Illywacked

A long time ago, probably not long after it was published in 1985, I overhead my mother telling my father what happened at the end of Peter Carey's novel Illywhacker.

I was cross because I'd wanted to read it and at that stage still thought that there was no point in starting a novel if you knew the ending.

Now I can't quite remember what she said so I thought I should give it a go when a copy turned up at home. After all I've read most of his other novels and some of his stories and essays and usually found his work interesting and funny if a bit disturbing in places (I mean The Tax Inspector was just a bit too icky in ways I don't like to think about even now).

But I can still remember enough of her description of what happened to look for clues to see how we're going to get there from here or here or here.

I'm wondering if this is why I'm reading it far slower than usual. After three weeks I'm only two-thirds of the way through its 600 pages.

It's not like the prose is any less engaging to that in the books of his that kept me reading all night. He has a lovely way of putting words together but this is the first one of his that I've been able to put down. And not just once. Every day on my bus ride, I've got up to something I don't want to read and just

stopped.

This book won heaps of prizes and had great reviews but at a distance of two decades if you know how it turns out, it just seems to be trying too hard to reflect "Australianess" in a novel.

There's a broad sweep of historical events from the Gold Rush to the Depression (so far). There's heaps of geography with descriptions of Melbourne, Geelong, Sydney and dozens of small towns from South Australia into south-east Queensland. (Maybe he'll get to WA). There's the "national character" of larrikinism compared to the experience of migrants from Europe and Asia. The lives of country folk and would-be communists are compared to the bourgeois and bohemian. There's drought (haven't got to flooding rains yet but there's time), There's exploitation of fauna and aknowledgement of the land belonging to the as yet invisible indigenous peoples. There's even a child lost in the bush.

So it just feels a bit like he was ticking the boxes of what used be called the Great Australian Novel.

I hope I change my mind by the end.