Synopses & Reviews
A new work of fiction by the author of Remembering Babylon. It is 1827, and, in a remote hut high on the plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, an illiterate Irishman, and ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other is the police officer who has been sent to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two men share memories and uncover unlikely connections between their lives. 240 pp. Author tour. 20,000 print.
Review
"David Malouf is one of the most interesting writers to come out of Australia. He might be described as the 'poor man's J.M.Coetzee.' Like the novels of the South African, Malouf's tend to be brief (in the 200-page range), written in crystalline prose, usually dealing with colonial and postcolonial subjects, often with a postmodern twist. But Maloufs work tends to lack the profoundly enigmatic character of Coetzee's, and thus is ultimately not as thought-provoking. The Conversations at Curlow Creek is a case in point. It takes up a potentially fascinating subject, the complex relations among the Irish in 19th-century Australia. But the plot develops in predictably unpredictable ways and the themes are presented in a heavy-handed manner. Too often the characters seem to be speaking for the author rather than for themselves. At times the message of the novel thus seems to border on the commonplace, as in these remarks by the main character: 'in a world where there is no justice the thing we must cling to above all else is pity if we are to retain some semblance of what makes us men.' Malouf can be more subtle than this; if you wish to sample his work, try instead an earlier novel like An Imaginary Life, his fanciful recreation of Ovid's life in exile." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)