Remembering Babylon

I normally will polish off a book in one or two days, maybe 3 if the writing is dense. If it takes me longer to read, I realize that it is not me, but rather the author who has failed to engage me. I am halfway through this book, but I have set it down 6 or 7 times and picked up something else. The plot involves a young boy in 19th century Australia who gets involved with a group of pygmies who have never seen a white man before. The premise is promising, but at the half-way mark I am still not invested in the book. It will be one of those that get read last, when I have run out of anything else to read.

Lachlan Beattie, a boy of Queensland, encounters Gemmy Fairley, a ragged castaway. Gemmy had learned the speech of the Aborigines and he had lived among them. He was not quite a Kaspar Hauser, but nearly one. He was taken in by Jock and Ellen McIvor, Lachlan's aunt and uncle. Gemmy had jerking stammering fits. People wondered if he was a spy. He was white but had acquired a native look. George Abbot, the schoolmaster of the settlement, is very young, but likes to pretend that he is older. Abbot hates the petty tyrannies of his job, hitting the students with a ruler. He had been a charming child, but as an adult he was plain. Alisdair Robertson, a relative, had helped George as a child. He was the person who had urged George to go teach at the settlement. George felt that he had come to a not very promising end. Gemmy tagged after the children when they went to school. George Abbot was the sort of person who tried to maintain his proficiency in French by practicing. When Gemmy is seen speaking to two natives, he is considered to be disloyal and Jock McIvor's associates want him to leave the settlement. Jock seeks to resist mob action but as unexplained events begin to take place something has to happen to change Gemmy's circumstances. He is moved to the household of a bee keeper. Lachlan is surprised to learn that the school teacher is a visitor there, a place where two rather cultured women live. The minister, Frazier, sees that Gemmy is caught between two worlds and that he is a figure of the future. Gemmy had been a ratcatcher's helper. He had loved the ratcatcher. Smelling a piece of wood in furniture at his new abode with the bee keeper, memory of his past is triggered. After being a ratcatcher's boy, he was at sea for two or three years until he became a castaway. Lachlan, in manhood a politician, feels that Gemmy's presence has remained with him for his whole life. This novel is a part of the wonderful and growing literature of the British diaspora.

When abandoned 'British object' Gemmy Fairley sprints away from his Aboriginal protectors and into a white settlement of mid-nineteenth-century Queensland, it's the occasion for both wonder and hostility. For Malouf, it's an opportunity to explore many aspects of language, landscape and Australian identity. In the various reactions of the townsfolk, and Gemmy himself, he elucidates his themes. It's a novel full of complex images, acute observations, and heartbreaking lyricism. Once again, Malouf effortlessly fuses personal moments with grand themes. This is a more complex and elliptical work than his earlier novels, but no more or less satisfying - it's hard to improve on perfection. Shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize, 'Remembering Babylon' - from the breadth (and depth) of its scope to the finest details of its execution - leaves the actual winner for dead.

Mr. David Malouf has the ability to take familiar topics, amend them, and create a new viewpoint, a valid book, and worthwhile reading experience. Fear generated by the unknown as perceived by ignorant or well-educated simpletons is not new. That these feelings are often expressed in terms of racial tension; hatred and violence are routine, not an exception, and anything but a novelty. In, "Remembering Babylon" the Author tells the tale in a manner new for me, and even though the behaviors of many involved were predictable, the new perspective and quality the Author brings to it made for very good reading.As he has in previous works he sets the tale in Australia, and once again brings settlers from Europe, in this case Scotland. Mr. Malouf then takes a familiar human interaction, which is by definition tragic, and it is here he makes it his own. In terms of Race, Gemmy is as white as any of the settlers. He spent thirteen years in London, and then was washed upon the coast of Australia where he then lives amongst the Native Aborigines for sixteen years. As Gemmy has lived the better part of his life is the harsh sun he is no longer as light in complexion as the self-described white newcomers. Gemmy one day happens across the path of some children, and in fear of his safety announces he "is a British Object". The irony of this statement could be dwelt on for pages by itself.There are many relationships a reader can explore in this story. I felt a key one was that between Gemmy and the Family headed by Jock that takes him in. Jock does so to please his wife, as Gemmy is not a person he would bring into his home with his Wife and Children. The reaction of the balance of the settlement ranges from degrees of fear, to desire to destroy the race that Gemmy has morphed into from the viewpoint of the duller of the participants. Gemmy at once becomes a trusted member of Jock's Family, and the focus for every evil fantasized, imagined, or counterfeited by others.The storyline must be left for the book, however one experience shared by Jock and Gemmy is of note. Gemmy treated like the savage he is not, routinely stays several steps ahead of those who attempt to exploit him to gain knowledge of his tribe, and then extinguish them. Far from being intellectually inept, he combines the street smarts of the former London Urchin, with the practical knowledge of sixteen years of learning to live in harmony with the same land the settlers come to conquer. He becomes a harmless, productive and trustworthy part of Jock's Family if not the community.Gemmy knows his own heart, and that of those he has come to live amongst. He is under no illusions as to how he is viewed, or how he sees the world. Jock goes through a major reassessment of what he thought he was, as events build around Gemmy. The Author explores in a thoughtful manner what our thoughts are made of, how they change, and whether it is we that change, or our views of others that change us.The book is fille

I didn't read this for a class or an essay but I can see how it might have ruined it for me if I had to pick through it trying to find something tangible to say. That said, I found the trading of power (or at least the characters' perception of it) in this book most compelling. From one second to the next, as the characters in a scene come and go, or the shock of first appearances fade or linger, a feeling of control quickly becomes one of fear and distrust. It's a true Malouf masterpiece because he makes us think about the people in our own world today by letting us into a story in an otherwise distant time and place. It's a beautiful book, and reads to me- like most of Malouf's writing- like a pure stream in a dirty world.

Setting this book in the mid-1800's on the nearly uninhabited north coast of Australia provides David Malouf with plenty of leeway to explore some of his favorite themes. The book begins with the return to "civilization" of an English cabinboy who had gone overboard twelve years prior and had been nursed by aborigines. With the north coast now being settled by people fearful of the shy aborigines who they think may be a threat to them, all the characters feel isolated: the settlers from life in England, from the more populated centers of Australia, from the aborigines, sometimes from each other, and certainly from the strange young man who has made contact with them; the former cabinboy from his "countrymen," from the society of the sailors he served, from the aborigines who nursed him, and from the new society now being established on the north coast. All have differing views of reality, different values, and different understandings of what is important. The reader is forced to question what constitutes "civilization" and to ponder the extent to which we can have a "real" world without recognizing the importance of the supernatural and those who allow it to inform and transform their lives. As in "The Conversations at Curlow Creek" and in "Harland's Half Acre," Malouf's main character must decide whether he will live in civilization as he has found it.