection in the late 1800s. Australia may have been a land of opportunity, but it was not for those people that populate these novels.
A Dream More Luminous than Love, taken as a whole, is a wonderfully well-written trilogy of novels about time, place, and human desire - well worth reading.
For my complete review, and to check out my other reviews, go to
https://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com/
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 11, 2025
I was led to this trilogy by Lisa, one of my Chief Reading Enablers. Her review of the second book led me to track down a copy of the trilogy. And, finally, eleven months after I obtained a paperback copy, I read it. I read the books in the order in which they appear in the trilogy: the timeline works for me. My thoughts drift through the books. ‘The Second Bridegroom’, set in the 1830s, opens with:
‘I must face the fact that I have forgotten who I am.’
This is the story of a young convict who, convicted of forgery and transported to Australia, escapes into an utterly foreign landscape after killing the man to whom he is shackled. Through Mr Hall’s wonderfully poetic prose, we see this landscape through the eyes of this myopic Manxman, and gradually recognise aspects of it. But this is no linear story. The Indigenous people who help him remain a mystery to him (and him to them). The story continues, with elements of magic realism as the young convict progresses on a journey. He observes and reports but does not seem to understand the world in which he finds himself. I am wondering whether he ever really knew who he was.
I move onto ‘The Grisly Wife’ which opens some thirty years later with:
‘Queer thing — but yes — we do mourn for the England we lost — maybe because the darkness of the tragedy awaiting us in New South Wales has left the memories of our youth bathed by contrast in clear simple light — and after so many years of exile one’s gentler adventures tend to rise to the surface more and more appealingly — …’
Meet Catherine Byrne, the English missionary, who has travelled to Australia with her husband John Heaps, who has renamed himself Muley Moloch after an Irish apostate. It is an act of penance, apparently. This is my least favourite of the trilogy, not because it offends me but because I have little patience with the cant of missionaries and their proselytising. But I move past my distaste for the characters into the world of the Household of Hidden Stars, Muley Moloch’s women disciples and the birth of a most unexpected child. Catherine’s thoughts shift from topic to topic and are not always easy to follow. The world described has changed in just thirty years: photography is slowly beginning to replace description; domestic machines are changing the way some lives are lived. But all lives must come to an end.
Which brings me to ‘Captivity Captive’. The opening sentence is:
‘There were crows in his eyes when he came right out with it, confessing that he had been the murderer.’
The murder described, of two sisters and a brother, happened in 1898 but has never been solved. In this novel, some fifty years after the event the elderly Patrick Malone decides to discern the truth. The terrain is traversed by looking back at a large family whose father valued self-sufficiency. Patrick may provide our voice for this generation, but it is Pa, to my mind, who dominates the story.
And so, I come to the end of a brilliant trilogy which over three generations examines Australia’s colonial history. Each of the stories depicts a different aspect of colonial influence: convicts and first contact; proselytisers and a changing world; unsolved murders and the insular self-sufficiency of a large family.
I cannot do this trilogy justice: my mind has followed some paths through the narrative while ignoring others.
Highly recommended … if you can find a copy.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
‘I must face the fact that I have forgotten who I am.’
This is the story of a young convict who, convicted of forgery and transported to Australia, escapes into an utterly foreign landscape after killing the man to whom he is shackled. Through Mr Hall’s wonderfully poetic prose, we see this landscape through the eyes of this myopic Manxman, and gradually recognise aspects of it. But this is no linear story. The Indigenous people who help him remain a mystery to him (and him to them). The story continues, with elements of magic realism as the young convict progresses on a journey. He observes and reports but does not seem to understand the world in which he finds himself. I am wondering whether he ever really knew who he was.
I move onto ‘The Grisly Wife’ which opens some thirty years later with:
‘Queer thing — but yes — we do mourn for the England we lost — maybe because the darkness of the tragedy awaiting us in New South Wales has left the memories of our youth bathed by contrast in clear simple light — and after so many years of exile one’s gentler adventures tend to rise to the surface more and more appealingly — …’
Meet Catherine Byrne, the English missionary, who has travelled to Australia with her husband John Heaps, who has renamed himself Muley Moloch after an Irish apostate. It is an act of penance, apparently. This is my least favourite of the trilogy, not because it offends me but because I have little patience with the cant of missionaries and their proselytising. But I move past my distaste for the characters into the world of the Household of Hidden Stars, Muley Moloch’s women disciples and the birth of a most unexpected child. Catherine’s thoughts shift from topic to topic and are not always easy to follow. The world described has changed in just thirty years: photography is slowly beginning to replace description; domestic machines are changing the way some lives are lived. But all lives must come to an end.
Which brings me to ‘Captivity Captive’. The opening sentence is:
‘There were crows in his eyes when he came right out with it, confessing that he had been the murderer.’
The murder described, of two sisters and a brother, happened in 1898 but has never been solved. In this novel, some fifty years after the event the elderly Patrick Malone decides to discern the truth. The terrain is traversed by looking back at a large family whose father valued self-sufficiency. Patrick may provide our voice for this generation, but it is Pa, to my mind, who dominates the story.
And so, I come to the end of a brilliant trilogy which over three generations examines Australia’s colonial history. Each of the stories depicts a different aspect of colonial influence: convicts and first contact; proselytisers and a changing world; unsolved murders and the insular self-sufficiency of a large family.
I cannot do this trilogy justice: my mind has followed some paths through the narrative while ignoring others.
Highly recommended … if you can find a copy.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
March 31, 2023
I picked up this book at a second hand bookshop in Yamba before covid and finally got around to reading it. Wow - these three novels are epic and left me breathless. I knew Rodney Hall as a poet and had read a couple of his novels but nothing prepared me for the richness of the writing here. Three disparate narrators weave three amazing tales. I can only suppose that this book is no longer in print which seems to be the unworthy fate of many great Oz novels from the past. Track it down. Better than most on offer now.
January 9, 2011
Another read during my Australian period. Thought this was great for understanding Australia during the settlement period (1870s to 1920s.) Well written.
July 18, 2012
Trilogy containing;
The Second Bridegroom
The Grisly Wife
Captivity.C.A.P.T.I.V.E.
The Second Bridegroom
The Grisly Wife
Captivity.C.A.P.T.I.V.E.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews